Her sisters, of course, refused to be converted. “What crap,” sneered Cat. “I hate those sort of books. I can’t believe you’re falling for it.”
“It’s weird,” said Gemma. “Every time I tried to read about the first habit, I just fell into the deepest sleep.”
So Lyn became a highly effective person on her own—and it worked. It worked like a charm.
“Oh, you’re so lucky!” people said of her success. Well, she wasn’t lucky. She was effective. Ever since then, she had begun each day with a strong cup of coffee and a brand-new “to do” list. She had a hardbound notebook especially for the task. At the front was her “principle-centered personal mission statement” and her long-term, medium-term, and short-term goals for each of the key areas of her life: work, family, and friends.
She loved that notebook. It gave her such a soothing sense of satisfaction as she drew a neat, sharp line through each new priority—check, check, check!
Just recently however, she’d noticed the tiniest, quickly suppressed blip of panic whenever she began a new list. She found herself thinking unproductive thoughts like, What if it was simply physically impossible to do everything? Sometimes it felt like all the people in her life were scavengers, pecking viciously away at her flesh, wanting more, more, more.
A friend from university had called recently, complaining that Lyn never kept in touch, and Lyn had wanted to scream at her, I have no time, don’t you see, I have no time! Instead, she had done a spreadsheet and listed all her friends, categorized by importance (close friend, good friend, casual friend) with columns for dinners, lunches, coffees, “just called to see how you are” phone calls and e-mails.
If her sisters ever discovered the existence of her “friend management system” they would be merciless.
She looked out her office window at the dazzling expanse of turquoise water and thought about herself through the eyes of the She journalist. When she’d walked into Lyn’s elegant home office with its harbor views, her lip had curled with envy. In some ways, Lyn agreed with her. She did have it all—adoring husband, gorgeous child, stimulating career—and she damn well deserved it. She worked hard, she was good at what she did—she was effective!
But some days, like when Gemma telephoned from the bathtub, water sloshing in the background, Lyn wondered what it would be like to be a little less effective, with nothing more to worry about than when to sleep with a new boyfriend.
And some days, like today, it felt like there was a band of pressure squeezing tightly around her skull. Talk to C. re D. Oh God.
No paradigm shift could eliminate a good strong dose of Catholic guilt.
The year Lyn turned twenty-two someone switched her life over to fast-forward and forgot to change it back again. That’s how it felt. When people said to her, “Can you believe how fast the year has gone? Christmas again!” she replied too fervently, “I know! I can’t believe it!”
Sometimes she’d be doing something perfectly ordinary, sitting at the dinner table passing Kara the pepper and without warning, she’d feel a strange, dizzy sense of disorientation. She’d look at Michael and think, Surely it was only a few months ago that we got married! She’d look at Maddie and think, But you were a tiny baby, only a few days ago! It was as if she were being picked up and put down again in each new stage of her life like a chess piece.
She could pinpoint the moment her life switched over to fast-forward. It was the day she got the phone call in Spain. The phone call about Gemma.
“It’s bad news,” said Cat, her voice echoing hollowly down the line and Lyn said “What?” even though she heard her perfectly well, just to put it off, just to annoy Cat, because she didn’t really believe it was anything bad.
“Bad news!” Cat repeated impatiently. “It’s something really, really bad.”
Lyn had spent the last ten months working in a London hotel and hating every minute of it. Now she was making up for it with eight long weeks of carefree summer travel around Europe before returning home in time for Gemma’s wedding.
Lyn had met an American boy named Hank in Barcelona. They caught the train together down the Costa Brava and stopped at a little town called Llanca. Each day lasted a lifetime. Their balcony looked right out on sparkling sea and hazy mountains capped with snowy white buildings. She and Hank weren’t sleeping together yet, but it would take only couple more jugs of sangria. Sometimes as they walked through sunlit cobbled streets he’d grab her and push her up against a wall and they’d kiss until they were both breathless. Lyn felt like she was living in an Audrey Hepburn movie. It was laughably romantic.
“What bad news?” asked Lyn calmly. She looked down at her sandy feet on the white tiles of her hotel room and admired her tanned, pink toenails. No doubt it was the bridesmaids’ dresses. Gemma probably wanted them to look like fluffy meringues, or more likely, something strange, like Gothic witches or flower-power hippies.
“Marcus is dead.”
Lyn watched her toes curl in surprise.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“I mean he’s dead. He got hit by a car on Military Road. He died in the ambulance. Gemma was with him.”
It was like being winded. Lyn grabbed at the telephone cord.
“It’s O.K. She’s fine. Well, she’s not fine. Her fiancé is dead. But she’s fine. She’s not hurt or anything.”
Lyn let out her breath. “My God. I can’t believe it.”
“She says you’re not to come home. She doesn’t want to ruin your holiday.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Lyn. “I’m coming now.”
There was the tiniest tremor in Cat’s voice. “I said you probably would.”
Hank came into the room while she was calling the airline and sat by her feet on the tiled floor, dripping from his swim. He took hold of her ankle. “What’s the deal?”
“I’m going home.”
He was sitting right next to her, touching her, but already he felt like a memory. His wet hair and tanned face seemed frivolous and insubstantial.
And that was when things switched to fast-forward.
She caught a train to Barcelona and managed to get on a flight to Heathrow, where a man at the Qantas counter upgraded her to business class, clucking sympathetically and tap-tapping conspiratorially at his keyboard. He handed her the boarding pass with a beatific smile, as if he knew he was handing her a brand-new destiny.