Chapter THREE

I STAY WITH BERNI for close to an hour until her husband Aidan rushes in, holding a bedraggled bunch of daisies he obviously picked up at a Korean market on his way, and the Kate Spade overnight bag that Berni had packed for the hospital weeks ago.

“How are you?” Aidan asks, kissing Berni and stroking his hand across her brow. “Sorry it took me so long. I left the edit studio as soon as you called. But I was way downtown and the guy at the garage had jammed ten other cars in front of mine.” He pauses, flustered, trying to figure out what he’s supposed to say now. Unlike Kirk, he’s not working from a script. “Anyway, wish I got here faster.”

“Maybe you can get these babies moving a little faster,” Berni wails, shifting from one side to the other, unable to find a comfortable position. “When the hell am I getting the epidural?”

“Soon,” Aidan says patronizingly, stroking her forehead again and trying to distract her from the clicking monitors, the clucking nurses and the contractions that are coming closer and closer together. “Very soon.”

“How do you know?” Berni asks, agitated. “You just got here.”

Aidan looks at me, and I can see he’s at a loss. So I chime in.

“Good news,” I say cheerfully. “The doctor says the labor’s going well. Right now it looks like it’ll be a natural delivery. No C-section.”

“How’s that good news?” Berni roars. “I’m forty-two already. I don’t have much time. The least they could do is get these babies out of me. Isn’t anybody going to do any work around here but me?”

“I’ve been working on the movie,” Aidan says defensively, trying to elevate cutting a film to the same league as cutting the umbilical cord. “And guess what? The set designer offered to come by the hospital and feng shui the room. He said not to deliver before he gets here.”

“I’ll just hang on until he can rearrange the furniture and paint the door red,” Berni says irritably.

“He said he wouldn’t charge us,” Aidan says, as if the bargain will ease the pain. “Volunteered his services.”

“Well I didn’t mean to volunteer mine,” Berni screams at her husband. “I don’t want to do this anymore. In fact, I’m not sure why I agreed in the first place. If you ever want more babies you can do the whole thing in a test tube. Or find somebody else. Preferably somebody with wider hips.”

Aidan resists making the obvious point that at the moment, when it comes to size, Berni’s hips are unsurpassed. Instead, he squeezes her hand and gives her another kiss. Thank goodness for Lamaze class. It teaches women how to count their breaths during labor and teaches men how to count to ten during their wives’ predictable rants.

“I’m here for you, honey,” Aidan says. “Fifteen hours, twenty hours, however long it takes. I’m yours.”

I worry that Berni’s reaction to the time line will blow the roof off the place, but instead, she sighs and puts both hands into Aidan’s. “I’m glad you’re with me,” she concedes. “This could be a long night. How many years have we been married? Twelve? I hope you have a few stories left I haven’t heard.”

He laughs. “It’s not going to be so bad. The whole thing’s like directing a movie. Long hours and a lot of junk food, but it doesn’t matter because you create something great.”

I’m hoping Berni’s delivery doesn’t end up at the Loew’s Cineplex or in reruns on TNT. But Berni seems happy to think of herself as Orson Welles in a maternity gown. She looks into Aidan’s eyes and lies back peacefully. Given the way the contractions have been going, I’m figuring her bliss could last another four minutes and twenty-seven seconds.

Before time runs out, I blow Berni a kiss and tell her I’m heading out. There’s not much more I can do around here unless the feng shui guy arrives and needs help hanging crystals and spreading his good chi.

“You’ve been great, Sara,” Berni says, giving me a feeble smile. “You’re a terrific friend. Thanks for getting me here.”

“Actually, I’m the one who got you here.” Aidan laughs, rubbing her belly. “But Sara, you really are great. Once the babies are born, you’ll be our first call.”

“Second call,” Berni says. “Right after the admissions office at Yale.”

Outside in the fresh air, happy to be alive and not in labor, I turn my cell phone back on. The signs in the hospital had warned that making calls would interfere with vital equipment. Oh, please. Millions of dollars’ worth of monitors and EKG machines are going to be screwed up by my twenty-buck Nokia? Just how much faith can you have in a hi-tech ICU if it doesn’t know the difference between a call coming in and a patient on his way out?

