How Lucky You Are (9781455518548) Read online

  She didn’t need to worry about finding friends. Kate and I quickly discovered that Amy was an easy third for our group, and we started to live in the way that twenty-two-year-old girls live in a big city—meeting for happy hour, watching television on each other’s sofas, discussing potential boyfriends, sharing each other’s clothing, nursing our hangovers together.

  In those early years, Kate and Amy were close. Not close in a confide-in-each-other kind of way but close in the sense that they spent time together when I wasn’t around. One rainy Saturday night when I couldn’t be convinced to go out—I never had the social stamina that they did and prized quiet nights alone in the apartment’s kitchen—the two of them came home shortly before midnight, wobbling and desperate to tell me about the palm reader they’d been to see in Georgetown. We were twenty-four.

  “You won’t believe it! You won’t believe it, Waverly!” Amy slurred, kneeling on the floor in front of the couch and gripping my legs with her clammy hands. “She said that I’m going to get engaged this year. This year!”

  “It’s true.” Kate nodded emphatically. “I heard it from the other side of the curtain.”

  “She said that he’d be somebody I never would have dreamt for myself—a foreigner, she said. Right, Kate? That’s the word she used, right?”

  Kate was standing by the open refrigerator, digging a fork into my leftover container of lo mein. She’d already swiped two of the madeleine cookies from the cooling rack on the counter. I’d baked them while watching a VHS of Annie Hall.

  “She said we’d have six babies,” Amy said dreamily, letting her head fall into my lap.

  “That’s great, Ame,” I said, patting her on the head. “And what about you, Kate?”

  “Well,” Kate said, flopping onto the other side of the couch and pushing my legs out of the way with her foot. “She said that I would also meet somebody this year—somebody well-known.” She shrugged. “So what else is new? My mother has been telling me exactly what my future will hold—or should hold—for as long as I can remember. I’ve never listened to her, so why would I listen to some freak ‘fortune-teller’ on M Street?”

  Back then, Kate was working at the Washington Post as a travel reporter. Her mother, naturally, viewed Kate’s career as the kind of appropriate hobby that would keep her busy—and keep her meeting appropriate people—until her husband came along. Then she could retire, start lunching on the charity circuit, and get busy having kids. Kate had other plans. She’d always said that if there was one thing she was going to make sure of in her life, it was that she would not grow up to be her mother. She wanted a life where the conversation involved more than one-upping and name-dropping, and since our teens, she’d daydreamt aloud about being the kind of person with a thick, tattered, heavily stamped passport. Budapest on Tuesday, Santiago on Wednesday. An apartment in New York, a flat in Paris. There would be men, of course (there always were with Kate) but she didn’t fantasize about a husband, per se, not in the white-picket-fence sense that Amy did. And kids? Kate was ambivalent about the idea of children, I’m sure because she was such an afterthought to her own parents. She grew up in a home where children were something you did because you were supposed to, like joining Congressional Country Club or naming your springer spaniel after one of the founding fathers.

  But when Brendan swooped into her life four years ago, everything changed. Suddenly, the round-the-world fantasies I’d heard her talk about for years were just little whims; “old daydreams,” she’d say wistfully. After years of resisting a certain kind of life, she just settled into it like she was giving up. Brendan was raised in Charlottesville, prep-school and Harvard educated, and a moderate conservative. It was as if her parents had ordered him out of the Neiman Marcus catalog for her for Christmas.

  When she told me that she was falling for him and thought she might marry him, and then proceeded to do just that barely a year after they’d been introduced, I wish that I could say that I was surprised, but I wasn’t. I hate to sound like this, because I’m not the kind of person who believes you’re supposed to settle down by a certain age, but I think that Kate heard the clock ticking. I’d been with Larry for six years. Amy had been married so long it was hard to remember her as single. Kate still had a trail of admirers that could circle a city block—and in my opinion, she always will—but I don’t think she felt the same way. Brendan might not have been the man of her dreams, but marrying him gave her security at a time when I think she was starting to feel a little lonesome. And if I had to make a guess, the loneliness she’d experienced as a child was exactly what she’d always been running from in the first place.

