Lost Along the Way(47)
Jane glanced past the white walls of the den into the red-walled library in the back of the house. She caught sight of a fireplace with more candles adorning the mantel, throw pillows covering the couch, and a bookcase jammed with books. Jane had no problem picturing Steve curled up on the couch in front of the fire reading while Meg cooked in the kitchen. At one time, this house must’ve made both of them so happy.
“Make yourself at home,” Meg said.
“It’s really beautiful,” Jane said as she pulled four wine bottles from the shopping bag and popped three of them in the fridge. “You guys were really smart to buy this when you did. You’ll probably make a fortune on it if you ever go to sell it.”
“I don’t know that I’ll ever sell it,” Meg said quietly. “It’s the only home I have now.”
Jane began opening Meg’s cabinets in search of wineglasses, as if it were perfectly normal for her to be rifling through the kitchen in a home she’d never been to. She didn’t care. The only way the three of them were going to get back to a place where they could be in the same room without it being weird was to pretend that it wasn’t weird for them to be in the same room. So she found no sensible reason whatsoever why she shouldn’t make herself feel right at home, and in her home, she drank wine.
She found dusty wineglasses in a small cupboard above the sink, difficult for her to reach, and she was a few inches taller than Meg. Clearly Meg wasn’t drinking her problems away. Jane opened the freezer to retrieve ice cubes to help chill down the wine and discovered countless loaves of bread, all of them meticulously wrapped and labeled, stacked on top of one another in the freezer like little tinfoil bricks. The sight of the carbohydrate carnival made Jane feel better about herself: Meg might not use wine as a crutch, but she, too, was seeking comfort in consumable items, and Jane liked discovering that they still had things in common.
It was a start.
seventeen
They’d enjoyed a simple dinner of grilled fish and salad and did their best to only discuss topics that no one really cared about: the weather, music, new movies that were about to hit the theaters. It somehow seemed like a better idea than discussing anything personal. When they’d finished cleaning the dishes, Meg showed them to their rooms; Cara turned left at the top of the stairs and placed her bag in a small but comfortable bedroom with a large bay window and soft yellow walls, while Jane took the guest room next to Meg’s at the opposite end of the hall. Jane threw her bag on the floor and ran her hand over the soft cream-colored sheets on the bed. The gauzy linen curtains that hung on the lone window blew softly in the breeze. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been anywhere so tranquil, and couldn’t wait until she could climb under the duvet and go to sleep.
But first they were all going to head back to the den for a nightcap.
Ten minutes later, Jane took a seat on the couch and sipped her drink. She didn’t want to discuss neutral topics anymore, and she figured the best way to break the ice was to pretend that nothing about this evening was strange. “So, what’s everyone been up to? Have you guys seen anyone from back home? I’m so out of the loop,” she said.
“‘Out of the loop’?” Cara asked, cracking a slight smile. “That’s a nice way to put it!”
“I know, but in fairness, I really am out of the loop. Everybody knows what’s been going on in my life, but I have no idea what’s going on in anyone else’s. When you think about it, it hardly seems fair,” Jane joked. Making fun of her situation was a tricky thing to do. She didn’t want to seem like she wasn’t horrified by what her husband had done, but at the same time, she had to be able to laugh at least a little bit.
“It must be hard,” Cara said. “Unfortunately I can’t help you. I haven’t exactly kept in touch with anyone, either. I’m not on Facebook and I missed the ten-year reunion.”
“Did anyone go to that?” Meg asked. “I didn’t think anyone went to those things. At least, I never had any intention of going. I didn’t want to play the ‘who has a better life’ game with people I haven’t seen since the nineties. I like to think I left some of that teenage-girl competitive nonsense in my past.”
“I don’t think girls ever really outgrow it, do you?” Jane asked.
“Seriously?” Cara asked, surprised to hear Jane actually admit something so silly out loud. “You find yourself competing with other women? At our age?”
Jane sighed. “Sometimes. I feel ridiculous saying it, but it’s true. It’s basically impossible to keep up with the women I hung out with in the city. It used to drive me crazy.”
“What do you mean?” Meg asked.
“I don’t know. Sometimes we’d go to lunch at this French place on the Upper East Side, and these women would sit around and order French food, and wear French designers, and talk about their trips to Paris or Saint-Tropez. The hysterical part was that none of them could actually speak a lick of French. They’re all phonies. But the crazy thing is that I wanted them to accept me so badly that I set about building a life that was full of material things, but completely empty, just so that they’d think I was one of them. In retrospect I can’t believe I cared about what they thought, but at the time, yeah, I felt like I was constantly struggling to keep up with them. For the record, it’s exhausting.”