The Best of Us Page 4

  “You know what would really help me? If you helped,” she said. “C’mon, fold this laundry so I can get the kids packed.”

  “Jesus, baby, I just got home from work,” Gio said. “Can’t I relax for ten minutes?”

  Tina exhaled slowly. Gio knew those words were a trigger for her; did he think she didn’t work all day long?

  “You’ve been relaxing for almost an hour,” she said, working hard to keep her voice level. “Let’s just get this all done so we can both relax.”

  “After this show,” Gio said, turning up the volume.

  Tina snatched the remote out of his hand and hit the Mute button.

  “What’s your prob——” Gio began, but Tina shushed him.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I think Sammy was coughing. Oh, God, I hope he’s not getting sick.”

  “Baby, he’s fine,” Gio said. He reclaimed the clicker and turned the television back up.

  Tina felt a knot in her stomach as she moved closer to the door. She’d definitely heard a cough. Could Sammy be coming down with something? He had allergies, which made even a slight cold problematic. She’d planned to pack his nebulizer just in case, and she’d asked Louise, Allie’s mom, to be sure that Sammy took a shower every night and washed his hair, to remove the ragweed pollen that always plagued him in late summer. But Louise was going to have six kids underfoot—she might forget.

  Her hands reached for the laundry piled on her side of the bed and automatically began to sort the shirts and shorts and pajamas into four neat stacks. Gio accused her of being overly alarmist sometimes, and she knew it was true, but what she didn’t know was how to change this particular dynamic in their marriage. His flat-out refusal to worry made her anxieties all the more intense, as if they kept needing to move to opposite extremes in order to create the middle ground of a reasonable reaction.

  She’d keep her cell phone on, she reminded herself. And Dwight had a private jet, for goodness’ sake. She could always fly home if Sammy really was becoming ill.

  She reached for one of Sammy’s tiny shirts with a smiling Elmo on the front and felt unexpected tears form. Seven days without her children seemed like an endless stretch of time, and while it had been so enticing in theory, now that the vacation was upon her, she felt almost panicked.

  Did other women feel torn in two when they left their children? she wondered as she placed the Elmo T-shirt into Sammy’s pile of clean clothes. Maybe not; it could all be the result of her old job as a nurse. There were two kids who stood out in her mind from all those shifts in the ER; two faces that rose above the blur of swallowed coins and sudden cases of croup and leg-breaking falls from playground structures. A little boy, aged six, who was riding in the backseat of a car that was slammed by a truck whose driver hadn’t noticed the stoplight turn red. Tina had been closest to the emergency room doors when the EMTs brought him in. She could see only one of his brown eyes through the mass of red, but it had looked straight at her. She’d reached out to hold his hand as they rushed him into surgery, running alongside the gurney. He hadn’t made it through.

  The other child Tina still saw vividly was a tiny girl—she didn’t know her age but thought she’d been two or so—who had found a bottle of flavored medicine that hadn’t been properly closed and had swallowed most of the contents. Tina didn’t know if the little girl had survived; she couldn’t bear to ask. Because by then Tina was six months pregnant. And the previous weekend she’d gone shopping and had bought a few onesies, some blankets, and a soft-looking teddy bear that she’d tucked into a corner of the crib. That bear was too similar to one the desperately ill girl held as she was carried out of the ambulance.

  Tina’s job had demonstrated over and over how easily the life of a parent could shatter. How simply turning your head at the wrong time, or answering a doorbell, could invite catastrophe. That was why she couldn’t entrust her kids to anyone, why she’d chosen to stay at home instead of hiring a nanny.

  But a private villa! she reminded herself. A chef! She’d be forced to relax; she’d have no other choice. She and Allie had spent hours on the phone in the weeks since the invitation had arrived, oohing and aahing over the pictures Pauline had e-mailed of the villa called Summer Escape, the enormous rooftop patio with a pool and hot tub, and the views of the glass-green Caribbean Sea.

