39. Some Forgotten Corner

“We live on an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” —Carl Sagan

“Do you see somebody?”

“Where?” Becky asked. They were standing in the backyard, shivering in their winter coats. Although the temperature had risen considerably since last week, Jen had warned Becky that it would still be too cold to stand around outside.

“I want to see the lake,” Becky said. “I’ll feel stupid if I spend two weeks at a lake house and don’t even visit the lake once.”

Jen pointed out that Becky had already seen the lake during the summer, and on this trip through the window, but Becky wanted to walk right up to it. They were standing at its edge now, right where the frozen ground turned sludgy with melted ice.

“He’s way on the other side,” Jen said, pointing. “On the balcony of the green house.”

The melting ice of the lake had cast a gray haze over everything, and Jen wasn’t sure if the distant figure was there. She thought she might be able to see his face, so stoic and unmoving, as though he were deep in meditation—or was that just a leaf? It seemed implausible that he would be outside on days as cold as this, sitting stoically on his balcony, staring out over the icy water. He might be a statue, she thought, and not a person at all. After all, though she could barely see him, he always seemed so still, his gaze so steady. But her intuition told her that this was not the case, that the figure was not only alive, but watching her specifically, not in a scary way, but with a kind of benevolent interest in her daily activities.

“I don’t see anyone,” Becky said.

“Look,” Jen said, tracing the figure’s outline with her finger. “See, his head is there, under that tree branch.” She could see him now, coming into focus, the straight back, the serene face staring right back at her from across the water.

“Maybe,” said Becky. “Yeah, I think that might be somebody.”

“Don’t lie to me,” said Jen. “It’s okay if you can’t see him.” She turned to face her friend and realized she was shivering again, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, her jaw clenched to keep her teeth from chattering.

“Do you want to go back inside?” Jen asked. The cold wasn’t bothering her at all. I must have toughened up over the winter, she thought, remembering how the wind had felt like it was blowing straight through her skin when the temperatures had first started falling in October.

“No, I really want to see him,” Becky said, though Jen could hear her teeth knocking together now as she spoke. “Where did you say he is?”

“There,” said Jen, pointing again. “But maybe he’s not there today.” Suddenly, she remembered Marie, who was sleeping in her carrier just inside, in the kitchen. Becky had said it would be okay to leave her for a few minutes, but it had been at least ten by now.

“The baby,” said Jen.

“Oh, right,” said Becky, her tone suggesting that she knew she had forgotten something important. She stared for a moment longer before turning back towards the house. As she reached the back door, she turned to look one last time at the lake. “I really want to see him,” she said again. “The man across the lake. Is he good luck or something?”

“I don’t know,” said Jen, pulling the door open for Becky so she would not have to unclench her arms from her waist. She tried to explain what she thought about the man, what he meant to her, but she couldn’t come up with words to describe her fascination. “I don’t know what he is,” she said.

Inside, Jen heated up water for tea while Becky nursed Marie. It had only been two weeks, and already they had established a comfortable little routine together, like a family. On the days that Becky didn’t follow her to taekwondo, Jen loved coming home to the sounds of Becky cooking in the kitchen. “Hold Marie,” she would say, and Jen would sit on a blanket on the floor near the heating vent, Marie cuddled against her chest like a puppy, watching Becky chop vegetables and pour steaming pasta into a strainer. This house will be strange without a family, Jen thought.

Before dawn tomorrow, Jen would drive them to the airport. By the time the sun rose in the rear view mirror of Jen’s car, Becky and Marie would be on an airplane and Jen would be returning to North Middleton alone.

