As I gently pat the bump under the table, I say, “That’s what you wanted to talk about? That I look like I’ve put on a few pounds?”

  My Aunt Dolly is not actually a nasty person, but like some people of her generation she doesn’t quite understand the line between honesty and courtesy.

  “No, of course not. Actually, you look good. Healthy. Heavier, yet it’s flattering. But, of course, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. May I?”

  “Of course,” I say.

  “They treated you horribly,” she says.

  “Who?” I say, honestly.

  “Those two we buried today. Your mother and father.”

  I quickly bury my true feelings.

  “Aunt Dolly, listen. I’m not saying that you’re wrong, but it’s been quite a while since those two had anything to do with me. And besides, they had issues of their own.”

  “Issues? My ass. When you have a child, that child becomes your issue. Not running around the world trying to get your hands on a Warhol or a Kandinsky. Not attempting to become artists also…” She paused for a moment. Then added, “Especially if you’re as ungifted as Lionel and Liz were.”

  “Well,” I say. “Thanks for your support, but it’s all over now.”

  “It’s never over. Not really. I told them more than once that they mistreated you. Not that they ever cared what I thought or said.”

  Dolly now begins to roll with her anger.

  “They’d smother you with nonsense when they were here—ballet lessons, cello lessons, riding lessons, French lessons—then they’d go off to Tokyo or Timbuktu for a month and leave you with Doris and all those tutors. It was dreadful.”

  What I want to say is Tell me something I don’t already know.

  Instead I say, “Aunt Dolly, I really need to go pee. And I need something cold to drink. And I need to think about what you’ve been saying. Okay?”

  “Are you all right, Emily?” she asks. “I’ve been watching you since you and Doris got here. This is the third time you’ve gone to the bathroom.”

  “I think I have some sort of urinary infection.”

  “Stop right there, dear. Spare me the details.”

  If Aunt Dolly only knew the details.

  I do what I have to do, and when I return, I see that Dolly is sipping a whiskey sour, and she has thoughtfully ordered me a vodka tonic.

  “I’m actually not drinking these days,” I say, hoping she believes my giant fib. Luckily, it seems like she does.

  “How would I know that?” she says. I order a club soda with a slice of lime.

  The bartender whisks away the vodka, and Aunt Dolly restarts her engine.

  “Listen,” the old lady says. “I want to take this terrible opportunity to say something.”

  “Don’t hold back,” I say. “Not that you ever would.”

  So she unloads.

  “I have not forgotten how they both criticized you. Cruel. Your weight. Your hair. Your grades. I guess it’s lucky that you didn’t have many friends before you went off to Hotchkiss. Because they would have criticized them, too.”

  “Thanks for the memories,” I say.

  I want to laugh, but I don’t have the energy for it. Dolly’s speech simply reminds me how involved my parents were with art, with painting, but, most of all, with each other. Most couples love their children above all others, but with Liz and Lionel, they loved each other the most. Everyone else, including me, was incidental.

  Art was their life. They had amassed one of the finest private art collections in the world. When the curators at MoMA needed to fill in a few gaps for a Lichtenstein retrospective, they borrowed four pieces from the Atkinson Collection. And Liz and Lionel themselves became painters… er, artists. Their work was terrible—derivative, corny, crude in its technique. But art was their life.

  When I was eight years old my parents took me to Los Angeles with them, a rare treat. We had drinks with Richard Gere. (“He has an enviable collection,” my father said.) We had dinner with David Hockney. (“No one can capture LA the way David can,” my mother said.) But all I wanted to do was go to Universal Studios.

  Enough of my lousy memories. I am becoming nauseated, and I’m wishing that I had kept the vodka tonic that Aunt Dolly ordered for me.

  “In any event, I tell you this now, because I want you to know that I have always loved you. And I’ve already told that greasy attorney Henry Kleinhenz that if your mother and father didn’t treat you right in their will, if they thought that museums and art schools are more important, then we will see Kleinhenz in court.”

  We?

  We will see Kleinhenz in court?

  Now I get it. It’s about us.

