That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (free e reader txt) 📗

Diana said, even as Daisy wondered if it was true, if she’d have snatched up any guy with Hal’s education and prospects. It wasn’t something she enjoyed thinking about.

“I love my husband.”

Diana nodded, and looked across the table, watchful and waiting.

“It was just…” Daisy’s boots were squeezing her toes. She shifted in her seat, discreetly easing her right foot partially free. “It was pretty grim, after my dad died. I think if I hadn’t gotten married, I would have felt obligated to live with my mother.” Daisy suppressed a shudder, remembering, in spite of herself, the dark apartment that always seemed to smell like cabbage, even though she’d never cooked it; her mother’s vacant expression as she sat on the couch; and how she’d felt like a wind-up car, frantically whizzing this way and that, trying to distract her mother, to jolly her out of her misery and get her back in the land of the living. The memory of falling asleep every night with the weight of her failure like a lead ball in her gut.

“So Hal was your escape hatch.” Daisy must have looked startled, because Diana quickly said, “I don’t mean that in a dismissive way. Given what was going on with your mother, it sounds like anyone would have wanted to escape.”

“Hal’s a wonderful guy,” said Daisy. She had been in love with Hal; completely, head over heels in love. She could remember those feelings vividly. They’d been real. But there’d been more to it. She had wanted a soft place to land, and Hal, who’d already made partner at his law firm, who’d inherited a house and had money in the bank, had been just that landing place. She also had no doubt that her mother was glad to have Daisy’s future settled, to have Daisy be someone else’s responsibility. And Hal had wanted a comfortable nest; he’d wanted ballast, things that could tether him to his responsible, straight-arrow life. A house, a mortgage, a wife and a child; those things could keep him in place and serve as a barrier between his old life and his new one. As to exactly what that old life encompassed, Daisy still wasn’t entirely sure. She’d never asked him much about it. She’d never wanted to, and told herself she didn’t have to push or probe. Thinking about Hal’s history was like walking into a dark room and touching the side of a monster. You didn’t have to do more than sense its contours, its shape and its bulk, to understand that it was bad.

Diana was looking at her closely, with interest but no judgment on her face, as Daisy said slowly, “I think sometimes, if I’d been a better person, I would have stayed with my mom, and been there for her, and not complained. But I always knew I wanted to get married and have children, and a home of my own. I just ended up doing it sooner than I’d planned.” When she’d told them the news, her roommates had performed something resembling an intervention, sitting her down on the couch, asking, one after another, Are you sure? You don’t think this is all really fast? You’re sure that you know him? Not love him, but know him. Marisol had asked her that, Daisy remembered, and she’d said, Yes, of course I know him, even as she’d thought, How much does anyone know anyone else? And how can anyone be sure about anything? What she’d known then was that Hal was, by far, the best-looking guy who’d ever shown any interest in her; he was handsome and accomplished. She knew no one better would ever come along, and she saw no reason to wait.

“What about your brothers?” Diana asked. “They were adults, right? Couldn’t they have helped?”

Daisy felt herself squirming under the other woman’s gaze. She forced herself to sit still. “David was married and living in Kentucky, and Danny was in New York City, but he was in graduate school, so he hardly ever made it home. I was the only one left. And—well, I was the girl. It just felt like the household stuff naturally landed on my shoulders.” With her forefinger, she wiped a bead of condensation off her glass. “The thing is, it wouldn’t have even been for very long. Six months after I got married, my mom met Arnold Mishkin, the guy who lived in the penthouse in her apartment building. He was a retired doctor, so he had plenty of money. A romance for the ages,” Daisy said, trying to smile and not think about how it had hurt to see her mom smiling again, and know that it was this new man, this stranger, who’d done what Daisy couldn’t. “My brother Danny calls them the lovebirds.” She drew herself up straight in her seat, which seemed to be trying to coax her into a slouch, and said, “What’s the best city you’ve ever visited?”

They talked about Paris, where Diana had spent a whole summer when she was in her twenties, about chocolate croissants and macarons and the best patisseries. Diana mentioned stints in Los Angeles (“terrible traffic”) and Phoenix (“incredible shopping”) and Cleveland (“better than you’d think”). Her hands moved gracefully as she spoke, her voice rising and falling in a way that Daisy found extremely soothing… although, again, that might have been the vodka.

Diana talked about visits to Tokyo and Rome. Daisy listened, wistfully recalling her own grand plans. When Beatrice no longer needed bottles or sippie cups or an endless supply of chicken nuggets, Daisy had wanted to travel, and Hal had been perfectly amenable. The problem was that his idea of a perfect vacation was not Europe but, instead, a resort with a golf course that could be reached by a direct flight from Philadelphia International Airport, while Daisy wanted to eat hand-pulled noodles in Singapore and margherita pizza in Rome and warm pain au chocolat in Paris; she wanted to sit in a sushi