CHAPTER FOUR
Sloshing along down Fifth Avenue past the vast International Toy Center at the western edge of Madison Square Park, Peyton finds herself noticing every child she passes.
Babies pushed along in tarped strollers; toddlers clinging to mothers’ hands; school-aged kids in groups, too young, in her opinion, to be unsupervised on city streets.
Maybe that will change by the time the little one inside her is that age.
She smiles, picturing a demure little girl in pigtails and kneesocks, or a spirited, freckle-nosed boy romping in dungarees.
Right now, she can’t imagine ever wanting to let her child out of her sight. Right now, all she wants is to cradle her baby safely in her arms.
But she’ll have to wait. Five months at least, perhaps almost six, according to the measurements at her last physical examination.
With every day that passes, she finds herself more enchanted by the miracle inside her.
Dr. Lombardo’s office did an ultrasound on her yesterday. Not one of those fancy new 3-D ultrasounds that look like a picture, but the old-fashioned black-and-white variety.
The technician couldn’t tell the baby’s gender, but he did identify the snowy streaks on screen as a head, a spine, limbs, as Peyton lay with tears rolling down her face. This is real. The sonogram, its grainy prints tucked into her shoulder bag, provides tangible proof that she’s carrying a child, that she’s going to be a mother.
For the rest of her life, no matter what happens, she will be joined with this precious, precious person. Already, she’s enveloped in a swell of emotion never before experienced in such profound permanence.
Love. Earth’s oldest love.
Maternal love, powerful enough to brighten even this gloomy Sunday morning with its abiding warmth.
She smiles at a little boy splashing toward her in bright yellow rain boots; at another stomping in a pond-sized puddle to his mother’s vocal dismay.
If April showers really do bring May flowers, Manhattan will be one big blooming garden in just a few more days. The last three weeks have been nonstop soggy grayness, to the point where she could hardly get out of bed this morning.
But of course she did, despite the fact that it’s a Sunday, because she spontaneously and stupidly made this brunch date with Gil.
Why on earth did she have to go and call her first love?
Because you’ve been feeling nostalgic lately, she reminds herself, holding her umbrella closer to her head as a wet gust tries to slip beneath it.
It’s as though certain details, innocuous relics, of her past have been locked away in a dusty attic that she suddenly has the urge to explore.
Is inexplicable nostalgia another bizarre pregnancy symptom, like the enhanced sense of smell Allison warned her to watch for?
It must be. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be eating canned Spaghetti-os every day for lunch, just the way she used to back in elementary school. Nor would she have spent last Saturday night sorting through old photos while watching a Green Acres marathon on cable.
And she certainly wouldn’t be reuniting with Gil Blaney on this gloomy Sunday—or ever.
He sounded so surprised when she called the other night. Pleasantly surprised—but only after initially telling her to hold on a moment, then apparently closing the door to whatever room he was in. She heard the click, and realized that he wanted privacy to take her phone call.
That bothered her. Was he afraid his wife would be upset? Maybe she shouldn’t have called him at home. In fact, she hadn’t even been sure she was calling him at home. She merely dialed the number he’d left with her mother.
If he didn’t want her to call him at home because it might upset his wife, why would he have left that number? Why would he have left any number?
“I just wanted to say hi,” she said with forced breeziness, trying to think of a reason to hang up quickly.
But as those first awkward moments turned into what felt for all the world like a casual conversation between two old friends, she found herself relaxing. Relaxing to the point where she agreed to have brunch with him.
She reaches the historic Flatiron Building and makes a left along Twenty-third Street, glad she picked this particular dining spot amidst the row of trendy bistros and bars across from the park’s southern entrance. He had mentioned a restaurant on the Upper West Side, but she stepped in and insisted on a place she’s frequented on business lunches, a place that isn’t the least bit intimate or romantic. That would be awkward, should the conversation lag. Better to be on familiar turf; noisy, bustling, familiar turf.
“That sounds fine,” Gil said, more accommodating than she expected—or remembered. “Is eleven okay?”
“Noon would be better.”
He laughed. “So you’re still calling all the shots. It’s nice to know some things never change. I’ll see you at noon.”
