The cursor blinked at the end of the message. A little voice in the back of her head warned her not to do it. It was the same voice she’d heard more than twenty years ago, when she was about to send Jason a drunken e-mail after she’d found out about the new San Francisco girlfriend. Didn’t let the sheets get cold, did you? she’d written.
He never replied to that e-mail, and she’d regretted sending it. But that didn’t stop her from sending this one now.
37
Maribeth ran into Sunita on the stoop as she got home from the library that day.
“Hey, we just got back from the Holiday Market,” Sunita said.
“The what?” Maribeth asked.
“That Christmas thing. I texted to see if you wanted to go.”
“Sorry. I was at the library.”
“Did you get any books?”
“Oh, I was just using the computer.” Using probably wasn’t the right word. Staring glazed in front of it, like those old ladies in front of the nickel slots. “How was it?”
“Lame. But next week is Handmade Arcade, which is awesome. It’s like Etsy in a convention center,” Sunita said. “You should come.”
“We’ll see. I might have to go back to the library.”
“If it’s a computer you need, you’re always welcome to borrow my laptop.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
“Could I maybe borrow it now?”
“Of course.” Sunita went into the apartment and returned with her laptop. “The Wi-Fi should work from your place.”
Furtively, as if she were about to watch porn, Maribeth brought the computer into her apartment. She launched her e-mail program and left it open all evening, refreshing the page while she attempted to distract herself with a short story collection, and when that didn’t work, resorting to the TV again. There was a Modern Family marathon on but the show’s irreverence was making her murderous so she changed to a Friends rerun but that depressed her, because it reminded her, in its bright-TV version, of her old existence with Elizabeth. (Well, they had a loft. And they were young.)
By the time Maribeth had moved on to The Good Wife, the slow boil of her anger had cooked down to a sludgy resignation. What had she expected? This was how it always was. Maribeth fought with words. Jason fought with silences. Just because she wanted it to be different didn’t mean it would be. As her dentist father used to say: “If wishes were gumdrops, I’d be a rich man.”
At two in the morning, there was no more TV to distract herself with. Maribeth felt drained and jittery. She needed to try to sleep. She started to close the e-mail window, but then couldn’t stop herself.
So you’re punishing me? she wrote. I’m not surprised. I just hoped that for once you’d be the bigger person and rise to the occasion. Wrong again!
38
Sunday morning, Maribeth woke up with Sunita’s laptop lodged next to the pillow. Seeing it, remembering the e-mails she’d written—and not even while drunk; she didn’t even have that excuse—she winced. It was great that Google now gave you a minute lag time to take back e-mails you’d mistakenly sent, but couldn’t they invent technology that let you take back e-mails the morning after?
She grabbed the laptop and brought it into the kitchen, shoving it inside the cupboard under a package of brown rice. Then she went back to bed and stayed there until she heard footsteps upstairs.
Though it was not yet ten, Todd answered the door fully dressed, in what appeared to be his catering uniform plus a boater hat.
“She’s making me go to the flower show at the Phipps Conservatory in old-timey clothes,” Todd whispered. “Save me!”
Sunita appeared in a flapper dress and a pair of jeans. “Oh, please, you were all over this.” She looked at Maribeth. “You want to come?”
“No thanks.”
“Are you sure? It’ll be fun.”
“I’m positive.” Maribeth did not want to linger or chat. She just wanted to return the computer; it felt as lethal as a loaded gun. “Thanks for the loan. Bye.”
Just as she’d closed the door to her apartment, her phone started to ring. “I appreciate the offer,” she said, assuming it was Sunita, “but I’m really not interested in going to a flower show today.”
There was a pause. And then, “But this is so much worse than a flower show.”
“Oh, Dr.—Stephen.” She paused to untangle the names, and the new reality in which Dr. Grant—Stephen—called her. “What could be worse than a flower show?”
Another pause. “The mall.”
When she didn’t say anything, he continued. “On Black Friday weekend.”
