In Twenty Years: A Novel (8 page)

Well, shit.

She’d forgotten about the lies she’d told her team (including but not limited to: publicist, manager,
Rock N Roll Dreammakers
producer, trainer, nutritionist, stylist, assistant, and, well, Tatiana) to make her escape back east. That she had a wretched stomach flu. That a house-call doctor had been summoned. That he’d insisted on bed rest for at least three days. That she couldn’t perform at tomorrow night’s show because of her tenuous frailty. That she was so exhausted he suggested they release a statement saying, “She was exhausted.” (He was a house-call doctor to the stars, after all.)

Evidently, at least half of Smoke’s has posted to Twitter, with a few especially adept patrons blasting out photos to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram simultaneously. Under other circumstances—frankly, right up until this particular circumstance—nothing would delight Lindy more. However, given the breadth (and depth) of her untruths, said circumstances prove different.

The texts from her publicist are not happy.

The texts from her manager come with expected fatigue at her irresponsibility.

The texts from the producer, particularly since he’d scrambled to find a replacement for tomorrow night’s show and was now paying Christina Aguilera double the usual rate, are really pretty fucking pissed.

The texts from Tatiana are confused:

I don’t understand . . . are you in Philadelphia? Why would you be in Philadelphia? I thought you were sick? I was worried. I AM worried!

The text from Leon is elated:

Philly! You’re there solo, right? I’m revving up the Jag!

He’s already on his way.

8

OWEN

Owen has had one beer too many. No, actually, he’s probably had about five too many. He stands for the first time in hours, when the lights glare on at 2:00 a.m. after last call, and now it’s time for all of the drunks to go home. (For the record, Owen finds this 2:00 a.m. closing time entirely too early—outrageously early! Who the hell needs to go home
now
? If you’ve made it to 2:00 a.m., you should be entitled to keep going, for Christ’s sake! Also, he hasn’t been out past 11:00 since he doesn’t even know when.) He clutches the wood framing on the back of the booth for balance and tries to shimmy out.

OK, maybe six beers too many.

Shit,
he thinks.
Catherine’s gonna go apeshit.

Then he thinks,
Oh well.

“We shut this place down, dude!” He smacks Colin’s back and then burps loudly enough that Lindy is distracted from her incessant texting, which she’s been absorbed with for the better part of the hour.

“Finish off the pitcher.” Owen thrusts the remains of the warmish, deflated beer toward her, but she flicks her hand, disinterested, so he raises it to his own mouth and chugs. His aim is mostly dead-on, but some of it dribbles down his chin to his salmon-colored polo, and now it kind of looks like he’s been neck-sweating.

He squeezes Colin’s shoulder.

“We’re staying out, man! We can’t go home yet!”

Colin has been cheek-to-cheek, deep in conversation with a woman who claims she’s in grad school for social work, but Owen suspects is a junior . . . or senior, if he’s being generous.

But he’d never say a word, never do anything but gaze on with, well, yes, a little touch of jealousy. She might be twenty, and that might be a little gross (is it gross—maybe it’s actually impressive!), but
damn . . . hit it, Colin!
Who is he to cock-block Colin? Every once in a while Colin is tagged in a shot on Facebook, and he’s always got a smokin’ blonde or a lanky brunette by his side.
Good for him, man!

I’m not a cock-blocker, man,
he thinks.
He should get his.

Not that Owen’s been in a position to really cock-block for the past decade. Sometimes, yeah, back when he was still working at the firm, and they’d all go out for closing dinners or deal drinks, and a few of his buddies (both married and single) might try to score for the night because they were celebrating. But those days are far behind him—five years behind him—and now, as far as Owen is concerned, at this exact moment no one should ever not tap what he wants, who he wants, when he wants.
Goddamn it! Why shouldn’t we always get exactly what we want?

When was the last time Owen got exactly what he wanted? Five years ago, maybe, when he quit. Five years is a long time to wait to feel gratified. Not that he doesn’t love the time with the kids. Piano lessons and tennis matches and science projects and all that. Still, it turns out that five years of science projects does not exactly lead to personal fulfillment.

But Catherine pays the bills, and he’d known this was the deal. He’d
wanted
this to be the deal. He just didn’t realize how much he’d dislike it. But what’s to be done now? He’s not a hot property in the legal field, and even if he were, he can’t ask Catherine to stay home! It’s not like she can just up and quit the way he did. This notion makes him even less happy: that he was utterly disposable in his own little world, whereas she sits atop hers. No one noticed when he gave his walking papers—well, his assistant brought him a pumpkin muffin on his last day, and a few of his “work friends” pitched in for a decent bottle of wine.

