A Hope for Emily

“Maybe.”

“What’s wrong?” She raises her eyebrows. “Tough day at work?”

Naomi is probably my best friend, amidst a handful of work colleagues I could call friends, but even she doesn’t know me that well. She doesn’t know what I’ve been trying to bury all these years, and she doesn’t know how I long for a baby now. She was surprised by my marriage, although she accepted the spontaneous destination wedding. I think that was more acceptable than if I’d planned a big, blowsy occasion at a golf club on Cape Cod.

“Yeah, I guess.” I don’t have the energy to enliven the pretense, and Naomi frowns.

“Seriously, what?”

I shake my head. She doesn’t even know about Emily, although I told her about Rachel. I never went into the details of it all, never wanted to. Easier all around if I didn’t tell anyone; if I let my marriage be simple. Naomi has only met James a handful of times; his commitment to Emily has made socializing difficult.

Emily. She has dogged my thoughts since Rachel came into my home, reeking of desperation, oozing a mother’s love, making me hate her and pity her in almost equal measure. Why did she have to get me involved, when I so very much haven’t been? Why did she have to make me doubt, wonder, care?

“Eva.” Naomi lays a hand on my arm. “Tell me what’s going on, because something obviously is. And let me buy you a drink.”

It doesn’t take much to coax me into a cocktail, and it gives me a moment to compose myself and figure out what I’m going to say, if anything. When Naomi comes back with another cherry cosmopolitan, my stomach cramps with both anticipation and anxiety about it all.

“Here we are,” Naomi says, handing me the huge glass. “Drink up.”

I take a small sip; it’s surprisingly strong as well as terribly sweet, like sugary cough syrup. “Now tell me what’s going on,” Naomi instructs. “Is it work? Is it marriage?” She can’t help but make a little face; she has never been big on commitment. We bonded over cocktails similar to this one back in New York, declaring we’d do everything for our careers and nothing for love. How things have changed… at least for me.

“I suppose it’s marriage,” I say after a moment, as the alcohol burns through me. “Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

And so, haltingly, somewhat reluctantly, I tell her about Emily. And about what Rachel now wants me to do. Naomi’s mouth drops open as soon as I let the first bombshell drop, and she doesn’t close it until I trail away, the unfinished ending to this sad story. And then… what? What am I going to do?

“Seriously? She wants you to intervene, siding with her against your own husband? I mean, the nerve.”

> For some reason I am annoyed that this is the first thing Naomi says. “She’s desperate. She doesn’t have any choice.”

“This is not your problem, Eva.” Naomi shakes her head as she sips her cocktail. “Not at all.”

“James is my husband,” I point out. “Emily is his daughter. They are my part of my life.” Despite how separate they’ve been. How much of that was because of James, and how much was down to me? Because until Rachel showed up at my door, I didn’t realize just how much I didn’t want or need to meet my husband’s first wife.

“And Rachel is his ex-wife. They can deal with their own problems. Dragging you right into the middle of it? I mean, what even is that?”

I can’t get on board with Naomi’s outrage, as much as part of me wants to. It would be so much easier, so wonderfully simple, to shrug this all off, to hold up my hands and say nuh-uh. Not me. “Don’t you feel sorry for her?” I ask curiously.

Naomi stiffens, surprised, a little discomfited. “I mean, yes, of course I do,” she says after a moment, looking annoyed and flustered. “Anyone would be. That’s not the point. You can feel sorry for someone, Eva, and not have to swoop in and fix all their problems.”

I think of Emily, lying so still in a hospital bed, not that I’ve actually seen her there or anywhere else. I’ve only imagined it, too many times, like something out of a movie, some weepy drama. “I’d hardly be doing that.”

Naomi regards me for a moment. “So, you’re seriously thinking about this? I thought you were going to bitch to me about this Rachel, the nerve of her, but you’re not, are you?” She shakes her head slowly. Wonderingly. “You’re really thinking about doing something.”

“I don’t know if I am.” I think of what I said to Rachel—that I’d do my best. What is my best? I don’t even know, and yet she launched onto it as if it was some kind of lifeline, thanking me, even reaching for my hand before she thought better of it. I felt like a traitor, because I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I would actually dare to say anything. I certainly didn’t want to, and yet…

If you and James had a child… wouldn’t you want to do whatever you could to try to help them?

Could Rachel possibly know how much she hurt me with those words? How they would play over and over again in my mind, taunting me, tormenting me.

If. If. If.

If only…

“I don’t get it,” Naomi says, making me look up from my drink; I’ve only had the one sip. My stomach is churning. “This isn’t like you.”

“It isn’t?” I don’t know whether I should be offended. What is like me? Am I the tough businesswoman I try to be at work, briskly polished and coolly focused, or the easygoing, fun lover I want to be at home? Am I the dutiful daughter at my parents’ interminable barbecues, or the quiet, seething rebel I feel on the inside? I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, never mind Naomi.