Becky hadn’t mentioned her offer to move to Michigan explicitly during the rest of her trip, but she had begun to treat Cone and North Middleton as her new home. She had been taking an ongoing verbal inventory of items Jen would need if she moved out of the lake house: “And you don’t have any blankets or sheets,” she would say, or, “You’ll need some dishes.” When they ran out to Jen’s regular small market for groceries, Jen noticed her sizing up the produce section, checking to see if the slim winter offerings, kale and hothouse tomatoes and imported cantaloupe, were organic. “Let’s look at the vitamin section,” she had said, even though she was not buying any vitamins. Yesterday had been Becky’s last day at the taekwondo school—Jen was skipping training today so they could spend the entire day together—and when she left, she had hugged both Rob and Olivia warmly: “I’ll see you soon,” she had said.

“I don’t want to go back,” Becky said, blowing absent-mindedly on her steaming cup of tea. She was staring out the window at the lake, as though still hoping to see the figure on the other side, though Jen was pretty sure that it would be impossible from this distance.

“You used to love LA,” Jen said. “Remember when you first moved out there? That was the happiest I had ever seen you. You’d come home every day saying, ‘Everyone here does yoga!’ or ‘Everyone here is a movie star!’”

“Young love,” said Becky. “I’m tired of it now. I just want to be a grown-up. I want to live in a grown-up place.”

She took a short, cautious sip of her tea, wrapping her both hands tightly around the hot surface of the cup for warmth.

“You’ll think about it, won’t you?” she said. “That’s all you have to do right now, think about it.”

Jen nodded. But truthfully, thinking about it was exactly what Jen didn’t want to do. She wished she could fast-forward through all the thinking and just find out what happens, like reading the last page of a novel first. Though she couldn’t imagine leaving here, she also couldn’t imagine the moment when she would make a decision to stay. The only other place she had ever decided to move to was Los Angeles, and that was to work in television and then movies, and if she wanted to keep working, she couldn't leave. But now, she could live anywhere she wanted. Anywhere. How does it happen, Jen wondered, that someone chooses a place to live, a place no different than any other place, and decides that this particular anyplace is home?

“I’ll figure something out soon,” said Jen.

She waited for Becky to respond, but Marie had started her hunger-dance, stretching her arms and legs as far from her body as she could, her fists clenched, toes curled into her tiny feet, and her face looking like she was crying, though she hadn’t made a noise yet.

“Time to eat,” Becky said, picking Marie up to nurse her. Jen didn’t even notice anymore. Several times, Jen had thought that people in the store or the coffee shop had been gawking at her, before remembering that they were simply surprised to see Becky feeding her baby in public.

“Speaking of LA,” Becky said, once Marie was comfortably situated, “I thought I should tell you. I saw Bradley.”

“Oh,” said Jen. “Bradley. I forgot about him.” It was the truth, she realized. She didn’t watch TV, had no access to the internet, and it had been months since she had seen the cover of a tabloid. She felt reluctant to allow him back into her consciousness now, but it seemed rude not to ask about him.

“How is he?” she asked.

“He seems good,” said Becky. Good, thought Jen. I’m glad he seems good. She wondered if she had completed her socially-mandated duty to ask polite questions. But Becky was still looking at her expectantly, waiting for more. I could just change the subject, Jen thought. But she didn’t want to be rude or make Becky feel bad for mentioning her ex-husband. One more question, she thought, and that will be enough.

“Where did you see him?” she asked.

“At a yoga class for parents with babies.”

Jen couldn’t help it; she sucked in breath through her teeth.

“Oh,” Becky said, slapping her hand across her mouth, then dropping it to her chin. “Crap.”

“It’s okay,” said Jen.

“You didn’t know?” Becky asked.

“No, but that’s all right,” Jen said. She realized that she felt worse about making Becky feel bad than about Bradley having a child with his new girlfriend.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to spring it on you,” Becky said. “I feel horrible.” Jen watched as she tried to reach out, maybe to touch Jen’s arm, but couldn’t figure out how to balance Marie with one hand while keeping her in position to nurse.

“It’s okay,” said Jen. “I had heard a rumor.”

“So you really didn’t know they had a baby?” Becky asked, now sounding impressed instead of guilty. “That’s incredible.”