Owen miscalculates the depth of the bottom two steps leading out of Smoke’s and stumbles out the front door onto the still busy sidewalk, the thick air assaulting his already clammy face. Lindy grasps his elbow, steadying him, as a summer student strolls past and yells, “Bitches, I need a cheesesteak!”

“Shit, man,” he says, mostly to himself, since Colin is plugging the possible sophomore’s number into his phone, and Lindy is ducking her head so no one else recognizes her. “I really want a cheesesteak. Do you know when the last time I had a cheesesteak was?”

Lindy doesn’t answer, so he says, “Senior year, man! Senior fucking year!”

“How important can a cheesesteak be to you?” Lindy asks.

“Goddamn important!” he yells. “Also, what is with your attitude? I love you, Lindy, I love you!”

“I don’t have an attitude.”

“You
do
,” he slurs. “You
do
.”

She stares at her phone rather than dignify him, as they hover under a street lamp waiting for Colin to close the deal.

“She’s, like,
twelve
,” Lindy says finally.

“Don’t cock-block,” Owen answers. “Don’t be a bitch and cock-block.” Then, “I didn’t just skip out on my job, FYI. In case you think I’m, like, some pathetic, emasculated househusband.” He stumbles over “emasculated,” and Lindy leans in a little closer, as if proximity will help his enunciation.

“I didn’t think—”

“Catherine
wanted
this,” he interrupts. “Jesus Christ, Colin, can you hurry the fuck up? I’ve never needed a cheesesteak more in my life!”

Then back to Lindy. “We agreed on it! That it would make everything easier. That
someone
needed to be home with the kids, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be her.” He rubs his collarbone, which surely smells like old beer. “I mean, she’s not a bad mom. I didn’t mean that. Shit. I’m drunk. I really need a cheesesteak.”

“It’s hard, I’m sure.” Lindy tries to fake sympathy.

“Don’t have kids,” Owen says. “It complicates everything.” Then he slumps against the lamppost. “No, that’s awful. I love my kids. Oh my God, I love them so much.”

“Mason?” Lindy’s face is hopeful, like maybe she’s gotten the name right, but Owen doesn’t notice.

“He’s the best, man. And Penelope. She’s gonna be twelve. Oh my God, my baby is almost a teenager.” He drops his chin to his chest. “Being a dad is the best thing I’ve ever done. I
like
being home with them. Since when has the world decided that’s a terrible thing? Shit. Maybe we could get a babysitter, but it’s not like I’m that employable. I mean, I kind of sucked as a lawyer . . . well, I didn’t suck but . . . I brought it up to Cathy a few weeks ago . . .” He shakes his head. “
That
went well.”

Lindy’s brow creases into tiny chopsticks, like she’s worried that Owen is about to start crying.

“Oh God, please don’t start crying!”

Owen lifts his head and rolls his eyes up at the night sky. He can’t recollect the last time he was this drunk. Or drunk at all. Catherine isn’t home often enough for them to build a proper social life in Highland Park, and Owen’s not the type to go to dinner parties alone. Sure, he has a few guy friends—husbands of the women he knows from around school (his “work friends” fell by the wayside after a few texts about plans that never materialized)—but these aren’t toss-five-back-and-pour-your-heart-out friendships. They talk about the Cubs and the White Sox and the Bears, and sometimes, when conversation is really waning, the Blackhawks. If the Bulls are on a streak, them too. You don’t have to have three pitchers of Budweiser (and that’s just your own portion) to talk about the Bulls. Also, they all have careers, work talk, client horror stories. Owen just sits there and nods, his shame quietly boiling in his gut, rising up, rearing its head until recently. Now he can no longer ignore it.

“My wife hates me.” He sighs.

“No,” Lindy says.

“She’s such a fucking genius. I mean, the choice was obvious: her or me. Of course it was her. Have you seen her company? She, like, rules the world.”

“I don’t know. You’re smart.” It comes out like a question.

“No,” he slurs. “She’s perfect. Always was. Remember?”

Owen loses himself for a sliver of a minute to that time: how they shared a full-size bed with no complaints of toes poking the other; how they would sneak away during finals week in the library stacks and make out where no one could see them; how, while everyone was planning boozy spring breaks to Mexico or Florida, they went home to her parents’ house, where they did things like look through her elementary-school photo albums and help her dad move his tools around his garage. They were perfect.

