Chapter Five
Three hours into Louisa’s engagement party, I’m reconsidering my decision not to rent or buy a car.
Eleanor picked me up and drove us the two and a half hours to Freeport, so she’s also my ride home, which means I’m stuck in Couples Central, repeating phrases like nope, I’m here alone and just haven’t met the right person yet while everyone seems determined to discover how a woman of moderate intelligence and attractiveness could reach her midthirties without securing a long-term partner.
I’m well aware that my singledom isn’t actually an astonishing phenomenon deserving of scientific study or even the casual curiosity of strangers, but in this particular environment, I’m an outlier.
Nearly every conversation revolves around how couples met, how happy they are together, advice about planning a wedding, or what makes a solid and lasting marriage.
Anyone uninitiated to the Happy Couples Club simply doesn’t belong.
My parents don’t help, asking how I expect to meet anyone while I’m “hiding” at the house. Being single for so long is another way I’ve disappointed them, though at least I never mentioned Noah, so I can avoid being asked what I did to make him not want to marry me.
“You’re not getting any younger,” my mom says, reciting a phrase I despise, especially when it’s delivered through a lilt of laughter that means I’m not allowed to be annoyed.
“I still think it’s a shame you and Harrison couldn’t work things out,” my dad says.
“He cheated on me and then dumped me for the woman he was cheating with,” I remind my parents for the umpteenth time. “Then he cheated on her with his next girlfriend. There was nothing to work out. Also, that was twelve years ago. Can we please move on already?”
My mom huffs in offense. “We would move on if you ever moved on.”
“I have moved on,” I say, and before I can explain that moving on from one relationship doesn’t inherently require leaping into another, my parents jump back in, talking over each other.
“He was such a nice young man,” my mom says.
“Nice-looking, too,” my dad adds.
“They would’ve had such beautiful children.”
“I even liked his family. That Christmas we all got together was one of my favorites.”
“Did you know that at age thirty-five, doctors consider it a geriatric pregnancy?”
“Seems unfair that we all had to stop seeing each other.”
“Maybe now that she won’t be chained to her desk for a while.”
“You know how she feels about meeting new people. But maybe we know someone?”
“Of course! What about that smart young lawyer we met at the Andersons’ last week?”
My dad tells my mom they were at the Jennings’ house, not the Andersons’ house, and this very beside-the-point correction launches a round of bickering I use to cover my escape.
Ten minutes later, Eleanor finds me on the front porch, slumped in an Adirondack chair and scanning used-car listings on my phone.
She looks elegant, as always, today in a pale-blue skirt suit that’s equally appropriate for a summer engagement party and a day in the office as the policy assistant to the governor of Maine.
She wears her hair cropped short these days, in a style she used to mock as “too mom-ish,” but it suits her, as does the van she said she’d never buy and the flat shoes she swore she’d never wear.
She turns forty this year, with a time-consuming job, three kids currently at home with a sitter, and a loving but equally busy husband who’s out back helping with the barbecue.
Flattering heels are no longer a priority.
She takes a seat beside me, setting a glass of white wine on a small table between us.
“Too much peopling?” she asks.
“Too much everything.” I pocket my phone and settle back in the chair, gazing out at a perfect square of green lawn bordered by an honest-to-god white picket fence.
The rose beds that line the porch are immaculate.
The grass looks like it’s never heard of a weed, let alone allowed one to invade its neatly trimmed expanse.
Somehow, Louisa even got rid of the mosquitoes.
She’s a domestic goddess, and her divinity is on high display today.
“You used to enjoy Grams’s parties,” Eleanor says.
“Grams didn’t make me socialize. She put a tricorn on my head and a tray of sea-themed appetizers in my hands and let me make my own choices about how much to engage.”
“She put you to work?”
“She gave me something to do.”
“Huh.” Eleanor considers this, and I use the moment to appreciate my grandmother’s sharp perception. I’ve always been anxious about attending big social events. She helped, not by pressuring me to make more of an effort but by removing the need to make any effort at all.
Again—again—the thought returns.
If my grandmother was still alive . . .
Not only can I no longer ignore it when it tap-tap-taps on my brain, but I’ve started to suspect it’s a cover for a similar but even harder thought. Now that she’s gone . . .
But this is not the time or the place to let that one take hold.
