“Exactly!” Sue says. “Callie? Don’t you?”
“Of course!” Callie smiles, although it’s not strictly true. If she’s with another mother she’ll always break open a bottle of wine, but it wouldn’t really occur to her to have a glass of wine by herself.
“God knows I need the wine to get me in the mood,” Sue says. “When Keith gets home from one of his bar-stops at the station, it’s a disaster. Then I’m likely to drink the whole bottle.”
Lisa groans with laughter. “What’s happened to us?” she says, looking at Sue, then at Callie. “I never used to be able to keep my hands off my husband. What happened? Honestly? I’d be happy if I never had sex again.”
“You said it, girl!” shrieks Sue, high-fiving her, while Callie smiles and stands up, excusing herself to go and get a frozen margarita.
Am I so unusual? she asks herself. Is there something wrong with me? For she does still love making love with her husband. After all these years they have grown closer, not further apart, and she never feels more connected to him than when they are in bed and he is moving gently inside her.
She cannot relate to what is going on for these other women. Doesn’t judge them, but dares not reveal her truth, because she would then be the outcast, the one who was judged, or misunderstood.
How is it, she wonders, that they have managed to avoid what so many of these women are going through? Is it luck? Is it work? Not work, she thinks, because her relationship with Reece never feels like work. Luck? Partly. And communication. Taking, making , time for each other. Considering each other. Listening to each other. Avoiding those times when they are with other couples and could attempt humor, but it would come at a partner’s expense—a biting comment that would elicit a smile or laughter from their friends, and an uncomfortable squirming from Reece.
She won’t do it. She loves her husband and she knows she cannot take him for granted. She knows because of evenings like this.
It isn’t as if Callie had a model for marriage, at least she didn’t during the formative years, which is when, they say, it counts. She can barely remember her parents being together, and what little she does remember centers around two people who seemed to be entirely different, who lived separate lives.
Perhaps it was her mother’s relationship with George that taught her the most. Her mother always said the joy of her marriage to George was that it was the second time around. She didn’t marry because she had to. Or because it was a way to leave her mother’s house. Or because of any pressure she felt.
She married, despite thinking that she would never marry again, because a man came along with whom she fell completely in love. A gentle, kind man, who made her laugh, and who, she used to say, she thought was the best-looking man she had ever seen.
The fact that George always seemed, to Callie at least, very old and very craggy and not handsome in the slightest, didn’t matter. Honor was smitten from the moment she met him, and remained smitten until the day he died.
“My handsome man” Honor would call him, leaning down while George was attempting to eat his breakfast, taking his face gently in her hands and kissing him.
“Look at that man,” she’d say happily, to anyone who would listen. “Isn’t he just the most glorious man you’ve ever seen?”
Everyone would agree. Not that George was the most glorious man they had ever seen, but that this was the most glorious relationship they had ever known. Being around Honor and George elevated everyone’s spirits, it made them feel good. On a subconscious level, Callie must have taken notes, for she knew that it was possible to have something like that, and anything less would be settling for second best.
Reece grew on her slowly. She liked him enormously, and liked how she felt around him from the moment they met. But thirty was a dangerous age, she knew. She had watched as too many of her friends who were approaching thirty jumped into marriage with the first man who offered. They weren’t relationships based on love or compatibility, but on the increasingly loud ticking of a biological clock.
She had been the bridesmaid at Samantha’s wedding. Samantha was a friend from school, a bright, bubbly and gorgeous girl who had a personality that was infinitely larger than life. She had spent her twenties on an emotional roller coaster, falling in and out of passionate love.
Samantha’s husband, Alex, was, without doubt, the most boring man Callie had ever known. He was arrogant, dismissive and rude. He had the sort of good looks that weren’t really good, but with the right clothes, the right haircut, a lot of working out, could create the illusion.
Callie, who loved everyone, disliked him instantly. She could see immediately that he was entirely wrong for Samantha. She knew that Samantha was marrying him because he’d asked, and because she was terrified that no one else would; and he was marrying her because he couldn’t believe his luck that someone as gorgeous as Samantha would even look at him, let alone marry him.
Callie sat through countless evenings listening to Alex pontificate about things he thought were important, always claiming to know just a little more than anyone else in the room.
She walked up the aisle in front of Samantha, praying for some kind of intervention, knowing that there was nothing she could do.
Their first baby came within the year. Their second twenty months afterward. Their third two years later, and their fourth two and half years after that.
“I guess I was wrong,” Callie said to Reece, who had refused to go out with them as a couple anymore, Alex being so unbearable. “I guess they’re happy.”
When Samantha left Alex for her personal trainer, no one was surprised. Callie hadn’t seen Samantha properly in years by that time, but they met for lunch one day in Greenwich and Samantha revealed all.
“I think I hated him before I even married him.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I just . . . I guess I was convinced I could make it work. I thought he loved me enough for both of us, and I thought I’d learn to love him.”