Three text messages are waiting for me, all from Kate. One insists I call immediately. The second gives an address where I should meet her. The third sounds an alarm. “Emergency! Get here right away!” and gives a few words of explanation. As a doctor, Kate is trained to recognize a traumatic situation—and she’s certainly in the midst of one right now. No woman should have to face buying a tankini on her own.

I walk briskly over to meet her at Sunshine Beach, the famous bathing suit boutique where you can get less fabric for more money than anywhere else in New York. I push through the fingerprint-free glass door—somebody must be on Windex duty 24/7—and gingerly step inside. The store is so chic that I’ve heard Winona Ryder has given up Saks to shoplift here exclusively. The music is blaring, the lights are white-hot, and so many mirrors are scattered at different angles in the room you’d think someone was trying to solar-power a rocket to Mars. Preening in front of those mirrors is a gaggle of model-beautiful customers, all long-haired, long-legged, and short on flaws.

I sigh and turn away. These are not my people. The whole scene is enough to convince me that the only reasonable place to try on a bathing suit is in a dark cave far, far away from the other villagers. Or to buy one online late at night while eating Mallomars. Sure, you can use the Internet for research, communication, and creating a global community. But it’s made an even bigger contribution to humanity. I can digitally try on a Lands’ End bikini without ever having to look at my thighs.

Kate is nowhere to be seen, so I call her on my cell phone to tell her that I’m at the store.

“You are? Thank God. I’m just in the fitting room.” I catch a glimpse of her face peeking out briefly from behind one of the satin curtains. Then she disappears. “Owen’s taking me for a romantic weekend and I need something sexier than last year’s La Blanca. I’ll be out in a sec.”

While I’m waiting, I saunter over to peruse the limited edition bathing suits, each hanging importantly on its own individual rack. Most of the gossamer mesh and gold-grommet confections look like they’d dissolve in a swimming pool faster than a Listerine breath strip. There’s not a swim-friendly Speedo or a black one-piece Anne Cole in sight. And nothing with Lycra panels to hold in extra flab. Sunshine Beach patrons must do all their tummy tucking at the plastic surgeon.

Kate emerges from her dressing room wearing her trademark spike heels and a lace eyelet side-tied bikini.

“Looks good,” I say, truly impressed with Kate’s forty-year-old body.

“You’re right. Not bad,” Kate agrees, pivoting in front of the mirror. But she pauses midspin and pinches the back of her perfect thigh. “Is the cellulite too disgusting? Like cottage cheese?”

I look for some evidence of lumps, bumps or even a grain of sand that might be stuck to Kate’s thigh. Nothing. “Smoothest thing I’ve ever seen. More like pasteurized Velveeta than cottage cheese. Owen will eat it up,” I add.

“Maybe Owen would like a halter top better,” she says. Then giving me a little wink, she adds, “I figure if I look good enough, I can get him to give me a full-service massage. Like yours.”

It definitely won’t be as good as mine. But I’m glad to have given Kate some ideas. That’s what best friends are for. No secrets. We tell each other everything.

Kate disappears into her dressing room, and I continue looking through the racks for a bathing suit that’s compatible with chlorine. Or even salt water. I stop at one hanger that has two identical strings, each sporting three very small black crocheted squares. I hold the pieces in front of my body and start turning them as if they’re a Rubik’s cube. But I can’t line up the squares to cover the requisite body parts. I wouldn’t even know how to wear this thing to a nude beach.

Giving up, I wander to the seating area in the back of the store. Half a dozen men are comfortably lolling on deep-cushioned leather couches, having generously decided that just this once, they can skip the baseball game to come shopping with their girlfriends or wives. What a sacrifice. I figure a guy deserves points if he’s at your side buying the shower curtain at Ikea. Not when he’s waiting in front of the bikini-modeling mirror.

