Chapter 2 #2
she weren’t dreaming, this would be yet another passive-aggressive act by Jonah. He knows he’s supposed to take his shoes
off at the door. The exorbitantly expensive free-trade, sustainable, bamboo baskets were purchased for that very purpose,
with the bonus of helping the women of the community that weaves them get free bicycles for safer journeys to retrieve fresh
water.
Even in her dreams, she can’t escape fighting with Jonah.
“Where are those confetti cannons when you need them?” Felix Singh strolls into the bedroom, a banana in one hand and an enormous smile pushing back the light brown skin of his cheeks. “You finally listened to me and let yourself sleep in, a full night of baby rest. Bravo!”
“Baby rest?” Ilena’s brow furrows.
“What do you think?” He peels back the skin of the banana. “Decided I’d invent a new saying since you, my treasure, are by
no means in need of beauty rest.” He waves the banana in front of her face, and nausea clenches her stomach. “Still no?” He
swiftly moves it away. “Figured it was worth a shot. I’ll get you something else. Egg? Yogurt?”
“What? Why?” Why are you here in my dream, in my house, in my bedroom . . . calling me “treasure”?
“I walked into that one, didn’t I?” He gives a warm smile. “However, I am fairly confident that a man is allowed to make his
pregnant wife breakfast and have it not be a condemnation of her ability to get it herself. But if you’d prefer, we can invest
in a drone.”
“We?”
“Got me again. Yes, I’m the one who wants the drone. Sorry for being such a man.”
This is bizarre, too bizarre. Ilena’s ready to wake up. Just wake up. She pushes herself to her feet and turns to face Felix, but his back is to her. Beside him, the sun streams in through floor-to-ceiling
windows that offer a breathtaking view of Boston Harbor. Boats and cargo ships and the Seaport Harbor Walk instead of the
oak trees and white hydrangeas enclosing her small yard in Newton.
“Did I sleep here?” she finds herself asking, as if that would explain away the rest of it.
Felix spins around in front of the glass-topped dresser, confusion tilting his head. “Oh, you mean, well? Did you sleep well?” He closes the dresser drawer, a Stanford baseball hat in his hand even though she’s positive that Felix went to Yale.
Felix walks toward her in his white polo and white shorts. “You slept like our baby.”
She gasps, and he chuckles knowingly. “I’m already doing dad jokes. Pathetic, I know.” He leans in and his lips graze her
cheek. “Maybe I can work it out with a few strong backhands. I’ll see you in a bit? You know how James gets when anyone’s
late.”
“Your husband,” Ilena blurts out, though as she says it, she sees the photograph on the dresser of Felix in a black suit,
white shirt, black tie, and herself in a high-waisted cream gown with beaded embroidery trailing down the full skirt. Her
wedding photo with Jonah shows her in an off-blue strapless shift and Jonah in a beige suit, both of which her mother had
declared as “tacky” despite the ceremony taking place on the beach.
Felix laughs again, giving a bit of an embarrassed shrug. “Bit silly to have a work husband, I know, I know.”
But James doesn’t work at AIM. James is a first grade teacher who loves teaching six-year-olds decoupage and subtraction tables.
“I—I’ve got to pee,” she says, then can’t believe she said “pee” in front of AIM’s general counsel.
“I’ll take a bagel out of the freezer for you,” Felix says, before stepping aside. “Take a bath, and if you get stuck again,
use the voice commands to text me.”
She really, really wants to wake up now. But then comes a pressure in her bladder and a tingling between her legs, and she
takes off for the door on the side of the room, grateful she found the en suite on the first try.
This is what her life has come to: nearly peeing herself in her dreams, a lack of control that’s a perfectly apt metaphor
for everything. It’s all Mallory’s fault. Somehow, it just is.
She fights to yank off the emerald ring, a battle she loses with the platinum wedding band.
She’s washing her hands at the sink when she looks in the mirror to see the round bump of a bun on top of her head.
She carefully releases the elastic, and hair that should be in a pixie cut spills to her shoulders.
She jerks back as her phone rings again. She finds it beside the bed.
It’s Aubrey. “Ilena, I’m sorry, I know what you said, but it’s just . . . something’s not right. I’m in my apartment, but
it’s not my apartment. There’s no low tide smell and there’s so much light, this might even be the top floor? But the Women Who Code
print you got me is here and my grandmother’s afghan too, but the couch is white and everything in the fridge is labeled ‘vegan’
and there’s a naked kid in my bed that’s not really my bed.”
White couch, vegan fridge, naked kid.
Blackout shade, digital clock, Felix making dad jokes.
Ilena and Aubrey are in homes that are theirs but that aren’t theirs, with people they shouldn’t be with, people they simply
work with. People who were at the summer outing, just like they were.
Ilena places a hand on her stomach that shouldn’t be her stomach. But is. “Aubrey, what’s the last thing you remember before
waking up?”
“The outing, we were at the sandbox, but we hadn’t even had dinner yet or done the toast and Mallory would have never let
us not do the toast—”
“Aubrey! Just slow down. Focus. The last thing.”
She inhales a breath. “The game. We were playing Kiss, Marry, Kill. Sorry, I mean Fuck. Fuck, Marry, Kill.”
Ilena goes quiet.
With a tremble in her voice, Aubrey says, “Tell me you remember more. Because if you don’t, then . . . wait, Ilena, are you
with Jonah?”
Ilena’s throat goes dry.
“Ilena? What is this?” Aubrey says.
Aubrey slept with Kai. Ilena’s married to Felix, and that means . . .
“Mallory,” Ilena chokes out.
“No,” Aubrey says, her voice tight, “you can’t think—”
“I’ll meet you there.” Ilena hangs up and stares at her phone, the past twenty-one years of Mallory rotating through her brain,
black turtleneck and round glasses as Steve Jobs at Halloween, “time-sharing” the Burberry coat they jointly splurged on after
depositing their first investor check, eating latkes on Hanukkah, oysters on July Fourth, cupcakes for every birthday . . .
Mallory. Her Mallory.
Ilena shoves herself off the mattress, a wave of dizziness making her stumble. What if “there” isn’t where they think it is?
What if Mallory’s not in the same apartment? This isn’t Ilena’s house in Newton, and it sounds like that’s not Aubrey’s basement
apartment by the river she refuses to upgrade. Ilena grabs her phone and searches her contacts. Mallory’s address is the same,
but she has no idea if the number is because who knows anyone’s cell number anymore? She’s lucky she remembers her own.
Ilena rushes to the other closed door in the bedroom that she correctly guesses is the closet and fumbles to find clothes
to fit this strange, new body. She dials and redials the number marked as Mallory as she wrestles on a pair of jeans with
a kangaroo pouch, getting no answer, only the incessant greeting of Mallory’s voicemail, taunting her. Because whatever this
is, it’s one hundred percent Mallory’s fault.