He wishes he knew when they took such a strident detour from their happiness. It’s impossible, though, and not just because he’s wasted right now. Rather, because it’s not like there’s one event that imploded them—no infidelity, no betrayal, no awful abuse that he could point to and say, “That’s when we began to sour.” No, their contentment just trickled away, bit by bit, as each of them drifted out on their own separate waves, the water lapping beneath their feet, and they each, separately, pretended not to notice the current pulling them apart.

Lindy takes pity on him.

“Remember how Bea used to say that if you were miserable, you were the only who could change it?”

Owen is surprised to remember this, and from Lindy’s wide-eyed expression, she’s surprised that it came to her too.

“That’s weird,” he says.

“What?”

“You being insightful.”

“I can be insightful!”

“In your music,” he says. “Not in your life.”

“Shut up.”

“Well, anyway, I’m not miserable.”

“And I’m not always a bitch.”

“I’m just drunk,” he rambles over her words. “Really. Catherine basically rules the world. We’re happy. We’re perfect. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

9

ANNIE

Annie lies in bed, her hair fanning across the pillow like a crown, and keeps checking the time on her phone, wondering when Colin is going to get home. Wondering too why he had to chase Lindy down the street rather than stay and reminisce with
her
. Someone was always chasing Lindy down one street or another, but not Annie. She’d rather lie here like a bug in a rug than dash after Lindy, thank you very much.

Annie wonders what it would take to make Colin chase her down the street. Probably nothing; there’s nothing Annie could do to make herself worthy enough for Colin to pursue her. She opens the front-facing camera on her phone and studies herself through the dim, muddied light on her screen. Even with some fine lines here and there, she’s prettier than she used to be: The freckles across her nose no longer embarrass her, the glow of her skin has gone from youthful indifference to downright illuminating. Her lashes are lush, her brows are thick and arched like all the current runway models. Her highlights blend so seamlessly into her base color that you’d never know they weren’t natural.

She drops her phone to the duvet.

Even with all this . . . no, he still wouldn’t chase her down the street. That’s just how it is, that’s just how it will always be. She’s not the type of woman who gets chased down the street. Well, Baxter had chased her in their early days, but that was years ago.

xo

The sign-off worms its way into her mental space—disruptive, unwanted, but there all the same. She cracks her thumb knuckle, then the other one.
He couldn’t be
. It couldn’t be. She must be reading more into it than it really is. It’s two stupid letters, just a casual way of saying good-bye. She pops her index fingers, then her pinkies. Her pulse accelerates with each delicious pop. She couldn’t have missed it again, the signs, his distance, not now that she was sober, coherent! She cradles her head in her hands and twists, squeezing out something unfamiliar, something unsettling: rage.

POP.

She rolls her neck back and forth across the pillow, breathing deep yoga breaths.

She thinks of her favorite website, CitiMama, where loads of anonymous women post questions like this:
My husband got a text that was signed with “Xo.” What would you do?

She already knows what they’d say. She spends enough anonymous hours of her own on there to know they’d pile on Baxter like a pack of rabid wolves: shredding him until there was nothing left that Annie recognized.

She pinches her thigh, then pinches harder. She doesn’t like being angry, she doesn’t like these strange roots of fury blossoming into something bigger, something real. She digs into her flesh until she snaps out of it.

At 2:15 a.m., she turns off her light and tries to settle into her old bed. Or whoever’s bed this is now. She waits three beats, three breaths, then decides it’s no use. She’s not going to be able to sleep at all, and then she worries what she’ll look like in the morning: ghastly! Gruesome. With ogre-size bags under her eyes. With blotchy skin that even the best foundation might not be able to conceal. What will Colin think?

She clicks the light back on and checks her e-mail on her phone. No one is e-mailing Annie at 2:20 a.m., but she holds out hope. Maybe someone on the West Coast is awake, even though she really doesn’t have friends out there.

Annie rereads her text to Baxter from earlier in the night—right after Colin bolted down the block after Lindy, and after she and Catherine had shared all the pictures of their kids from their phones, and after Annie had peppered Catherine endlessly with questions on how she conceives all of her magnificent (truly magnificent!) ideas for The Crafty Lady. Eventually, she could tell that Catherine was growing weary of the subject, so they retreated to bed.

She reads the text once more.

I love you! I miss you! Give Gussy ten big kisses for me!

