“Thanks for including me,” Liz said automatically, and then they both were quiet, and Liz wondered if they would continue to be part of each other’s lives for decades to come—if Ham and Lydia would stay married.
“I hope you don’t feel”—Ham paused—“I guess, ah, misled.”
“I don’t care that you’re transgender,” Liz said. “And even if I did, I realize you don’t need my approval. But it’ll be a huge bummer if Lydia becomes permanently estranged from our parents.”
“No one wants her to have a good relationship with them more than I do,” Ham said. “I didn’t plan to—she was the one who had the idea of eloping. I could have said no, obviously, but what if I did and your parents succeeded in turning her against me? I couldn’t risk losing the love of my life.”
To be adored as deeply and inexplicably as Ham adored Lydia—would she herself, Liz wondered, ever experience it?
“I decided the best strategy was to tie the knot now, then spend as long as it takes convincing your mom and dad I’m a good guy,” Ham was saying. “That’s still my aim, and I welcome your advice.”
“So the other stuff you’ve told me,” Liz said, “or your bio on your website—I’d understand if it’s not, but is it all true? Were you in the army, and did you grow up in Seattle?”
“It’s definitely all true,” Ham said. “I was commissioned into the Signal Corps as a female and I had a different name, but yes.”
Liz sighed. “Do you think the storage locker with all the stuff from my parents’ basement is infested with spiders?”
“That crossed my mind. I can check. Liz, I know that Lydia can be hard on you, but your opinion matters a lot to both of us. I’m really happy we have your blessing, and I promise I’ll make things right with your parents.”
“I believe you,” Liz said. “Now go inside. You’re missing your own party.” As Ham stepped forward to hug her once more, she said, “Lydia’s lucky she found you.”
LIZ’S PLANE LANDED at JFK shortly after eleven A.M., and as it taxied toward the gate, she switched the setting on her phone out of airplane mode. Immediately, three texts popped onto her screen, one of which was from her editor, Talia, a second from Jane, and a third that read, It’s Darcy. Hope things are okay with your family. Can I buy you a drink this weekend?
Her heart stretched and contracted. Why now? Of course now! I’m sure you’ve heard from my brother about him and Caroline, Liz thought, and the idea of sitting in a bar listening to him describe his renewed romance made her glad she’d left Cincinnati.
She was ready—more than ready—to once again inhabit her life in New York. So it hadn’t worked out with Darcy; she was thirty-eight, and it hadn’t worked out with plenty of guys. Actually I’m back in NY, she typed hastily. Looks like we’re ships passing in the night. Take care. Then she hit Send, and within a few minutes, she was off the plane and hurrying through the terminal, buoyed, however temporarily, by the relief of resolution.
FOR THE MORNING of the Women’s League luncheon, Liz had ordered a large bouquet of pale pink roses, hypericum berries, and sweet peas to be delivered to the Tudor, along with a card bearing her and Jane’s names. During the luncheon, she texted Mary and Kitty to ask how it was proceeding.
Fine, Mary texted back. Almost over.
Picture a sorority that time traveled 50 years, Kitty texted back. Except drunker.
Neither of which exactly answered Liz’s question.
The day before, Liz had heard from Shane Williams that another couple was preparing to make an offer on the house, and she had purposely withheld this information prior to the luncheon. Upon calling the Tudor in the late afternoon, she learned from Mr. Bennet that her mother had retired to bed.
“In defeat or triumph?” Liz asked, and her father said, “It’s hard to tell sometimes, isn’t it?”
THE INITIAL OFFER was for $899,000; after negotiations, it stalled at $920,000, which Shane told Liz and Mr. Bennet in a conference call he strongly recommended accepting. “Unless you want to take the house off the market, make improvements, and put it up for sale again in the spring,” he said. “But with the school year under way, and the holidays on the horizon, now just isn’t when most people are looking to move.”
The second time around, the inspection did not yield surprises; a closing date was set for October 18, and Liz booked a ticket to Cincinnati accordingly.