She doesn’t expect to spot him the moment she steps in out of the dismal drizzle. She thought she’d have a moment to make herself presentable, to gather her thoughts.
But he’s right here, sprawled on a seat by the door, his lanky legs stretched in front of him and one arm hooked casually over the back of the chair. Peyton pauses to take in the familiar posture, the upturned Kevin Bacon nose, the shock of sandy brown hair that betrays not a strand of gray.
He looks up, sees her, smiles. “You look exactly the same, Runt,” he says, standing and crossing over to her.
Runt. The word, his tone, the way he looks at her when he says it . . .
Memories burst unbidden from the dim recesses of her mind. Fond memories.
“So do you, Gil. You look great.”
He squeezes her upper arms, and she sees that up close, there’s a network of fine lines around his blue eyes and his smile. He’s gotten older. Not old, just older.
Well, so has she.
Time is running out.
The ominous thought strikes out of nowhere. Why?
Time might be rushing by, but it certainly isn’t running out. She’s getting older, yes, but that doesn’t mean her life is drawing to a close. In so many ways, it’s just beginning.
“Are you okay?” Gil asks, putting a hand beneath her elbow as the hostess beckons.
“Sure. I’m fine,” Peyton assures him, trying to shake the strange, sudden sense of foreboding.
The phone rings, and it has to be him. He must have got the latest message by now.
Yes, this time, it has to be him.
But it isn’t. It’s a telemarketer.
A rude, pushy telemarketer who deserves to be cursed at and disconnected with an abrupt click.
When the line is tied up, nobody else can call. He can’t call.
Then again, how can he, when he’s busy with her?
It isn’t that he wants to be with her. It’s all part of the little game, remember? He doesn’t really feel anything for her. You’re the one he cares about.
Sometimes, it just doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes, it feels as though he’s really gone.
Abandonment.
Lately, this life feels as empty as a hollow womb.
Yet the work goes on, as it must. Donors and parents have been selected; babies are coming into the world. The donors must be punished and eliminated, the parents established and blessed.
Now that it’s resumed, this important work, this vocation, can go on forever, if necessary.
But it all depends on him.
The restaurant is typical Chelsea: high-beamed ceilings, exposed brick, wide-planked floors. What it isn’t, at least not today, is crowded. Perhaps it’s the weather, or maybe this place just isn’t as busy on weekends. In any case, the candlelit far reaches of the cavernous space could almost conceivably be romantic and intimate.
“Is this okay?” the hostess asks, leading them to a large booth in the corner.
It isn’t as far as Peyton is concerned, but Gil assures the hostess that it is.
He motions for her to slide into the curved seat and she does, careful not to bump her stomach against anything.
A regular table would have been better. At least at a table they’d be sitting on opposite sides, a safe distance from each other. Here, they’re forced to sit ridiculously close, the only way to have a conversation without speaking across an unreasonable expanse of table.
“So,” Gil says, once they have menus in hand, “it’s about time you called me.”
“What do you mean?” She knows exactly what he means. But it’s something to say.
“It took you long enough to get in touch. When I found out you’ve been living here for years—”
“Only a few,” she amends, glancing wistfully at the wine list, the laminated page trembling in her hands. What she wouldn’t give for a nerve-calming glass of that California Pinot Grigio. She’s still feeling vaguely uneasy, and it isn’t just about having brunch with an old flame.
Or is it?
There are times lately when Peyton feels almost like a squatter in somebody else’s body. This pregnancy has changed her profoundly, in ways she never expected. She’s more emotional, less secure. More . . . paranoid. She finds herself scanning the restaurant again, looking for the nameless, faceless something she senses lurking nearby.
“But you should have called when you knew you were coming to New York,” Gil is saying, and she forces her attention back to the conversation. “I would have helped you get settled, shown you the ropes . . .”
“Thanks, but I managed to negotiate the ropes and get settled all by my little self,” she assures him, wondering how she could have forgotten about the faint scar beside his eyebrow, courtesy of a childhood playground accident. For all the time he’s crossed her mind these past two decades, she never remembered the scar. Never remembered how she used to touch it gently with her fingertip before kissing it.