  “Okay, that’s done,” Tina said as she finished sorting the laundry and nestled each pile into a small bag. The kids had T-shirts and shorts, bathing suits and pajamas, stuffed animals and books, toothbrushes and one sweatshirt apiece, even though it was August, just in case the nights turned chilly. She’d filled a separate bag with Sammy’s nebulizer, some basic medicines, and the list of emergency numbers. She glanced at the clock. It was nine-thirty and she hadn’t packed a single thing for herself, guaranteeing she’d forget something crucial. She glanced at her to-do list again. She had to make sure the timers she’d bought for the living room lights were set, and she needed to water the plants, and she should really put Caesar’s dog food on the counter so their beer-swilling dog walker could find it . . . Oh, God, the key for what’s-his-name! Was it too late to drop it off?

  “Gio, I need you to run the key down the street,” she said as she shoved a bright red Miraclesuit bathing suit into her suitcase. She’d ordered it online after it promised to erase ten pounds from her frame. Ten pounds wasn’t enough—she should’ve bought two so she could wear them both, one over the other.

  “Gio?”

  She looked over and saw that he’d fallen asleep, clutching the remote against his chest like a little kid with a security blanket.

  There were so many things she loved about her husband: his deep voice, the way he smelled after he worked up a sweat on the job; how he could diagnose any problem in the house or car, from a leaky pipe to a dying carburetor. Even the things she pretended to roll her eyes at—like the fact that he refused ever to dance or to cook anything more complex than a toaster waffle—fit into his deliciously macho image.

  She knew his job was stressful. Gio worked on sweltering sites during the summer and unheated ones in the winter, and was usually the first one at the job in the morning and the last one to leave at night. He was under tremendous pressure to come in on time and at budget for this particular project, especially since the company he worked for had already let go a half dozen employees this year because of the poor economy. Gio was working so hard to spare himself—and his family—from the same fate.

  Tina leaned over, untied her husband’s yellow work boots, and slid them off. He must have been too tired to bother removing them.

  She watched him sleep, feeling anger mingle with sympathy while she held a boot that was scuffed at the toe and still contained some of Gio’s warmth. She wondered if all marriages were this complicated.

  * * *

  It was four a.m., and Allie was conceding defeat.

  She slipped out of bed and into her terry-cloth robe, then crept down the stairs, her feet soundless against the soft carpet. Last night she and Ryan had opened a bottle of chardonnay and watched an old episode of The Office, and while an extra glass of wine and the comedy had helped her drift off, she’d known it wouldn’t last. She hadn’t slept through the night in weeks.

  Ever since that phone call with a woman she barely knew but was inexorably tied to, Allie felt as if she’d been split into two people. One Allie chatted with the post office clerk and wrote knock-knock jokes on slips of paper to tuck into the girls’ lunch boxes and set aside the sports page for Ryan. The other Allie looked up at the clock to see an entire hour had mysteriously passed, and wandered around her house in the middle of the night, running her fingertip over the family photos on the mantel.

  Now she passed the suitcases stacked by the front door and headed for the kitchen, where a small light above the stove cast a gentle glow. It resembled a stage set—a lonely room waiting for dishes to clatter into the sink and bacon to
sizzle in a pan and people to talk in bright morning voices.

  Allie kept the lights off but switched on the coffeemaker and put in a scoop of French roast, then opened a window to allow the August morning’s soft air to filter into the house. In a few hours, she’d cook a special breakfast of cinnamon-sprinkled French toast and fill glasses with orange juice, then drive the girls to her mother’s house. She’d hug them tight and say goodbye, secure in the knowledge that her mom would care for them well. And then she’d step onto a private plane and drink Savannah’s Sex on the Beach shooters—how like Savannah to bring not just any old drinks but ones with suggestive names—and she’d spend the next week sunbathing, jogging on the beach, eating, and drinking.

  But most of all, not thinking. That was the private deal she’d made with herself: She’d get one more week, then she’d face whatever her future held. She stood there, gripping the handle of the coffeepot even after it gave a final gurgle. She wondered if she’d be able to pull it off. Surely Ryan would notice something was wrong, and the others might, too, since they were going to spend so much time together. Maybe she should have an excuse handy in case . . . Allie yanked her mind away from that train of thought as swiftly as if she were pulling away her hand from a hot stove top. Jamaica, she told herself, summoning the iron discipline that had her reaching for her running shoes even on cold, rain-soaked days. Think about the vacation.