“It’s been everywhere?” Jen asked.

“Everywhere,” said Becky. “It’s like you can’t get away from it.”

Jen thought back to what it was like living in Los Angeles, surrounded by tabloids and televisions and billboards and gossip. She remembered, even before her own name was well-known, how she would know everything about all the big movie stars, every relationship, every break-up, every triumphant and tragic and embarrassing event. She would call them by first name, just like the tabloids did—Jen’s heartbreak, Jen’s new fling—as though they were her closest friends instead of people she had never met. Yes, if Bradley had a baby, everyone would know, she realized. If Bradley’s girlfriend had a baby, she corrected herself.

“So they’re still together?” Jen asked, now asking questions out of true curiosity rather than politeness.

“Yeah, so far,” said Becky. “At least the magazines haven’t said anything about them breaking up. We only talked for a few minutes, but he didn’t say much about her, so maybe that’s good.”

Jen knew what Becky meant, but in fact, she didn’t agree that it was good. In fact, she realized, she didn’t care whether or not Bradley was happy. She couldn’t quite say that she wanted him to be happy, because really, she didn’t want anything for him; she had no feeling about him at all. She tried making herself be happy for him, but it was like trying to be happy for King Arthur or Napoleon. She couldn’t get any real sense of who Bradley was, or what his life was about.

She knew that it used to be her life, too—the film sets, the photographers, the nice clothes and fancy restaurants and exclusive clubs—but looking back, it seemed to belong to some other person. She couldn’t imagine a life like that now, being followed everywhere, everyone knowing every detail of your personal life. If that can make him happy, she thought, then I’m glad. But the main happiness she felt was for herself, that she had escaped it, that she was not ever going to allow her life to become someone else’s entertainment again.

“That reminds me,” said Jen. “I have news for you. I can’t believe I haven’t told you this already.” She had been meaning to surprise Becky with her gossip early in the trip, but each day she kept remembering only after Becky had gone to bed. I can’t believe she almost left without me telling her, Jen thought.

“Guess who I almost saw?”

“I don’t know,” said Becky. “What do you mean, almost saw?”

“Well, Master Park took me to the Snail Plant to play chess, and I ended up replacing another player who was supposed to be there, and it was—you are not going to believe this—Vanto Hatch.”

“Oh,” said Becky. She looked down at Marie, determined that she had finished nursing, and straightened her shirt out, now balancing the baby more easily with one hand.

“Isn’t that crazy?” said Jen. “He comes here about once a month to play chess. There’s a good chance I’ll play against him some day if I go back there. I wonder if he’ll remember me. Probably not—I mean, I’m just some girl he sort of dated in middle school, right? ”

“I quit Groundbreakers,” Becky said.

“What?” Jen asked. “Wait. Why?”

Becky picked up her tea, now cool enough that she could take a large gulp of it while she considered how to answer. Marie was falling asleep again after her meal; Becky lifted her gently into the carrier, which sat in the middle of the kitchen table as though it were a serving platter and Marie was the main course.

“Do you remember that book Paula gave me, The Deliberate Family?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” said Jen, thinking back to her trip to Los Angeles. “It was all about using chess strategy to raise your kids, right? I guess that makes a little more sense to me now—at least we know where Vanto Hatch is getting his chess strategy from.” She laughed, pleased to have made this connection.

“That book is horrible,” Becky said.

“I thought you liked it,” Jen said, remembering how delighted Becky had been to receive an advance copy of the Groundbreaker’s guide to parenting.

“How could I like it?” Becky asked. “That book all about how to terrorize your children into doing what you want them to, treating them like your enemy. It calls them your ‘opponent.’”

Becky paused and took a long breath, and then another long sip of her tea. When she spoke again, she was more composed.