  Aunt Dolly wants to make certain that I’ll have the necessary money to keep her in the luxurious style she’s gotten used to.

  “Let’s wait and see, Aunt Dolly,” I say.

  I am very tired. (Dr. Craven said that I would be.) What’s more, for some reason, on the drive up, my nipples had begun feeling sore. (Oh, I guess the reason must be that I’m pregnant.) Worst of all, I’m still thinking about that vodka tonic.

  Okay, just one. It’s not going to kill me or the bump.

  I excuse myself from Aunt Dolly and head to the bar.

  CHAPTER

  32

  I KNEW I’D FIND you here,” he says.

  I’m standing at the bar waiting for my vodka tonic when I hear an unmistakably identifiable voice—earthy, nasal, happy. The voice of my old Hotchkiss classmate Greg Hayden.

  I turn around and let out a tiny scream.

  Yes, Greg Hayden. The nicest guy in our class. The tallest guy in our class. But most of all, the best writer in our class. According to the dean of community life, Greg and I were the brains and brawn of the biweekly Hotchkiss Record.

  We hug each other. We stand back and look at each other. Greg’s tie is loose, his shirt collar unbuttoned, his dark hair is in need of something—a haircut? A better barber? A conditioner? But age has been kind to him.

  “My God,” I say. “You still look like the gawky kid who’s late for bio class.”

  “And you look like… well, you look… wonderful… beautiful…”

  At this moment Aunt Dolly walks by with an exaggerated tiptoe.

  “You two children look like you can use some time alone,” she says. “I’ll disappear.”

  “No. That’s okay,” Greg says.

  “No. It’s not okay,” says Aunt Dolly, and she is out of the barroom.

  Greg orders a glass of chardonnay. We sit at the same little table where Aunt Dolly lectured me on my inheritance. I get to work on my icy vodka drink.

  “What are you doing here? I thought you were living in Cambridge,” I say.

  “I am, but I read the awful news about your folks, and I wanted to be here,” he says. Then he reaches across the table and gently touches my hand.

  Honestly, I don’t ever remember Greg Hayden in my Hotchkiss days spending much time with Liz and Lionel, except maybe briefly at one or two of the rare visits they made to the school. Maybe I’m wrong; maybe I just don’t remember. Greg could have come to the house in Sharon. Maybe he even came to New York. Maybe Southampton. Now I’m not sure of anything. I’m sweating, and I have to pee again, and I just finished drinking my vodka as if it were water. I gently pull my free hand away from Greg.

  “Can you excuse me, just for a minute?” I say.

  I have to get to the ladies’ room quickly. I am feeling… What exactly am I feeling? I’m feeling like a woman who needs to urinate. I’m feeling like a woman who might vomit. I’m feeling like a woman who needs more alcohol. In the empty bathroom I remove the silver flask from my bag, then I take a very long slug.

  When I return to the table, Greg, the nicest guy at school, stands up.

  I am delighted that he’s ordered me a fresh vodka tonic.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Sorry.”

  “You look a little, well, I think maybe a little… I think the word is groggy,” he says.

  “I think the word you’re looking for is queasy,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says. “That’s the word.”

  “Remember, I was always great on rewrite,” I say.

  “You were always great on every possible level of writing. You could make the Prep School Tennis Invitational sound like the Wimbledon finals. Your fiction for the lit mag was incredible. God. I practically memorized your short story ‘One Winter in Provence.’”

  “Please, don’t make me think about that awful, embarrassing story. It was so infantile.”

  “No, it was not. It was wonderful.”

  And then, as if he wants to prove my point, he quotes from the story itself:

  “If you’re in love, even your lover’s imperfections are wonderful.

  “‘He’s such a terrible slob. He’s like a little boy. It’s so adorable.’

  “‘She can’t even make toast. I don’t know why, but I find that incredibly sexy.’

  “Then one day it all ends, and you can’t remember ever being in love like that. So you think… If that was a mistake, if that wasn’t real love, is everything just a rehearsal for real love?”

