Mrs. Fletcher(93)

Brendan didn’t answer. He was totally engrossed in his stupid game, flinching and tilting his body from side to side as he banged away at the controller, trying to kill all the bad guys.

“Turn that off,” she snapped.

“Huh?” He looked up, more surprised than annoyed.

“Now.”

He obeyed. The gunfire ceased, but the silence that followed was just as unnerving.

“You need to treat women with more respect,” she told him.

Brendan blinked in confusion.

“What?”

“I’m not deaf. I hear the way you talk sometimes, and I don’t like it. We aren’t sex objects and we’re not bitches, do you understand? I never want to hear that word in this house again.”

“I never—” he protested.

“Please,” she told him. “Don’t insult me. Not tonight. I’m not in the mood.”

He stared at her for a long time, still clutching his useless controller. And then he nodded.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean anything by it.”

“Life’s not a porn movie, okay?”

“I know that.” He sounded genuinely hurt that she might even think he thought it was. “Jesus.”

“Good,” she said. “Then please start acting like it.”

*

Julian texted three times while she was in the shower, wondering where she was and what was wrong. Eve didn’t know what to tell him.

I smelled bad.

I’m a coward.

I’m way too old for you.

All these things were true, but none of them would make him feel any better. She remembered how awful it was at that age—at any age—to get your hopes up and then to come up empty.

Poor kid.

She lay down for a few minutes, but she wasn’t tired anymore. She got up and stood in front of the full-length mirror in her fuzzy pink bathrobe. Then she undid the belt of the robe and let it fall open.

Not too bad, she thought.

Her body wasn’t what it used to be, but she looked okay. Her stomach not so much, but it was easy enough to frame the image so only her head and chest were included.

Not bad at all.

The first picture was too dark, so she turned on her bedside lamp and tried again. This one was much better. Her hair was wet and her eyes were tired, but she looked like herself, which was a fairly rare occurrence.

In real life, her breasts were a bit droopier than she would have liked—no longer perfect or amazing—but the way the robe fell alongside them, you couldn’t really see that.

In the photo, her breasts were lovely.

In the photo, she was smiling.

This is just for you, she told him. Please don’t show it to anyone else.

After she sent the text, she went to her contacts and blocked his number, so she could never do anything like that again.





PART FIVE


Lucky Day





Red Carpet


Eve got married in early September, around the beginning of what would have been Brendan’s sophomore year of college, if Brendan had still been going to college. The day dawned gray and drizzly, but the sky cleared in late morning and brightened into a glorious afternoon, which was a huge relief, because the ceremony was taking place in her own backyard.

A few minutes after four o’clock, she stepped out onto the patio, wearing a pale yellow dress and clutching a bouquet of peonies and garden roses. The guests were gathered on the lawn, standing on either side of a narrow, slightly wrinkled red carpet that had been unfurled on top of the grass.

She paused for a moment to savor the tableau, to imprint it on her memory. There weren’t a lot of people in the yard—only forty or so, with more on the groom’s side than the bride’s—but the faces turned in her direction formed a map of her life, old and new. Her sister and mother had made the drive up from New Jersey in the morning and had done nothing but complain about the traffic since their arrival. Jane and Peggy had come with their husbands; Liza completed the friend group, the self-proclaimed fifth wheel. She’d been sweet and supportive over the past few months, repeatedly congratulating Eve on her good fortune, though it clearly pained her to see her best divorced buddy rejoining the ranks of the married, leaving her to face the harsh world of middle-aged dating on her own.

Don’t forget me, she’d whispered at the end of the previous week’s bachelorette dinner, after too many glasses of wine. Promise?

I won’t, Eve told her, and it was a promise she intended to keep.

Ted and Bethany had surprised her, not only by RSVP’ing an enthusiastic Yes!!!, but also by bringing Jon-Jon, who looked adorable in his little blue blazer, eyes wide, arms rigid at his sides. He was doing okay, observing the scene with some apprehension, but no outbursts or tantrums so far, knock on wood. And if he did start screaming, Eve thought, then so be it. She wasn’t some starry-eyed twenty-five-year-old who expected everything to be perfect on her Special Day.

Aside from Jon-Jon, the only other child present was Margo’s eight-year-old daughter, Millicent, who’d come to the ceremony straight from a soccer game, in cleats and a blue-and-white jersey with HUSKIES on the front. She was tall for her age, with toothpick legs and long blond hair, wedged between Margo and Dumell. They looked happy and very much together, though Eve knew that they’d gone through a rough patch and had been broken up for most of the summer.