Certain Girls Read online

  “Not at all!” I lied.

  Shari sighed as a gold-medallioned, Jheri-curled DJ who was a dead ringer for a pre-incarceration Rick James led her parents to the front of the room for the blessing over the bread. “Tamsin’s furious. She says that marine biology is a serious science, and that I’m . . .” Her bejeweled fingers hooked into air quotes. “‘Trivializing her ambitions’ with seashell centerpieces and mermaid costumes.” She blinked at me with her newly widened eyes. “I think the waitresses look cute!”

  “Adorable,” I said.

  “They should,” Shari muttered. “I had to pay them extra to wear bikinis. Something about the health code.” She towed me through the crowd, past the tables draped in ocean-blue tablecloths, and over to Donna Summer. Of the ten people at the table, six were family, two were me and Peter, and numbers nine and ten were the programming director of the city’s public radio station and his wife. I waved at my husband, who was standing in the corner, deep in conversation with a gastroenterologist of our acquaintance. Better Peter than me, I thought, and sank into my seat.

  The elderly woman to my left peered at my place card, then at my face. My heart sank. I knew what was coming. “Candace Shapiro? Not Candace Shapiro the writer?”

  “Former,” I said, trying to smile as I spread my napkin over my lap. Suddenly the gastroenterologist wasn’t looking so bad. Ah well. I supposed I should be flattered that Shari still thought my name was worth dropping. I’d written one novel under my own name almost ten years ago and, since then, had produced a steady stream of science fiction under a pseudonym. The pay for sci fi was a lot worse, but anonymity turned out to suit me much better than my fifteen minutes of fame had.

  My seatmate placed one spotted, shaking hand on my forearm. “You know, dear, I’ve had a book inside me for the longest time.”

  “My husband’s a doctor,” I told her gravely. “I’m sure he could help you get it out.”

  A puzzled look crossed the aged party’s face.

  “Sorry,” I said. “What’s your idea?”

  “Well, it’s about a woman who gets divorced after many years of marriage . . .”

  I smiled, sipped my drink, and tried to turn her synopsis into a pleasant blur of sound. A minute later, Peter appeared at my side. I shot him a grateful smile as he took my hand.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the woman. “They’re playing our song. Cannie?”

  I got to my feet and followed him to the dance floor, where a few grown-up couples had worked their way in among the kids. I waved at Joy, stretched up to plant a quick kiss on the dimple in Peter’s chin, and leaned in to his tuxedoed chest. It took me a minute to recognize the music. “‘Do It Till You’re Raw’ is our song?”

  “I had to get you out of there, so it is now,” he said.

  “And here I was, hoping for something romantic.” I sighed. “You know. ‘I Had His Baby, But You Have My Heart.’” I rested my cheek on his shoulder, then waved at Shari and Scott Marmer as they fox-trotted past us. Scott looked euphoric, puffed up and proud of his children. His round brown eyes and his bald spot gleamed under the disco lights, along with his cummerbund, made of the same red satin as Shari’s gown. “Can you believe that’s going to be us this fall? I looked at Shari more closely. “Except I probably won’t be getting my implants refreshed beforehand.”

  “No need,” Peter said, and dipped me. When the song was over, I raised my hands to my hair, which felt fine, then dropped them to my hips, encased in black velvet. I thought I looked all right. No less an authority than my daughter had signed off on my ensemble. True, she’d done so with a less than enthusiastic I guess it’s okay, and told me on our way into the building that if I took my shoes off at any point in the evening and wandered around like a homeless person, she would legally emancipate herself, which children were allowed to do these days.

  I wondered, the way I always did on occasions like this, what people thought when they saw me and Peter together, and whether it was some incredulous version of He’s married to her? Unlike poor, paunchy, balding Scott, Peter was tall and lean, and had only gotten better-looking as the years had progressed. Sadly, unlike the surgically improved Shari Marmer, the same could not be said of me. Ah, well, I thought. I should look on the bright side. Maybe they all assumed that I had the flexibility of a nineteen-year-old Romanian gymnast and the imagination of a porn star and could do all manner of crazy stuff in bed.

