I'm Fine and Neither Are You(38)

I had some of these very questions myself, but all I could do was weakly reply that I didn’t know. I hated lying and was pretty sure the omissions I was making were one and the same. In desperation, I had finally suggested she reach out to Matt to ask him herself. I was relieved when she said that she would.

“One down,” said Jael. She waved her empty wineglass at our waiter. Then she looked at my glass, which was still nearly full. “At least grief isn’t turning you into a lush.”

“I’m just tired today.” I took a small sip of my drink. If I hadn’t had to keep my wits about me, I probably would have tossed the entire glass back like a shot and immediately repeated the process.

She gave me a sad smile. “I have so many regrets, you know? I hadn’t seen Jenny in almost two months before she died. I’d been really bad about seeing anyone, really, since Caleb was born,” she said, referring to her third child.

It wasn’t just her. Our friendship circle had casually unraveled around the time Sonia had become part of the one percent. When I ran into Jael at Jenny’s memorial service, it had been nearly half a year since she and I had last gotten together, and I’d almost not recognized her at first. She’d lost weight—a combination of nonstop nursing and no time to eat, she said apologetically, probably because motherhood had the opposite effect on me—and her black hair was streaked with gray. Her face was bare, and brambles of fine lines had formed around her eyes. She looked decades older than the last time we’d met up, as though the years of her life had all shown up at once.

“Listen, we’ve all been bad about getting together,” I told Jael. “Don’t beat yourself up.”

“Yes, but I avoided Jenny for the wrong reason. I felt so guilty about getting pregnant with Caleb when she’s had such a struggle because of her endometriosis. And you know, with forty just around the corner . . . it seemed like that chapter of her life was over. That must have been hard on her and Matt.”

I paused, my wineglass halfway to my mouth, wondering how to respond. I knew Jenny had wanted another child, but she had also said she had come to love their family of three exactly as it was.

Now I had to wonder if that was the whole story.

“That’s what it was, wasn’t it?” Jael said suddenly. “The hormones she was taking. I read that they can cause fatal blood clots in women over thirty-five.”

“It’s possible,” I fibbed.

“I bet it was,” she said, nodding. “When I told Jenny I was pregnant again, she said they had moved past it a long time ago. But I don’t know if that’s something you can ever really move past, especially when it doesn’t work out. My sister had secondary infertility, and it was really hard on her, even after she ended up having another child.”

“At least Jenny and Matt didn’t mind trying.”

Jael gave me a funny look. “What do you mean?”

“They were like rabbits.” I quickly amended myself: “Well, maybe not rabbits.”

“Because rabbits make lots of babies.”

“Sorry—that was me sticking my foot in my mouth,” I said, embarrassed. “But you know how Jenny was always talking about how they did it every day when he was home—sometimes even twice a day. Sanjay and I haven’t been like that since we were in our early twenties.” I hesitated, then added, “He wants us to have sex more often.”

Jael rolled her eyes. “Men. If I’ve learned one thing, though, it’s that having to do it saps the joy right out of it. Tony and I only ever had to try with Rachel,” she said, referring to her eldest. “But it was the worst . In my experience, the fastest way to murder your libido is to remove spontaneity from the equation.”

My husband’s direct request was hundreds of miles south of spontaneous—but that was my fault. “I can definitely see that,” I said, staring into the red abyss of my wineglass.



“Sanjay,” I whispered.

He was asleep on our bed, as straight and still as a log. I straddled him and leaned forward. I was wearing the tight White Sox T-shirt he loved and a pair of navy underwear. The underwear had a tiny tear where the polyester lace met the elastic band, but that was in the back and it was dark and hey, at least I was trying. “Hi,” I whispered, trying to rouse him.

“Hi,” he mumbled, opening an eye. Then the other one sprang open. “You smell like wine.”

“It’s my new perfume,” I said saucily. Jael and I had chosen a restaurant within walking distance of both of our houses, so I’d decided to have a second glass, and, following Jael’s lead, a third. Now my bedroom was swaying ever so slightly. But when I’d walked in the door, I’d had a spontaneous thought: tonight would be the night I would give it the old college try.

And damn it, I was going to enjoy it.

He pushed himself up on his elbows and looked at me. “You look really good.”

I wanted to remark that this was because my T-shirt covered my stomach, but I was just clearheaded enough to curb my sarcasm. “Thank you,” I said in a tone of voice I had not used in a long time.

Then I leaned forward and kissed him. At ten at night he already had morning breath. That didn’t bother me nearly as much as his stubble, which felt like sandpaper against my chin. I would not be so easily thrown off course, though, so I adjusted my face and kissed him again. This time it wasn’t nearly as irritating, and he now tasted a little like wine, too. Victory.