A Hope for Emily

“Um, yes. Of course.” Her tone is stiff, her nod jerky. She steps aside and I slip by her, into James’ new home, where I’ve never been before.

I recognize some of the furniture. When we sold the house, we split everything—the furniture, the dishes, the wedding presents. It seemed only fair, and I didn’t want to reconstruct our family home in a shabby duplex anyway, a second rate version of what I once had. I let James have the good pieces, and I topped up with stuff from IKEA.

Now I feel a jolt as I see our leather sofa in the living room; James and I sat on that just about every evening. I can picture my feet in his lap, his palm spanning the curvature of my baby bump. I look away, and catch sight of the hall table we picked up at an antique store in the Catskills, after trying to haggle with the owner of the shop, a wiry, dapper gentleman with snow-white hair and a mischievous smile. Being here is going to be harder than I thought.

I walk towards the back of the apartment, noticing the new things too. Some nice lithographs of colonial Boston. Dining room chairs in white leather. How totally impractical, I think, but then of course they don’t have children. Looking at Eva, one French-manicured hand resting on the living room doorway, her wasp-thin waist emphasized by the tailored skirt and tucked-in blouse, I wonder if they ever will. It’s not a possibility I want to dwell on even for a moment.

“This is a surprise,” Eva says eventually, when I haven’t said anything. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to just come here like this.” I don’t want to be hostile, but it rises up in me anyway, a bubbling resentment I’ve kept at a sensible simmer for too long. I turn to face her. “I know I’m invading your privacy, your life, and I am sorry to do that…” My words trail away and she raises her eyebrows.

“But…?” she prompts coolly. She doesn’t want me here. It’s uncomfortably obvious, insulting, even though I understand it. I don’t want to be here, either.

“James isn’t answering my texts or emails anymore. He’s refusing to engage with me about Emily’s care, and so I decided I needed to find another way to discuss something with him.”

“So you’re involving me?” Her tone is not promising, as her eyebrows rise higher. She sounds incredulous and even horrified, as if she can’t imagine why on earth I would do such a thing. I can’t imagine it, either, and yet here I am. Desperation drives you to do the strangest things, and not even feel sorry or embarrassed.

“I just need him to listen, Eva. And he won’t listen to me.” I thought about cornering him in his office, trailing him out to the parking lot, but that felt too humiliating and I don’t think it would work anyway. James needs to hear my viewpoint from someone else. Someone else who thinks like I do.

And that’s Eva?

Who else could it be?

“Your relationship with James has nothing to do with me, Rachel,” Eva says firmly. “Nothing at all.”

“Doesn’t it?” My words hover in the air and then fall softly to the ground. Eva gives a little shake of her head but says nothing. I decide to try another tack. “Look, this isn’t ideal, is it? Divorce… remarriage… we all know that this isn’t the way it’s meant to go, but life is messy and broken, and here we are.”

“Thanks for that.” There is acid in her voice now; I didn’t mean it unkindly but I see her bristle, and I curse myself for making this even harder than it needs to be.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to…” I pause, helpless, wanting this so much to work and yet afraid it already hasn’t. Afraid that it was a desperately absurd thing to do in the first place. “Eva, look, what I was trying to say, and making a mess of it obviously, is that I’m not… I’m not bitter. About… you know. You.” There is a lie twisted up in all that truth, but I can’t untangle it now. “I accept that it didn’t work out between James and me, that he’s happy with you now. I’m not here to rock that boat or cause any trouble between you.” That much is absolutely true. “All that matters to me now is Emily,” I say, and I hear the throb of sincerity, of feeling, in my voice, like a pulse. I see Eva’s eyes widen and I know she hears it too. “And James is refusing even to talk to me about it. I need someone to speak sense to him, someone he’ll actually listen to…”

“And you think I’m that person?” There is a disparaging note in her voice I’m not sure I understand.

“Who else is there?”

“What about his dad? He’d listen to him, maybe?”

I shake my head. James’ mother died two and a half years after we were married, and his father remarried a woman from his gym six months later. James wasn’t happy about it; the irony isn’t wasted on me now. In any case, James’ relationship with his father, a former bigwig in finance and undoubtedly once a workaholic, was always a bit distant, with that slap-on-the-back-instead-of-a-hug kind of affection.

“I don’t think so,” I tell Eva. “They’ve never had that kind of relationship.” In fact, James became estranged from his father for a brief period after college, when he didn’t go right into actuarial work, but spent a year travelling in the Far East, finding himself, something his father took a dim view of. But doesn’t Eva know all that?

She moves from the doorway to the kitchen, picking up a half-full wine glass along the way, shaking her head all the while. “Whatever you want me to do, Rachel… I don’t think I’m the right person to do it.”

“I know it’s not ideal, and it might feel a bit awkward.” I follow her into the kitchen, which is a pristine hymn to granite and stainless steel, and looks untouched. “But you know Emily has gone into the palliative care unit…” I don’t actually know what James has told her, how involved she’s been; I’ve never liked thinking of the two of them discussing my daughter, or for that matter, me. I haven’t wanted to imagine James complaining about my attitude, not that I think he wo

uld. He’s loyal, in his way. But it still feels deeply uncomfortable, to think of them talking about my life. My pain.

“I know, yes,” Eva says briefly.

“And I suppose James has told you I’m not happy about it?”

“Yes.” Eva sloshes more wine into her glass, filling it nearly to the brim. She turns to me, one eyebrow raised. “Want a glass?”

I do, I need something to steady my nerves, but it doesn’t feel right, and besides, I’m driving. “No thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” She puts the wine bottle, only a mouthful left in it, back in the huge sub-zero fridge and then picks up her wine glass, closing her eyes briefly as she takes a sip.

Then she opens her eyes and stares at me hard, which is a little disconcerting. Is she looking at my gray roots that are at least an inch long, the lines carved into my face that weren’t there three years ago?