  I squared my shoulders and lifted my head as the DJ played “Lady in Red” and Peter took me in his arms again. I was determined to be a good role model, to set a good example for my daughter, to be judged on the content of my character as opposed to the size of my thighs. And if I was going to be judged by the size of my thighs, let the word go out that I was actually an impressive seven pounds thinner than I was when I’d gotten married, thanks to an indescribably hellish six weeks on the Atkins Diet. Plus, except for a touch of arthritis and the occasional back spasm, I was disgustingly healthy, while Peter was the one who’d inherited a cholesterol problem that he had to treat with three separate medications.

  I looked up to find him staring at me, his forehead slightly furrowed, eyes intent.

  “What is it?” I asked hopefully. “Do you wanna go make out in a stairwell?”

  “Let’s take a walk.” He snagged a few beef satay sticks and a plate from a passing waiter, added some raw vegetables and crackers, and led me up the staircase to the Signers’ Hall, with life-size statues of the men who’d signed the Constitution.

  I leaned against Ben Franklin and took a look around. “You know what? Our country was founded by a bunch of short, short men.”

  “Better nutrition these days,” said Peter, setting his plate on a cocktail table by the railing and giving John Witherspoon a friendly slap on the back. “It’s the secret to everything. And you’re wearing heels.”

  I pointed at George Washington. “Well, so is he. Hey, did Ben Franklin have VD, or was that someone else?”

  “Cannie,” Peter said soberly. “We are in the presence of great men. Molded bronze replicas of great men. And you have to bring up venereal disease?”

  I squinted at Ben’s biography, on a small rectangular plaque on the back of his chair. It made no mention of any nasty souvenirs he might have picked up during his years in Paris. History was a whitewash, I thought, crossing the floor and leaning over the railing to look down at the hired dancers, gyrating wildly as a specially constructed Studio 54 emblem descended from the ceiling (instead of sniffing cocaine, the man on the moon appeared to be reading from the Torah). “This party is insane,” I said.

  “I’ve been thinking about something,” Peter said, looking at me steadily over George Washington’s wig.

  I hoisted myself up onto the stool in front of our cocktail table. “Joy’s party?” Our daughter’s bat mitzvah, and the party that would follow, were many months away but had already emerged as a hot topic around our house.

  “Not that.” He took the seat across from me and looked at me sweetly, almost shyly, from underneath his long eyelashes.

  “Are you dying?” I inquired. Then I asked, “Can I have your beef stick?”

  Peter exhaled. His brown eyes crinkled in the corners and his teeth flashed briefly as he struggled not to smile.

  “Those weren’t related questions. I’m very sympathetic,” I assured him. “I’m just also very hungry. But don’t worry. I’ll do the whole devoted-wife-of-many-years thing. Hold your hand, sleep by your bedside, have your body stuffed and mounted, whatever you like.”

  “Viking funeral,” Peter said. “You know I want a Viking funeral. With flaming arrows and Wyclef Jean singing ‘Many Rivers to Cross.’”

  “Right right right,” I said. I had an entire file on my laptop labeled “Peter’s Demise.” “If Wyclef’s busy, should I try for Pras?”

  Peter shrugged. “He could use the work, I guess.”

  “Well, you think it over. I really don’t want you haunting me from beyond t
he grave because I hired the wrong Fugee. And do you want the music before or after they set your corpse on fire?”

  “Before,” he said, reclaiming his plate. “Once you light a corpse on fire, it’s all downhill from there.” He munched ruminatively on a carrot stick. “Maybe I could lie in state at the Apollo. Like James Brown.”

  “You might have to release an album first, but I’ll see what I can do. I know people. So what’s up?” I raised my eyebrow in a knowing manner. “Do you want a threesome?”

  “No, I don’t want a threesome!” he boomed. Peter has a very deep voice. It tends to carry. The three women in strapless gowns who’d wandered into the hall, presumably for some fresh air, stared at us. I gave them a sympathetic shrug and mouthed, Sorry.

  “I want . . .” He lowered his voice and stared at me, his dark brown eyes intent. Even with all the little businesses of ten years of marriage between us, the conversations about when to get the roof fixed and where to send Joy for summer camp, his gaze could still melt me and make me wish we were somewhere all alone . . . and that I really was as limber as a Romanian gymnast.

  “I want to have a baby,” Peter said.

  “You want . . .” I felt my heart start pounding, and my velvet dress suddenly felt too tight. “Huh. Didn’t see that coming. Really?”

