CHAPTER 40

Lunch with Elle

Leda hadn’t seen Elle in quite a few years. They hadn’t kept in touch all that much through text, so when Elle e-mailed her and asked if she wanted to meet up for lunch, she was surprised. From what she gathered through social media Elle had married a rich financier and had three children. She lived in New York and had a summer house on Martha’s Vineyard. The last time they’d really spoken she was working at a little-known, fairly prestigious literary magazine. At around this same time, Elle met her now husband. The last text conversation between them went:

LEDA: That’s so sweet! He sounds great!

ELLE: Yeah, he’s really cute! We’ve been spending every day together.

LEDA: That’s fantastic! What’s his name again?

Elle never responded.

It wasn’t all that surprising that Elle would meet a rich guy and be living in New York. Her family was very well-to-do, and she was so skinny, after all. Leda had suggested they meet at a nearby diner, but Elle insisted on a fancier restaurant downtown.

“What about the kids?” Leda texted.

“Sabrina can watch them,” Elle answered. “My nanny.”

“At the restaurant?” she asked.

“Probably at a park. Sabrina can take care of it. She’s fabulous.”

In the car ride over to meet Elle, Leda tried to explain to Annabelle that she’d be with three new kids and Sabrina for the afternoon.

“But where will you be?” Annabelle said.

“I’ll be at lunch with their mommy.”

“But shouldn’t they be with their mommy?” Annabelle said.

“Probably, my love. Probably.”

They walked into the restaurant, and she saw Elle and the three children immediately.

“Elle,” she said, waving.

“Is that the children?” Annabelle asked, holding tight to her mother’s hand.

“Yeah, let’s go say hi.”

“Oh my god! Leda!” Elle got up and opened her arms for a big hug.

Elle looked as skinny as she ever had. She was wearing a poncho that looked expensive and dwarfed her tiny frame. Her face was as pretty as Leda remembered it, although she’d aged considerably. No longer could she pass for nineteen, as she had so often complained about in her twenties.

“People always card me!” she’d say, holding a drink and looking chic, everyone marveling at her youth, saying things like, “Well, it’s no wonder! You have such a good figure, like a sixteen-year-old!” or “Your thighs are like my arms!”

There was no doubt now that Elle was not a teenager. Her face looked tired and gaunt. She had wrinkles around her eyes. She looked older than the thirty-some-odd years that she actually was.

“This must be your daughter!” Elle said.

“Yes, this is Annabelle.”

“Hi, Annabelle! These are my three, Brooklyn, Declan, and Rowan.” Sabrina stood holding Rowan, waiting expectantly for either orders or an introduction.

“Hi, everybody,” Leda said. “And you must be Sabrina?” She offered her hand out to the woman.

“Oh yes, so sorry. This is Sabrina. Sabrina, Leda. And Annabelle.”

“Hi,” Sabrina said, nodding in a passively dutiful way that was uncomfortable to be around. How does she have this person in her life and just tell her what to do as if she were nothing more than a capable houseplant? As if she weren’t just another woman, just like herself, trying to make this all work? Leda thought.

After a few seconds of chitchat with the children, Elle sent them all off on their way.

Leda hugged Annabelle tightly. “You’ll have fun,” she said, but she was more hopeful than sure in saying it.

Once the children were out the door the women sat down at the table together.

“Ugh, I’m so happy to have some free time away from them!” Elle said. “I love them, but please, I need time for myself.”

“Yeah,” Leda said, but she was missing Annabelle already.

“Have you ever been here before?”

“Yes, John and I came here for our anniversary last year.”

“Oh, that’s nice. How is John?”

“He’s great. Working hard as ever.”

“I haven’t seen him in ages. By the way, they have a great kale salad here. Are you into kale?”

“Not really, but I’ve heard it’s very healthy, isn’t it?”

“I’ve been doing nothing but kale juices in the morning for the last two weeks. It’s kind of like a cleanse but a bit more substantive. I’ll e-mail you the routine. It goes, kale, kale, kale, squash, kale, banana, repeat.”

“And these are all juices?”

“Yes, all juices. It helped me lose the baby weight from Rowan.”

