Charles looks at her expectantly.
“I’m a closet smoker. Could you hand me my bag?”
Charles reaches for Emma’s bag, spilling its contents. A yellow legal pad covered with writing tumbles out, followed by cigarettes, elastic hair bands, a subway map, and a battered copy of Play It as It Lays. Charles picks up the pad. Emma leaps up from her chair and grabs it from him.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing,” Emma says, wrapping her arms around the pad.
“You’re making me very curious.”
Oh good. “It’s nothing,” Emma says, returning to her chair.
Charles’s questioning eyes bore into her. “It’s an awfully important nothing.”
“Oh, all right. Really, it’s just something I wrote, am writing… I don’t know.”
“So you’re a closet writer, too.”
“I guess. Not a very good one. Now can we change the subject?”
“Let me see it,” he says.
Emma pretends she’s considering it.
“Let-me-see.”
And so she does. Charles begins reading. Emma feels goose bumps break out on her arms and neck. Without taking his eyes off the page, he settles into the armchair. The room grows very still. Emma is at a loss as to what to do with herself. He’s reading so intently. She walks as quietly as she can over to the window. Across the street, a cat crouches in the gutter devouring a scrap of food. The New York night feels full of promise, a sea of warm hope delivering Emma from her pain, carrying her to her fate. She turns. Charles is still reading, bathed in the soft lamplight, his lips slightly pursed. He flips a page, and then another. Finally Emma can stand it no longer.
“May I have it back, please?”
He cuts her off with a brusque “shhhhh” and keeps reading until he reaches the end. He looks up at her. “Is this part of something longer?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“You guess?”
“There’s more. There’s a lot more.”
“Would you let me see it?”
“Charles, you don’t have to-”
“Read anything I don’t want to. I know that, Emma. But I want to read more of this.”
Emma goes to her dresser and takes out the pages she’s been writing for so long now. All but the most recent are neatly typed. Her book, her story, her life. She feels the weight of the pages in her hand and then, hesitantly, gives them to Charles.
“Do you mind if I take these home tonight?”
Emma shakes her head.
As they finish their tea, Charles, leaning forward in his chair, tells her about showing his first novel to his writing teacher at Dartmouth. Of how he didn’t sleep for two days while she read it. Emma nods and smiles but finds it hard to pay attention.
“Walk me downstairs,” he says.
It’s cool out; the rain has stopped. Charles cradles the stack of papers and hails a cab. He squeezes Emma’s shoulder and says, “See you in the morning.”
Emma watches the cab pull out into traffic and disappear up the street.
It’s going to happen.
20
Anne is propped up in bed, going over a licensing agreement with a small Vermont furniture maker. She’s having a hard time concentrating. The numbness is gone from her stomach; there’s just a tiny point of tenderness where the needle went in. For a five-hundred-dollar surcharge the company doing the DNA testing agreed to expedite her tests; she’ll have the results in about ten days. She reaches for another disgusting peanut butter cookie and picks up her bedside phone and dials.
“Hello.”
“Kayla, it’s me.”
“I hate you. I spent eighteen hundred dollars today on your goddamn website.”
“Isn’t it great?”
“It’s amazing! Just what I need-a whole new way to shop. You’re a genius. And where did you find those gold-leaf tiles?”
“Deepest Brooklyn.”
“Wow. But I’m canceling the whole order if you don’t tell me what’s bugging you. Right now.”
Anne puts her paperwork on the bedside table. She lifts off the covers and sits on the edge of the bed.
“I’m pregnant… and Charles may not be the father.”
There’s a long pause.
“Sorry. I was picking my jaw up off the floor. Tell me everything.”
And Anne does, spewing out the whole story. When she’s done she feels better than she has in months.
“That motherfucker Farnsworth,” Kayla says.
“No, Kayla, that’s too easy. I could have stopped it.”
“He shouldn’t have put you in that position. But that’s a moot point. What are your thoughts about the baby?”
“Even if it is Farnsworth’s, I don’t know if I can go through with an abortion. There’s a life growing inside me.”
“What about your life, Anne? If it’s Farnsworth’s, there’s a chance you’ll hate the baby. Think about the ramifications of that. You know I’m still a little conflicted about my own abortion, but at the same time I know I did the right thing. I’ve never doubted it for a second. It wasn’t the right time and it wasn’t the right man. The same may be true for you.”
“But it is the right time. I want a child.”
“But do you want this child?”
Anne starts to pace around the room. She looks down at the park, its lights twinkling in the dark. What fun it would be to take her little child-would it be a boy or a girl? — to the zoo and the carousel. To share a tuna fish sandwich sitting on a park bench.
“It’s my child as much as the father’s, Kayla. It’s my baby.”
“Anne, it’s your decision and you’re my best friend and I love you and I’ll support you in whatever you decide. But remember that you have choices.”
Anne imagines going to an Upper East Side clinic for the abortion, spending a couple of recuperative days at Canyon Ranch. The whole thing would be over with and she could get on with her life. It seems like such a simple solution. Especially considering the current state of her marriage.
“I’m speaking to a media buyers’ convention in Scottsdale on Saturday. Why don’t I fly to New York as soon as I’m done?” Kayla says.
An overwhelming sadness descends on Anne. She turns away from the window and sits on the floor, her back against the wall.
“Are you going to our fifteenth reunion?” she asks, knowing Kayla will grasp her need to change the subject.
“Hell, yes, it’s the ultimate gloat fest. All those little blond chippies slaving away on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. We showed ’em, didn’t we, Turner?”
Anne leans her head against the side of her dresser and closes her eyes. “We showed ’em.”
“I’m six hours away from buying you a big fat martini. Promise me you’ll call if you want me to hop a plane.”
