Chapter 39 #3
“I’m embarrassed to tell you this.”
“Don’t be. Listen. Will you listen? I’m sorry this happened to you. It matters. You matter. You have always mattered to me and you always will.”
Emily’s breath quickened.
“Even if we can’t be together,” said Gen. “Okay?”
“Oh,” said Emily quietly. She stepped away. Her shirt was splotched with damp patches. “Okay.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Can we go outside? I want some air.”
It was warm but not oppressive on the porch. The low sun made the green corn shine like water. Emily was silent, trying to manage the weight of her disappointment.
“I’m surprised Jack let you bring the kids.”
“I offered not to take money from him in the divorce.”
“You did?”
“I was surprised, too, that he agreed, especially when I told him about us, but he’s weird about money. It’s bound up with his sense of self-worth.”
Gen squeezed her eyes shut. “You told him? But your lawyer said—Emily.” Gen stared. “Why would you do that?”
“Well, there’s no us now.”
Face tight, Gen rubbed her collarbone. Her shirt had dried. She said nothing.
“We were always going to end up in court,” said Emily. “He was never going to make it easy.”
“You didn’t have to tell him. Why did you tell him? Why did you do that? Why would you risk so much?”
Emily could have said that it was a matter of self-respect, but she wanted to give a fuller answer to Gen, whose eyes were wide and unhappy.
Emily gazed across the yard to where the barn stood.
She remembered its hayloft, all that had happened there, their hunger for each other, the peaceful quiet afterward, dusty light drifting up from below.
A wind blew over the farm. She heard the soft applause of leaves.
She looked at Gen: older now, soon an orphan.
If they weren’t exactly friends and couldn’t be lovers, there remained one thing they could be.
“You might not think of me as family,” Emily said, “but I think of you as mine.”
How’s Gen? texted Shipley.
Not good, Emily wrote. Nella’s really weak
I meant the tabloids
Emily had been too busy to watch the news or go into town. Did they find out about Nella? Gen hated the thought of paparazzi descending on Washford and using her grandmother as entertainment, which was why she had been so secretive about her departure from the Olympics.
No, said Shipley.
What’s going on? said Emily.
In leaving London with no explanation, Gen had detonated her image.
It kind of fucked her, Shipley wrote. On ESPN, sportscasters said she was a coward.
“What’s so bad that she can’t at least be honest about it?
” they wondered. The fundamental rule of sports wasn’t complicated: you win or you lose, but you must play the game.
Sponsors dropped her. Op-ed writers said that she had betrayed her nation.
Tabloids speculated that she was on a bender.
Like mother, like daughter, said one article.
It’s all gone to shit, Shipley texted. She should have faced the press.
Told them a lie, whatever. Should have faked an injury.
I told her to. Got a real fatal flaw, that one. Too proud.
Emily realized that there was never a newspaper on the farmhouse porch when she arrived in the mornings after sleeping at her mother’s, even though it had been common to see them around Nella’s house when she was a teenager, and to collect one from the doormat outside Gen’s apartment in Williamsburg.
She recalled Nella complaining that the nurse had commandeered the TV’s remote control.
Emily went to Gen. “You blew up your career?”
Gen covered her face and sighed. “My agent won’t stop calling. She wants to scrape me off the pavement, put me on the Today show or something. Cut out my heart and hold it up for everyone to see. She even said that she wanted me to live my truth .”
“Natasha’s just looking out for you.”
Gen’s hand fell from her face. She narrowed her eyes. “You know her? How do you know her name? You said that like you know her.”
With reluctance, Emily told Gen about the conversation with Natasha in the café.
Gen said, “Is that why you said a break would be good for me?”
“Well.”
“I’m going to fire her,” Gen said flatly.
“Gen, no. This is why I didn’t want to tell you. She’s powerful and she’s on your side.”
“Can I fire her for telling me to live my truth?”
“There’s a reason people like that phrase.”
“She messed with my personal life.”
“You need her. Let it go.”
“I didn’t realize how bad the press could be.
I mean, I knew. But I didn’t know . I put so much pressure on you, that last night in New York.
I was upset. But I’m okay now, I really am, I think I am.
We can be family, you and me, if that’s what you want.
I don’t want to lose you again. Can we make a promise?