“I guess I was kind of excited about it at first,” Becky admitted. “Before Marie was born. I mean, it’s kind of an interesting idea in theory, to run your family like a war or something, but once you actually have a family…” Becky paused and looked at Marie, sleeping in her carrier.

“It’s kind of sick,” Jen said, finishing her sentence.

“It is,” said Becky, holding Marie’s tiny foot and using it to rock her gently in the carrier. “But you know, it wasn’t just the parenting strategies. Everything in Groundbreakers was starting to get that way.”

“What way?” Jen asked. She had a pretty strong guess what Becky meant, but she wanted to hear how she would put it into words. It was something dark that Becky was alluding to, something that had been bothering Jen as well, and Jen was still struggling with how to understand it.

“The idea that every part of life is a battle,” Becky said, her lack of hesitation suggesting that she was having no difficulty describing the thing Jen was thinking of. “This you-versus-the-world mentality. It just seems really egotistical and selfish.”

Yes, that was it, Jen thought. That’s what The New Aggressive Male was all about. The ideas had troubled her, and yet they had seemed so logical the way the book had presented them, so difficult to argue against.

She thought of what Fred Fawls would say in response to Becky. “But isn’t our job as individuals to advocate for ourselves? I mean, obviously there are other people in our lives who we take care of, like our families. But aren’t there lots of people who are our adversaries?”

“That’s one way to think about it,” said Becky, wrinkling her eyebrows at Jen like she was trying to see her better. “Did they teach you that in taekwondo or something?”

“Sort of,” said Jen. “Maybe.”

“It’s very male,” said Becky. “The whole having-to-be-better-than-everyone-else thing. It was starting to infuse all the parts of Groundbreakers. My coach started to talking to me about making game plans instead of blueprints, like it was football or something. He said I needed a plan for Marie to help her get ahead in life, to give her a competitive advantage. It was just making me tired.”

Before now, Jen had never appreciated the positivity of the building metaphor; it had always annoyed her with its phony blue-collaredness. At least building was—she grimaced at the pun even though she had not said it aloud—constructive.

“It’s good you left,” said Jen, grabbing Marie’s other foot, the one that Becky wasn’t holding. It felt warm and solid in her hand, and after a moment, she could feel the pulsing rhythm of Marie’s blood being pumped through her tiny veins. It’s traveling up her leg, and into her heart, and back down into her other foot, under Becky’s hand, Jen thought.

“I’m never going to be in a group like that again,” Becky said. “I’m never going to let somebody tell me what to think.”

Jen nodded. She wondered if she was herself currently in a group like that, and if so, how she had let it happen, and whether she needed to get out.

Chapter 40

38. The Center of One's Own History

“Exile in a real place, a place of few bodies and many stones, is just an extension (a packaging) of the other exile, the state of being separated from whatever is left of the center of one’s own history.” —Don DeLillo

Becky called the lake house the day after the baby was born. “She’s called Marie,” Becky said, her voice tired and happy through the background buzzing of the unreliable phone line. “After Marie Curie.”

“Marie Curie?” Jen repeated, trying to remember what she knew about this famous name. “She died a tragic death of radiation poisoning, right?”

“She was a chemist and a physicist,” Becky said. “She won two Nobel Prizes.”

“Oh, right,” said Jen. “And why did you name the baby after her?”

Becky’s exasperated sigh filled Jen’s ear with a burst of crackly static.

“I want her to be a scientist,” Becky said. “Not an actress, not a celebrity, not anything stupid. No offense,” she added. “I want her to do something important.”

“Do you want me to fly out there?” Jen asked, jumping up from the couch to prove her willingness to leave on a moment’s notice. The truth was, she really didn’t want to. Her last trip to Los Angeles had been exhausting for her on both ends, first re-orienting herself to the frantic socialness of Hollywood, then returning to her solitary life in Michigan, far more solitary now that Shane was gone. That had been two months earlier, and Jen had just finally gotten back into a comfortable routine: training around noon, teaching Olivia in the evening, training some more, playing chess with Master Park late at night.