  It would be a strange week, Allie conceded as she began moving again and filled up her favorite mug, a chunky purple piece of glazed pottery she’d bought from a local artist at a farmers’ market. Pauline was basically a stranger, and while Allie and Dwight saw each other a couple of times a year for lunch, Dwight wasn’t in regular touch with the rest of the group. Allie couldn’t imagine two more different women than Pauline and Savannah, and Gary had never meshed with the other husbands. But surely everyone would be on their best behavior in such an idyllic setting.

  At first Allie had balked at the idea of accepting. But Pauline had insisted: “Dwight really wants to do this,” she’d said. “It’s the only thing he truly hopes for on his birthday.”

  Allie had sensed Pauline was telling the truth, which was why she’d finally said yes, even though she still wasn’t entirely comfortable with Dwight footing the bill. She’d spent a long time searching for a gift for him, and had finally decided on two small ones: a basket full of the vintage candy he’d once told her he’d adored as a child and still craved—Smarties, Pop Rocks, Hot Tamales, Razzles, FireBalls, and Reese’s Pieces. She was also going to take photographs during the trip and compile them into a Snapfish album, along with all the old pictures of them from college that she could find. Dwight wasn’t in many of them, but she’d managed to locate a few. It seemed like such a small thing to do, but what could she possibly buy the man that he didn’t already own?

  She lightened her coffee with a splash of cream, then carried her mug to the big, soft couch in the living room and sat down, tucking her legs underneath her. Her eyes roamed around the familiar contours of the room—the denim-covered chairs with striped accent pillows, Sasha’s pink ballet slipper half-hidden under the coffee table, the vase of sunflowers whose edges were just beginning to turn brown.

  In a week, she’d be preparing to reverse her journey, stacking her suitcases by the door of the Jamaican villa and hugging her friends good-bye. And then, when she stepped out of the fantasy and came home . . . She gulped air and dropped her head into her hands.

  “Mommy?”

  Allie looked up and saw her seven-year-old daughter, Eva, padding down the stairs in pink footie pajamas. She quickly wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe.

  “Hey, baby girl,” Allie said, opening her arms. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  “I thought it was morning,” Eva said. “But it’s still dark out.”

  “The sun is getting ready to come up, though,” Allie said. She smoothed Eva’s auburn hair, a perfect match for her own, relishing the way her daughter’s warm, soft body felt in her arms. “Try to go back to sleep if you can.”

  “Tell me a story,” Eva said. It was their nighttime ritual, but rather than reading from books about girl detectives or talking animals, Allie always recounted family stories from her own memories: the time Eva climbed into the fireplace and climbed out covered in cold ashes; the day Sasha crawled over to the DVD player, decided it looked hungry, and tried to feed a piece of toast through its slot; and Allie’s disastrous first date with Ryan, when he’d taken them to a restaurant that had shut down the previous week, then had gotten a flat tire as he pulled out of the empty parking lot. Instead of becoming angry or embarrassed, he’d burst into laughter—then he’d made Allie laugh, too, by joking that he’d lined the parking lot with sharp nails so he could woo her with his macho tire-changing skills.

  “Which story would you like?” Allie asked. “The day you were born?”

  “The day you were born,” Eva said.

  “Okay,” Allie said. She took a deep breath. “The day I was born. Well, I grew in another woman’s tummy, not Grandma Louise’s, because Grandma Louise couldn’t grow babies. And there I was, growing bigger and bigger, and Grandma Louise and Grandpa Bucky were getting all ready for me.”

  “They painted your room,” Eva prompted, snuggling closer.

  “They did,” Allie confirmed. “They painted it yellow, just like Daddy and I painted your room before you were born.”

  “But they didn’t know it was you who was coming,” Eva said.

  “That’s true,” Allie said. “They wanted a baby so badly, but they didn’t know which one was meant to belong to them. And then I decided I was tired of being squished in a tummy, so I wiggled my way out and gave a great big yell. And Grandma Louise swears she somehow felt that yell in her bones and knew I was trying to tell her to come get me.”