  There’s another thing, too. As much as Kate talked about wanting to flee her pedigree, it was hard for me to imagine that you’d give up that kind of privilege if it was what you’d known your whole life. When she stopped working six months into their marriage for the sake of Brendan’s career? Okay, I found it a little ironic that she was stepping directly into the supportive wifely role that her mother had expected for her, but, again, it wasn’t that surprising. As much as Kate hated her parents for basically overlooking the fact that she existed, she was quite comfortable with her station in life, and it probably felt natural to just make the easy choices and do what she’d always known. Plus, the thing with Kate—and it’s actually something I admire, maybe even envy—is that she’s so headstrong and sovereign in the way that she marches through every decision that you just don’t question her, even if she is your best friend.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Larry’s heavy footsteps pound the stairs behind the kitchen, shaking my collection of bud vases on the windowsill over the sink. At last, I think, peeking out of the kitchen door to check on Mike, who’s sitting on the couch in the living room and thumbing halfheartedly through a coffee table book of Rolling Stone covers. Larry can keep Mike occupied.

  “Hello! Hello!” Larry says, entering the kitchen. After ten years together and countless evenings like this, I still can’t convince the man to put on a nice shirt for dinner. He’s fresh from the shower—I can smell his Right Guard across the room—and his thick, wavy, wet hair has left a damp half-moon along the collar of his long-sleeved T-shirt.

  “Lare, could you put on some shoes at least?” I say, pointing my knife at his bare feet. My boyfriend is one of those people who looks like where he’s from. Just throw a flannel shirt on the guy and he could be an easy stand-in for the Brawny paper towel man. He moved here from Minnesota specifically to work at the Smithsonian and is now a curator at the National Museum of American History, where he oversees a massive collection of old campaign memorabilia and political artifacts. A lifelong history buff, he gets excited about an old World War Two poster in the way that I get wound up over buttercream.

  “Baby, it’s family here.” He laughs, putting his beer bottle on the kitchen counter so that he can wrap Amy in a bear hug, his heavy arms folding around her shoulders and neck.

  Larry is one of those rare people whom everybody seems to like. He tells ridiculous tales about growing up in Minnesota—ice-fishing mishaps, barroom brawls that led to best friendships—and when he does, he draws a crowd. Once, one night in Old Town, he got the whole bar singing “Skol Vikings,” the Minnesota Vikings fight song, and this was during football season, in a roomful of rabid, beer-breathed Redskins fans. In short, everyone loves being around him, myself included…most of the time. The fact that I haven’t shared my money problems with him (which, let’s face it, since he’s my roommate, are his problems, too) is wearing on me and, by extension, us. I’ve never kept secrets from him before, and I feel so guilty that I actually find myself looking for ways to avoid him. He’s noticed, though neither of us has said anything about it. I tell myself that it’s temporary, a rut, and that we’ll push through it just like we have before, but deep down I know that’s not true.

  Larry lets go of Amy, ruffling her hair as he walks away as if she’s his kid sister, and then he hugs Kate, calling her �
�Katie” even though she always asks him not to. Larry and Kate are just like siblings—outwardly mocking and secretly adoring of each other. When he finally makes his way to me, I’m stirring the pot on the stove. He wraps his arm around me and bends deeply to kiss me in the crook of my neck. He’s six-two—big, but not NBA big—and strong in the best way, like he could haul a load of firewood if he needed to, but not like someone who pounds protein shakes at the gym. I am average—not the smallest girl in town but not the biggest either—and when Larry holds me, it’s with every bit of him.

  “What’s the over/under on Dr. Feelgood cracking a smile tonight?” Larry whispers in my ear. He’s talking about Mike, who’s now gazing sleepily out my front window. I gently shove him off with my elbow.

  “Go! Go get him a beer,” I whisper. When I turn, I catch Amy watching me. At first, I fear that she heard Larry joke about Mike, but she’s looking at me in the funniest, most longing way. She grins sheepishly and then claps her hands together and says, “So! What can I do to help? You can’t just let me stand here and watch you work.”