I rifle through a New York Times on the table, and since the front page is too depressing and the Home section has already been stolen—now I’ll never know what happened at the Milan Furniture Expo—I reach for the Metro section. And there above the fold is a familiar face. I look again, suddenly excited. It’s Owen Hardy, beaming and looking handsome in a tux. He’s standing in a floral-filled tent at some glamorous affair, surrounded by equally glamorous admirers.

I smile smugly. Pretty neat. My best friend’s boyfriend, right there in The New York Times. I’m just two degrees of separation from a celebrity. I grab the section and start to walk toward Kate’s dressing room. “Kate,” I call as I get closer. “Did you see this? Owen’s in the paper and . . .”

My voice trails off as I read the caption and stop dead in my tracks.

I go back to the couch and read the caption again. Maybe the paper got the ID wrong. Could be they’ll print a retraction tomorrow. But no, this is The New York Times. Ever since the Jayson Blair scandal they don’t declare that the world is round unless they can fact-check it with Christopher Columbus. Still, I read the article, hoping that the attractive woman with the diamond necklace and her arm snaked around Owen’s waist is really his sister. Or, given today’s plastic surgery miracles, his mother. Anything but what the paper claims. That the sophisticated blonde standing next to Owen is his wife.

I keep reading and it’s even worse than I think. Owen and his wife weren’t just attending the party, they were hosting it. A little charity benefit at their upstate retreat. Twenty acres including a team of racehorses, a pond stocked with exotic fish and a brood of champion golden retrievers. Everything but a dancing bear.

I put the paper down. So where does Kate fit into this pretty picture? It doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of room. Does she even know about this? She must.

Across the store I see her flouncing out of the dressing room wearing the same bikini bottom but a striped halter top. I rush over to her.

“Kate,” I blurt, the moment she’s in earshot. “Owen’s married. Did you know? Did he ever tell you?”

In the mirror, I see Kate’s pale face redden.

“Of course he told me,” she says carefully.

“When were you going to mention it to me?” I ask, thinking how pleased I was a few minutes ago that we never keep secrets from each other.

Kate fiddles with the halter top. “Sorry, Sara,” she says apologetically. “I wanted you to have a chance to get to know him. Because it’s not the way it sounds.”

“It sounds bad. Bad like a fourth-grade cello concert. But this one probably won’t improve.”

“It might,” Kate says, turning around to look at me with her big saucer eyes. “The situation with Owen’s more complicated than you think.”

Complicated? Seems pretty simple to me. Married men are right up there with carbs, Easy Stride shoes, and blind dates arranged by your pastor—or with your pastor—as things every single woman should avoid.

“All right, tell me all about it,” I say, trying not to be judgmental. First I’ll listen to my best friend’s story. Then I’ll tell her why she’s ruining her life.

“Owen and his wife aren’t getting along all that well,” Kate says, launching into her defense. “They’ve talked about a separation. Or he’s thinking about talking about it. Something like that.”

“What do you expect him to tell you? That they’re building their dream house in Tahiti?”

“Owen tells me the truth,” Kate says.

“The truth is he’s not leaving her,” I say firmly. “They never leave. You should know that. Don’t you watch Oprah? ‘Married Men Talk But Never Walk.’ ”

“Make it into a bumper sticker and I’ll put it on my car.” Kate sighs. “Look, it doesn’t matter to me. Owen and I care about each other and we have fun. That’s all that counts. What we have is exciting—and pretty damn sexy.”

I’m sure it is. An affair with a married man has so much intrigue. All those whispered conversations. All those clandestine meetings. All those chocolates the hotel maid leaves when she turns down your bed midday. But that’s not the point.

“Married men are lethal,” I say. “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be,” Kate says. “Owen’s definitely non-toxic.”

“Also non-single, non-marriageable and non-available for Christmas dinners or family events,” I say, trying to make my point. Though I have to admit there’s an upside to missing Christmas dinner with in-laws.

Kate picks up a pair of Persol sunglasses and a sparkly hair clip that the salesgirl has discreetly left in front of the mirror, right next to the flowery sarong, jeweled mules, Louis Vuitton beach bag, and matching Christian Dior towel. All de rigueur accessories when buying a swimsuit. These days you need more equipment to lie out in the sun than to climb the Himalayas.