  He nodded. “I want us to have a baby together.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. This was not the first time the possibility of a baby had come up over the course of our marriage. There’d be a story about some talk-show host or country singer on the news, the proud mother of twins or triplets “born with the help of a surrogate,” an expression that always made me roll my eyes. It would be like me saying that the oil in my car had been “changed with the help of a mechanic,” as if I had something to do with it other than paying the bill. But if we were going to have a baby who was biologically our own, there’d need to be a third party involved. Joy had been born two months early, via emergency C-section, which had been followed by an emergency hysterectomy. There’d be no more babies for me. Peter knew this, of course, and even though he’d pointed out the pieces about surrogates, he’d never pushed it.

  Now, though, it looked like he was ready to push. “I’m fifty-one,” he said.

  I turned away and read out loud from James McHenry’s plaque: “‘Physician, military aide, and politician.’ And a very sharp dresser.”

  Peter ignored me. “I’m getting older. Joy’s growing up. And there might be possibilities. You might have viable eggs.”

  I batted my eyelashes. “That is, hands down, the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  Peter took my hand, and his face was so open, so hopeful, so familiar and dear that I was sick with regret that my one shot at natural motherhood had come via my stoned jerk of an ex-boyfriend instead of with my husband. “Don’t you ever think about it?” he asked.

  My eyelids started to prickle. “Well . . .” I shook my head and swallowed hard. “You know. Sometimes.” Obviously I’d wondered. I’d daydreamed about a baby we’d make together, a sober little boy who’d look like Peter, with flashes of his dry humor, like heat lightning in the summer sky; one perfect little boy to go along with my perfect girl. But it was like dreaming about being in the Supremes, or winning a marathon, or, in my case, running a marathon: a fantasy for a lazy afternoon in the hammock, something to mull over while stuck on a runway or driving on the turnpike, nothing that would ever really happen.

  “We’re so happy now,” I said. “We have each other. We have Joy. And Joy needs us.”

  “She’s growing up,” he said gently. “Our job now is to let her go.”

  I freed my hand and turned away. Technically, it was true. With any other going-on-thirteen-year-old, I’d agree unconditionally. But Joy was a different story. She needed special attention because of who she was, the things she struggled with—her hearing, her reading—and because of who I’d been.

  “Our lives are wonderful, but everything’s the same,” he continued. “We live in the same house, we see the same people, we go to the Jersey shore every summer—”

  “You like it there!”

  “Things are good,” he said. “But maybe they could be even better. It wouldn’t kill us to try something new.”

  “Back to threesomes,” I said, half to myself.

  “I think we should at least take a look. See what’s what.” He pulled a business card out of his wallet and handed it to me. Dr. Stanley Neville, reproductive endocrinologist, offices on Spruce Street—in the same building, I noted ruefully, as the doctor who treated my recently diagnosed arthritis. “He can do an ultrasound of your ovaries.”

  “Good times,” I said, and gave him back the card. I thought of our lives, perfectly arranged, the three of us safe, cocooned from the world. My garden, after ten years of attention, was in full flower, with espaliered roses climbing the brick walls, hydrangeas with blue and violet blossoms as big as babies’ heads. My house was just the way I’d always wanted it. Last month, seven years of searching had finally yielded the perfect green-and-gold antique grandfather clock that sat on top of the staircase and melodically bing-bonged the hours. Everything except for the tiny and no doubt fixable matter of Joy’s grades was perfect.

  Peter touched my shoulder. “Whatever happens, whether this works out or not, our life is good just the way it is. I’m happy. You know that, don’t you?”

  Beneath us, a parade of waiters and waitresses, in their bodysuits and bikinis, exited the kitchen bearing salad plates. I nodded. My eyelids were still burning, and there was a lump in my throat, but I wasn’t about to start bawling in the middle of the Constitution Center. I could only imagine the gossip that would start if Shari got wind of it. “Okay,” I said.

  “Candace,” he said fondly. “Please don’t look so worried.”

  “I’m not worried,” I lied. He handed me his plate, but for one of the rare times in recent memory, I wasn’t hungry at all. So I set it back on the table and followed him down the stairs, past the windows and the moon hanging high in the sky, flooding the lawn with its silvery light.