  “My God, you really did memorize it,” I say. My arms are glistening with sweat, and I can feel that my face is flushed. The nausea is increasing, and while Greg leans into the table I take another gulp of my drink.

  There are all sorts of ways that AA meetings prepare you for times like this. The first is obviously to get up and walk away. The second involves… but it doesn’t matter because my plan is to simply finish the remainder of my drink.

  The combination of the two drinks from the bar, along with my big dip into my silver flask, is showing up in my burning eyes, my aching head. Now I have to focus on not slurring my words.

  The hand. Here comes Greg’s hand again.

  “I’ve got to tell you the truth, Emily. The reason I came here today is that it seemed like an easy way to see you again. I loved you in school. I loved you all those times I came down to Princeton to visit you.”

  Although I’m shaky, I am astonished at what this blast out of my past is saying.

  “Greg, that was a decade ago. You and I had absolutely nothing going on at Hotchkiss. And in college, well, sure, we slept together once or twice, but that was nothing. That was just, well, it was just sex. We even told each other that it was nothing.”

  A decade ago. A decade ago, for God’s sake. But why does he look so familiar? Why does he feel so familiar? Where have we been? Where have I seen him?

  Greg suddenly looks sad.

  “Yeah, it was sex, but it wasn’t just sex for me. You were everything to me. You were the whole package—smart and great-looking and sweet and really, really talented. Everybody, me included, expected great things from you—a book, a movie, a play.”

  The bartender brings me another drink. He must have instinctually figured that I was a keep-’em-coming sort of drinker.

  “Greg, this is all news to me, and I don’t mean to be mean or anything like that but, no, not now. That was a long, long time ago,” I say.

  “Not anymore. I’ve kept track of you, Emily. I’ve seen you in New York. I watched you at the bar at the Pierre. I watched you walking home from that other bar you always go to, Ted’s. I know you work at Dazzle. I’ve watched you running around the reservoir. Emily, listen to me. I want us to be what we were meant to be.”

  I feel a pit of dread forming in my stomach.

  The man I’m afraid has been following me these past few weeks… is it Greg?

  Part of me wants to confront him. Tell him to knock it off or I’ll go to the police. But perhaps it is the magical strength of too much vodka that leads me to blurt instead, “Greg, this is really creeping me out.”

  “‘Creeping you out’? What’s so creepy about it?”

  “That you’ve been thinking about me for so long, that you’ve actually followed me around Manhattan. Now. You’ve come here. To my parents’ funeral…”

  I just want him to go away. If he doesn’t leave, I will. But he doesn’t budge. I can’t tell whether his reddening face means he’s angry or sorrowful or both. I know that I’ll be wobbly when I stand up, but I have to. I finish my drink. With both of my hands placed flat on the table, I shove myself up and speak.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, but then I feel I should add, “Well, sort of sorry.”

  Now a look of pure fury comes over his face. He stands up.

  “After all I’ve said. After all I’ve told you, this is how you act. I said that I love you, and you act like a bitch. Well, while we’re both telling the truth about everything, let me tell you this. You panned out to be a nothing. Everybody expected you to set the goddamn world on fire. But look at you now. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You’re just a fucking mess. A rich mess, but still a mess.”

  I walk as fast as I can to the door. I turn down the hallway. I pass the room where the funeral luncheon is still going on.

  The last voice I hear is Aunt Dolly’s.

  “Emily, please. There are people here you should be talking to.”

  CHAPTER

  33

  I SHOULD NOT BE driving. Even I know I should not be driving.

  But I’m going to drive anyway.

  Of course, I should not have been drinking, either.

  I have to get away from the funeral luncheon. I have to get away from Aunt Dolly and her inheritance obsession and Dr. Pierson and his depressing memories.

  But most of all I want to get away from Greg Hayden. Greg has done more than creep me out. He has frightened me. I’m not someone into psychoanalyzing others, but he sounds like a crazy man to me, the kind of crazy man who could go out and buy a gun to settle his feelings of unrequited love.

