Chapter 13
After Darbi left, Mary went for a long walk on the bike path. It didn’t exist the first time she’d lived in Framingham, and being on it today reminded her of the last time she’d walked the Hudson trail with Kendra. Her heart ached when she remembered Kendra asking, “Do you not want me to go?” Thinking back on it now, Mary wished she’d been more supportive of Kendra’s news instead of making her feel guilty. Wasn’t it parents’ responsibility to raise their children to have the strength and courage to set off on their own? Kendra had left for London thinking she’d disappointed Mary. The ache in Mary’s chest intensified. As soon as she returned to her old life, she would make sure her daughter knew how proud of her she was.
Mary picked up her pace. Above her, the sky was a magnificent shade of blue, without a cloud in sight. The temperature was comfortable, somewhere in the midseventies, and there was no humidity. No doubt Dean was at Addison Heights today, playing a round of golf. His life probably hadn’t changed too much without her. Maybe he had a new wife, and she played with him. She pictured him riding in one of those carts with a fit blond woman. The two of them laughed as they searched for a wayward ball. She felt a prickle of jealousy. Don’t get too comfortable with her, Dean. I’ll be back .
She passed a crew of landscapers, and two of the men whistled at her. She stopped to do a pirouette. When she was really in her twenties, catcalls had enraged her. A woman should be able to walk down the street without being harassed. Now, though, she relished the attention. Soon enough, she’d be back to her fifty-something body, invisible again.
As she crossed Old Connecticut Path to the other side of the bike trail, her thoughts turned to Liz. Mary didn’t know what to make of her supposed impact on Liz’s life. She’d like to believe she’d played a part in Liz’s success, but she doubted she had. Other than Dean and Kendra, she couldn’t imagine her absence would affect anyone. The thought saddened her. She’d done so little with her life and affected so few. Sitting behind that news desk was the one thing she’d done that had made her feel like she mattered.
She’d reached the part of the trail that went under the road. She didn’t like walking through the tunnel by herself, so she turned around.
Back at the apartment, her neighbor, Brady, was setting up cornhole in the yard.
“Hey there.” Was it her imagination, or had he said those two words suggestively?
She raced to the staircase so she wouldn’t have to talk to him.
Before she reached the top, he hollered up to her from the bottom: “You’d better come tonight, or I’ll toss you over my shoulder and carry you down.”
Car doors started slamming at eight. By eight thirty, vehicles spilled out of the driveway and lined both sides of the busy street. A few pickup trucks and SUVs were parked on the grass beside a stone wall. Groups of men and women huddled on the lawn, drinking from beer cans and plastic cups. Every now and then, Frank Sinatra dashed across the yard, chasing a ball. Mary watched all the action from her living room window, wondering if she should join the crowd. On one hand, she wanted to stay as far away from Brady as she could. On the other, she had nothing else to do tonight. She also wasn’t sure she could spend all evening with twenty-somethings without giving herself away. While she now inhabited the body of a twenty-four-year-old, her mind still worked like that of a woman in her midfifties. What would they talk about? A ridiculous television show that she’d never watched or a band she’d never heard of? Her heart raced and her breathing accelerated, so much so that she was on the verge of hyperventilating.
An image of Kendra walking next to her on the bike path popped into her head, and she felt herself relax. She could carry on a conversation with people in their twenties. She and Kendra and Kendra’s friends had always had fascinating discussions—when her daughter bothered to come around, that was. Kendra had been particularly passionate about debating whether soulmates existed. She had argued that the person you were meant to be with was predestined. Mary had disagreed. She said the idea of there being only one person meant for you in a world of seven or eight billion people and that person being born in the same century and geographic area as you was preposterous.
At the start of the conversation, Kendra had been reclining in her chair with her splayed hands resting on her thighs. By the end of Mary’s diatribe, Kendra was standing, her arms crossed against her chest and her tightly clenched fists tucked beneath her underarms. “How can you think that when you’re one of the lucky ones who’s found your soulmate?”
“There is no such thing as a soulmate,” Mary had reiterated. “Love takes hard work, and if you’re not willing to do the work, no relationship will last.”
“So you don’t think Dad’s your soulmate?”
On the day Kendra had asked the question, Mary was miffed at Dean for spending the afternoon at the club golfing instead of relaxing on a beach with her. “He’s my husband, so I’m committed to doing the work to make our relationship last.”
Kendra had just celebrated her twenty-second birthday, but the way she rolled her eyes reminded Mary of the thirteen-year-old girl Kendra once was. “Of everyone you ever met in your life, you recognized something special in Dad and chose him to be your person. That makes him your soulmate.”
