Commonwealth(61)

“Not on your life,” Franny said.

“I can’t talk to her now.”

“Well, neither can I, so I suggest you go down to the kitchen and hang up the phone.”

She walked out of the cabin and to the back of the property. She knew where there was a break in the hedge and she took it: through the neighbor’s yard, down their driveway, and out onto the street, her flip-flops slapping against her feet. She wished she had her bicycle, a hat, some money, and at the same time she wished for nothing in the world but to be alone. Franny couldn’t help but believe that she had brought every discomfort she experienced down on herself. Had she done something with her life no one would be asking her to make them cappuccino, and had she done something with her life she would be perfectly happy to make them cappuccino, because it would not be her job. She would make the coffee because she was a gracious and helpful person. She could feel good about being kind without continually wondering if she were anything more than a nice-enough-looking waitress. She wished, as she approached thirty, that she had figured out how to be more than a muse, or, as her father had put it the last time she had seen him in Los Angeles, “Being a mistress isn’t a job.”

Her father hadn’t read Commonwealth but her sister had.

“There’s nothing particularly libelous about it,” Caroline said to Franny. “He’s covered his tracks.”

“I’m grateful that you don’t review for the Times.”

“I’ll put it another way: I didn’t enjoy it but I’m not going to sue him.”

“You’re hardly even in the book.”

Caroline laughed. “Maybe that’s what irritated me about it. Anyway, if I was going to sue I’d make it a class-action case, get the whole family involved.”

“Well,” Franny said, “that would be one way to get us all together again.”

It was funny how much Franny missed Caroline now. For as much as they’d hated each other growing up, a peculiar fondness had crept in somewhere along the way. Franny and Caroline knew all the same stories. Caroline practiced patent law in Silicon Valley. There was nothing harder than that. She was married to a software designer named Wharton. Wharton was his last name but no one ever called him anything else because his first name was Eugene. Franny believed that Wharton had softened her sister up. He made Caroline laugh. Franny had no memory of her sister ever laughing about anything when they were growing up, at least never in front of her. Caroline and Wharton had a baby named Nick.

Franny got to spend a lot of time with Caroline the semester Leo was teaching at Stanford. Caroline still badgered her about going back to law school, and Franny was able to believe that the badgering came from a place of affection.

“Believe me,” Caroline said, “I know school is miserable. I even know that practicing law can be miserable. But sooner or later you have to do something. If you think you’re going to find one thing that will be perfect for you, you’re going to spend your eightieth birthday reading the want ads.”

“You sound like you’re trying to talk me into a bad marriage.”

“But it doesn’t have to be a bad marriage. Why can’t you see that? Get a law degree and go fight housing discrimination, or go get a job for a publisher and write book contracts for authors.”

Franny smiled and shook her head. “I’ll figure it out,” was what she had said to her sister.

But she hadn’t figured it out, and now she was in Amagansett walking through town in order to avoid the man she loved and his friends. Franny looked in shop windows, and when she saw a newspaper on a bench she sat down and read the entire thing. The light was so soft, so honeyed, that she could almost forgive her houseguests for wanting to stay. She waited until she was sure it was too late for anyone to ask her to make them lunch. She passed the restaurant she and Leo liked, hoping that by some chance she would see him there. Finally she decided to go back. There was nothing else to do. She had planned to sneak up to the bedroom undetected, but they saw her from the side porch and waved.

“Franny, what a day we’ve had without you!” Leo said, as if there had been nothing strange about her leaving or her return.

Astrid, back from Sag Harbor, nodded. “I had to bring the sandwiches for lunch. There’s still some sorbet.”

“And Eric and I went into town and bought things for dinner,” Marisol said.

“Someone’s still going to have to go back into town,” Eric said. “We didn’t get enough.”

Franny looked at them up on the porch, everyone softened by the veil of the screen, by the light that was slanting in behind them, by the bank of yellow lilies that separated them from her. It was not unlike seeing tigers at the zoo.

“Hollinger called,” Leo said. “He’s driving in from the city with Ellen. They should be here in an hour or so.”

“Hollinger?” Astrid said. “You didn’t tell me that. How did he know where you were?” John Hollinger was not Astrid’s client. His novel The Seventh Story had beaten out Commonwealth for the Pulitzer, and both men made a great show of how this fact had not affected their friendship, even though they hadn’t exactly been friends in the first place.

Marisol gave a single, dismissive wave. “It won’t be an hour. He’s always late.”