  “And then she and Grandpa came to get you,” Eva said.

  “They rushed right to the hospital,” Allie confirmed. “They fed me a bottle of milk and changed my diaper, and as soon as the doctors said I could leave, Grandma and Grandpa dressed me in a little pink outfit and brought me home. And then we were a family.”

  “What about the lady whose tummy you lived in? Was she your family, too?”

  Allie’s hand froze on her daughter’s head. Could Eva have overheard something—a snippet of conversation from the phone call she’d tried to keep private? Kids were so intuitive; maybe she’d just absorbed something from the very air.

  Allie needed to choose her words carefully. “That lady was named Debby, and she wasn’t really my family,” she finally said. “She just took care of me until my real family could get me. She was more of a . . . friend.”

  “Oh,” Eva said in a small voice.

  “Honey?” Allie asked. “Is there anything bothering you?”

  Eva shook her head, and Allie had no idea whether to push her to talk. So she just held her little girl, whispering more stories as the sky turned from black to gray to blue. Even after Allie felt Eva’s body relax into sleep, she kept talking softly, telling of the day Eva was born, and Sasha—the best days of her life. The days that made her realize that everything else she’d experienced—college, meeting Ryan, even her wedding day—had just been dress rehearsals for the pivotal chapter of her life: motherhood.

  Allie had told Eva the truth about her birth mother, Debby. Ever since Debby had reached out to her through the adoption agency after Allie turned eighteen and Allie had agreed to a meeting, they’d fallen into a casually friendly relationship. But they weren’t close, and witnessing the tumult of Debby’s life—she was constantly fighting with her third husband, and always short of money—made Allie grateful for that.

  She didn’t talk to Debby often, maybe every four or five months. But a few weeks after Dwight’s invitation had been delivered, Debby had called.

  “Hank died,” she’d said. No preamble, just those stark words. Allie had felt tears gathering in her eyes, even though she’d never
met her biological father, who’d gotten Debby pregnant when they were both teenagers. Allie had been standing at the counter, sorting through the day’s mail while Ryan was giving the girls a bath upstairs. Her legs had suddenly felt weak, and she’d sunk into a chair.

  “How?” she’d asked, the possibilities racing through her mind. She knew, through Debby, that he’d been a heavy drinker and smoker.

  “Lou Gehrig’s disease,” Debby had said. “It happened a couple weeks ago. I didn’t know until I saw some stuff about the funeral on the Facebook page for our old high school.”

  Debby didn’t sound upset—she and Hank had broken up before Allie had even been born. Hank had been furious that Debby decided against an abortion, Debby had said, in one of her breathtakingly thoughtless remarks that made Allie all the more grateful for her true parents.

  Allie had talked to Debby awhile longer, listening to her lament her current husband’s job troubles. Then, just as she’d begun to ease off the phone, Debby had said, “It happened to Hank’s father, too, you know. I remember when I went to his house once, in the tenth grade. He could barely move. It really creeped me out. He had to blink his eyes to communicate.”

  “What?” Allie had asked.

  “Yeah, he had it, too. Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

  “So my biological father and grandfather had the same disease?” Allie had asked. “It isn’t . . . genetic, is it?”

  Debby had paused to take another drag of her cigarette. “Huh. Never thought of that.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Allie had blurted, unable to listen to Debby’s raspy voice for another minute. She’d hung up and raced into the living room, then back into the kitchen. Then she’d abruptly stopped, her heart thudding in her chest.

  It was probably nothing, she’d told herself as she grabbed a sponge and began violently scrubbing a pan she’d left soaking in the sink. The fact that two of her relatives had the same fatal illness was a fluke. Was ALS even inherited? She’d thought it was a random disease that struck as swiftly and irrevocably as a bolt of lightning, impossible to predict where it would touch down. Besides, Debby wasn’t the most reliable source; Allie had caught her in a half dozen untruths before. Or maybe she’d gotten confused about Hank’s father’s diagnosis. He could have had a stroke, or . . . or been paralyzed in an accident.