  I stumble and slide into the driver’s seat, and instead of fastening my seat belt, I pat my belly and say, “Okay, little bump, Mommy’s going to take us home.”

  I imagine that the winding country back roads of northwestern Connecticut, the roads that will take me to the Taconic Parkway South, will be my biggest challenge. But for some reason these narrow streets are easy to handle. It’s that curving, snaking, narrow, unpredictable, overused Taconic that turns out to be the bitch.

  Damn it! Why does the guy in the entrance lane keep stopping and starting, hesitating? I could’ve rear-ended him four times. Merge, for God’s sake.

  I know I should snap my seat belt into place, but, hey, I’ve got to keep my eyes on the road now.

  Okay, little guy or little gal, you’re in for a bumpy ride.

  “Bumpy” was not supposed to be a joke. I can be much funnier than a lame little pun like “bumpy” when I talk to my “bump.”

  You know that, little bump. You know that Mommy can be really funny.

  For some reason the other cars all seem way too close together. But if I bear left, I’m going to hit the guardrail. If I move too far right, I’m going to go off the road.

  Yes, I am shaky. No, I’m not drunk.

  At least that’s what I tell myself.

  I keep assuming that my sadness and depression are because I just came from my mother’s and father’s memorial service. But my brain and my heart are a big jumble of feelings. The sadness comes from this ride, the memory of the hundreds of times that we drove back from Sharon to Manhattan, usually on Sunday nights. Walter, my father’s driver, at the wheel. Liz and Lionel in the backseat. Me in between them. I hear my father’s voice:

  Well, I certainly don’t think that seat belts make a difference. Seat belts are for sissies. And I’m using the word sissies. That’s right.

  What awful word does he want to use? How can he be so stupid and so wealthy at the same time? Only my mother knows.

  Oh, for God’s sake, Lionel. We should have waited until Monday morning to come back. I only told you that forty times. But, oh, no, you had to go and enroll Emily into that Monday morning art class. As if she has any chance of being an artist.

  Lionel’s thought?

  For God’s sake, Liz, the girl is only eight. We might as well try to find something she’s good at.

  I hate this parkway, and I hate the way I’m feeling. I’m like a human yo-yo. First, I’m very sleepy. Then very wide awake. I guess I’m thankful that they don’t allow trucks on this parkway. The bump and I would have been crushed to death by now.

  Don’t you worry, little bump. Your mommy is watching out for you. I’ll always watch out for you.

  And I will. I absolutely will. That’s one thing I won’t mess up.

  Then it happens, Lawren Pierson’s voice from an hour or so earlier.

  I have been expecting great things from you, Emily. Is it possible that I missed them?

  I should have said, No. You haven’t missed them. I just haven’t done them. I still have time. I still have time.

  Hey, little bump. Are you thirsty? Gotta stay hydrated. Mommy has to make sure we have enough to drink.

  And, of course, there’s just one thing left to drink. The flask. I know I left some delicious vodka in there when I took a gulp of it back at the restaurant.

  Great. Now I’ll just find the flask. I’ll just feel around… and… and… there… got it.

  Okay, it’s going to take a magician to hold the wheel, hold the flask, and also unscrew the top of this lovely silver container.

  But, bump. I can’t risk it.

  Suddenly the scraping, banging, scratching sound of my car against the guardrail overwhelms me. I reflexively turn hard to my left. This unleashes a brass-band-gone-crazy of honking horns. I rush to turn back to my lane, but overshoot it and manage to hit the guardrail once more. Because I’m without a seat belt, my head hits the steering wheel quickly, hard.

  We’re going to be okay, bump. We’re going to be okay. Mommy will always take care of you.

  I manage to straighten out and stay in my lane. I’m back on track. But everything else is wrong: Head aching. Vodka gone. Blurry vision. I pat the bump. I feel the taste of blood in my mouth. A car slows down so that it can drive exactly parallel to my own. The driver of the car honks. A teenage boy is in the driver’s seat. Here it comes, I’m ready for it: “Asshole, idiot, fucking nutcase.” I’m assuming that this will be accompanied by the middle finger.