Baxter hadn’t written back until nearly midnight. He must have fallen asleep on the couch again, waking to pee, checking his phone. He’d replied with a solitary emoji thumbs-up.

She rolls onto her side and stares at their text exchange, with the pseudo–Ralph Lauren sheets around her shins, and the pine-beer scent wafting all around her and the familiar creaking of the stairs as Catherine paces around her bedroom down the hall and her own history here, and she thinks,
xo
.

Why couldn’t he at least say that?

She props up on an elbow, considering.
Who showed Baxter how to use emojis?
Baxter’s a dinosaur about these things. No social media. No clever smiley faces or winks or frowns fashioned out of punctuation marks. She hadn’t shown him emojis. Maybe Gus. Gus knew how to do all sorts of things that his old-fart parents didn’t understand. Annie always tried to keep up, but it was like quicksand.
Gus must have shown Baxter.

Or maybe,
a surprising voice clatters deep in her cerebral space,
it was Cici.
Annie swallows hard, like she can literally swallow the thought, but
Cici
lingers, like a rotten aftertaste, like regret over a bite you thought would go down easy but in fact, might turn your insides green.

Catherine knocks on the door, and Annie starts, dropping her phone like it’s evidence of a murder.

“You still up? I saw the light on.” Catherine pokes her head in. “I can’t sleep. It’s too weird to be here again.” She musses her hair. “God, I haven’t thought about this place in forever.”

Annie thinks about this place more often than she wants to admit, even to herself. She still Googles all of them (well, except Lindy). She still sometimes flips through her photo albums stacked in their den-library, the ones chock-full of collages and cut-out sentimental quotes like,
“A Friend Is Someone Who Knows All About You and Loves You Anyway!”

“I know what you mean. Why look back when you can look forward?”

Catherine chews on her fingernail. “I don’t know. Maybe I should be more sentimental about college.”

“Well, it
is
where you met Owen!”

“It is,” Catherine says. “But that was forever ago.” Then she asks, “So things never got better with you and Lindy? That was never resolved?”

Annie instinctively sits up straighter, her shoulders arching back, her chin pushing forward. “Oh God. Oh, that was ages ago. I mean, we never actually
resolved
it, I guess. But . . . you know.” She shrugs, then fiddles with a loose thread on the duvet.

Catherine purses her lips, puzzled. “I guess . . . well, I feel bad about it. How I acted at the wedding. That we managed to turn . . .” She pauses. “Well, that we managed to turn Bea’s funeral into a fight.” She sighs. “Not that I’m being good about it now. I should. I need to be nicer to her.”

“You’re so nice!” Annie says.

“Not to everyone. Not anymore.”

“I think you’re too hard on yourself,” Annie offers.

“Hmm.” Catherine considers this. “So you and Lindy never—”

“Oh.” Annie jitters her hands. “Well, I have Baxter now, and life is so busy and great that I don’t dwell on all that stupid stuff from before. Like, I truly just feel fulfilled now, so . . . why dredge up all of
that
stuff?” She retrieves her phone. “I was just texting him, actually. Saying good night. He texted me back an emoji.” Annie smiles and hopes that it’s convincing. “I mean, how cute is that?”

Catherine laughs.

“Cute, I guess! The only thing Owen texts me about is why I’m not coming home for dinner.”

“Oh, stop. That can’t be. You guys were always the epitome of happiness.”

Catherine shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know. I work a lot.”

“Well, I quit as soon as I got married. Working was never for me, not once Gus came along anyway.” Annie instantly regrets her honesty, worried she’s offended Catherine.
Idiot! What a stupid thing to say to Catherine Grant of all people!
“I didn’t mean . . . I
think moms who work outside the home are great! I think what you do . . . it’s amazing! I’ve already told you that a million times!” She overcompensates: “I’m very active, though. All sorts of jobs at Gus’s school! And I’d like to volunteer more. And of course, until recently, Baxter was almost never home. I was practically a single mom! No, no, I don’t mean that how it sounds. He’s a wonderful father.” She catches her breath. “Anyway, now I’m vice president of the PTA!” She claps her hands together, like a cymbal, like this is the apex of her aspirations.

“Well, that sounds pretty wonderful. As long as we’re happy.”

“It does seem like we’re all really happy,” Annie says, regretting blathering on like the chatterbox her mom always told her not to be. “Like, flash-forward from graduation, and we’re living the lives we should be!”