“Yes. That’s worse than a flower show.”
“Now that we’ve cleared that up . . .” he trailed off. In the background, she could hear the sound of the TV. “Remember that time I cooked your turkey?”
“Technically, it wasn’t my turkey.”
“Right, Fred belonged to the kids. I was just invoking some quid pro quo.”
“And this quid pro quo involves a mall on Black Friday weekend?”
“I know. It’s an uneven bargain. I’d still be in your debt.”
“I think if we’re keeping tabs, I’m still in the red. But why exactly do you want to go shopping this weekend?”
“To get Mallory her Christmas gift.”
“You do realize, in spite of the hype, you have four weeks until Christmas.”
“I want to get it out of the way. So I don’t panic again.”
“Panic?”
“Last year, I left it too late and panicked and got her a leather jacket from the Home Shopping Network.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“Unless you’re a vegan who is very serious about animal rights. Mal thought I was making fun of her and got very offended in the way that twenty-one-year-olds will.” He sighed. “She sold it on eBay and got herself kayak lessons so maybe it worked out in the end. But I’d like to avoid another disaster this time around. Hence, the mall. It’s what people do, right?”
Maribeth rarely had cause to enter a mall (score a point for New York City). But when she did, while visiting her mother, for instance, she became immediately irritable; the crowds made her claustrophobic, the number of stores made her dizzy. A mall on Black Friday weekend sounded like a nightmare. But perhaps it was a testament to just how wretched the weekend had already been that when she told Stephen she would be happy to go with him, she meant it.
“WE’RE GOING TO the Ross Park Mall,” Stephen informed her as they drove across the Thirtieth Street Bridge. “Have you been?”
“Have I not made my feelings about malls clear?” she joked.
“They say this is the best one in Pittsburgh.”
“That’s like telling someone they have the best cancer.”
Her hand flew up to her mouth. Cancer. Which his wife had died of. What was wrong with her?
“Well, there are better cancers,” Stephen replied, taking it all in stride. “Thyroid, prostate, highly curable.”
She wanted to change the subject before she stepped in it again. “Tell me about Mallory. What’s she like?”
“Twenty-two. Smart, ambitious, bossy. By her own admission. She has a tattoo that says Bossy Bitch, but with that number sign in front of it?”
“A hashtag?”
“If you say so.”
“So she’s a feminist, and maybe a wee bit shortsighted.”
“Aren’t all young people shortsighted?” he asked.
“I suppose so.”
“And if she’s shortsighted, good for her. In many ways she had to grow up too soon.”
Maribeth assumed he meant losing her mother. If Mallory was twenty-two now, she would’ve been twenty when Felicity died. That wasn’t great, but twenty . . . it was better than four.
“She wants another tattoo but I can’t bring myself to fund one as a gift.”
“What else does she like?”
“She majored in public policy bu
t with a minor in theater.” He smiled proudly. “So she likes performances: plays, concerts, dance. That’s what Felicity used to get her, tickets to opera or ballet, and they’d go together.”
“Why not do that?”
“I feel like I’d be intruding on their thing. And I hate opera.”
“What about a donation? Maybe to a cancer charity,” she said, mentioning the c-word intentionally this time, in a more sensitive manner.
They pulled into the massive parking lot and started searching for a spot. “Now you’re just trying to get out of going to the mall,” he said.
Maybe. It was packed, judging by the dearth of parking spaces. They circled twice before finally resorting to stalking a family back to their car.
“I feel like a cheetah tracking its prey,” Maribeth said.
“I know,” Stephen said, as he pulled to the side and put on his blinker while the family loaded shopping bags into an SUV. “If anyone takes the spot, you go out and eat them, okay?”
“Oh, no. I’m just here for gift advice.” The family was piling into the car now. “I’m actually good at it. I used to edit holiday gift guides.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Back in my other life.”
MARIBETH’S TEMPLES BEGAN to pound as soon as they got inside and saw the line for Santa’s Village snaking past the food court. The children, faces sticky with extorted cotton candy, were already sugar-high out of their minds, and their poor parents all seemed ready for a good long nap that would not happen for another month.