“You always were big on figuring things out on your own. You never liked me to do anything for you. Or anybody else, for that matter.”
“I never cared what you did for anybody else, Gil. And it’s a good thing, because you were quite the good-deed doer back then.”
He laughs. “I meant that you never wanted anybody else doing anything for you, either. You had it stuck in your head that accepting help—or God forbid, asking for it—was weak. I guess nothing has changed with you.”
If you only knew, she thinks, resisting the urge to rest her hand on her stomach.
“Not in that respect,” she says aloud. “Tell me about your life. Wife, kids, job . . . ?”
“Job is great. I’m an analyst now. Kids are great. Josie’s twelve, Randy’s eight. I’d show you pictures, but I didn’t bring them.”
“You mean you don’t carry them around in your wallet?” She thinks of the sonogram stills in her purse.
He shakes his head. “I guess I’m a bad daddy.”
“Well, I would have loved to see them.”
“Next time.”
Next time? As far as Peyton is concerned, this is a onetime event.
“Do they look like you?” she asks.
A shadow crosses his eyes. “Not really. They—”
The waiter appears to recite a list of specials and ask if he can get them started with Bloody Marys or mimosas.
“I’ll stick with coffee,” Peyton says. “Decaf.”
“Oh, come on, live a little.” Gil looks at the waiter. “We’ll have the mimosas. And I’d like to select the champagne.”
“Wait, Gil, no. Seriously, I just want decaf,” she tells the waiter, who, to her absolute irritation, looks at Gil as if for confirmation.
“She’ll have decaf. And I’ll have regular. With a splash of Bailey’s.”
“In both?”
Unlike the waiter, Gil looks expectantly at Peyton.
“Just plain decaf, thanks.”
The waiter leaves.
“You’re no fun, Runt.”
Hearing the old familiar nickname, Peyton is transported instantly to the day they first met, back in grade school. He was throwing a tennis ball against the brick wall behind the gym and it bounced away, over his head, just as she was walking by.
“Hey, Runt,” he called, “can you get that for me?”
They laughed about it later—about her indignation that he assumed she was younger than him just because he was a whole head taller. In truth, he was a whole head taller than everybody their age, having inherited the notorious Blaney height genes.
Not to mention the notorious Blaney fondness for Irish cream, and Irish whiskey, she thinks, shaking her head with a smile.
“What?” he asks.
“It’s not that I’m no fun, Stretch.” The last word rolls off her tongue as effortlessly as Runt rolled off his.
Runt and Stretch. The pet names lasted as long as their romance did. How could she have forgotten?
She says lightly, “It’s just that you’re such the party boy that next to you, normal fun-loving people seem dull.”
“You weren’t opposed to a little cocktail back in the day, as I recall.”
“We were underage back in the day, remember? It was forbidden contraband. Now that I’m all grown up . . .”
“The formerly forbidden stuff isn’t half as much fun, right?” he asks with a spark in his eye that tells her he isn’t just talking about liquor.
Gil always was a flirt. So was she. But things are different now. Vastly different.
“Your wife,” Peyton says abruptly.
“My wife? What about her?”
“How is she?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
She looks down at his left hand, where a gold band encircles his fourth finger. “Is she traveling or something?”
“We’re separated.”
“Oh, Gil . . . I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Is it . . . permanent?”
“Who knows? I’ve been trying for optimism, but she’s made it pretty clear that she can’t stand the sight of me.”
“What about the kids?”
“Oh, she likes them.”
“No, I meant—”
“I know what you meant. I was just being funny. Or trying to, anyway. Not that there’s anything funny about any of this,” he adds soberly. “She’s talking about moving out to Oregon.”
“Oregon! Why?”
“She said she wants to live on the coast. I told her that the last time I checked, this was the coast. Apparently, it’s the wrong one. But I swear I’ll fight her on it. I can’t let her take my kids from me.”
“Of course not. I’m sure it won’t happen.” This time, Peyton can’t keep her hand from coming to a sheltering rest on her belly.
Her child isn’t even born yet, and she can’t stand the thought of somebody wrenching it from her life. She can only imagine how intensely emotional this is for Gil—and wonder how his wife can even contemplate such a thing. What on earth could he have done to deserve losing his children?
