Chapter 22

Ariel

That morning I sent David off to work with a smile, not minding the suitcase that was swinging from his hand as he walked away from us. He kissed me so long before he left that the boys made gagging noises and collapsed into a pile of giggles when David dipped me dramatically. “You boys be good for your mom,” he said, rubbing his hand over their heads on his way out the door.

He paused at the door. “I’ll hurry home,” he said and raised his eyebrows at me.

“I hope you will,” I said, and he was gone. My eyes filled with tears as he backed out of the garage. I realized this was the first time he had left that I had thought about missing him instead of just being angry that he was gone. Later I would send him a text telling him how much I appreciated him working hard for us.

I took out the ingredients to make chocolate-chip banana muffins—a recipe so basic a monkey could make it. The boys gathered around to watch, begging to lick the bowl and the beaters, fighting over whose turn it was to stir. I was making the muffins for Justine. I envisioned handing them to her, tucked into a basket with a decorative cloth covering them, giggling with her over the therapeutic benefits of chocolate as she took the first bite with a rapturous look on her face. I imagined her hand on my arm, the earnestness in her eyes as she thanked me for being there for her. She would tell me their plans for Mark to get another job; I would talk to her about how to be a support to him. We would strengthen each other, and in the end, our marriages—our lives—would be better. Someday we would talk about “that time” and we would say things like “We are all the better for it.” I closed the door to the oven and called out to my sons, who had lost interest in the muffins.

“Boys, why don’t you get dressed for the pool, and we’ll go see if Cameron and Caroline would like to come with us. I think their mommy would like a break,” I said. I was on my way to becoming friend of the year. The boys whooped with delight. They would’ve lived at the pool if I let them.

An hour later I had warm muffins and barely contained boys making a procession across our yards. They wore matching swim trunks and no shirts, looking the epitome of little boys on summer days. It occurred to me that I hadn’t snapped a photo in weeks. I had phone messages to return from clients anxious to schedule their fall appointments, but I hadn’t carved out a moment to call them back. Justine had been true to her word to send me more business than I could handle.

When I knocked, Mark came to the door, looking disheveled and confused. His eyes fell to the basket of muffins in my hand and traveled back up.

“Is Justine here?” I asked. I held up the basket. “I brought muffins,” I said, master of the obvious. “They’re still warm,” I added hopefully, as though I must say the magic word to get him to open the door the rest of the way and let us in to find Justine.

“She’s not here,” he said. “She’s meeting someone for lunch,” he said. He shook his head. “Her parents came and got the girls yesterday so it’s just me here. I have no idea when she’ll be back.” A cloud crossed his face, dark like a storm gathering.

“Oh,” I managed. Like a jealous suitor, I wanted to ask him who she was with but refrained. Who else was she confiding in? I handed him the basket of muffins. “Well, then, you should enjoy these.”

He looked at me. “I couldn’t,” he said, his hand frozen in midair. I knew he wanted to take them, so I forced them into his hand.

“It’s the least I can do.” A look passed between us. He understood that I wanted to say more but lacked the right words. The muffins would have to do. He nodded.

“I’m glad Justine has you,” he said. “I was worried about her, after Laura moved away. Worried how she’d cope. You two seem to have become good friends. I like that you guys go out as much as you do and that she can talk to you as much as she does. It gets her mind off things.”

Go out? Talk a lot? I stood blinking back at him. “Oh, well, okay. Yes. It’s good,” I stammered. “The party last night was really great, by the way.”

“Yeah, sure. No problem. Thanks for these.” He held up the muffins and scratched his stubbly cheek with his free hand. “I’ll tell her you came by.”

“That would be nice,” I said, backing away from the door so he could shut it gently and go back to where he came from.

What did Mark mean “go out”? Justine and I never went out. And she rarely confided in me. Maybe he was confusing me with another of her many friends. Or maybe he just meant that we saw each other often thanks to proximity. Either way, I couldn’t fault him for his confusion. He was under a lot of stress.

I was debating leaving the pool that afternoon when Justine arrived with Betsy, Tom’s wife. They were laughing like old friends, and I hated the jealousy I felt as I watched from across the pool. I never imagined her being friends with Tom’s—her former boyfriend’s—wife. It struck me as odd, and I wondered why Betsy would go along with it. Probably for the same reason I wanted to be friends with her. She was pretty and poised and influential and smart. Who wouldn’t want to be in her company? I watched Betsy look at her and knew she was as taken in by her as I was. Perhaps this is who Mark meant when he said he was glad we went out often. Maybe Justine and Betsy were chummier than I knew. How very progressive of them.

Eventually she separated from Betsy and plopped down beside me, smiling. “Did you have fun last night?” she asked. “I did.”

“I came by your house earlier,” I said. “I brought muffins.” I sounded put out, even though I didn’t mean to.

“Muffins?” she said. “What kind?”

“Chocolate-chip banana,” I said. “Warm.”

“Mmm,” she said, her face dreamy as she closed her eyes and rocked back and forth. “Warm chocolate-chip banana are the best.” She opened her eyes. “Wish I’d been there,” she said.

“It was the least I could do. To thank you. And to come alongside you,” I added hesitantly.

“Come alongside me?” she asked, her eyes wide. “About what?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “About Mark’s job …”

She waved her hand in the air as though she were swatting a fly. “Oh, honey, that’s no tragedy. We’ll be just fine.” She smiled at me pitifully, as though I were a dramatic child instead of the woman who found her sobbing in her closet. She pointed over at Betsy. “Tom’s even going to help me find a job if Mark can’t find one first. Isn’t that great?”

“You—you’re going to—work? But I thought you said he was going to find another job.”

“Well, I mean, the market’s tough out there. I think it would be foolish of me to not try to do my part, don’t you?”

All I could think of was the hole that her working would cut into my life. What about our morning walks? Carpool plans? What about freezer cooking? What about our friendship? I felt panic rise up in my throat like bile. I didn’t know if I was disgusted with her for thinking of working or with myself for being so selfish that I could even make her husband’s job loss about me.

She waved her hand again. “Well, this is all getting ahead of ourselves, now isn’t it? We have no idea what’s going to happen, so let’s just not worry about it before we have to.” She smiled again, though something behind her eyes looked different, uncertain. “What I really need is to get away. What would you think about that? Do you think you could do a girls’ getaway weekend?”

“Umm, sure. Yeah, that’d be great. But I mean, umm …when?” Like it mattered. Of course I would go. I would do whatever I could to go on a girls’ weekend with just Justine and me.

“This weekend. Let’s be spontaneous! Of course, if you can’t go, I could ask someone else.…”

“No, I can go. Let me work it out with David.”

“Great. My parents have a place down at Myrtle Beach, and we could drive down there. What do you say?”

I nodded even as my brain was still scrolling through my to-do list, checking my mental calendar. Where was my life-management notebook when I needed it? “I’d love to go,” I said, matching my smile with hers, tooth for tooth.

“Fabulous!” she said. She gave me a high five like we were kids. “This is going to be fabulous. All we’ll need is our bathing suits and some clothes to wear out to dinner.” She hopped up to go back to Betsy. I prayed she wouldn’t invite her, too, hating my territorial side. “I think I want to go dancing,” she said, doing a little dance move right there and smiling at me before she walked away, leaving me to try to picture our middle-aged selves dancing at some club in Myrtle Beach far away from our husbands, kids, and middle-aged lives. I was sure she was just kidding. I fished around in my beach bag for my cell phone. I had arrangements to make.