I'm Fine and Neither Are You(19)
Jenny pulled a wooden spoon from a drawer and began pushing the chicken around in its sauce. “My pleasure.”
“What’s Matt up to?”
“Oh,” she said, peering into the pot. She sniffed at the chicken and then said, “He’s home this week.”
“That’s good.”
She put a lid on the pot. “Did I tell you Sonia asked me to sit on the board of the Children’s Literacy Society?”
“No. Huh.” Sonia had recently come into money—so much money that even Jenny’s eyes grew wide when we discussed it, and she had been raised to want for nothing. Sonia’s grandfather had accumulated a great fortune, and she and her brother were his only surviving heirs. Sonia claimed the inheritance wouldn’t change anything, but she had quietly stopped working and joined a tennis league as well as the boards of what seemed to be every other charity in town. I hadn’t seen much of her lately. “Will you do it?” I asked Jenny.
“It’s important work.”
“Kids do need to read,” I quipped, though Stevie’s struggles had been anything but funny.
Jenny had begun cleaning off the island. “They have a really lovely signature event in the fall—Matt and I attended a few years ago. So that would be nice. But Sonia warned that it’s a major time commitment. I need to find out how much time exactly.”
“Are there ways to get involved that don’t involve sitting on the board?” I asked, as much for myself as for Jenny. Dipping a toe into children’s literature—in some capacity, even if I couldn’t find the energy to actually write out my ideas—had been one of my New Year’s resolutions. The year was closing in fast and I had not taken a single step toward my goal. But maybe volunteering would be a good way to make progress, and reconnect with Sonia in the process.
“I’m going to look into that.” She stopped wiping the counter, cocked her head, and looked at me. “Why, you want to join me?”
“Maybe,” I said.
She went back to sponging the marble. “You’re so lucky, you know.”
I was sitting on a barstool that I happened to know cost more than every single item I was wearing as well as the purse I had left on a hook in the foyer, and sipping fine wine out of an expensive glass that was part of a set that one of Jenny’s sponsors had sent her as a thank-you for allowing them to advertise on her website. (That the company thanked her for letting them pay her still boggled my mind.) “And how’s that?”
She tossed the crumbs in her hand into the garbage and put the sponge in the dishwasher. “Never mind.”
“No, spill it,” I pressed. “I could use a refresher on the perks of being Penelope.”
“Well . . .” She scrunched up her nose for a split second. “It’s just nice that if you want to volunteer, Sanjay will support you.” She quickly added, “Not that I’m at all trying to minimize your issues.”
One of these issues was that while Sanjay would support the idea of me volunteering, when I got home from having done so, the kids’ lunches would not be made, and though I had asked him to pay the water bill, I would sort through the mail that had been left in the mailbox and find a notice informing us that our repeat delinquency would cost an additional twenty-five dollars—and that was provided we sent payment within the next two business days.
There was a reason that instead of daydreaming about my husband taking me passionately against a wall, I fantasized about replacing him with a wife.
I looked at Jenny, and over at the pot, which had the kitchen smelling like a French bistro, and then back at her. Matt was nothing if not supportive. Jenny said he was overly tied to the idea of coming home to a clean house and a hot meal—but I could barely fault him. After a long day at the office, I yearned for the same things, though I would have made do with someone (it didn’t necessarily have to be Sanjay) greeting me at the door with a just-shaken martini.
What I would never dare admit to Jenny was that it seemed to me she was the one who was most concerned with her domestic duties. Instead of grumbling about the house, I heard him crow about Jenny’s success—how she had managed to do what so many people could only dream of and turn her passion for lovely things into a well-paying career. (If the online murmurs were to be believed, her website brought in several hundred thousand in advertising revenue each year.)
I never did have the opportunity to gently tell Jenny I thought Matt supported her, because Miles and Cecily came running into the kitchen to show us the kitten hospital they had just built. I drained my wine as they finished, and then it was time to go home and get on with the less pleasant parts of my day.
Jenny and I said goodbye in the kitchen and that was that; I don’t even remember if I looked at her after I hugged her, let alone noted her expression before I dragged Miles out the door. He was begging to stay, and I said no—not even a little longer. Because it was Sunday and we had things to do, and I had no idea that my friend needed me and that our rushed goodbye would be the last time I would see her alive.
Back in my own kitchen, drinking seven-dollar-a-bottle chardonnay, I racked my mind trying to remember what I had missed. It was a fool’s errand; you can’t hit a rewind button in your head and suddenly spot all the things you had overlooked in the first place.
And yet I tried. Jenny hadn’t responded when I said it was good that Matt was home for the week. At the time, I had barely thought anything of it. Like anyone else, Jenny occasionally redirected the conversation for no apparent reason.