“Not Bea,” Catherine offers quietly. “Shit. Sorry. That was terrible. God, do I ever know how to kill the mood. I should go back to sleep. I never have enough sleep. Never.”

Annie smacks her palms against the duvet.

“Let’s go out,” she practically sings. “Why are those guys out while we’re staring at our belly buttons?”

What she really means is,
Let’s go find Colin
. Then what she asks herself is,
Why are you thinking about Colin?
Then, she reminds herself:
xo
.

“I guess we could go out . . . ?” Catherine sounds unconvinced. “Owen left me a fairly incomprehensible voice mail a while ago . . . I think they’re getting cheesesteaks.” She checks her Cartier watch. Baxter gave Annie something similar for her thirty-fifth birthday when she noticed that all the moms at school had one. She stopped wearing it within a year when the moms had moved on to something else, an Hermès bracelet. She didn’t ask Baxter for that too because she was doing her delicate dance of trying to remain utterly unassuming to her husband, as if her undemanding nature would get him to notice her, get him to come back to her. In some ways, it worked. In some ways, he did.

“We should definitely go out!” Annie is already on her feet. Why did she practically have to make herself invisible for her husband to fall back in love with her? Colin would never ask this of a woman! Annie shimmies into her shoes, clopping down the hallway and then the steps.

It’s only as she’s reapplying her matte peach lipstick over and over again, ironing out the wrinkles in her linen capris with her sweaty palms, that she realizes that maybe she’s already invisible to Colin. At least Baxter noticed her in the first place. At least that’s something. Maybe she should be grateful for that.

Annie lasers in on Colin in one of the back booths as soon as they step inside Pat’s. He’s got an arm slung around Owen with an effortlessness that reminds her of how easy he was to love: his casualness, his lack of pretense. Of course, Annie was never anything close to casual, which is why she knew he’d never love her in return.

Colin leans a little closer to Owen, saying something with intensity. Owen shakes his head and shoves the remains of a hoagie, with meat and peppers and some sort of processed filler they claim is cheddar cheese (but Annie never believed it) into his mouth. Cheesesteaks, the infamous after-hours ritual of Philadelphia college students (particularly inebriated college students), were never really Annie’s thing. As a kid, she’d survived on enough crap—hot wings left over from her mom’s waitressing shift, Pop Tarts and Hi-C for breakfast, state-supplemented school lunches—to appreciate the benefits of not inhaling various artery-blocking, chemically preserved, shriveled-up meats as dawn rounded the bend.

Colin raises his eyes and spies Catherine and Annie in the doorway and waves them over. Catherine sighs loudly when she catches a glimpse of Owen’s state of drunkenness, and then kisses him perfunctorily and recoils. Annie can only imagine his breath.

“Cathy!” he shouts. “Oh my God, Cathy! I’m sooooooo happy you’re here. Come have a cheesesteak, you have to have a cheesesteak.” He tries to pull her onto his lap, but she swivels her hips just so, and his arm flails and thuds on the table limply.

“Well, this is lovely.” Then to Annie, “I can’t imagine your husband would stuff himself with cheesesteaks and an entire keg at two in the morning.”

“It was
not
an entire keg,” Owen says, while Annie stutters.

“Oh . . . well.” She doesn’t want to insult Catherine, make her feel bad, because Owen is indeed a bit of slob right now. Fairly disgusting, actually. And no, Baxter would certainly not stuff himself with cheesesteaks at two in the morning. “He’s sort of vegan, so that’s all.”

Annie contorts her mouth into a sympathetic smile, all the while lodged in the memory of that stupid raw-food diet Baxter had insisted on. She had willingly obliged, recreating uncooked carrots in as many ways as she could find on The Crafty Lady. She’d taught herself how to cook after they got married, thinking it was the sort of thing a good wife did. Her own mom had never cooked, never done much more than bring home drive-through fast food or heat up a can of beans and hot dogs. In the sixth grade, for a school fundraiser, other moms had baked lemon tarts and peanut-butter blondies and coffee cakes with mouthwatering brown-sugar crumbles on top. Her own mom sent her in with two boxes of Twinkies and a bag of doilies.
Twinkies.
Annie walked into the gym where the other parents had laid their lovely handcrafted treats full of love on silver platters, and quickly spun around, shame rising up her neck like a heat rash, and dumped the Twinkies and the cheap drugstore doilies into the trash. When her mom asked later that night if they sold quickly, Annie pressed back tears and simply said, “Yes.”