My sister sips her wine while I watch a row of sunflowers bow in the breeze. Of all my siblings, Eleanor has always been the least aggressive about filling every silence, though eventually she says, “Mom mentioned you’re starting a new teaching job this fall.”
I emit a pained groan as I drop my head into my hands.
Beside me, Eleanor laughs. “Let me guess. You fed her a crumb. She made a feast?”
“It’s my fault. I caved under pressure. Told her the job search was underway.
” I peek between my fingers. “Most listings will get posted after schools are back in session and searches are approved. Even then, anything full time would likely start the following fall. And, well . . .” I lower my hands to pick at the hem of my white eyelet sundress.
It looked cute this morning when I put it on.
Now it has a lemonade stain on the skirt, pink frosting on the collar, and sweat marks under the arms. How my siblings all manage to look spotless on a hot summer day, after hours spent in a crowded house full of people eating and drinking, is beyond me.
“The eBay sales,” Eleanor says. “How are they going?”
I inch up a shrug. “It’ll be enough for a few repairs. Windows. Roof patching.”
She gives me a look that suggests she hears what I’m not saying, loud and clear.
“You know Mom and Dad would help,” she says. “Just until you get back on your feet.”
“I’d rather get myself back on my feet.” I glance around to make sure our parents aren’t standing nearby, hanging on every word. “It’s those looks they give each other. The ones that say, We knew this one would be a problem or How many times did we try to tell her?”
Eleanor nods. She might be the perfect daughter, immune to those looks, but she gets it.
“What about selling the boat?” she asks.
“Selling her? Pretty sure I’d need to pay someone to tow her away.”
“You could start charging Dylan rent.”
“I could, I guess.” I settle my dress over my knobby knees.
I hated them at age fourteen, and I still hate them at thirty-four.
“But Grams wouldn’t want me to. Her will was so clear, and she was so grateful for his help.
I’ve always thought of him as her assistant, but he used the word friends the other day, which is hard to picture but may be closer to the truth.
Besides, if I’m only there for a few months, it doesn’t hurt to have someone keeping an eye on the place. ”
“Are you only there for a few months?”
I open my mouth to say of course, but a sigh emerges instead. “I don’t know.”
This time, when Eleanor nods, I feel like she understands everything.
How much I came to hate my supposed dream job back in Chicago.
How deeply I missed the ocean. How often I’ve crossed that barely perceptible line between alone and lonely.
And how hard I’ve struggled with the growing disparity between the life I thought I’d be living and the ways my life has unfolded instead.
I’ve downplayed all of it to my family, but they know me too well.
Haley and Riley step onto the porch together, both holding summery drinks with fancy garnishes.
She’s in a bold-print stretchy minidress that shows off her tats and baby bump.
He’s in soft, pale, beautifully tailored linens.
His fiancé told him he looked handsome in linen on the day they met, and he’s been an ardent flax devotee ever since.
“There you both are.” Haley plops down on the arm of my chair. “Dad thought you left.”
Eleanor tsks. “I would’ve said goodbye first.”
Haley nods in my direction. “Yeah, but Phil wouldn’t.”
I swat her thigh with the back of my hand. Then I get up and offer her my chair. She could probably balance on the arm for hours, perfectly poised, after a lifetime of dance classes, but hogging one of the only two chairs with a pregnant woman nearby feels wrong.
“We’re working through Phil’s existential crisis,” Eleanor says.
I shoot her a scowl. Here we were, having a quiet moment of honest conversation, something I often enjoy with any one of my siblings, but once they group up, I’m lost.
“Who says I’m having an existential crisis?” I ask.
“Aren’t you?” she throws back.
“I’m just”—goddammit, what am I just?—“considering a career pivot. That’s all.”
Riley crosses the porch and leans back against the railing, stacking his ankles and looking Great Gatsby–esque, with his rakish mop of light-chestnut curls fluttering in the breeze and his polished brogues on display.
At thirty-one, he’s already a licensed physician specializing in internal medicine and earning half a million a year.
His fiancé is a pediatrician at the same hospital and is the sweetest, most loving man in the world. Our parents are so proud.
“What does a history professor pivot to?” Riley asks. “Writing textbooks?”
“Or biographies of dead presidents?” Haley suggests.
Eleanor scoots forward on her chair. “What about working at a museum?”