  My dining room is too small for seven people. Kate lingers in the doorway between it and the kitchen and I know that she’s waiting to choose a seat because she doesn’t want to be near Mike, who seems to have at least loosened up enough to talk hockey with Larry and his coworker Kyle.

  I squeeze past Amy’s chair, holding the pot of stew over her head as I pass, and everyone nudges into their seats. “It smells incredible,” she says, shifting dishes on the table to make room for the pot. Five years ago, after much prodding from Kate, Amy, and Larry, I quit my job as a high school English teacher to open Maggie’s, which is named after my childhood dog. I know, the world has enough bakeries, coffee shops, and bars named after dogs. Yes, there’s a black and white picture of her on the wall by the cash register. I won’t apologize for it. She was a fantastic dog.

  “So, a toast,” Larry says, raising his glass when I finally sit down, easing in between Amy and Kate. “To Waverly, the hostess with the—”

  “Oh God, Larry, stop before they are too nauseous to have an appetite,” I interrupt. “Cheers, everyone.” I raise my glass. “Let’s eat.”

  “So,” Kate says after everyone’s plate has been filled, pointing her fork toward Kyle’s new girlfriend, Rebecca. She’s a petite woman with Gilda Radner hair who’s a professor at American. “What is it that you teach?”

  “Women’s Studies.” Her voice is surprisingly throaty, particularly for a woman with a figure skater’s frame.

  I glance around the table to make sure everyone has what they need and see Mike make a face. Kate knocks my foot with hers under the table. She’s noticed, too.

  “Interesting!” Amy says, nodding her head emphatically while she finishes chewing. “So, give me an example of one of your classes,” she says after she’s swallowed.

  “Well, I also work out of the English department, so right now I’m teaching a course on women’s autobiography. We read Carolyn Heilbrun, Annie Dillard, Maxine Hong Kingston. Do you know them?”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Amy laughs self-deprecatingly. “Since I had my daughter, I’m lucky if I read a book a year.”

  Mike shakes his head.

  “What?” Amy says teasingly.

  Mike rolls his eyes, and it’s not in an amused way. He looks genuinely peeved.

  “Do you have something you’d like to say, Mike?” Kate says.

  Shit, here we go. The fact that she’s getting a little drunk doesn’t bode well for the rest of us.

  “Mike just knows how little I read,” Amy says, laughing to lighten the mood. It’s obvious that she’s trying to placate him. “I mean, to be honest, my sister gave me a People magazine subscription for my birthday and I can’t even finish one issue before another one arrives in the mail.”

  Mike puts his fork down and shakes his head at Amy. “No, Amy.” He laughs sarcastically. “Believe it or not, I actually wasn’t reacting to you. I just don’t understand the point of a ‘Women’s Studies’ department.” He makes little quotation marks with his fingers as he says it. “I mean, if equality’s the issue, shouldn’t there then be a ‘Men’s Studies’ department, too?”

  “Oh, Mike,” Kate says. “That’s the same flimsy argument that my barely postpubescent classmates at Brown used fifteen years ago.”

  “Come on,” Mike says, sputtering sauce. “You think Brendan, the Republican superhero, is into ‘Women’s Studies’?” He makes the little quotation marks again despite the fork in his hand, which is close enough to Larry’s face that he has to jerk his head to avoid getting hit by a forkful of beef. Here goes my relaxing Friday night dinner party. I see the way that Mike is glaring at Kate, feel the way that Kate has sat up in her chair—almost as if it’s in case she needs to pounce across the table at him—and I suddenly remember a movie scene I once saw of a dinner party gone bad where the ominous sound of an escalating roller coaster was piped in over the actors’ voices—boom, click, boom, click, boom, click. It’s exactly what I’m feeling in my chest.

  “My husband’s masculinity isn’t threatened by strong women,” Kate says, taking another swig of her wine.

  I look over at Amy. Her eyes are pinned to her plate.

  I put my hand over Kate’s arm. “I’m sorry,” I say to the table. “How about we, uh, change the subject?” I have the kind of complexion that’s always rosy, like I’ve just come out of the cold, but now I can feel that I’m flushed down to my collarbone.