SEPTEMBER IN NEW York was still prone to unpleasant hotness, but by October, which had always been Liz’s favorite month, the city was at its best—the leaves in Central Park were changing color, the stylish women who worked at Mascara and its sister magazines were wearing belted coats, and her favorite deli was selling pumpkin soup. It had occurred to Liz that her extended stay in Cincinnati might distance her from her New York friends, or even from her own habits there, but in fact, she appreciated the city anew, and the affection appeared reciprocal: She went out often for drinks, dinner, or brunch, in many cases with people she hadn’t socialized with for over a year, and there was much to gossip about and discuss. Though she made a point of calling her parents every other evening, and texting her sisters as often if not more so, the absence of constant familial obligations made her feel as if additional hours had been inserted into each day, hours in which she could read novels, attend movies, go for long runs, or visit museum exhibits that she probably, the previous spring, would have intended to see without actually doing so, believing herself to be too busy.
A few weeks had passed before Liz realized that these auxiliary chunks of time were attributable not simply to no longer being at the beck and call of her family but also to the conclusion of her relationship with Jasper. It was in the second week of October, with neither delight nor vengeance, that Liz discarded the red sheer teddy and matching thong underwear, never worn, that he’d sent her in Cincinnati. She also recycled the piece of computer paper on which, over a decade and a half, she had written what she’d once deemed Jasper’s best sentences: I talk way more openly with you than I do with her. Sometimes I think you and I would be a good couple. I love you in my life. How meager these offerings had come to seem, how provisional their compliments. Yet surely she was as culpable as he was; recalling her casual speculation about when Jasper’s wife’s grandmother might die and thereby free Jasper and Susan to divorce, Liz wondered if a stronger sign of a relationship’s essential corruptness could exist than for its official realization to hinge on the demise of another human being.
In any case, when the autumn nights most filled Liz with yearning—when, as she was leaving work, the smell of candied cashews and fallen leaves wafted through the cool air—the person she thought about wasn’t Jasper.
CONGRATULATIONS, KATHLEEN BENNET! read the email Kitty had forwarded to Liz. The Kenwood Institute of Cosmetology is pleased to offer you a place in our rigorous and state-of-the-art 16-week Manicuring Program; your session will begin on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2013.
Happy now? Kitty had typed above the institute’s digital letterhead, and Liz wrote back, Yes, very. Good for you!
MRS. BENNET WAS the one who called Liz, which was unusual, unless there was a sale on bath mats at Gattle’s. “Your father has gone to a lecture with that deviant,” Mrs. Bennet practically hissed. “Can you imagine?”
“Do you mean Ham?” Liz asked.
“I don’t know what your father’s thinking.”
Liz had been pleased to hear that Mr. Bennet and Lydia had met on more than one occasion for breakfast at the Echo, but as far as she knew, this was the first time since the elopement that he had socialized with Ham.
“What’s the lecture about?” she asked.
“That has nothing to do with anything,” Mrs. Bennet said.
A modicum of research revealed that the two men had heard a professor at the University of Cincinnati speak on law and politics in ancient Greece.
Are u a history buff? Liz texted Ham.
Whatever it takes, Liz, Ham texted back. Whatever it takes :)
USING A SMARTPHONE matchmaking app that hadn’t existed the last time she’d been single, Liz embarked on a series of dates that were neither terrible nor particularly promising. The fifth man she met for a drink turned out to be someone with whom she had gone on one date seven years earlier, though neither of them realized it until they were seated across from each other at a restaurant on East Thirty-sixth Street and had been talking for ten minutes. The man’s name was Eric, and he was now living in the suburbs of New Jersey, divorced, and the father of a five-year-old and a two-year-old.
He was a perfectly pleasant person, but as they spoke, all the things that had bothered her the last time around bothered her again, with only the slightest particulars changed. She hadn’t been aware of storing this list of Deterrents to Dating Eric Zanti in her brain for seven years, but once it got reactivated, there was no denying that it was there: He didn’t read much, he said, because he was too busy. He enjoyed small-game hunting, though on a recent guys’ weekend with his buddies, he’d taken down a 150-inch whitetail deer. He thought his ex-wife spent too much time on Facebook.