Mary had conceded that when she’d met Dean, she’d felt a connection with him that she hadn’t felt with anyone else. On their first date, she’d told him her favorite novel was A Prayer for Owen Meany . By their second date, he’d read it, and they’d held their own two-person book club about it over dinner. One year on her birthday, he’d gifted her a ticket to a conference where her idol, Barbara Walters, was the keynote speaker. Once when she was sick at home, he’d stopped by unexpectedly with his mother’s homemade chicken soup and a video he’d picked up at Blockbuster for her, Tootsie , which was her favorite movie. “Why did you choose this?” she’d asked, holding up the box.
“Figured it was right up your alley,” he’d said, and through her flu-like haze she’d recognized that he got her in a way that no one else ever had.
From the front lawn, Brady stared up at her, his black dog by his side with a tennis ball in his mouth. Brady lifted his hand above his head and motioned for her to come downstairs.
By the time Mary joined the party, most everybody had made their way inside the house, except for four guys playing cornhole with beanbags that glowed in the dark. As she walked past the game, a player wearing a Red Sox cap called out to her. “Hey, you’re that girl on the news.”
She felt as if she were floating. In this version of her life, she was someone people recognized.
The guy’s friend swatted him in the arm. “Worst pickup line ever, bro.”
“No,” Mary said, stopping beside them. “I am on the news. ICNN 77.”
“Is Belli’s birthday party going to be on TV?” the guy in the baseball cap asked.
He sounded so excited by the idea that Mary considered lying. She looked down at the cornhole board, noticing the red, white, and blue stars and stripes. The sight of the flag painted on the game board on this hot summer night a few weeks before the Fourth of July grounded her in her new reality like nothing else had. She was not in her midfifties anymore. She was in her twenties at a party surrounded by people her new age, getting a second chance at life.
“I’m not working,” she said. “I’m here to have fun.” She picked up a beanbag from the ground and tossed it across the lawn toward the other board. It landed with a resounding thump before skidding up a white stripe and dropping into the hole.
Neon-pink strobe lights rotated around the living room, illuminating a large crowd dancing to music Mary didn’t recognize. A lone spotlight shone on a tall sweaty man in an Uncle Sam hat dancing by himself in the corner. Frank Sinatra lay balled up under a table with a keg set up on it. Mary briefly considered joining him or hightailing back up the stairs to her apartment. This wasn’t like any party she’d attended in decades. She was used to more intimate social gatherings, where the guests stood in small circles sipping expensive wine while caterers passed around trays of hors d’oeuvres.
The first time she was twenty-four, she wouldn’t have been comfortable going to a party where she didn’t know anyone. Over the years, though, she’d attended enough of Dean’s work functions to perfect the art of conversing with strangers. She pretended she was a reporter on assignment to get the person’s story. She threw her shoulders back and walked away from the door into the heart of the party. An enormous Happy Birthday Belli banner hung from the wall on the opposite side of the room. A few feet in front of it, a glass bowl dangled from the ceiling. Because the bowl looked as out of place as she felt, Mary fought her way through the mob to get a closer look. Was it a prop in some game she didn’t know about? When she finally reached the bowl, her hand flew over her open mouth. A lone orange fish swam in circles in a small aquarium suspended from the ceiling by bungee cords. A strobe light struck the glass, turning the water pink. The fish jerked to its right and switched directions. The strobe light hit the bowl again. The fish jerked left. Mary reached up toward the cords, intending to take the aquarium down. That poor fish had to be scared out of its mind.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” a muscular guy in a Villanova Wildcats T-shirt said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m taking this little creature someplace safe, away from the loud noise and flashing lights. It’s too much for him.” She stood on her tiptoes but couldn’t reach the aquarium. “Help me get him down.”
“He needs to stay right where he is. With a bird’s-eye view of his party.”
“Mary!” Brady’s voice came from behind her. He handed her a beer. “I was getting ready to come up there after you.” He winked. “Glad you came down.”
What did that wink mean? And the way he was grinning at her made her feel skeevy. She looked away, lifting the flimsy plastic cup to her mouth. She sipped, breathing in a foul sulfuric odor. Yuck: a skunky taste filled her mouth. She hadn’t drunk beer in decades, preferring trendy cocktails and malbec or cabernets. Still, she didn’t remember beer being so gross. She wanted to spit it out.
“She’s trying to take Belli down,” the guy in the Villanova shirt said.
“He stays where he is.” Brady pointed at the fish. “At least until we sing happy birthday and cut his cake.”
Mary’s head jerked backward. “That’s Belli?”
Brady raised an eyebrow. “Who did you think it was? His twin?”
“You’re throwing a birthday party for a fish?”
“Were you drinking before you came down? I’ve been planning this for weeks. You watched me MacGyver this.” He snapped one of the cords, and the fishbowl swung back and forth.