Ahh, the holidays. Maribeth was a little relieved to have no part in them this year. Not that she ever had much to say about Christmas, aside from buying Jason’s family their presents and organizing the trip to whichever one of his relatives they were celebrating with. “Well, it’s not really your holiday, is it?” Lauren had said a few Christmases back when Maribeth had suggested that maybe, just maybe, her buying five presents per twin was overkill.
They passed various stores, Maribeth calling out suggestions: Crate and Barrel for a knife set? Tumi for a suitcase? Kate Spade for a handbag? Stephen vetoed everything. Mallory didn’t cook. She traveled with a backpack. Designer bags were too bourgeois, and also, leather.
They were standing near the entrance to Nordstrom when Maribeth heard the strongest Pittsburgh accent she’d encountered so far calling, “Dr. Grant. Dr. Grant? Is that you? Look Donny, it’s him!”
An elderly couple in matching tracksuits barreled toward them. Unlike pretty much everyone else in the mall, they carried no shopping bags, only water bottles holstered into fanny packs.
Stephen plastered on a bright toothy smile. It made him look, Maribeth thought, like a doctor, just not her doctor.
“Don, Susan, good to see you,” he said. There was a round of back-patting and handshaking.
“Who’s your friend?” Susan asked.
“This is M.B. M.B., Don and Susan were my patients.”
“We had matching heart attacks,” Don said, smiling at Susan adoringly. “Five years ago, one after the other.”
“My heart attack gave him a heart attack,” Susan said.
“My doll baby.” Don’s line was accompanied by a dramatic clutch of the chest.
It was kind of sweet, this practiced shtick. It was also obvious by the way they delivered their lines to Maribeth that it occurred to neither of them that she might be a patient, that she too might have had a heart attack.
“You both look well,” Stephen said. “And I haven’t heard from you, which I take as a good sign.”
“Because you’re not at the practice anymore. We’re with that Dr. Garber now,” Don said.
“Don!” Susan scolded. She lowered her voice. “We don’t like him as much. We would’ve followed you to the new place but we didn’t know and then all of our records and insurance are with the old place.”
“It’s fine,” Stephen said.
“I don’t want you to think that we thought . . .” Susan trailed off. “It was all just so sad.”
“I appreciate that,” Stephen said, though Maribeth noticed his doctorly smile was fraying at the edges. “You’re here doing your walks?”
“We come three times a week,” Susan said. “Just like you told us to. Usually it’s not as crowded.”
“I said it would be,” Don said.
“I thought it would be worse if we came early,” Susan snapped.
“You look well,” Stephen said again, starting to pull away.
“We are. And my cholesterol, you wouldn’t believe,” Don said. “It’s at 140 and my LDL is very low and my HDL is high. What were the numbers, Suse?”
“That’s wonderful,” Stephen said.
“You should see the grands,” Don said, pulling out a battered billfold.
Maribeth sensed it, then, his discomfort, his need to get away, and above all, his sadness. She’d been curious about what had happened with his old practice but had resisted trying to find out. Now, she was glad not to know. It felt, somehow, like protecting him.
“We should go,” Maribeth said, linking an arm through Stephen’s. “I’m late.”
Stephen looked momentarily confused. “Right. So you are. Don, Susan, good to see you both.”
“You, too. Dr. Grant. I’m glad you’re doing better,” Susan said. “Life marches on. It must.”
AS MARIBETH AND Stephen left Don and Susan and escaped into Nordstrom, Stephen’s mood clouded over and Maribeth’s spirits, as if finally admitting defeat, plummeted as well. A piano player was going to town with Christmas carols, and an army of overly made-up young women was politely, but aggressively, offering fragrance samples. It all made Maribeth dizzy. She had a sudden flashback of nearly passing out at Macy’s while she and Jason registered for their wedding (or, rather, as Elizabeth registered for them—she’d come along to offer “technical support” and had gleefully aimed that little gun at gravy boats and Nambé salt shakers while Maribeth and Jason shuffled behind her).