I get that people need to keep stuff to themselves, but if I ask a real question, will you promise to always give a real answer? An honest one. Like, full. ”
“You’ll do the same?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
Gen looked relieved.
“How are you doing, with your gran?”
Gen’s grief emerged like a thick thread that followed its needle everywhere. As they talked, dusk came. The porchlight went on.
Not long after, Gen asked about the divorce. Emily grimaced but gave a real answer. She told her everything.
“I have money,” said Gen.
“No.”
“If he tries to outspend you. Think about it.”
“No.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“I’ll get a job. I’ve got a degree. It’d be nice to finally use it.”
“Are you scared about this going to court?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. I’d be less scared if you let me help with lawyer fees.”
“No.” Emily shook her head, smiling a little. “You really don’t give up.”
Gen went quiet, as though startled, and looked thoughtful. She didn’t press the issue.
August lengthened. Emily’s agent submitted her novel to editors. The marigold seedlings grew. The children were thrilled. Emily felt the greenhouse warmth breathe from the cup as she removed the Saran Wrap cover so that the seedlings could climb above the rim.
“Petti coat ,” said Stella.
“ Cot tage,” said Emily’s mother. The four of them were on the grass by the local pond. Connor had just come out of the cloudy, warm water.
“What’s a cot?” said Stella.
“A small bed.”
“ Corn er.”
“Oh, the little word in the big word game,” said Connor, water dripping off his skinny body. He had Skyped earlier that day with his friend Annika, and was feeling pleased and much more grown-up than his sister.
“ Slip per,” said Stella.
“It was my turn,” said Emily’s mother. “S wing .”
“Spar row .”
“Croco dile .”
“ Dile ?” said Stella. “That’s not a word!”
“Sure it is. A dile. Sometimes I go to the dile and buy milk.”
“That’s cheating!”
Connor said, “There’s dial, d-i-a-l . That’s a word.”
“That doesn’t count! That’s not how you spell crocodile ! I know it. I know it from Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile .”
“But it sounds the same.”
“It’s not the same. Right, Mommy?”
“Go on, Emily,” drawled her mother, “pick a side.”
“I can’t pick a side.”
“Coward.”
Did dile count because it sounded like dial ?
When Gen had said that she didn’t want to lose Emily again, did that mean that she still felt the same way about Emily, just as Emily did about her?
That was how it had sounded. But her hope of what Gen had meant could have been a dile: an invention.
A dile: a glop of wet clay that could be shaped into anything.
“I don’t know,” Emily said, because she didn’t.
Then she grinned. “Co ward, ” she said, and the game began again.
Not long after, Emily was sitting under a tree at the farm, reading, when a truck loaded with lumber pulled up.
A work crew got out of the truck and discussed something.
She couldn’t hear what was said. A man went to the front door.
Gen opened it, and after a brief exchange, she nodded and gestured toward the barn.
The crew went inside it. Emily couldn’t see what they were doing, but the air became filled with the sounds of demolition.
She was so distressed that she shut her book.
Since returning to Washford, she hadn’t gone inside the barn because it would have been painful to see the hayloft, but it had nonetheless comforted her to believe that, as much as she and Gen had changed, this one space hadn’t.
She had noticed the farmhouse’s improvements, and although she missed the house as she had known it, missed the bed where she had slept, the changes didn’t seem to have anything to do with her.
This change did. It felt pointed. Intended to scrape away the past. The sound of hammers on wood made her chest hurt.
Why? she wanted to ask Gen, but didn’t, because she wasn’t sure that she wanted a real answer.
The window of her childhood bedroom was open and there was a little breeze.
The thin curtains were sucked against the screen, then billowed, but the room stayed stuffy and hot.
Outside, Stella called to Connor. They were drawing with chalk on the sidewalk.
Her mother sat in a plastic lawn chair, watching them.
Emily was getting dressed after a shower.
She heard birds and a lawn mower. Her phone rang: it was Leila Alami.
“Are you ready for good news?” her agent said.
When you haven’t had good news for a long time, its arrival has the quality of a myth. Who would believe it?
“We have an offer for your book,” said Leila.
An editor had offered one hundred thousand dollars.
Emily sat on the bed. It was so much money. It didn’t matter that the sum was small change for Jack; his car had cost that much. Emily had never made even a fraction of that amount in her entire life. “Can you say that number again? I think I misheard you.”