She’d watched him set up that contraption? Was that when it had happened between them? Had it happened right here on the rug under the fishbowl? Her skin itched all over, and she scratched her arm. “I don’t think it’s safe or good for the fish to be hanging like that.”
“We’re all betting on whether Belli survives to see the day after his first birthday,” Villanova T-Shirt Guy said.
“He’s having the time of his—”
A woman in a burnt orange sundress flung herself at Brady. She had to be close to six feet tall. “I’ll throw a hissy fit if you don’t keep your promise to dance with me.” Her southern drawl caught Mary’s attention because that kind of accent was rarely heard in New England.
The woman’s eyes landed on Mary. “You’re the upstairs neighbor.”
Was there accusation in her voice? Mary gulped.
“I’m Brady’s girlfriend, RaeLynn.” She broke away from Brady and now loomed over Mary.
Was this woman going to kick her butt? “Mary.” She took a step backward. The woman’s height alone intimidated her.
“I know exactly who you are.”
Mary had slept with Brady, and he had a girlfriend. Had he told Mary about this girl? No, no version of herself would sleep with a man who wasn’t single. What a sleazeball this guy was. And perhaps she was no better. She had a husband, albeit in another universe.
In a flash, the woman’s hands came toward Mary’s neck. She was going to die at twenty-four, beaten to a pulp by a jealous girlfriend. Making it even worse, she had no memory of what had happened with Brady. Technically, it wasn’t even her, at least not this version of her, who had done something with him.
The woman’s hands thumped down on Mary’s shoulders. She jerked Mary toward her, embracing her in a big bear hug. “I can’t believe I’m meeting a celebrity. Brady and I watch you all the time. I made him take me to the Scooper Bowl after watching that story. You’re so good.”
Mary exhaled. The woman—what was her name again?—wasn’t going to kill her. She was a fan. Mary had a fan! “Thank you for watching. I didn’t catch your name.”
“RaeLynn Horton.”
The guy in the Uncle Sam hat dancing with the spotlight on him called out, “Someone bring me a beer.”
Mary tilted her head in his direction. “What’s his story?” She turned toward Brady, but he and the Villanova T-Shirt Guy were both gone. Thankfully.
“Marcus? Bless his heart,” RaeLynn said. “Rookie at the fire station. They’re hazing him, but they won’t ever call it that. Making him dance all night. I told him he didn’t have to, but he wouldn’t listen.” RaeLynn moved to the side to let someone by. The guy bumped Mary’s cup, and beer spilled over her shirt.
“Whoops,” he said without stopping.
Was “whoops” the new “sorry”? Mary had a good mind to chase the guy down and teach him how to apologize.
The music abruptly ended, and all the lights went out. Brady emerged from the kitchen carrying a long sheet cake with one fish-shaped candle. “Time to sing to Belli,” he called. Everyone crammed under the bowl. The girl in front of Mary stepped on her foot. The man to her left accidentally jabbed his elbow into her ribs. Villanova T-Shirt Guy rested his hand on her shoulder. “Happy birthday to you ...,” Brady started. The entire group joined in. The girl next to Mary sang the loudest, her hot breath tickling Mary’s ear, making it itch.
Mary’s wet, sticky shirt clung to her stomach. Her heart pounded and her breathing became shallow. She wanted to get out of there, get some air, but she was pinned in place. Long ago at a party in this same apartment, she’d had a panic attack under similar conditions where a crowd had boxed her in. Dean had sensed her discomfort and wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders, pushing people out of the way to get her to the door. He hadn’t even thought her reaction was weird. He’d understood these attacks were something that happened to her every so often, and he read up on them so he could help her through them. She wished he were here now.
To calm herself, she looked around the room, silently naming things she saw: a girl with platinum blond hair, a guy wearing a Celtics T-shirt, a fish hanging from the ceiling. Her breathing started to slow, and she silently thanked Dean, who had taught her that trick long ago.
The singing stopped. Everyone high-fived one another. Brady cut the cake. RaeLynn handed Mary a slice. “You okay, sweetie? You look a little green around the gills.” She laughed and looked up at the fish.
Mary placed her hand on her wet shirt. “I’m really uncomfortable. I’m going to go upstairs and change.” She pointed at the aquarium. “Would you mind taking that down?”
“Belli?” RaeLynn reached up to unfasten the cords. “Yeah, he doesn’t need to be up here anymore.”
With the fishbowl tucked under her arm, Mary left the party. Back in her apartment, she placed Belli on the coffee table. Instead of changing into another shirt, she slipped into her pajamas and settled on the sofa with a book. Laughter from the party below drifted up through the floorboards. Mary exhaled loudly, grateful to be by herself in her apartment with the fish.