She did not want to leave and disrupt everything again, but she was prepared to. Paula had reminded Jen almost every day of her last visit that she would need to come again once the baby arrived. “You’re her best friend,” Paula had said, pulling Jen aside at the baby shower, out at breakfast, making dinner in Jen’s kitchen. “It is your job to be here.” Jen had nodded in resignation, trying not to think about the prospect of flying back here all over again.

“Actually,” Becky said on the phone line, “I was hoping we could come visit you.”

“Really?” This seemed too convenient to be true; Jen felt a pang of guilt for the pleasure that was mixed in with her surprise. “But it’s freezing here. And do you want to travel with a little baby?”

“I really need to get out of Los Angeles,” Becky said. “The doctor told me we can fly in a few weeks.”

As she hung up the phone, Jen surveyed the living room. The center of the room was empty, revealing a large, flattened section of carpet where the heavy coffee table had been before Jen had moved it against the wall to make room for stretching and taekwondo forms. The couch, Jen’s favorite reading spot, had a stack of books covering one of its three cushions and blankets strewn over the other two. There was a television in the corner of the room that Jen had forgotten was there, its screen attracting a thick coat of dust. Taped to the walls across from the couch were the old collages she had made using the most embarrassing passages from tabloid articles about her. She remembered how mortified she had been to read, “Jen’s lackluster performances over the last five years have caused film critics to speculate that she may be developing a serious drug habit.” Now the line had the comfortable familiarity of a worn old paperback, and she smiled happily as she read it.

This all is going to have to go, she thought, surveying the evidence of seven months of solipsism. Someone is coming. She felt a flood of excitement and relief wash over her. She began to clean the room right then, even though Becky wouldn’t be coming for three more weeks. As she folded the blankets and arranged the books on the shelf, she sang out loud, as loud as she could, songs that she remembered from when she was a teenager, songs that she and Becky used to sing along with on the radio after school. Once everything was put away, she began to focus on dirt and dust, removing the books that she had just put onto the shelves, wiping each shelf with warm water until it was smooth and clean, then drying it and replacing the books. She could not remember ever having enjoyed cleaning quite so much. When she was done, the living room still looked Spartan, with its functional furniture and drab carpet, but it was tidy.

The drive to the Detroit airport took an extra hour in each direction along the slippery roads, still slick from the morning’s light snowfall although it was late afternoon. For once, Jen was happy to be driving Paula’s mother’s heavy four-wheel-drive vehicle, especially once she had Marie in the back, secured tightly into a baby seat that Becky had brought, along with an entire extra suitcase filled with other baby-related items. Both mother and baby were bundled in thick coats to shield them against the winter chill, which had made an aggressive return after the brief January thaw. Jen noticed Becky’s teeth chattering as they started the drive back towards North Middleton, and she turned the heat up as high as it would go.

“I’m sorry it’s so cold,” said Jen, as she, Becky, and Marie sat bundled in blankets on the bed in the second bedroom, where Becky would sleep. Marie was asleep already, lying on Becky’s stomach, her easy tranquility reminding Jen more of Chase than of Becky. “The weather was beautiful when I first got back here after the baby shower. I could almost exercise outside.”

“I don’t care about the cold,” said Becky defiantly, even as she pulled her blanket a little further over herself and her sleeping baby. “I am so sick of LA. I’d rather be anywhere else but there. Even Michigan.”

Jen wasn’t sure what it meant that she wanted to jump to Michigan’s defense rather than Los Angeles’s. She had the urge to point out all the positive qualities of North Middleton—its small, quirky businesses like the food co-op, the tea house, and the juice bar, the friendly people who all seemed to know each other, the beautiful forests and lakes, including the ones visible from this very room. But she knew these features would be a hard sell in light of the bitter cold that was seeping through the poorly-insulated window, making it difficult to enjoy anything but what they were doing right now, huddling together under the blankets on the corner of the bed closest to the heater.