In women’s apparel she stopped in front of a rainbow display of cashmere. “How about a sweater?” she asked. “Cashmere’s good for cold weather but also more temperate. Very flexible.”
“I don’t know,” Stephen said. “Feels a little conservative for Mal.”
“How about arm warmers?” she suggested. “A little more funky. They’ll keep her warm in the Pittsburgh winters.” She was no longer conversing. She was speaking in Frap copy.
“Maybe. If she ever came home.”
“Oh?”
“I usually go there.”
“Where’s there?”
“San Francisco.”
“I fucking hate San Francisco.”
She’d said it loudly and several shoppers turned around with disapproving expressions, as if this were not Nordstrom but the Sistine Chapel, and it was not Golden Gate City she’d maligned but God.
“What did San Francisco ever do to you?” Stephen asked.
She had such a visceral memory of that one horrible trip to see Jason there. It had only been a few months since he’d announced his intention to move to San Francisco after graduation. Maribeth had been shocked. Not just because it was the first she’d heard of it, but because only a few weeks earlier, Jason’s sister, Lauren, had come to visit and had taken Maribeth out for an early twenty-second birthday lunch. “Look,” Lauren had told her after they’d ordered, “Jason asked me to take you out so I could sneakily get your ring finger sized but I have no idea how to do that without you figuring it out so can we just go to the jeweler after this and you pretend to be surprised later?”
“Surprised? About what?”
“Mom gave Jason her engagement ring,” Lauren said. “You know, now that the divorce is final she doesn’t want it anymore.”
“And he wants to give it to me?” It took a minute for the implication to sink in. Jason was going to propose? They’d discussed moving to New York City together after graduation—her to work in magazines, him to get a job as an A&R scout for a r
ecord label—and maybe getting a place together down the line and, yes, there was a permanence to their talks of the future. But getting married?
They had her finger sized and then nothing happened. Her birthday came and went; no proposal. Spring break came and she and Jason went to New York City together so she could do informational interviews with human resources reps. No proposal.
As the weeks went by and still no proposal came, she found herself growing anxious, wondering if now would be the moment. She began to anticipate it. And then she began to anticipate it eagerly.
She’d been anticipating when Jason told her that he’d decided to move to San Francisco.
“But I can’t move to San Francisco,” she’d said, misunderstanding at first.
“I know that,” he’d replied.
“Wait. Are you breaking up with me?”
“What? No. It’s not about you.” Jason had rushed to explain how the tech scene was starting to heat up and there might be a future in Internet radio and he might be able to deejay. Now was the time to take a risk, he said, when he was unencumbered.
Unencumbered? She’d felt so humiliated, so caught out. How could she have been thinking forever when Jason had been thinking San Francisco?
But then they didn’t break up. They graduated and she moved to Manhattan and he went to San Francisco, and she got a job as an editorial floater at a magazine publisher and he got work as a temp. They kept in touch, e-mailing, calling each other when the rates were low. When he suggested Maribeth visit for Labor Day weekend, she wondered if he was finally going to propose. She used her brand new credit card to buy a ticket.
Maribeth knew from the minute he picked her up at the airport that it wasn’t going to happen. Their kiss was awkward. Everything about the weekend was awkward, that aborted proposal stomping around like the elephant in his tiny room. (Lauren must’ve told him that she’d told Maribeth. Maribeth wanted to ask, but couldn’t.) Neither one knew what to do, what to say. So they compensated by having a ton of sex—which wasn’t that great either—and then Maribeth got a bladder infection. Her old college roommate Courtney was about to start graduate school at Berkeley and said she could hook her up with some antibiotics so Maribeth had borrowed Jason’s car to go see her. “I can tell things with you two are still going strong,” Courtney said, winking and handing over the Cipro. Maribeth hadn’t said anything.