“Okay, maybe not a hard hat,” he concedes. “But like some kind of hat.”
The summer went on. In some ways, it was the first time in a long time their marriage had felt equitable, because they were both looking for something else. In some ways, he said, the month of July felt like a long goodbye to their marriage, a slow burn of the inevitable.
Then, Juliana ended up at their house for dinner, and David expected a scene. Why else would Taylor invite her? But Taylor caused no scene. The opposite. Taylor was the consummate hostess, more present at the table, maybe, than she’d been all summer. She asked Juliana questions about her company—insightful, sharp questions that David wouldn’t have thought to ask, had never asked. There were so many things about business that Taylor understood and he didn’t.
David thought Taylor wanted to bring things to a head, to hasten the inevitable. He thought she wanted to skip to the last page in the book. In a way, he was relieved by this prospect. Terrified, but relieved. There was so much pressure building inside that house all summer, and if someone didn’t stick a pin in it and let some air out the whole place was going to burst. He thought Taylor was the pin.
But he understands now that it was more complicated than that. When Juliana came to dinner, David realized that Taylor had changed course. She didn’t want to confront David with what she suspected. She wanted to show Juliana that David was hers. She’d made a decision, and the decision was to do what it took to keep her marriage.
In the end, of course, Juliana was the pin.
Juliana left soon after Jack and Shelly and Nicola. And with Caroline gone too, and Felicity by that time sound asleep, David and Taylor were alone. Taylor cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher, washed by hand the delicate wineglasses. She was calm at first, stacking, carrying.
David began to help her. He shook out the place mats and napkins and carried them to the laundry room. There was a smear of Juliana’s lipstick on one of the napkins, and David noted that. Taylor put some music on, country ballads. Taylorneverlistened to country, but there was something about the mournful music, the simple, tragic lyrics, that fit the situation. Then, when the cleanup was done, Taylor put her hands on the edges of the sink, and David noticed that her shoulders were shaking. Taylor was crying. Taylornevercried. In fact, since the day they’d met at Yale, he had not seen her cry.
“Hey,” said David. “Hey, hey, come here. Turn around.” He said this gently, and he touched her on the shoulder, not sure how she would react to his touch. He thought she’d flinch and push him away. But she didn’t; she collapsed into David, sobbing. She got her mascara all over his white shirt.
Nicola has stopped walking, trying to square this image of Taylor with the Taylor she knows. “What’d she say?”
“She said, ‘Why don’t you like me best, David? I like you best. Why don’t you like me best?’”
“Wow.” Nicola breathes the word out softly; more a sound that an actual word. “That’s heartbreaking.”
“Heartbreaking,” David agrees, and his voice cracks.
“So what’dyousay?”
“What could I say?” He looks up at the sky for a long, long moment. He’s not, Nicola realizes, going to tell her any more than that. She waits and waits, but that’s all there is.
She holds up her finger and David says, “What are you doing?”
“Listening for frogs.”
“Why?”
“Because behind those shrubs,” she says, “is a vernal pool.”
“Awhat?”
“Vernal pool. Sorry, has the walk become too educational?” She’s trying to make him smile.
He shakes his head and, yes, he smiles. “Okay, I can’t stand the suspense. Please enlighten me. What is a vernal pool?”
“I’m glad you asked! A vernal pool is a seasonally wet body of water.”
“That’s good to know. I’m sure that will come in handy in my life as a...” He paused and seemed to be searching for the right word. “As a—oh, geez, Nicola. I don’t know what to call myself.”
“As a philanderer?” she suggests.
He punches her on the arm, but only lightly.
“Sorry,” she says. “I couldn’t help it.” When they were kids it would have been a real punch. David and his brothers didn’t believe in treating Nicola and her sisters any differently because they were girls. “Very funny,” he says. Then he says, “I’m so jealous of you, you know.”
“Ofme?”
“Yeah. You’ve got a plan.”
“Uh, incorrect. My ‘job’ is over in a few weeks. I’m only living where I’m living because of you. If I go back to school, I’m accruing more debt while simultaneously avoiding paying off the rest of my law school loans.”