“I don’t care about non-marriageable,” Kate says, looking me squarely in the eye. “I really don’t. I’ve finally given up looking for Mr. Perfect. I’ve been around long enough to know there’s more than one way to live your life. I have a great practice, great friends and now I have a great guy. How many women can say that? I’m happy.”

“You can’t be happy,” I say. “Admit it. Secretly, you want to get married. You think he’s going to leave her.”

“Nope,” Kate says resolutely. “I don’t expect him to leave his wife and it doesn’t matter.” She looks carefully at the glittery hair clip and uses it to pull back her perfectly cut, perfectly shiny hair. Then she comes over and rubs my arm. “Listen, I’m not against love and marriage. I think it’s great that you and Bradford found each other. But Owen and I have something terrific going. I don’t know where it’ll lead. I’m just going to enjoy.”

I’m sure she will. At least for a while. Kate’s in that first flush of infatuation where the relationship seems inviolable, the guy can do no wrong, and rationality goes out the window. Reasoning with her at this point would be as impossible as trying to disconnect a teenager from her iPod. For now, I might as well give up and go for a more neutral topic.

“So where’s Owen taking you this weekend that you need this new bathing suit?” I ask, looking at her in her teeny-weeny halter bikini. “I hope it’s Rio, otherwise you might get arrested.”

“Do you think it’s too skimpy?” she asks, looking in the mirror, and tugging at the bottom.

“No, you pull it off brilliantly,” I say honestly, realizing that Kate, at least, didn’t forfeit her right to wear a bikini when she traded in Bonne Bell Lip Smackers for Bobbi Brown concealer.

“Not too young for me?” she asks, still hesitating.

“You look better in that suit than any twenty-year-old possibly could,” I confirm.

Kate glances over at a young blonde who’s parading around in the Rubik’s cube bikini—and all the squares are in the right place. The girl has a great body—and she obviously knows how to solve algorithms.

“Maybe not any twenty-year-old, but you do look pretty darn good,” I say, laughing. I peek into Kate’s dressing room and see three more suits waiting. “Want to go try on the others?”

“No, this one’s just right,” Kate says, taking one last appraising glance.

“I don’t mind waiting,” I tell her.

“I like this one,” Kate says, heading off to change.

What other woman could find the right bikini so fast? And be confident enough that it is just right—without fussing and trying on thirty others? I’ve got to say this about Kate. She knows what she wants. Unfortunately, at the moment, she seems to want Owen.

 

I call over to the hospital three times, but by seven o’clock at night, Berni still hasn’t delivered.

“Do you want me to come over?” I ask Aidan, when I reach him on the phone.

“No, that’s okay. The room’s already pretty crowded. The nurses. The doctors. The drummer.”

“The drummer?” I ask.

“Mood music for delivery,” Aidan explains. “Gets you back to your basic primordial rhythms.”

“Is it working?” I ask.

“I can’t tell. You could probably bring in the whole London Symphony Orchestra and it wouldn’t make a difference right now.”

“And the hospital doesn’t mind having Ringo playing on the maternity ward?” I ask.

“We didn’t get Ringo,” Aidan apologizes, not realizing that I didn’t really expect the hallways to be crawling with Beatles. “The drummer came with the deluxe package. It was one of the reasons we picked this hospital. Berni showed you the brochures, didn’t she?”

She sure did. When I delivered Dylan, the only goody I got was a take-home bag with Pampers and Pond’s cold cream. Now with so much competition for the baby business, choosing a hospital is like deciding between luxury hotels. Choice of Frette sheets or Anichini. Reflexologists or accupressurists. Not to mention birthing bed or birthing pool—which shouldn’t even be a choice. Some crazy expert or other decided that since the baby has already spent nine months in a womb full of water, why not deliver her into a pool of water? Berni nixed the suggestion. She decided Mommy and Me swim class would be quite enough.

“So are you eating?” I ask Aidan, remembering that Berni had preordered a lobster and steak dinner for him.

“There’s a great spread here, but I don’t dare touch it. It doesn’t seem fair. Berni’s on ice chips, I’m on ice chips,” he says supportively.