  TWO

  Todd plopped himself down on my bed and stared at me eagerly. “So what were you guys doing in there?” he asked.

  I pulled the bobby pins out of my hair, letting my curls tumble around my shoulders, smiling without saying a word.

  “We’re your best friends,” Todd pleaded. “James is our cousin. We can give you inside information. I think he’s a hottie.”

  Tamsin, in her sleeping bag on the floor, pursed her lips and noisily flipped the page of her book. Todd was still wearing his suit, but his sister had gotten out of her dress the minute my bedroom door was closed, and looked much happier in her Lord of the Rings nightshirt and her sweatpants, with her face scrubbed clean of the makeup her mother had made her wear and her freckles back in full force on her nose.

  “We didn’t do anything,” I lied as Frenchelle, my dog, hopped onto my bed and curled up like a Danish at my feet. The truth was, I’d danced with Todd and Tamsin’s fifteen-year-old cousin, James, three times. Then James had offered me a sip of his drink, which had turned out to be a whiskey sour that his older brother had given him, and I’d said okay to that, too. Then he’d taken me into the darkened auditorium where they do the “Freedom Rising” multimedia presentation and pressed me against the carpeted wall, and we’d stood there in the darkness, him in his shirt and tie and me with his jacket draped over my shoulders, kissing like something out of a movie, or at least a music video. I’d worried a little when he started rubbing himself up and down against me, but when he put his hand on my breast, I just moved it away, and when he didn’t put it back, I let myself relax. It was so dark in the auditorium that I could pretend he was anybody. At first I’d pretended that he was Dustin Tull the singer, and that had been good, and then I’d pretended that he was Duncan Brodkey, my crush from school, and that was even better, standing there in the darkness with James’s thin lips
pressing against mine so hard that I could feel the bumps of his teeth.

  You’re so hot, he’d murmured in my ear, and that was the best thing of all, because I thought he believed it: that in that dress, for that night, it might actually have been true. Then one of James’s hands had slid back to my chest, and he’d pinched me too hard. I’d pushed him away and said, I don’t think so, in a scornful, almost snotty voice, and I had sounded exactly like Taryn Tupping, who is actually hot and the star of The Girls’ Room on TV. It was just the kind of thing she’d say to a boy who’d gone too far, the exact words and tone that a real hot girl would use. James had stepped away from me immediately, and I thought he’d look angry, but he just looked as if it was what he expected—as if that was how hot girls were supposed to behave.

  “Spill, spill!” Todd chanted. I blushed, remembering it: the feeling of James’s lips and his hands, and that respectful look on his face. But I didn’t want to say anything because Tamsin hadn’t kissed anyone yet, and if I did tell, Todd would pass the story along to everyone, probably starting with his mother.

  Frenchelle turned in a circle, then curled up again and started snoring as my mother made her way slowly up the stairs. I rolled over, hiding my face in my pillow as she paused, the way she always did, to admire the clock at the top of the staircase. “Shh,” I said. “It’s her.”

  The three of us lay there, the silence broken only by the sound of Tamsin clicking her retainer in and out of her mouth, until I heard my mother turn around and head toward her bedroom. I rolled onto my back, stared at the ceiling, and began my litany. “Reasons I cannot stand my mother: one through ten.”

  “Here we go,” Tamsin muttered.

  “ ’Scuse me,” said Todd, carrying his pajamas to the bathroom.

  I ignored them both. “One: her boobs.”

  “They’re not that bad,” Tamsin said without looking up from the copy of Ghost World I’d gotten her for Chanukah, to replace the one she’d read until it had fallen apart. Todd came back in, barefoot in striped seersucker pajamas, smelling like benzoyl peroxide and mint toothpaste, his dark brown hair brushed up from his forehead, his lips and nose and the arch of his eyebrows identical to his sister’s. Even though he’s not into girls except as friends, this would probably be the last time Todd would be allowed to sleep over—Today I am a man, he’d said, making a face—but there was going to be a brunch at the Marmers’ house the next morning. The caterers would arrive at six, and Mrs. Marmer had decided that the benefits of the twins getting a good night’s rest outweighed the risks of a mixed-sex sleepover. “They’re just . . . you know.” Tamsin rolled onto her side. “Big.”