That didn’t sound particularly appealing to me. But the friend seemed fascinated.
“I haven’t said anything to Kyle yet,” Brenda told her friend. “But it’s over between us. It’s going to break his heart. But I have to be true to myself. I can’t live a lie anymore.”
This was Brenda for you. She never stopped spewing soap opera dialogue.
“This guy’s married, huh?” the friend asked Brenda.
“In a way,” she said. “His wife’s a nutcase.”
“But it’s her house, right? Her family’s got a ton of money. The great-grandfather invented Scotch tape or Wite-Out or something.”
“It’s all pretty complicated,” Brenda said. “Only it’s not, really. It’s like ... we’re two bodies with one soul. Once you understand that, all that other stuff doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just details.”
I looked across the table to where Jilly sat. She was feeding ice cream to Molly, her favorite American Girl. For a moment, the picture came to me of how it would be for her if her father said he was moving out of the house and marrying Brenda. This was what Brenda meant when she talked about “details.”
I remembered that, back in New Jersey, my father was going to be moving out too. Only that was different. My father’s departure from our apartment would probably feel like a relief. For Jilly and Hayward—and for Regina—the possibility of Forrest running off with Brenda would bring about the end to any possibility of future happiness or joy at Wonderland.
54
I Want to Have Your Baby
Olivia’s mother, Phyllis, was hosting a party for women from the club, with a special guest who promised to identify what colors they should be featuring in their wardrobes. It turned out you were either a winter, a spring, a summer, or an autumn. If you didn’t know which, and favored the wrong colors, you might just have to throw out your whole wardrobe and replace it with another one. Overhearing her explaining this to one of the women at the club while I was waiting for Jilly to get out of her tennis lesson, I felt a sudden surprising wave of missing my mother. For all the ways she disappointed me, I could just hear the deep belly laugh that would come out of her if she heard this concept of what the woman called “finding your season.”
In earlier days, Regina wouldn’t have been caught dead at such an event either, but she’d decided to attend, probably as part of her campaign to project to Forrest and everyone else at the club the appearance that she was a regular person. As an added incentive, Phyllis had promised there’d be a bouncy house for the kids. Hayward said he was too old for bouncy houses, but agreed to go, probably because Olivia would be there, which meant he might catch a glimpse of Olivia and her friends bouncing. I knew what part of their bodies he’d be eyeing.
With the family occupied by the Color Me Fashionable party, I was left free to head to the tennis courts. It had been three days since I’d had the chance to work with Jonathan, and it was too late in the afternoon for a lesson. But I could still hit against the backboard.
I must have been hitting for over two hours. One of the night bulbs meant to light the court was out, making it difficult to see the ball. Anyone else would have called it a day by this point, but I couldn’t stop.
Due to the darkness, I was missing a lot of shots. To retrieve my ball after one of these, I had to step off the court into a thicket of bushes, and beyond those, trees and brush at the far end of the tennis court.
This was when I heard their voices. I knew right away who it was.
Earlier that evening, when I headed to the court, I had no intention of carrying out one of my reconnaissance missions, so I didn’t have my Polaroid camera with me. But I did have my little notebook in my pocket. Also a pencil. I had developed the habit of bringing these along with me at times when I hit balls by myself, to write down how many I’d hit and how long I’d managed to keep the ball in play. Now I took out the notebook, ready to transcribe what I heard.
“I can’t bear it when Kyle touches me now,” Brenda said. “It makes me physically ill.”
“Oh, baby.” This was Forrest. Then silence for a moment. I couldn’t see, but the two of them were kissing, no doubt.
“I have to leave him. I don’t even care if he takes Pumpkin. I want a divorce.”
“I know, I know. But it’s complicated.”
“What’s complicated?” she said. “I love you. You love me. I think about you all the time. We want to be together. It’s simple.”
I was crouched in the bushes with my notebook on my knees, writing down what they said as fast as I could. It was hard to keep up.
“It’s not that easy for me,” Forrest told her. “There’s the children. I have to put them first.”
“I love kids,” she said.
They were quiet for a minute. More kissing probably. Then came Brenda again: “I want to have your baby.”
From where I sat on the dirt, scribbling with the little pencil I’d picked up at mini golf, I shook my head. In case it wasn’t bad enough that Forrest was having an affair, he was having one with a woman who talked like every sappy song I’d ever heard on the radio. Brenda was a pinhead.
“It’s going to work out fine,” she said. “Your kids love you so much, they wouldn’t blame you for seeking your happiness.”
“I know my kids would love you too,” he told her. “In a perfect world, we’d be together, and have half a dozen more of them, and they’d all look like you. But I have to think about Regina.”
