Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Hannah’s biggest and final tennis tournament of the season was on the following Saturday.
The night before, during the especially stressful era of searching for Hannah’s tennis skirt and wrangling all the kids for dinner, Kathy surprised everyone by arriving with presents, candy, and plenty of bottles of wine.
When she pulled into the driveway, Ada bit her tongue to keep from groaning, then hurried to let her mother in. “Look who’s here!” she announced.
“What kind of grandmother would I be if I missed my granddaughter’s final match?” Kathy declared.
Ada did not say, “You could be the kind who calls first!” Her mother looked radiant and entirely pleased with herself, wearing a shade of coral lipstick that reminded Ada of long-ago beach trips with her mother, after her father had left and made them a duo.
“It was sweet of you,” Ada said, half begrudgingly. “Thank you.”
Hannah, Kade, and Olivia ran into the foyer to hug their grandmother, while Peter emerged from his private den upstairs to say hello.
His eyes were shadowed, proof of how tired a week’s worth of surgeries made him.
After the kids, Ada, and Kathy were set up on the back porch with delivery pizza, three flavors plus garlic bread, Peter admitted that he had plans to watch a game with a buddy.
“I can cancel,” he said to Kathy. “I didn’t know you’d be in town.”
Kathy laughed. “Don’t cancel on my account! Go! Watch your game. We’ll see you at the tennis match tomorrow.”
Peter kissed Ada on the cheek and high-fived all of his children. “See you later,” he said before bolting for the door like his life depended on it.
Ada wished she could go with him. But here she sat with her mother, who performed the routine of a happy grandmother, asking her grandkids about school and their friends.
Kathy ate delicately, using a fork and knife, which prompted Ada to reconsider her eating habits as well.
The last thing she wanted was for her mother to accuse her of being sloppy in front of her children.
After the kids were stuffed, Hannah went upstairs to hang out alone, presumably with music, and Kade and Olivia ran up and down the beach, chasing seagulls and throwing rocks into the sea.
Ada put the rest of the pizza in the fridge and poured a glass of wine for herself and her mother.
Orange, purple, and pink played over the waves, but the first of the stars twinkled in the sky above.
It was a radiant evening, the first Friday in May.
“Tell me,” Kathy said, arching her eyebrow toward Ada. “Do you have any friends?”
Ada was caught off guard. Hadn’t she just thought about her own mother’s lack of friends? And how dare her mother insinuate that she didn’t have a social life!
“I have a few,” Ada said. But she gestured toward Kade and Olivia, saying, “This season of my life doesn’t allow for a lot of me time, I guess.”
“But Peter has friends,” Kathy pointed out.
“Yes.” Ada furrowed her brow, realizing she’d never thought of it like that before.
Peter had friends; Peter met buddies to watch games; Peter went out for beers.
“But I need more solo time than Peter does, I think.” Was this true?
Ada wasn’t sure. She filled her mouth with wine and considered how to tell her mother to back off.
“When your father left us, I had no one,” Kathy said, flaring her nostrils. “I realized I’d given myself over completely to you and your father and left no space for myself.”
“I do have space for myself,” Ada retorted, her tone haughty.
She got up, telling her mother she had to clean the kitchen, and brought her wine inside.
There, she scrubbed the already clean counter for a full ten minutes as her ears rang.
Why did her mother think she could give her all this unsolicited advice?
Eventually, her mother followed her into the kitchen and peppered her with facts about female friendship, about how nourishing it was for all involved.
“I’ve started going to a little ladies’ card-playing group downtown,” she said.
“That’s great, Mom,” Ada offered, folding the rag over and over again and searching for a way out of this.
“You’re a therapist,” her mother continued, sounding half desperate. “I would think you’d know what happens when people end up with no one to talk to.”
Ada twisted her neck around to look her mother in the eye.
It was clear from her mother’s expression that she genuinely cared that perhaps her “surprise visit” was less about Hannah and more about Ada.
Was it possible that her mother had sensed something in Ada during their visit last weekend?
Ada shook the thought out of her head and said, “Let’s play a card game.
” Anything to get the topic off her and her so-called loneliness.
Peter called with more news two hours after he left for the game.