  “No, no, it’s fine,” Rebecca says, unruffled. “I get this reaction from men a lot. It’s not a big deal. Some men just don’t comprehend the usefulness of a women’s studies curriculum in the twenty-first century.”

  “Exactly,” Mike says, banging his fist on the table and making the wineglasses shake. The sound makes me jump, and I look across the table at Larry, whose eyebrows have now shot into his hairline. “I mean, what do you think about all of this?” Mike says to Kyle.

  “I’m sorry. What’s the question?” Kyle says, looking up from his nearly empty plate. You can tell what his politics are just by looking at him. He’s intellectual looking in a contrived way, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a wool turtleneck sweater. He looks like someone who meditates. A tea drinker.

  “What do you think of your girlfriend’s job?” Mike says, slow and loud, like an ignorant person speaking to a foreigner.

  “Well,” Kyle says, carefully resting his fork on the table and then folding his hands at his chest like a yogi. “I think it’s fascinating. I’ve learned a lot from Rebecca about feminist theory and what it’s like to be a woman in the modern world.”

  “Kyle just read The Feminine Mystique,” Rebecca says.

  “Really?” I say, hoping that I can steer the conversation away from Mike and Kate. “Larry, maybe you should take a cue from your coworker.” Aside from the history journals he reads for work, Larry never reads anything heavier than the sports page, the Sunday comics, and paperback thrillers, but I’m trying to lighten the mood. I smile at him as I hand him my glass—he’s stood to man the refills—and hope that he can tell by the way that I’m looking at him that I’d like some help.

  Seconds later, I can tell it’s of no use.

  “Oh, c’mon!” Mike groans. “Hey, Kate, I guess you can count these folks out of your husband’s constituency. No way they’re voting for Brendan!”

  Kate shakes her head toward the ceiling. “You are so—,” she starts.

  “Well, I think it’s all very interesting,” Amy interjects, finally speaking. I’ve had one eye on her—she’s been swirling her fork in figure eights around her plate. “I read The Feminine Mystique in college and I loved it.” She smiles at Rebecca.

  “Oh, give me a break, Ame,” Mike says, laughing. “You can barely remember to pick up the dry cleaning, much less whatever you studied in college.” He looks at Rebecca. “My wife’s just trying to impress you,” he says.

  Amy takes a deep breath and shakes her he
ad. “Please, don’t mind my husband,” she says. “He has strong opinions.”

  “Whatever,” he says, scooping a forkful of food into his mouth.

  The room falls silent and Amy looks at me from across the table. “I’m sorry,” she mouths, and I notice the tears in her eyes. The old radiator under the window hisses and cracks. Larry clears his throat. “Who wants seconds?” he says.

  I look over again at Amy as Larry and Kyle begin to tell the table about how one of Tony Hawk’s skateboards has joined the museum’s permanent sports collection. She is subtly gnawing on her bottom lip and I can tell as she nods and smiles and listens to Kyle that her mind is entirely somewhere else. Mike’s behavior tonight is nothing I haven’t seen before, but he seems a little more explosive than usual, and he’s never acted this way in front of people outside of our small circle.

  I know that Amy must be mortified, but I’m having a hard time feeling sympathetic—this is not how I’d planned tonight to go, and there’s no one who’s more humiliated than me. Kate must sense this, because she squeezes my wrist under the table and mutters, “What an asshole,” under her breath. I tap her foot with mine in acknowledgment, then stand up to get dessert out of the kitchen.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Saturday morning, five a.m. Emmylou Harris is on the stereo, coffee is brewing, and my staff—a motley crew of college students, artists, recent immigrants, and felons—won’t start trickling in for another hour. This time alone, when the only noise in the bakery is my music and the whir of the industrial-sized mixer, is my favorite time of the day. I do my best thinking before the sun comes up, feeling like I can solve the world’s problems while I sift flour through a sieve that I make with my fingers or knead bread dough until it’s warm and pillowy under my palms. It’s not that I’m a morning person exactly, but there’s something about knowing that most people are still in bed when I see the sunrise each day that makes me feel industrious and optimistic, like I’m getting a head start. Of course, the feeling all goes to shit the minute the bakery opens and things start hopping, but this early time is mine and mine alone, and it’s sacred.