That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (read more books .txt) 📕

bar in Tokyo and a trattoria in Tuscany; to eat paella in Madrid and green papaya salad in Thailand; shaved ice in Hawaii and French toast in Hong Kong; she wanted to encourage, in Beatrice, a love of food, of taste, of all the good things in the world. And she’d ended up married to a man who’d once told her that his idea of hell was a nine-course tasting menu.

“Are you close to your brothers?” Diana was asking.

“Well, David’s still in Kentucky. I only see him once or twice a year. But Danny’s nearby. He and his husband live about an hour away from Philadelphia, and they’re terrific.” Daisy studied Diana’s face for any signs of surprise or distaste at the mention of Danny having a husband, but all she saw was the way Diana’s head was cocked as she listened closely. Of course she’s not a homophobe, Daisy told herself. She’s educated and sophisticated. She lives in New York City and she travels the world. If anything, a gay brother would probably give Daisy cachet instead of being counted against her.

“Jesse teaches dance, and works in an art gallery, and Danny’s a counselor at a high school in Trenton.” Daisy rummaged around with her toes, searching for her boot, which was now completely free of her foot and had escaped somewhere underneath the table. “And they live in Lambertville, which has this lovely downtown, with all kinds of shops and galleries.” She couldn’t stop herself from sighing.

“You prefer city living?” Diana asked.

“If it had just been me, I think I would have loved to live in a city. But Hal had strong feelings about raising kids in a place where they could ride their bikes and have backyards. And I got pregnant a year after we got married.” Daisy sighed again, and Diana looked sympathetic.

“Was that hard?” she asked.

“Oh, it was about what I should have expected. Colic. Screaming all night long. Feeling like a failure, because I’d wanted to breast-feed for a year, and Beatrice wouldn’t cooperate. Even when she was six weeks old, she wanted nothing to do with me.” Daisy tried to smile, to make it sound like a joke and not something that had wounded her deeply, something that pained her still. “My mom came for a week, right after Beatrice was born, but she wasn’t a lot of help. And then…” Daisy looked down into her empty glass. “Well, after my mom went home, it hit me.”

Diana looked at her expectantly, eyebrows raised.

“That I wasn’t going to get to go anywhere,” she explained. “That the years I probably should’ve spent living on my own, or seeing Europe on a Eurail Pass, or living with three girlfriends in New York, I was already married with a kid, and a husband who’s not crazy about travel.”

“Couldn’t you travel on your own? Or with friends?”

“I could go with friends. I did, sometimes.” She and Beatrice had made a few trips to the Poconos with Hannah and Zoe; they’d done overnight trips in New York. But they’d never gone very far, or stayed very long. “It’s not that Hal wouldn’t let me go. It’s just that he needs me.” If she hadn’t had the better part of that Bloody Mary inside of her, she wouldn’t have said it; and if she’d said it, she would have surely stopped there, but the combination of spices and horseradish and vodka and being in a room full of adults with a new friend who was listening with interest kept her talking.

“Needs you for what?” Diana was asking. If there was judgment in her tone, Daisy couldn’t hear it. “To take care of your daughter?”

“Well, definitely that, at first.” Daisy could still picture Hal, shirtless, with the baby in his arms, because the nurses at the hospital had encouraged skin-to-skin contact; Hal pacing back and forth along the upstairs hallway, insistently chanting, “Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep,” and with Beatrice’s small pink body pressed against his chest for all of ten minutes, before handing the baby back to Daisy. He’d needed her to manage the baby, and their house, and, eventually, Beatrice’s schooling and her schedule, needed her to remember his father’s birthday and the anniversary of his mother’s death, and set up doctor’s and dentist’s visits and buy groceries and gifts, to drop his suits at the dry cleaners and pick them up again. “Just everything. All of it. Our life. He needed me to run our life.”

Daisy tried to smile, to shake off the memories of those bad years, the exhaustion born of sleepless nights and busy days, and how it felt when Hal would just hand off the baby, mid-meltdown, so he could go shower and shave. “You’re lucky you never had to deal with any of this.”

“Oh, sure,” said Diana, rolling her eyes. “Because the world is just so delightful to women who don’t get married or have kids. Nobody ever thinks there’s anything wrong with me, and nobody ever asks if I’ve frozen my eggs, or when I’m going to meet Mr. Right.” Diana raised her glass. “To the grass always being greener.”

Daisy looked down and discovered a fresh drink in front of her. “To green grass,” she said, and hoped she hadn’t allowed the conversation to dwell too heavily on herself, and her own disappointments. “Did you fire anyone today?”

Diana touched a lock of her expensive-looking hair, and tucked it behind her ear. “I should have. There’s this one manager. He deserves to be fired, but I think the most I can hope for is getting him reassigned to a place where he won’t do as much damage.” She shook her head. “White guys—especially white guys who are part of a family business—they fail upward, or they move sideways. And they always come out fine in the end.”

“Ugh, right?” Daisy said. “My husband went to prep school. This place called Emlen, in New Hampshire. I swear to God, those guys…” She