He gives a bitter laugh. “Don’t be so sure it won’t happen. You’ve never met Karla, have you?”
“No.” But she glimpsed the statuesque blonde once or twice from afar in the first few years after Gil left. Back then, he came back to Talbot Corners more often, much to Peyton’s chagrin. It wasn’t easy, seeing her former love and his new bride, making certain that he didn’t spot her.
Their coffees arrive. Stirring his, Gil says of his estranged wife, “What I loved about her when I met her was that she was strong and independent. A lot like you, actually.”
But she didn’t have a needy mother in Talbot Corners. Peyton can’t help thinking of the road not taken, of what might have happened if her stepfather hadn’t died just as freedom was within her grasp.
“But you’re different,” Gil goes on, looking at Peyton with a wistful expression that makes her squirm in her seat. “You have a heart.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“I heard it got broken a while back.”
She sighs. “How’d you hear that?”
“You don’t get engaged to a guy like Jeff Rieger without feeding the local gossip mill for a good long time. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
“I’m not sorry. Not anymore, anyway,” she admits, unwilling to revisit the pain of being left at the altar.
“I’m not, either,” Gil confides, leaning closer. “I’m so glad you walked back into my life now, just when I needed you. It’s like all of a sudden, there is a God.”
“Gil . . .” She has to tell him that she isn’t back in his life. Not in that way, anyway. Not romantically.
“Let’s have dinner Wednesday night. I have meetings tomorrow night and Tuesday, but Wednesday is—”
“I can’t, Gil. I have a meeting, too.”
“Right. We haven’t even talked about your job, or your life—I swear I’m not always this self-absorbed. It’s just been a tough couple of months.”
“I’m sure. And it’s fine. You need somebody to talk to.” She instinctively reaches out and touches his hand, knowing she shouldn’t give him the wrong idea, wondering if the instinct is purely platonic on her part. She can’t ignore how deeply she loved him once.
First love.
She’s long since dismissed their romance as infatuation, easy to do after Gil vanished from her daily life. But now, remembering the intensity of emotion she felt for him all those years ago, she can’t help wondering if first love really was true love. Perhaps the feelings she thought she was burying forever weren’t dead after all.
Just don’t rule anything out, okay? You might change your mind.
She promised Allison she wouldn’t . . .
And she won’t. She has to nip this thing in the bud now, before it blossoms into a complication she doesn’t need. And she knows exactly how to do it.
“So what time will your meeting be over on Wednesday?” Gil is asking. “Is it in your office? Because I can meet—”
“It’s in Brooklyn, Gil,” she cuts in. “And it isn’t a meeting, exactly. It’s a support group. For pregnant, single women.”
“What’s this? More baby clothes?”
Derry looks up from the cross stitch she’s working on to see Linden standing over her with a cardboard carton. “Those are the pink receiving blankets I ordered last week. Remember? I showed you.”
“I don’t think you did.”
She knows she didn’t, but she shrugs and says, “You were probably busy thinking about something else.”
He shakes his head and puts the box back in the corner behind the door, where it rests on top of a stack that’s been accumulating for almost a month now.
Derry frowns and makes another pastel x in a configuration that will soon, she hopes, begin to look like the lamb it’s supposed to be. The duckie bib she made turned out so well she thought she should tackle the lamb. Being new to needlework, she probably should have stuck with easy little yellow ducks.
Linden turns down the volume on the Foreigner CD she was playing and returns to the couch to sit beside her.
“Derry, we need to talk.”
“About what?”
“All this crap you’re buying for the baby.”
“Crap?” She winces, not just at the offensive word but because a strand of embroidery floss just snagged on a bit of fingernail she earlier chewed to ragged splinters. She tosses the wooden hoop aside and bites at the ragged edge.
“Whatever it is. Little shoes and blankets and dresses—the baby isn’t even born yet. You don’t even know for sure it’s a girl.”
She removes her fingertip from her mouth to remind him, “Rose said the test showed it is, and we already said that we’re going to name her—”
“Tests can be wrong,” he cuts in. “I know what we said, but we don’t know it’s going to happen. And anyway, it’s not just the dresses that bug me. Where are we going to put all this cr—stuff? You’re going way overboard, don’t you think?”