“What do you want to do tomorrow?” Jen asked. “It will be too cold to walk around much, but we could go check out a yoga class at this school I’ve heard about.” In anticipation of Becky’s visit, Jen had dropped into Olivia’s yoga school and gotten the schedule of classes. “I’m sure they’d let you bring Marie into the class.”

“You don’t have to do anything different on my account,” said Becky. “Let’s go to your taekwondo school.”

Jen hesitated to respond. For somebody who had just given birth, Becky looked fit, but maybe not that fit, or maybe it just seemed wrong that someone would squeeze a baby out of her body and throw a roundhouse kick during the same month. “That might be too much for you,” she said, feeling bad for squashing Becky’s enthusiasm.

“Oh, I’m not going to work out,” Becky said. Marie had just woken up and Becky was getting ready to nurse her, pulling her long tunic all the way up and steering the baby’s head towards her breast with a quick, expert gesture. “Me and Marie will just watch, if you think that will be okay.”

“Sure, that will be great,” said Jen, trying not to sound overly pleased at the prospect of missing less training than she had anticipated. She had planned to come in at least a few times during the weeks Becky was visiting to teach Olivia, but hadn’t counted on getting to do her own workouts.

“I go twice a day,” Jen said, wondering if she was pushing her luck.

“Fine,” said Becky. “As long as they’re okay with us nursing in there.”

“I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” said Jen, though truthfully she could not imagine a scenario in which Becky’s exposed breast would fail to cause a scene in a school populated almost exclusively by college-aged men. But watching Marie, who had finally succumbed entirely to sleep and was cuddled against Becky’s chest with her mouth gaping open, Jen couldn’t imagine anyone objecting to anything this tiny new person did.

Luckily, the next day, no one seemed to notice Becky as she sat on the floor in the corner of the room and nursed Marie while Jen led Olivia through her exercises. If any of the boys were troubled, it was impossible to tell; they usually avoided the corner of the room where Jen trained, first with Shane and now with Olivia, and it was quite possible that they were as oblivious to Marie’s presence as their blank facial expressions seemed to indicate as they walked past.

As Olivia practiced her kicks and Becky nursed little baby Marie, Jen was suddenly struck by the strong femininity pervading their section of the room, something that she had never felt in that space before. Thinking back, she could only remember a handful of times when she had trained with Shane and another woman at the same time—and of course, Shane hadn’t even thought of herself as a woman, exactly. Being surrounded by three other females was unprecedented.

“Does your friend want to try?” Olivia asked, as Jen held the pad for her to kick.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jen, looking over at Becky, who had finished nursing and was holding Marie over her shoulder. Jen hadn’t told Becky about Olivia’s past. After the Skipper incident, Jen wasn’t so sure that Becky could forgive even a reformed paparazzo. Jen herself had barely forgiven her; she gave her the best instruction she could, but nothing more, nothing like pleasant conversation or friendly camaraderie or concern about her life in general and how it was going. She often wondered whether it bothered Olivia to take instruction from someone so cold.

“It would be fun to try, if I could do it lightly,” said Becky, sounding like she really meant it and wasn’t just being polite. “But I didn’t bring Marie’s carrier.”

“I could hold her,” Olivia offered.

“I’ll hold her,” Jen said, quickly, surprised by her own sudden possessiveness. She handed the kicking pad to Olivia. “Show her how to do a roundhouse kick,” she said. “It will be good for you to practice teaching it to someone.”

Jen sat down on the floor next to Becky and took the baby from her. This was only the second time that she had held her—the other time was when Becky had introduced them at the airport—and Jen was struck by how incongruous it felt to be bracing for the startling impact of Olivia’s kicks against the pad one moment, and the next to be cuddling such a small, warm creature against her chest. She looked down at Marie, who looked like she was trying but failing to stay awake, her eyelids closing slowly then snapping open again, her bright baby-blue eyes rolling up into her head.

