Alternate Side(74)

“She pretended to. There was a lot of pretending. I don’t know what was worse, the pain last year or the pretending now.”

“It’s a dialectic. Wait for the synthesis.”

“Thank you, professor.”

“Really, I like this place. It’s a new you.”

“Is it? Or is it the old me with new furniture?”

“I like the new furniture. That white couch is great.” Jenny leaned in toward the view until her forehead touched the window glass. “That roof garden must have cost a fortune,” she said, looking down at the top of the brick building across the street.

“I’ve literally never seen anyone using it,” Nora said, standing next to her.

Jenny put her arm around Nora’s waist, and squeezed.

“Should I get a dog?” Nora said.

“It depends,” Jenny said. “Do you really want a dog, or do you think you should get a dog because it will make it seem like nothing has changed?”

Nora sighed. “I’ve always wanted a white couch,” she said.

“If you get a dog, get one who won’t jump on the furniture,” Jenny said.

It was funny, Nora sometimes thought, how, after the shock of becoming a separated person, of losing not only her home but her entire way of thinking about herself and her life, she had woken up one morning and realized that she would survive, that her former life was like a dress she had loved but that no tailor could take in after all the weight she’d lost. She wasn’t stupid; she was working long hours at her new job, hiring staff, setting up systems, visiting schools, and instead of weekends only, she was running every morning through the park in the half-light. Keeping busy, that’s what they called it. She knew there was a chance that someday she would sit down at the table at which she ate breakfast and feel loneliness like a flu, hot and achy and terrible and everywhere, the kind of feeling that made you want to stay in bed.

“Didn’t that happen sometimes even when you were still married?” Jenny had asked.

Somehow she and Charlie had both wound up with what they hadn’t known they’d always wanted. One evening they had gone to dinner with Lizzie’s parents, along with Oliver and Lizzie, and it had been as though they were still together in some strange way, but better. Nothing had happened in the last day, or the last week, to make one annoyed with the other; there was no irritating subtext as they sat around the table, Nora talking about the foundation to Lizzie’s mother, who headed a small private school, Charlie talking about the market to Lizzie’s father, who was a hospital administrator. The only thing that made it odd was the end of the evening, standing on the pavement executing that dance of moving from saying good night to actually leaving.

“That was a nice evening,” Charlie had said.

“Really nice,” Nora said.

And then it was cheek kiss, cheek kiss, and turn away in opposite directions. Charlie had headed east while Nora went north. Nora had glimpsed something, just for a moment, on her son’s face, and next morning, when the two of them had breakfast, she said, “Don’t let what happened make you relationship-shy.”

Oliver smiled a little sadly. “Mom, I draw conclusions based on all available data.”

“And if the data is contradictory?” she said, thinking of Lizzie’s parents, her mother’s arm looped through her father’s reflexively as they walked from the restaurant to the corner for a cab. Although who knew what that really meant? Charlie and Nora had looked like that to outsiders, so that when Nora had told her father they were separated he had said, “You’re kidding.”

“If the data is contradictory I continue to study the subject,” Oliver said.

That first Thanksgiving Nora and Charlie had gone together, as usual, to her father and Carol in Connecticut. “Always welcome, always welcome,” her father had said as he pumped Charlie’s hand. The food had been the same, and the conversation, too, although Oliver had gone to Lizzie’s and Rachel stayed in Seattle and had dinner with Christine. Nora assumed that next year Charlie would have Thanksgiving dinner with his woman friend, and the following year she might be his second wife, and so on and so forth. It was funny, how easy it was to predict the fine points of the future, and how the big things were incomprehensible until they were right there, on paper: Certificate of Dissolution of Marriage. Sometimes she thought about the block and wondered whether she’d wanted it because she knew it was what was wanted, whether life, at least in New York City, was an inchoate search for authenticity when imitation was always dangled before you like a great prize.

“Your new job sounds amazing,” Suzanne said wistfully when their women’s group met for lunch. “There are only so many swatches you can look at before you feel as though you’re rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Thank God I’m done with that house downtown. Although I do miss seeing James. That man is to die for.”

“Have people finally stopped with the leopard carpeting?” said Jenny, giving Nora a look across the table.

Suzanne shook her head. “Ten years from now I will watch while every client decides to pull it out. If I’m even doing this ten years from now.”

“One mistake I never made,” said Jenny, leaning over her bowl of soup.

“You used to say that about marriage,” Elena said, and Nora felt a movement under the table and realized that one of the other women had kicked Elena. “I mean that Jenny used to talk about how terrible marriage was, and now she’s married.” Kick. Kick. “What?” yelled Elena, and Nora started to laugh.