“Well, if you faint from hunger, at least you’re in a hospital,” I say. “Hang in there. Call with any news.” I decide not to add that I’m on my way to have dinner at some fancy Chinese restaurant in midtown that Bradford has suggested we try.

 

Twenty minutes later, I pick up Dylan in the West Village from a playdate with his best friend, and we head to Sianese Palace. It’s supposed to be the new hot place, but it sounds to me like a hoity-toity name for a nasty nasal infection. The white-gloved doorman opens the restaurant’s heavy gold door, and I wonder what Bradford could possibly have been thinking. Has he forgotten what it’s like to have a seven-year-old? Given that there’s a noisy, kid-friendly Chinese joint in New York on every corner, did Bradford have to pick an elegant room where the loudest sound seems to be the ping of Perrier splashing into crystal goblets?

Dylan looks around the hushed, child-free room, tugs at the collar on his polo shirt worn especially for the occasion, and looks dubiously at the maître d’.

“Do you have fortune cookies?” Dylan asks hopefully.

“Pardon me, sir?” The maître d’, dressed in a tuxedo and bow tie, looks at him uncertainly.

“Fortune cookies. The Chinese restaurant we used to go to had a big bowl in front.”

“This is not a Chinese restaurant,” the maître d’ says haughtily. “We’re Chinese-Thai-French fusion.” He lays down the menus grandly and holds out a chair for me.

What could possibly happen when you fuse all those cuisines? General Tso’s chicken paté? Moo goo gai pan bouillabaisse? Must have taken a host of green cards to open this place.

We sip on lemonades for a while, waiting for Bradford. But when he still doesn’t appear, I order rice wontons for Dylan, who’s thrilled by the rainbow-colored crackers and works his way happily through the bowl. I order another round. Starved myself by now, I absentmindedly munch on a pink one.

“Eew,” I say, tossing it onto the table. “Tastes like Styrofoam. How can you eat those things?”

“I like them,” he says, grabbing another handful. Then he yawns. “I’m full. Can we go?”

The waiter has stopped refilling our water glasses since he’s now figured we’re making a dinner out of the crunchy Styrofoam wontons. At $4.95 a clip, I think the tab’s running up just fine, but he has other ideas. He can’t expect that everyone will order the hundred fifty dollar per person Taste-of-the-World Tasting Menu, but he had to be hoping we’d spring for at least a couple of egg rolls.

I’m getting as pissed off as the waiter. Where is Bradford? At least I can keep Dylan amused in the meantime. I pull out two pens and a piece of white paper and put it on the table between us.

“Tic-tac-toe or battleship?” I ask.

“Battleship!” Dylan says with a grin, grabbing a pen.

I draw six rows of six evenly-spaced dots and we take turns making connecting lines. The beginning goes quickly, and then it comes down to some hard choices. Dylan triumphantly closes the first box and claims it with a “D.”

“I’m winning!” he hollers.

“Got a long way to go, buddy,” I tell him, laughing.

He closes three more. “Still winning! Killing you, mom! You’re so lame!”

The elderly couple at the next table eyes us disapprovingly, as irritated as if we were playing roulette in the middle of the Metropolitan Opera House.

Bradford, finally coming up behind us, shares their displeasure. Not realizing there’s a paper on the table, or that I’m drawing as well, he grabs Dylan’s pen from his hand.

“We don’t draw on tablecloths, young man,” he says sternly.

Since he hasn’t bothered with hello, I don’t either.

“Why not?” I say, jumping up and jumping to Dylan’s defense. “Lots of great artists have drawn on tablecloths. Picasso did it. And so did Dubuffet.”

“That was different. They were famous.”

“Maybe Dylan will be famous, too,” I say.

“We weren’t drawing on the tablecloth, anyway,” Dylan says, since we’ve both missed the point. He holds up the now-checkered sheet of paper. “See? Look.”

Bradford looks contrite. He tosses me a wan smile and tousles Dylan’s hair. “Sorry, guys,” he says, slumping into a chair. “It’s been a rough day. I need a Diet Coke and then I’ll feel better.”