Jen tried to decide if she looked more like Becky or Chase, but she didn’t look like either of them. Or perhaps she looked like both of them, so blended-up that it was impossible to separate them out again, like cream in coffee. She could imagine Marie’s straight little nose being like Becky’s nose—but then again, Chase’s nose was sort of like that, too, just bigger. And her tiny mouth was shapely like Becky’s mouth, which always looked like it had been outlined carefully with lip liner even though Becky rarely even wore makeup, but the fleshy, sensual lower lip reminded Jen of Chase.

Jen looked up and saw Olivia explaining how Becky should kick the pad. “Make sure to pivot your foot,” she said, recreating the familiar directions that she had learned from Jen, and Jen from Shane.

“Like this?” Becky asked, turning her left foot on the ground as she snapped her right foot lightly into the pad that Olivia was holding.

“Yeah, that’s really good,” said Olivia, giving Becky the encouraging smile that she herself had never received from Jen. “Just pivot a tiny bit more, even.”

Now that Jen had gotten comfortable, it felt nice to sit so still, the baby cuddled against her chest like a sleeping cat. Marie’s eyes had closed all the way and her mouth was puckering into little sucking motions. Jen touched her pinky to Marie’s lips, and was shocked by the power of the suction that pulled her finger into the baby’s mouth. Marie sucked happily on the finger for a few moments, but then, with a look of great consternation, even as her eyes were closed, she spat it out. That’s Becky’s face, Jen thought, remembering all the time she had seen that same eyebrow wrinkle when she had similarly disappointed her friend. She shifted Marie’s weight onto her body a little more and leaned back against the wall, watching Olivia do all the work of teaching Becky.

By the end of the hour, Becky’s roundhouse kick was looking pretty decent for a beginner. “She did great, didn’t she?” Olivia said, smiling proudly, as Jen rose from the floor, a tricky maneuver that involved holding Marie with one arm, and carried her over to her mother.

“Yeah, she did,” said Jen.

Becky smiled broadly. “That was fun,” she said. With the arm that was not holding Marie, Becky reached out and squeezed Olivia’s shoulder. “Thanks so much for teaching me.”

“It was my pleasure,” said Olivia, squeezing her arm back. Jen felt puzzled watching them exchange the warm look of new friends, wondering if this meant that she would have to start being nicer to Olivia.

Usually Jen retreated into the back room as soon as Olivia’s lesson was over, but she had already told Master Park that she would not be staying for chess tonight. It turned out to be the right decision; Becky was tired, and the baby was starting to get cranky, making little crying sounds that Jen feared would lead to outright wailing.

Jen held Marie while Becky put her shoes on, and then they switched. Olivia had followed them to the shoe cubbies and was making small talk with Becky: “How long are you here for? How are you liking North Middleton?” And Becky, though tired, seemed happy to answer: “Two weeks…yeah, I love it here…I don’t mind the cold.”

And then, as Jen finished tying her sneakers, she looked up and saw Rob standing right next to Becky. He was leaned over the baby, covering and uncovering his face with one hand in a rudimentary game of peek-a-boo. Becky lifted Marie so he could see her better, clearly enjoying showing her off.

“She’s brand new, isn’t she?” Rob asked, stroking Marie’s forehead softly.

“Not quite four weeks,” said Becky.

Jen was stunned. During the seven months that Jen had trained at Master Park’s, she had not exchanged more than a cursory word with Rob, things like “excuse me” during the multiple times they had almost crashed into each other because they were not making eye contact. But here he was, now, gushing over Becky’s baby. Olivia was standing next to him; together, they formed a little cooing huddle around Marie.

“I’m sorry, I know you probably need to get going,” Rob said. “I just really wanted to come see her. I’m such a sucker for little babies.”