In her twenties, Liz had lived with a roommate named Asuka who loathed grocery shopping; she said that looking at all the food in the aisles, thinking of the meals she’d need to fix, day after day and year after year, filled her with despair. Parting ways with Eric outside the restaurant—they kissed on the cheek, and Liz stifled the impulse to make a joke about seeing him again seven years hence—Liz understood Asuka’s despair, except with men instead of food. Even before she returned to her apartment, she had deleted the matchmaking app from her phone.
DURING THE FORTY-EIGHT hours she was in Cincinnati for her parents’ move from the Tudor and the subsequent closing at the title company, Liz looked for Darcy. She looked for him running on Madison Road as she drove back and forth—her own trips were staggered with those of the movers—between the Tudor and the Grasmoor, which was the building where her parents had, after all, decided to live, though they were renting a two-bedroom rather than buying a three-bedroom and using the funds that might have served as the down payment to maintain their country club membership. She looked for Darcy downtown, when she and her father went to the title company’s office (she had never previously encountered Darcy downtown), and while she waited at the Dewey’s in Oakley to pick up a pizza for her parents’ first dinner in their new dwelling. She looked for him on her own run the next day, and it would have been a lie to claim she didn’t consider stopping by his apartment, but it was seven-twenty in the morning and he had a complicated work schedule and a girlfriend. (I’m sure you’ve heard from my brother about him and Caroline.)
Before flying out, Liz met Ham and Lydia for lunch at Teller’s. “I don’t know if Lydia mentioned that I wrote a letter to your mom,” Ham said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t heard back.”
Over pizza the previous night, Liz had inquired about whether her mother had considered breaking the silence between herself and her youngest daughter and her husband. “I certainly haven’t,” Mrs. Bennet had declared.
“I think she still needs time,” Liz said to Ham. “Maybe after they get settled into the new place, she’ll be more receptive. But I’m glad you’re trying.”
“Lizzy, I have a question,” Lydia said. “Have you ever gotten your eyebrows threaded?”
The three of them had stood to leave the restaurant when they saw a middle-aged woman Liz recognized as Gretchen Keefe, who decades earlier had been their teenage babysitter and neighbor on Grandin Road. Gretchen was accompanied by another woman, both of them wearing black leggings, recognizably overpriced hooded sweatshirts, and large diamond rings.
“Hey, guys!” Gretchen said warmly. “Is it true that Mary eloped with a transvestite?”
Liz winced as Ham extended his hand and said with equal warmth, “Actually, I’m transgender, not a transvestite, and married to Lydia here, but nice to meet you. Hamilton Ryan.”
“Oh my God.” Instead of shaking Ham’s hand, Gretchen brought her own hand to her mouth; her face had drained of merriment.
“Is it true,” Lydia said to Gretchen with feigned brightness, “that you and your husband haven’t had sex in fifteen years? Because that’s what he told Kitty last summer while she was trying to swim laps.”
“I didn’t realize—” Gretchen said, and Liz said, too loudly, “Yeah, lots of changes in our family. In fact, our parents moved from Grandin Road yesterday. The house had just gotten too big for them.” This was what Mrs. Bennet had explained to Abigail Rycraw, a widow and Women’s League member they’d run into in the Grasmoor parking lot, and her mother had said it so convincingly that Liz briefly thought she believed it.
Gretchen looked to be on the cusp of tears, and Liz said, “Anyway, nice to see you!” She glanced at Ham and Lydia and pointed toward the front of the restaurant. “Shall we?”
Outside on the sidewalk, Lydia said, “Gretchen Keefe sucks.”
“You need to grow a thicker skin, baby,” Ham said. “You’ll get there.”
“Sorry,” Liz said, and Ham shrugged.
“I’ve heard worse.”
REMEMBER THAT GUY Darcy who dissed u at the Lucases bbq? Mary texted Liz on Halloween. Just saw him at Skyline but he was bizarrely nice.
Liz was at her desk at Mascara, preparing to enter a one o’clock meeting.
Another text arrived from Mary: Maybe he’s bipolar.
What did you talk about? Liz typed, then deleted.
Was Chip’s sister Caroline with him? she typed, then deleted that, too.