I try to smile, but I’m still vaguely annoyed at Bradford. Forty minutes late and the first thing he does is snap at us. I’ve got to say this for Bradford, though—when he knows he’s wrong, he immediately tries to make amends. He takes the paper Dylan’s still holding and looks at it carefully.

“All those D’s are your points?” Bradford asks, impressed.

“Yup,” Dylan says, nodding.

“You’re really killing your mom, Dyl, huh?”

“Just what I told her!” Dylan crows.

“You guys want to finish the game?” Bradford asks, loosening his tie, and then, remembering where he is, tightening it back up again. “I’ll referee.”

“Are you kidding?” I say. “No way I can make a comeback. Thanks for the save.”

Bradford takes my hand. “That’s what I’m here for,” he says, and then he mouths, “Forgive me?”

I squeeze his hand and Bradford kisses me on the cheek. The waiter comes over, sizes up Bradford and looks relieved. Finally, someone at our table who might order the Peking duck. Bradford reads the funny French-Chinese-Thai food names from the menu and lets Dylan pick his favorites. Fortunately, the food’s not quite as exotic as I’d feared.

“I like the one with the ‘dragon’ in it,” Dylan says, leaning over Bradford’s shoulder to look at the menu.

“Me, too, Dyl. Let’s get it. And how about the one named after the emperor.” All in all, they pick out six dishes and two appetizers and Bradford asks the waiter to bring the chopsticks.

“For three,” he says.

“Nope. I need a fork,” Dylan says, looking slightly abashed.

But when the chopsticks arrive, Bradford has a plan. He secures a rubber band from the now-fawning waiter—ordering eight expensive dishes guarantees our water glasses are quickly refilled—and expertly wraps the top of two chopsticks so they click in unison.

“Try this,” Bradford says, placing Dylan’s fingers around the chopsticks and showing him how easily they now work. “It’s how my daughter Skylar learned. She mastered it before our trip to China.”

“Can we go to China?” Dylan asks, excitedly clicking away. “I think I’ve got it!”

“Sure. We’ll go all sorts of places. Ever been to Paris?”

I give him a raised eyebrow. Bradford knows how I feel about giving kids too much too soon. Just because you can afford to do everything doesn’t mean you should. Catching my drift, he adds quickly, “Maybe we’ll start with a trip this fall up the Taconic to go apple-picking. Ever done that?”

“Yup,” Dylan says disappointed, dreams of the Great Wall dashed by visions of manual labor. “Mommy and I do it every year. Last year I ate so many apples I threw up in the car on the way home.”

“We won’t let that happen this year,” Bradford promises. “Skylar can keep tabs on you.”

“It’s going to be fun having her,” I say. “We’re so excited Skylar’s coming home from her summer trip in two days. It’ll be great to be all together.”

Dylan grunts. Maybe I’m the one looking forward to it. Well, mostly. I’m a little wary of the arrangement—Skylar will be alternating weeks at her mom’s house and ours. But I know we’ll make it work. I have this cockeyed image of a happily blended extended family, with Skylar good-naturedly offering me back-to-school fashion tips. And she’ll be my ticket into all those bubble-gum movies I secretly love but am embarrassed to go see myself. Teens need an adult to get into R-rated flicks. And any self-respecting adult needs a thirteen-year-old girl in tow to fully enjoy The Princess Diaries.

“Skylar called from Rome today,” Bradford says, clicking his own chopsticks. “She liked the Vatican, but she had more fun at Prada.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” I say. “Some people consider Prada a religious experience.”

“We’ll get to hear all about it,” Bradford says. He looks at Dylan, who’s avidly working his way—with chopsticks—through a plate of Peking duck. Then he turns to me and shakes his head. “I’m a little worried about Skylar,” he admits. “After two months in Europe with her mother, she sounded sort of nasty about you and me when she called.”

I nod. “Don’t worry, I’ll win her over,” I say bravely.

Bradford takes my hand. “Thanks, honey. I’m glad you’re ready for this. Because Skylar may not make it easy.”