“I’m sure you didn’t have any baby weight.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. I gained about thirty pounds with each pregnancy. My thighs were chafing when I’d wear a skirt. Can you imagine?”

Leda wanted to explain that thirty pounds wasn’t a lot and that thigh gap was something that the vast majority of women never experienced, let alone during pregnancy, but instead she just nodded, silently gaining perspective on Elle and the ever-growing distance between them.

Both women ordered the kale salad, but Leda also ordered a mushroom flatbread pizza to eat alongside. She no longer starved in order to impress friends. It was one of the many privileges of maturity. Elle, on the other hand, didn’t touch her salad. Leda tried to count how many bites she actually took. It was three and a half (the half being if you counted when she sucked the lemon slice from her iced tea). Is anyone ever naturally thin? Leda wondered. Thin enough where their thighs are like arms?

“I’m telling you, I just can’t stand these bigger smartphones. I like small purses,” Elle said.

“All my purses contain at least one plastic horse. Salesclerks must think I’m crazy when I go to pay and pull out a Clydesdale,” Leda said.

“Annabelle is so precious. Are you thinking of having any more?” Elle asked.

“Probably one more. How about yourself?”

“Oh god, no. Honestly, three is more than I wanted, but my husband insisted. His mom had three and so did his grandmother. It’s a thing for him. I mean, it doesn’t really bother me. What’s one more?”

Leda figured that Sabrina might disagree with such an affirmation.

“Well, you guys all make a beautiful family.”

“I feel very blessed. Honestly, I look at my friends who work in publishing or whatever, and I just feel so sorry for them. Who really gives a shit about a promotion or publishing an article on Salon.com? Once you have kids you realize what a ridiculous fantasy that all is.” Elle sat up straight. “All I can say is we did it, Led. We won.”

Leda didn’t agree with what Elle was saying. Even in the best of circumstances it would be impossible to agree with someone who was so blind to their own privilege, but she wasn’t about to argue. She thought about choices and her own choices and then about the inside of Annabelle’s room and its tiny desk and chair.

“I miss smoking,” Elle said. “I wish I had a cigarette.”

“Do you miss writing at all?” Leda asked. She thought of the story about the woman who sold combs.

“Not at all,” Elle said, and without even a moment of reflection, as if unequivocally it was true, “Come on, let’s go have coffee.”

They walked to Starbucks a few blocks away. Elle’s shoes were very loud on the pavement.

“The thing is that it’s impossible to keep up with the trends when you have work done on your kitchen. Our counters were granite when we bought the house—embarrassing. I know. We switched to marble, but now I’m thinking of going to bamboo parquet.”

“Bamboo parquet?”

“Oh, it’s very sustainable. My worry, though, is that it doesn’t really go with the aesthetic of the rest of the house, which is more French colonial than modern. In retrospect that was a mistake as well.”

Leda listened to Elle talk about decorating. She heard her voice click on words like backsplash and fabric swatch. At a certain point as they walked along she noticed a trail of blood spots on the sidewalk. She wondered what had happened and why someone would be dripping blood like this down the street. Nosebleed, she thought. Fight, she thought. Dog with a ripped paw pad, she thought. She didn’t say anything to Elle. You can’t just talk about blood spots like that. You can’t say, “Look, a trail of blood spots. Isn’t that disconcerting? Someone’s insides just dotting the pavement.” The trail of spots stopped seemingly without cause, and that was it.

Elle ordered a soy macchiato with two shots and Leda ordered tea. They sat by the window and Elle bragged about something Declan could do.

“But you know, Brooklyn read at five, so it doesn’t really sur-
prise me.”

“They’re so smart,” Leda said.

About a half hour later Sabrina met them with the children. She looked tired and capable all at once as she directed them back to their mothers. I wonder what her dreams are, Leda thought. I wonder who it is she is trying to be.

On the car ride home she asked Annabelle about her day.

“So what did you think of Brooklyn, Declan, and Rowan? Did you like them?” she asked.

Annabelle took a second to consider it.

“No,” she said.

“Why not?”

“They’re weird.” She paused thoughtfully again. “They’re weird and they’re mean.”