Chapter 3
Chapter three
The next morning, I am having coffee with Emmy while Jack and Rose head out to the barn to look at the Wilsons’ new foal with Emmy’s twins, fifteen-year-old Peter and Polly.
Emmy’s kitchen is in its usual state of comfortable, chaotic clutter, but I can’t help but notice there is nothing freshly baked as there usually is, and when I sit down at the table, Emmy informs me she’s out of coffee.
“Sorry,” she says on a sigh as she closes the cupboard door.
“I didn’t get to the grocery store last week.
I do have some herbal tea, but it’s very herbal.
” She makes a face as she holds up the flowery box.
“Jasmine, lily, and marigold. Sounds like a flower bouquet, not something you’d drink.
I think Bethany brought it over, so maybe you have it at your house, too?
” With a dispirited sigh, she drops the box on the counter, then joins me at the table, easing into her seat with another long, low sigh.
I glance at my friend in concern—I’ve known Emmy for a year now, and we’ve been good friends for most of that time, and while I’ve seen her worried, especially about the whole Ben and Bethany thing, I’ve never seen her look down the way she does now.
Her straw-colored hair is pulled back into a messy bun, and the spring sunshine streaming in from the kitchen window catches its silvery glints, as well as the deepening crow’s feet fanning out from her eyes.
She rests her chin in her hand, her blue eyes faded as she gazes out at the barnyard, muddy and bare in springtime.
“Emmy…” I hesitate, unsure how to proceed because we’ve never been in this situation before. Emmy has pretty much always been the one to jolly me along, so when the shoe is on the other foot… well, it feels strange. “Are you okay?” I ask.
“Huh?” She lifts her chin from her hand to glance at me in bemusement. “Do I not seem okay?” she asks, sounding genuinely curious.
“Well…” Again, I hesitate. How honest to be? “I mean, yes, generally, but you’re not your usual… bubbly self.”
“Bubbly?” Emmy repeats scathingly, and I laugh.
“You know what I mean. Is anything wrong? Or just… I don’t know, hard?” Emmy has seven children, a busy husband, and a working farm of sorts. There’s bound to be a lot of hard in the day-to-day routines of life.
“No,” Emmy replies after a telling pause. “Nothing’s… wrong.” The emphasis on the word makes me think I picked the wrong one. If not wrong, then… what?
“Okay,” I say cautiously, feeling my way through my friend’s mood. “Maybe so-so, then? A little meh?”
“It’s just…” Emmy closes her eyes briefly and then snaps them open. “Don’t you wish there was a little more to… to life?” she asks, a desperate edge to her voice that I have never, ever heard from her before.
I consider her question honestly because I can sense how heartfelt it was.
“I think we all feel that way sometimes,” I venture after a moment’s reflection.
“Especially at our age, Emmy. Life for middle-aged women with kids… a lot of kids?” I rest one hand on my burgeoning middle as I consider, with some alarm, how my life is going to change, and soon.
“It can feel like too much, and yet at the same time… not enough.”
“Yes.” Emmy reaches over the table to take hold of my hand tightly. “Yes, Abby, that’s exactly how it feels sometimes,” she says, and she almost sounds near tears.
I smile at her, trying to hide my own deepening worry. This is really not the way Emmy usually sounds. At all. “Emmy… did something happen to make you feel this way?”
She lets go of my hand abruptly, rising from the table in one jerky movement.
“No, why would something have to happen?” she demands, sounding uncharacteristically irritable.
“Beyond the usual, that is.” She whirls around to face me, ticking off her fingers as she recites her list. “Besides Ed leaving the toilet seat up again, after twenty-odd years of marriage, and Polly refusing to muck out the stall of her own horse, and Sammy refusing to be potty trained even though he’s four years old, and Eleanor teething, and Ben thinking he’s the first person ever to be in love, and Alice acting like she’s the first person to have her heart broken, even though I don’t think it actually is, she just likes being dramatic…
” Her breath rushes out on a raggedy sigh.
“Besides all that, you mean?” she asks with an attempt at wryness that falls pretty flat.
“Well…” I try to smile, even though I’m now seriously worried. “Yeah, besides all that.”
