Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [72]
Harrison was explaining how the hedge fund he worked for was adjusting to the economy and how their outlook was changing. Every time he said the word “derivatives,” Isabella’s temples throbbed. Coco and Brinkley listened intently, and not just to be polite. They were interested in what he was saying.
He was boring, Isabella realized. She watched him tell a story about work and it hit her: He was boring, and his friends were boring, and this picnic right now was boring. Harrison probably had a secret desire to get married and move to Boston and get a golden retriever and be boring all the time. She didn’t know him at all.
And worse, what if he didn’t want to marry her and move to Boston? She wasn’t quite sure she wanted to be with him, but she was quite sure that she wanted him to want that. Her brain swirled inside her head, and she closed her eyes and tilted her head back to face the sun.
Sometimes Harrison seemed like an old man, crooked and worn out. He was cranky at the end of workdays, loosening his tie and watching the evening news. They probably shouldn’t have moved in together so soon, but rent in New York was insane and both of their leases were up and they were spending almost every night together anyway. It seemed like a good idea. Now Isabella couldn’t imagine how they would ever get out of it even if they wanted to.
“Do you ever hate Ken?” Isabella had asked her friend Mary a couple of weeks ago. They were getting manicures on a Wednesday night after work and the question just came out. Ken was Mary’s new boyfriend, a nice guy who made all of their friends comment, “Oh, there he is. That’s what she’s been waiting for,” as if finding your perfect match was a guarantee as long as you were patient enough.
Mary raised her eyebrows and looked closely at a nail she’d just smudged.
“Hate him?” she asked.
“Yeah. Hate him,” Isabella said. “The other night I looked at Harrison and I just … I don’t know.”
“I don’t know if I ever hate him,” Mary said. “But he sure bugs the living fuck out of me sometimes.”
That night they all went to the North End for Italian food. They ate pasta and drank less wine than they had the night before, and Brinkley, Coco, and Harrison all exchanged information about people they’d gone to school with.
“Cathleen’s pregnant again,” Coco said. “But she’s not really telling anyone yet, so don’t say anything.”
Coco always knew the best gossip, and almost everything she said was followed by a disclaimer that she wasn’t supposed to repeat it. The first time Isabella had met Coco was at a wedding of Brinkley and Harrison’s friend Tom. Coco spent most of the reception sharing bits of information with Isabella. The bride had cheated on the groom in college with another friend, Dave, who hadn’t been invited to the wedding, and also one of the bridesmaids had been in love with the groom since freshman year!
Isabella took these confidences to mean that Coco really liked her, that she wanted to be friends, and she was flattered by the attention. But after a few more encounters, Isabella realized there was nothing special about her. Coco just couldn’t keep a secret.
Back at their house, Coco put out cookies and poured everyone some wine. The baby was wide awake, and lay on the floor on a pink blanket with a mobile of stuffed farm animals above her. She babbled at them like she was telling a story.
“You have a lot to say tonight, don’t you?” Coco asked the baby.
“Just like her mother,” Harrison said, and they all laughed.
For some reason this made Isabella feel left out, like she was crashing a reunion. She sat on the floor next to the baby, pretending to be so interested in Elizabeth that she didn’t care about the conversation around her. The three of them were still trading information about people from college, but they had moved on to peripheral friends, people Isabella had never even met.
“Dorothea got laid off!” Coco almost yelled this one, so happy that she’d remembered