The Identicals(34)

Tabitha is too emotionally spent to have a reunion phone call with Stephanie, so she sends a text: Hey, stranger! My mother broke her hip. I’m in Boston at MGH, and Ainsley is at home on Nantucket. Is there ANY way I could impose on you and Stu and ask you to take Ainsley in for 2–3 nights? I know it’s an enormous favor out of the blue but I’m desperate. I’ll make it up to you. Thanks xo.

She’s a coward, sending a text. They’re talking about the well-being of Tabitha’s only child. Tabitha hates herself. She should have called. Yes, it would have been awkward—it’s easily been four years since Tabitha and Steph have had any kind of meaningful conversation—but sending a text was too casual.

As if to punish Tabitha for her cavalier handling of the situation, her phone pings with a response: I checked with Candace. She doesn’t think having Ainsley here is a good idea. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help! xo.

Oh, sure, Tabitha thinks. Blame it on the sixteen-year-old.

In her heart, she knows this is the answer she deserves.

Tabitha will have to call Meghan and ask her to stay at the carriage house. There is simply no one else. Meghan is as big as a house, and her pregnancy has been a trial—she has developed carpal tunnel syndrome and gestational diabetes. Her ankles are so swollen that she can’t wear shoes, only flip-flops; she has to pee every ten minutes, and when she leaves the other sales associate, Mary Jo, in charge of the store while she goes to the bathroom, something inevitably walks out of the store unpaid for. Mary Jo is seventy-eight years old and myopic. Tabitha has to fire her, but she’s worried about getting slapped with a lawsuit for being ageist.

Meghan will watch Ainsley. She is beholden to Tabitha because Tabitha is paying her through her maternity leave despite the fact that she is a seasonal employee. But Meghan won’t want to do it. All Meghan wants to do when she gets home is eat the low-sugar snacks she’s allowed to consume and watch Ellen. On the one hand, Tabitha thinks it would be good for Meghan to get some hands-on parenting experience, albeit at the other end of the spectrum. This is what your child will be like at sixteen if you’re very unlucky! On the other hand, Tabitha knows she should let Meghan enjoy her last two or three weeks of caring for herself and spending quiet time with her husband, Jonathan.

But if not Meghan, then who?



The next day finds Tabitha in a different waiting room, alternately paging through back issues of Town & Country and dozing with her head up against the concrete block wall. Eleanor is expected to be in surgery for a few hours, but Tabitha is afraid if she leaves the hospital something awful will happen. If she stays here and suffers, Eleanor will be fine.

At twelve thirty, Tabitha’s phone rings. She checks the display: It’s Ainsley. Twelve thirty means Ainsley is at lunch. No doubt she’s wondering how much longer she’s going to be left an orphan.

“Hi, sweetie,” Tabitha says. “I’m trying to find someone to stay with you.”

“I called Aunt Harper,” Ainsley says. “She can be here tomorrow night and stay for as long as you need her to, but she wants to make sure you’re okay with it.”

“No,” Tabitha says. “Not Harper.”

“Just let her come, Tabitha. Mama, I mean—sorry. Please? Please please please? That way you can take care of Grammie and not worry about me. Aunt Harper can stay as long as you need her to. She quit her job.”

Quit her job? Tabitha thinks. More likely she got fired. Tabitha doesn’t want Harper to be the one to fix things, because Harper never actually fixes things. She only makes things worse. Look at her life. Tabitha caught the doctor’s wife’s champagne in the face!

And yet having Harper come to watch Ainsley is an answer of sorts. It would allow Tabitha to go back to the town house on Pinckney Street once Eleanor is safely out of surgery to get some much-needed sleep.

But then the memories assault Tabitha: Harper walking into the rental cottage on Prospect Street with a bouquet of wildflowers. Harper singing a song in Julian’s tiny ear as she rocked him. The song was “If I Had $1000000” by the Barenaked Ladies; it calmed Julian immediately. It was the only thing that could. Harper making cioppino with clams and mussels, the tomato-rich broth the first real food Tabitha had eaten since Julian’s birth.

Harper braiding Tabitha’s hair and ironing Tabitha’s dress.

A bottle of champagne with their bare feet dangling off the end of Old South Wharf, dinner at 21 Federal, all eyes on the two of them. Dancing in the front row of the Chicken Box to a band that played old U2 songs. Harper’s arm crooked around Tabitha’s neck as they belted out the lyrics to “With or Without You.”

Tabitha can’t think any further. It is simply too awful.

“No,” Tabitha says to Ainsley now. “I’m sorry, but no. Not your Aunt Harper.”

“But Mom—” Ainsley says.

“No,” Tabitha says, and she hangs up.





HARPER


Tabitha must be really desperate if, as Ainsley said, she approved of Harper staying with Ainsley for the summer. So Harper packs up just what she will need for the season—clothes, shoes, toiletries, books, computer, one good kitchen knife, her food processor, her cast-iron skillet, leashes, chew toys, rawhides. What else? She is nearly forty years old, but she has acquired very little in the way of material things. Will she need her surf-casting pole or her mountain bike? Doubtful.