“And you wanted babies,” Callie remembered.
“So much.” Samantha sighed. “It clouded everything else.”
By this time Callie was married. Happily. Blissfully. She knew then just how lucky she was to have found the type of relationship her mother had found with George.
Even today, all these years on, if she arrives early at a party and sees Reece walk in the door, her heart still flips. He’s with me! she thinks. See that gorgeous man over there? He’s mine!
Callie stops just inside the kitchen, and looks at the photographs on the wall. She looks at ones of Reece and feels her heart swell. I love my husband, she thinks, feeling a shiver of excitement at the prospect of his coming home.
I am just so damned lucky.
Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle
Only about 3 million calories a serving, but worth it, and who counts when it’s Book Club . . .
Ingredients
3 cups half-and-half
6 large eggs
½ cup white sugar
½ cup soft brown sugar
⅓ cup molasses
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon salt
3 cups pureed pumpkin, or about 1½ cans
1 package store-bought gingerbread mix
1 quart heavy cream
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup crystallized ginger
½ cup gingersnap crumbs
Method
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
Scald the half-and-half in a heavy saucepan (which means take it to the edge of boiling, then remove it from the heat).
Beat the eggs, white and brown sugars, molasses, cinnamon, ground ginger, nutmeg, cloves and salt. Mix in the pumpkin and half-and-half. When it is smooth, pour into a buttered baking dish, which you then put into a bain-marie. Put the dish into a larger baking dish and fill the larger dish with
hot water to about 1 inch below the rim of the custard dish. Bake this for 50 minutes, then check on it. You want a set, firm custard, and a knife inserted into the center should come out clean.
Cool and refrigerate overnight.
Cook, cool and slice the gingerbread.
To assemble your trifle: use a trifle bowl or any deep glass or crystal bowl.
Whip the heavy cream with the vanilla, then fold in the crystallized ginger. Set aside.
Spoon half of the pumpkin custard into the bowl and layer half of the gingerbread over that, then half of the whipped cream. Repeat. Top the final layer of whipped cream with gingersnaps or gingersnap crumbs and, if you like, drizzle with Calvados.
Chapter Five
Reece Perry settles down in the first-class seat and goes through his routine. He pulls out his DVD player, tucks it into the seat next to him, kicks off his shoes and pulls on the socks he always brings. His magazines are stuffed into the pocket in front, and his Kindle behind them—for when they are safely up in the air and it is safe to turn on all electronic devices.
His iPhone is on his lap and he picks it up, checking his email once more. Across the aisle from him is a man, similar age, holding his iPhone and playing some racing-car game. Reece grins. He downloaded a shocking amount of applications when he first got the phone, then found he was regressing to the age of about sixteen and was wasting vast amounts of time playing the games, so he got rid of all of them.
He checks his watch. Ten-forty p.m. in Cape Town, which means three-forty p.m. in Bedford. He picks up his mobile again to call Callie, thinking about how much he wants to see her, hoping she hasn’t left to meet the kids from school.
“Hi, Loki,” he says, using his pet name for her, the same as her pet name for him. It started as a joke, when they saw the name on a sweatshirt and Callie decided it would make the perfect silly lovers’ name, but then, somehow, it stuck.
“Lovebug!” The excitement is evident in Callie’s delighted greeting. “Are you on the plane?”
“I am. I can’t wait to see you. I’ve missed you guys.”
“You always miss us guys,” Callie says. “And we miss you too. Eliza made a chart and she’s been crossing off the days until you come home. And this morning Jack was practically hopping with excitement, but I told him you’d probably be home after they’re in bed. They both say you have to swear you’ll wake them up.”
Reece smiles. “Have you ever known me not to wake them up?”
“Right, and usually neither of them even remembers in the morning. But I’m glad you’re coming home. When’s your next trip?”
“Cal, don’t ask when my next one is before this one is even done.”
Callie laughs. “You’re right. I’d just like to know I’m going to see you for a bit before you take off.”
“You’ll see me a lot.” He smiles again, adding, “You can see all of me if you want.”
“Promises, promises.” Callie laughs. “I’d quite like to see all of you tonight.”
“You’ll be up, right?”
“You can count on it. I have a ton of photographs I need to go through. Oh God, I didn’t tell you, I did that shoot for those people at the end of East Magnolia Drive.”
“Which people?”
“The people who bought that huge house. The Kavanaghs. Remember, we met them at that cocktail party in New Canaan, at the Philip Johnson house?”
“Yeah, I remember. How’s the house?”
“Really beautiful. I mean, it’s huge—another big, new house—but she decorated it herself and I think she did an incredible job. Everyone around town is whispering about them being gauche, but I thought they were just lovely.”
“You think everyone’s just lovely.”