“You’re being a little pessimistic, don’t you think?” she returns, glaring at him. “We were approved, Linden. The donor chose us. In a few months, we’re going to be bringing a newborn into this home, and I want to be ready.”
“Yeah, me too . . . when the time comes. But don’t you think you should hold off a little? Things can happen.”
Yes. Things can happen. Donors can change their mind. About the chosen parents, about adoption. There can be complications in late pregnancy, complications in labor.
“Rose said everything will work out,” Derry reminds Linden, refusing to allow her dreams of motherhood to be tainted by his negativity. “Why can’t you just be optimistic?”
“I am optimistic.”
Derry snorts, thinking he probably doesn’t even know what the word means.
“Weren’t you supposed to be going over to see Richie this afternoon?” she asks, anxious to get him and his bad vibes out of here.
“Yeah, in a little while. You trying to get rid of me?”
“Not at all,” she says, wishing he’d leave her alone with her lamb bib and pink blankies and dreams of sugar and spice and everything nice.
Pulling into the puddle-dotted circular driveway in front of her three-story brick home, Anne Marie realizes that Jarrett’s black Mercedes is parked just where it was when she left two hours ago.
Terrific. He’d promised to take the boys out to get some lunch, since the weekly groceries aren’t delivered until Monday morning and the cupboards and fridge are in their usual Sunday barren state.
Now Anne Marie’s going to walk in and find hungry children, and Jarrett absorbed in something else. Something selfish. It never fails.
She parks her own silver Mercedes in the garage, with no intention of venturing out again on this rain-soaked afternoon. Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest. With triplets in the house and a hands-off husband, there’s no such thing. But if Jarrett refuses to take them out to eat, she’ll scrape together something from the pantry.
Turning off the windshield wipers and then the engine, she leans against the leather headrest a moment to inhale the welcome silence. Then she reaches over to the seat to grab her cell phone and slip it into her Hermes satchel beside the small red-leather-bound Bible that accompanies her everywhere she goes.
Her heels tap on the concrete as she makes her way through the darkened three-car garage to the door that leads into the butler’s pantry. She can hear little voices squealing and the din of a Thomas the Tank Engine cartoon in the background.
The moment she opens the door, she’s met by the sound of pounding sock-feet and a gleeful chorus of one word sung in identical pitch and perfect unison. “Mommy!”
“Hi, everybody!” She bends to welcome her sons into her embrace, searching over their heads for Jarrett.
“How was mass?” he asks, coming around the corner from the kitchen.
Is it her imagination, or does he seem suspicious? Is he wondering if she really was at church? Did he snoop around the house while she was gone and find the envelope she slipped into the top drawer of her dresser last night, beneath the layers of bras and panties?
You’re just being paranoid, Anne Marie scolds herself.
Jarrett asks the same question every Sunday. It’s a polite nonquestion, in a league with “How’s your meal?” and “How was your day?” He doesn’t really want to know. It’s just something to say, just another of his maddeningly impersonal interaction skills.
Early in their relationship, it bothered her that he didn’t use endearments. She long since gave up longing for honey or sweetheart. Now she just wishes he would occasionally address her directly by name. She can count on one hand the number of times she’s heard Anne Marie pass his lips.
She can almost hear her grandmother saying, So what? There are worse marital offenses. He’s faithful and a good provider, so why are you complaining?
“Mass was fine,” Anne Marie tells Jarrett. “Long sermon,” she adds, in case he really was wondering where she’s been all this time. She motions at the triplets, who are scampering out of the room, and can’t help saying, “I thought you were taking them out for lunch.”
“They didn’t want to go out in the rain so we ordered a pizza.”
Instantly, Anne Marie regrets her accusing tone. “Oh. Good idea.”
“You thought I would let them starve?”
“No. I thought you didn’t feed them . . . yet.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not such a horrible father, am I?”
“No,” she says, looking down at her Ferragamo pumps. “You’re not a horrible father at all.”
I’m just a horrible mother.
No. That isn’t fair. It isn’t true . . . not now, anyway.
Anne Marie Egerton loves her babies fiercely. All of them.