Did my name come up? she wrote, and this she also deleted.
Finally, she wrote, I guess he likes chili, and that was the text she sent.
JANE’S FORTIETH BIRTHDAY fell on the first Saturday in November, and Liz traveled by train to Rhinebeck to help set up the dinner party Amanda and Prisha were hosting. Liz had made two earlier trips to Rhinebeck and been reassured both times to see that her sister’s coloring was rosy, her demeanor was upbeat, and a small, enchanting bump protruded a little more from her midsection with each visit. By her birthday, Jane was twenty-two weeks pregnant and downright voluptuous. She wore empire-waist shirts that emphasized her full breasts, and jeans whose stretchy belly panels she revealed to Liz with amusement. “You’re like a fertility goddess,” Liz said, and Jane laughed but didn’t seem displeased.
Mr. and Mrs. Bennet called in the afternoon to sing “Happy Birthday”—this was the only duet Liz had ever known her parents to perform—and the guests arrived around seven: friends of Amanda and Prisha’s whom Jane had recently come to know, a Barnard classmate and her husband living in nearby Kingston, a pair of yoga studio colleagues who, like Liz, had made the journey from the city. Though Jane didn’t drink, Amanda broke out several bottles of what Liz recognized as expensive wine. Liz had brought a cake from a Cobble Hill bakery—on the crowded train, she’d sat with the cake box on her lap like an obedient child, holding above it the book she was reading—and despite the filling meal, no one declined a slice.
Liz shared the double bed in the guest room with Jane and her body pillow, and on Sunday morning, while Amanda and Prisha were still asleep and their son was watching television, the sisters went for a stroll on the woodsy, sidewalkless roads around their hosts’ home.
“Does being forty feel fabulous and foxy?” Liz asked.
“More like fatigued and foolish,” Jane said, but she sounded cheerful. “Thanks for coming up to celebrate.”
“How are you doing on money?”
Jane shook her head. “Amanda won’t let me pay for anything, and their friends have been amazing with hand-me-downs. Now I just have to figure out how to break the news to Mom and Dad. Mom still hasn’t spoken to Lydia and Ham, has she?”
“I don’t think so. Did you hear that Lydia registered? Which, not to sound like Mom, but is that allowed if you elope?”
“I’ll have to order her something,” Jane said.
“How about dinner chin
a that’s $240 a setting? Or perhaps you’d prefer the $650 juicer.”
“Are you making those up or are they real?”
“To be fair, the juicer also chops and purées.”
Jane laughed. “Maybe I can afford to buy her part of a fork. Lizzy, I don’t know what I imagined my financial situation would be when I was forty, but mooching off friends—it wasn’t this.”
The surprise, Liz thought, wasn’t that someone rich would swoop in to subsidize Jane’s pregnancy; the surprise was that Jane had arrived at a point where she needed subsidizing. So refined and delicate was Jane, so charming and beloved, that a certain inevitability had surrounded her courtship with Chip, and it was their breakup rather than their coupling that felt like a deviation from the script. Also, Liz wondered, was it indecorous of her to feel relieved that obscenely successful Amanda rather than middling Liz herself was supporting Jane—should Liz insist on taking responsibility, as a family member? Aloud, Liz said, “They seem fine with your so-called mooching.”
“You would never do it. In fact, the opposite—aren’t you paying Kitty and Mary’s rent?”
“Only until they finish their classes and get jobs. I have one more thing to tell you about Lydia. She took Ham’s last name, so she’s Lydia Ryan now.”
“Hmm,” Jane said. “I guess she’s traditional after all.”
IT WASN’T UNEXPECTED to run into Jasper; given the smallness of the Manhattan media world, the only question had been when the encounter would happen. The answer turned out to be a Wednesday evening publication party for a White House memoir by a former national security advisor also known for her magnificently toned calves.
The party occurred at an event space on the twenty-second floor of a building on Columbus Circle. Three other people entered the elevator in the lobby with Liz, and just before the doors closed, an arm shot through them, followed by a male voice saying, “Hold up!” Presently, the rest of Jasper appeared. He and Liz made eye contact, and he smiled. “Hey! It’s you.”