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Through the phone line, she heard a loud crash followed by an even louder wail. “Oh crap. What did you guys break now?” Randi shouted. “Jen, I gotta go. Tell him!” she barked, and then hung up.
Hugging a pillow, Jenna burrowed deeper into her sofa. It was two o’clock, and she decided on a quick nap before picking Janie up from school. Just as she started to drift off, she heard the sound of a car pulling into her driveway. Through the sidelight, she could see a shining black Lincoln. A woman, slender, wearing rhinestone studded sunglasses and what looked like an explosion of editorial designs, climbed out. She was holding a very wiggly baby. She shifted the child to her hip while she fished through a huge pastel-colored bag stamped with designer initials. Retrieving a pacifier, she popped it into the baby’s mouth, and rang the bell.
Jenna opened the door, and her bottom lip fell. It was Meghan Morrisey, Jack’s daughter, the girl Jenna last saw being carted into an ambulance after Eric saved her from a drug overdose.
“Here, take this,” Meghan said. She handed off a cherub dressed in layers of baby couture. “Jesus, you live far from the city.” She spoke as though she had seen Jenna yesterday rather than almost ten years ago. “It took my driver forever to get here. Damned kid slept all the way. I think my tits are going to pop.” She put her hands over large breasts to illustrate her point, then unbuttoned her blouse. She took the baby back and strode over to Jenna’s couch to nurse him.
“So how the hell have you been?”
Jenna was too stunned to speak.
“Get me a glass of water,” Meghan ordered. “Nursing makes me so thirsty.”
She explained she had gotten Jenna’s address from her father. She also explained that she was “deliriously” and “happily” married. Her husband was “disgustingly” rich, and she lived in a lavish penthouse in Manhattan. “Gave up all my bad habits. Not my sense of style though.” She crossed one paisley-stockinged leg over the other.
As she fed her son, whose name she proudly announced as Ocean Amadeus Morrisey Millwood, she got down to the business of why she was visiting. “My husband and I live on the Upper East Side, a block away from Eric and Bree’s place. Whenever they were in New York, we would get together.”
“You and Bree are friends?” Jenna was surprisingly hurt by the admission.
“Friends? With that demon bitch? I wouldn’t have looked at her on the street if it wasn’t for Eric. I could have killed him when he married her.” Meghan popped her other nipple into her son’s mouth, took a sip of water, and continued her rant. “Bree Davis was the second biggest mistake of Eric’s life…losing you the first. Now he has a chance to be happy and instead of fixing things, he’s just moping around and crying the blues to my dad, and Nick, and whoever else will listen to him cry about how he can’t get past the fact that you lied to him.” Meghan looked lovingly down at her nursing baby. “Men,” she spat. “I hope this one doesn’t grow up to be an asshole.”
Wide eyed, Jenna looked and listened as Meghan delivered her oration while efficiently feeding, burping, and changing her son. There was no arguing, nor was there any segue into the one-sided conversation. Each time Jenna opened her mouth to speak, Meghan held up a hand. “That beautiful man spent nine years being miserable without you, and now he’s just wasting more time. Daddy and I think someone needs to light a fire under his stubborn ass. There’s a gala at the Frick on Friday, and you’re going. I’ve fixed you up with someone who will make Eric so jealous he’ll put the fucking Hope Diamond on your finger.” Meghan stood, propped her son on one hip and blew out the door. “Frick-n-Friday.” She laughed as she stepped to her waiting limo. “See you then.”
****
When Meghan called to finalize their plans, Jenna argued and gave myriad excuses for not being able to attend the gala. “I already have plans—There’s too much traffic on Friday—I have nothing to wear.”
“A. You’re lying. B. I will send a car. C. I’ve already arranged to have a dozen couture gowns delivered to your house. Pick one!” Meghan harangued, whined, and threatened to drag Jenna to the Frick by her hair if she didn’t agree to go. Her last appeal was a sensitive and heartfelt entreaty. “If it wasn’t for you and Eric, I wouldn’t even be alive. No two people deserve happiness more. Please let me help.”
A day later, a selection of eveningwear arrived by courier, and later that afternoon, a stylist, seamstress, and dresser were also knocking on Jenna’s door. But when Friday dawned, the day clear and the sky as blue as a morning glory, Jenna came down with a skin prickling attack of nerves. She called Meghan and itemized more excuses for needing to bow out, being camera shy at the top of the list.
“Camera shy? You’ve been on the red-carpet enough times to wear a rut in it.”
“It’s not only that,” Jenna admitted. “I just don’t think going on a date to some bougie affair is going to help make things better between me and Eric.”
Meghan’s long sigh hissed through the phone’s speaker. “So what’syourplan then? Are you going to sit around and hope he’s done brooding in a year?”
Jenna brought her hand to what was still an indiscernible mound below her navel. Her breasts were already spilling from the cups of all her brassieres. In another month, there would be no hiding her condition.
“All right, I’ll go.” Jenna hung up and, for the first time since agreeing, she realized she had no idea who her date even was.
****
Janie opened the door, wide-eyed and breathless as she greeted Eric. “Did you see the limo? Did you?” She was bouncing in place, a firm but gangly collection of limbs that blurred his vision. “Mommy says she’s been in limos lots of time and they’re no big deal, but I think they’re cool!”
“Your mom’s right. They’re just long cars.”
His comment put an end to Janie’s animated gamboling and she offered innocently wide eyes to him. “Don’t you want to know why it’s here?”
Eric lifted his shoulders in a shrug, but his jaw constricted as he spoke. “I imagine your mom has plans.”
“A date!” Janie shrieked like an audience member of an early Elvis performance.
Eric was bringing his daughter with him to Ina’s and grabbed her bag from the floor.
“Don’t you want to know who she’s going out with?” Janie asked.
“No, Jane, it’s not really my business.”