“Hey, baby,” he said, sounding gruff.
“What’s up?” Ada twisted away from her mother on the dark porch, and her mind raced. Had he gotten into an accident? Had he drunk too much and needed a ride? She wouldn’t get angry about any of it. All she wanted was for Peter to be home safe and a reprieve from all this time with her mother.
“You remember my buddy Max from the city?” Peter asked.
Ada remembered Max, Peter’s old roommate from their Manhattan days, another orthodontist who hadn’t left the city when everyone else had.
They’d gone to his wedding about five years ago, for which Max had spent more money than most house down payments.
His wife worked in event planning or a similar field.
“Is he okay?” Ada asked.
“He called, really upset. Abby left him tonight, and he doesn’t have anyone,” Peter continued. “I told him I could drive to the city early tomorrow morning.”
Ada threw her head back, trying to obliterate the wave of rage before it took over. “Oh,” she said.
“I know. It’s bad timing.” Peter sighed.
“I mean, yeah. It is.” Ada clacked her nails across the table and felt her mother’s burning gaze.
“I’m going to call Hannah tonight before she falls asleep and explain everything,” Peter said. “She’s basically grown up. I know she’ll get it. Sometimes life gets in the way, you know?”
“Yeah. She’ll understand.” Ada scrunched her face and willed herself not to cry.
As quietly as she could, she said, “It’s just that it’s her senior year.
She needs her dad at her last match.” She doesn’t even really like tennis!
I think she played it to please us. She didn’t say anything because she knew there was no convincing Peter to stay.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so angry toward Peter.
She couldn’t remember the last time he’d disappointed her so greatly.
“I’ll be home later to pack. But don’t stay up if you want to go to bed,” Peter said. “I’ll wake you up before I leave.”
Ada flared her nostrils. She couldn’t show any emotion in front of her mother. “All right, honey. Drive safe. Love you.”
“You too,” Peter said, hanging up.
Ada blinked at the dark phone and took three deep breaths to steady her mind. It took a minute to realize that her mother was talking about something. She’d let herself forget she was there for a moment.
“It’s just she seems a little down, doesn’t she?” Kathy asked.
“What?” Ada blinked at her. “Who seems down?”
Kathy was quiet, her eyes calculating. “Ada, what’s going on?”
“Who seems down?”
“I was talking about Hannah!” Kathy said, reaching for the bottle of wine to give herself a refill. “But you were a million miles away.” There was the sound of the wineglass filling up. “Who was that, anyway?”
“It was Peter.” Ada didn’t have the will to tell her mother why he’d called, so she said, “The game is going to overtime, so he’s staying a little bit later than he thought.”
“Oh.” Kathy shrugged. “But why did you say, ‘she’ll understand’? Something about the tennis match?”
Ugh. “Something came up tomorrow.”
“He’s going to miss the match?” Kathy looked stricken.
“His job is really important, Mom,” Ada said. “It’s an emergency.”
Kathy leaned against the back of the chair and gazed at Ada with a steely look.
For a moment, Ada thought her mother was going to press her for more details about her marriage, about how they communicated, about how often they were intimate.
Kathy could cross boundaries when she wanted to, and Ada always forgave her for it. Ada swallowed the lump in her throat.
But instead, Kathy surprised her. “What can I do to help you this weekend?”
All the tension spilled out of Ada’s shoulders. “Oh. Um. Well, I have to meet a patient tomorrow morning, so if you could get the kids’ breakfast ready, that would be amazing.”
“It’s done,” Kathy said, standing. She took the half bottle of wine inside with her, pausing in the doorway. “I’m going to bed. I love you, Ada. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She left Ada on the back porch with a few sips left in her wineglass, gazing out at the inky-black water as she waited for her husband to come home.
Through her daughter’s upstairs window, she could make out some of Hannah’s words as she spoke to her father on the phone.
“Oh, sure. Yeah. It’s no big deal.” A longer pause.
“Really, Dad. I don’t care. It’s just tennis. ”
Ada got up and went to the kitchen, where she poured the rest of her wine down the drain and stood with her palms flat on the counter.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss, that she’d been looking at her family life as though it were a painting turned upside down on a wall for a long time.