There’s a pause as Callie considers it. “You’re right!” Her laugh echoes down the phone line. “I do. But she really was, and she served the most amazing chocolate cake—you would have died. Anyway, they’re coming for dinner in a couple of weeks so you’d better be around.”
“Give me the date when I get home and I’ll make sure I am.”
“Oh my gosh, look at the time. I have to go and meet the bus. Have a safe flight, baby. I love you.”
“I love you too.” And he puts down the phone feeling his heart soar.
He loves that she isn’t needy. So unlike girlfriends before her. There were one or two he thought might have made the grade, but then they’d do things like pick up his phone and scroll through texts when he was out of the room, or give him a hard time because he had to go away again on yet another work trip, and no, they couldn’t come with him because he’d be working around the clock and it wouldn’t be any fun for them.
The stewardess walks past, flashing him a flirtatious look. “Champagne? Orange juice? Sparkling water?”
“Champagne, please.” What a shame it is, he thinks, that such a pretty woman has ruined herself, for she has clearly done a significant amount of work to her face in a bid to retain her youthful looks, and now her lips are too full, her skin too tanned, her eyebrows too arched, and when she smiles the folds from her nose to her mouth look decidedly . . . odd.
“I’m Sally,” she says. “Let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.” It is not flirting, exactly, but there is a flirtatious lilt, although Reece is used to this, traveling as much as he does.
It is almost amusing, he thinks, how some stewardesses will respond delightedly to a man traveling alone, their hopeful looks swiftly disappearing, replaced with a bored look of resignation as they offer the same drinks to the woman sitting behind.
He would never admit this out loud to Callie, although she secretly knows it, but he loves traveling. It was the one thing that scared him when he met Callie and knew, very quickly, that she was the woman he would be spending the rest of his life with: what if she made him change?
He loves his career, climbing the ranks in his small advertising agency to creative director, and then switching over to directing for a large agency. The Creative Advertising Awards he has won for this agency line the glass shelves in his office.
He loves that he has worked his way up to a sleek, modern office the size of a small basketball court, with all the toys and accoutrements that creative people are supposed to have. There is, in fact, a basketball hoop. A pool table. A black leather and chrome Mies van der Rohe sofa, and a corner bar for those late-night brainstorming sessions.
He loves that, as his career progresses, he gets to go to more and more exotic locales to film the commercials, meet interesting people, eat unusual food, stay up late with the crew in assorted bars and nightclubs.
Before Callie, traveling also meant women. Lots of them. From models and actresses appearing in the ads to, occasionally, women he met in bars. He is a tall, sporty American, with a winning grin and a wicked charm.
It isn’t that Reece is the best-looking in the room, but he has a way of focusing his full attention on you, male or female, that always makes you feel you are the most interesting person he has ever met.
Almost everyone who has a conversation of longer than five minutes with Reece falls a little bit in love with him. It helps that he is six foot one, with tousled dirty-blond hair, and looks great in a pair of old jeans.
That is one of the things that first attracted Callie. That he looks equally good in a Brooks Brothers suit as in a polo shirt and jeans, with sneakers and a faded baseball cap.
He always shied away from marriage, in fact from commitment of any kind, thinking that commitment meant change. But when he met Callie, it wasn’t so much that she didn’t want him to change—which she didn’t—but that he wanted to.
Reece found he was no longer interested in the leggy model types who starred in his shoots, wasn’t swayed by a plunging neck-line or a sultry look in the way he had been in the past.
In the early days, he hated being away from Callie; a couple of times he even cut his trips short to run back home. Then, when Eliza was born, he fell madly in love,
but started to welcome the nights away, the luxury hotels, the nights of unbroken sleep. And then came Jack, and with it a chaos that he still isn’t entirely sure he is used to.
Now, Callie, Eliza and Jack manage perfectly well without him, and while he misses them, he is grateful that he gets not only to have some peace and quiet, but also that he gets to have a semblance of the freedom of a single man again.
Not that he’s taking advantage of the women—never that—but he gets to stay up until late, drinking with the boys. He gets to have some downtime, lie by swimming pools with the papers and some great music playing through his earplugs—with no small people tugging on his arm, demanding he play a game, or throw a ball, or just give them some attention, any kind of attention, please.
Of late, though, he has found that while he still looks forward to the trips he’s getting a little too old for the late nights and the drinking. The past couple of trips he has been the first to leave dinner, sometimes before dessert, yawning and excusing himself to go up to his hotel room and crash in front of the TV.
The will to party may still be there, or at least the idea of it, but the reality is something else entirely.
It’s a bit like the year he stopped running, doing any kind of working out. He’d lie in bed every night and decide that in the morning he would go for a run. There would be no decision making involved; he would set the alarm forty-five minutes earlier, then get up, pull on shorts and sneakers and be out through the door before even the kids woke up.
Every morning, without fail, the alarm would go off, he’d groan, reach out a hand to bang it off and fall back to sleep.