Emmy laughs, then it suddenly turns into something close to a sob. As she sinks into her chair, she drops her head on her arms and starts to cry for real—honest-to-goodness sobs that shake her shoulders and feel as if they’re torn from the depths of her being.
“Emmy…” I clamber out of my seat to put my arm around her shoulders, nearly knocking a pile of papers on the table to the ground in the process. “Emmy.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” she chokes out, lifting her head to wipe her streaming eyes.
“Honestly, I’m all right, Abby. At least, I sort of am.
” I remove my arm as she sits back in her chair with a heavy sigh.
“It’s not even about all those things I mentioned…
the toilet seat and the horse and the fact that Sammy will likely be in diapers until he’s six, if not later.
” She sighs again, briefly closing her eyes before she snaps them open.
“It’s just… do you ever think, this is your life?
The only one you’ll have? And you kind of wish it wasn’t, or at least there was something more than what you currently have? ”
“Well…” I begin uncertainly, unsure how to answer, and she leans forward, seeming eager now to explain.
“I mean, you’ll never—I’ll never—live in Paris and eat chocolate croissants every morning at a sidewalk café overlooking the Seine while reading poetry.
And I’ll never run a ranch in… in, I don’t know, Colorado, or find myself in Arizona, or run a-a pottery studio in the Florida Keys, or backpack by myself through South America, hitching rides on the back of mopeds and drinking tequila under the stars. ”
She lapses into a reflective silence, and I offer a tremulous smile.
“Seems like you’ve thought through these scenarios quite a lot,” I remark cautiously.
“Oh, I haven’t, not really,” Emmy says as she wipes her eyes again. “And it’s not like I even want to do any of those things. I don’t speak French or Spanish, I’m not good in the heat, and I’m as close as I want to be to running a ranch right now. I definitely do not want another horse.”
“And the pottery studio?” I ask, and she laughs, a tired sound.
“I’m not all that arty.”
I try to smile. “Well, then…”
“But don’t you know what I mean?” she presses before shaking her head slowly.
“Or maybe you don’t, because you did it, Abby.
You had one kind of life, and you exchanged it for something totally different.
” She gives me a look of rueful envy. “It’s like you’ve been able to live two lives when the rest of us have to make do with one. ”
“I exchanged it for the kind of life you already have,” I point out gently.
“So, you’re way ahead of me.” She smiles and shrugs, seeming unconvinced, and I continue, leaning forward in my earnestness.
“But Emmy, I do get where you’re coming from.
We’re middle-aged. The end of the road is in sight, if only in the distance, and that’s a scary feeling.
And…” I pause, feeling my way through the words.
“There are only so many lives you can live, so many experiences you can have. But anything can feel like same-old, same-old after a while. The Seine looks polluted, and your croissant is stale, the ranch is a ton of thankless work, and Arizona is overrated. And pottery? So messy.” She smiles faintly, but I can tell she’s not convinced, and I don’t blame her.
As much as I like my homesteading life, sometimes it can feel like very hard work, or worse, mere drudgery.
But every life feels that way, eventually, or at least once in a while.
My Princeton life did, and this life does, too.
It’s all about plodding through the drudgery to find those brief, sparkling moments of enjoyment and gratitude.
But I don’t feel like giving Emmy that lecture, and I don’t think that’s what she needs right now.
“What’s set off this feeling?” I ask her because in my experience, a hopeless ennui about life doesn’t come out of nowhere.
Emmy stares at me for a moment and then says, “Ed’s going on a forestry conference in Charleston.
Some corporate bonding thing. They’re staying at a Holiday Inn for two nights and going out for beers and bowling, and honestly, it sounds completely meh, but the truth is, I’m still jealous.
Because while he’s swilling beer and shooting pool, I’m going to be changing Sammy’s poopy diaper and yelling at Polly to muck out her horse stall, and everything else.
And I just… would rather be in Paris.” She gives me a small smile. “Even if my croissant is stale.”
I reach over and pat her hand. “Me, too. Although maybe not Paris. Maybe the Bahamas.”
She nods. “I’d take that over a kick in the teeth with a frozen boot.”
I can’t help but laugh at that hillbilly expression. “To be honest, I think anyone would.”