“It’s okay,” said Becky, smiling, clearly charmed by the attention to her offspring. “Do you want to hold her?”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to disturb her,” said Rob, his tone indicating that he hoped she would insist.

“It’s okay,” Becky said, transferring Marie into his arms. “She just took a little nap with Jen.”

Marie began to make the little crying noises again as Rob lifted her to his chest. “There, there,” he said, as he began to bounce up and down lightly with his knees. “It’s okay, everything’s okay.” He looks good with a baby, Jen thought reluctantly, noticing how the icy blue of his eyes seemed gentler and grayer as he smiled down at Marie, his posture softening as he curved his shoulders over her, holding her tight as he bounced.

“My son is six,” he said to Becky, without looking up. “It’s a fun age, but I loved when he was a tiny baby like this.”

“Maybe you should have another one,” said Becky, eyeing his bouncing technique favorably. “You seem like you know what you’re doing.”

“I’d like to,” said Rob, his voice growing quiet as he hugged Marie closer to his chest. His tone implied that the next word should be “but,” although he didn’t say it.

“You have to wait until it’s the right time,” Becky said quickly, squeezing his shoulder like she had just squeezed Olivia’s arm a few minutes ago.

“I know,” he said, his voice sticking in his throat. “That’s right.”

Jen walked over to the door and watched from a distance, wanting to get home and have Becky to herself again, but reluctant to break up this scene, Becky, Olivia and Rob connecting to each other as naturally as Becky, Paula and Chase once had back in Los Angeles. When they finally said their goodbyes, they were acting like old friends, hugging warmly and promising to see each other again during Becky’s trip.

“So what’s the deal with that Rob guy?” Becky asked, as Jen drove down Main Street back towards Cone. She had her sun-visor pulled down even though it was dark, and she was staring into the little makeup mirror on it, watching Marie sleep in her car seat. “He’s the guy from the co-op, right?”

“Yeah,” said Jen, surprised that Becky remembered him from one sighting, so long ago.

“He’s cute,” said Becky. “Why can’t he have a second baby? Does that mean he’s single, or is he still with the mother of his kid?”

Jen thought back to the night that Rob had driven her home, how he had kissed her and then confessed to being in a relationship, how he had cried and made her promise that they would still be friends.

It was that aggressive male book that made him do it, she remembered. She had just finished reading it herself. She had found it a disturbing read, although she couldn’t find anything in it that she specifically disagreed with. Perhaps that was the problem. Everything it said seemed to describe accurately the actions of some man or another she had known: her father, Bradley, Skipper, Chase, Rob, Master Park. She wondered whether he had given it to her to help her enhance her own aggressiveness or just better understand the mental state of the men around her.

“They’re still together,” said Jen.

“Too bad,” said Becky. “But see, that’s so nice,” she added abruptly, as though continuing an ongoing debate that Jen had not noticed they were having. “A guy who can stay with his wife. No one stays together in LA, especially if they have kids.” She let out a self-deprecating laugh. “Sometimes they were never even together in the first place.”

Jen didn’t bother to correct Becky, either about Rob being married to the mother of his child or about her representation of him as the ideal loyal partner.

“It’s just so great to be out of LA,” said Becky, as Jen turned onto the bumpy road that led to the lake house. “Everyone there seems so superficial, like they’re not real people, like they’re acting all the time.”

While last night Jen had felt like standing up for Michigan, now she wanted to come to the defense of Los Angeles. Becky had friends there, and yoga, and a community. But Jen didn’t feel ready to admit how lonely her life was here, because she was scared that Becky would tell her to move back to Los Angeles, and she wouldn’t be able to make a case for why she wasn’t ready to.

“What about Paula and Chase?” Jen asked.

“They’re both in these relationships, and I never get to spend any time with them alone,” said Becky. “I like Ex, but he’s so strange. Or she. And Eduardo…”

“He really is obnoxious,” said Jen, remembering how he had acted like he owned Becky’s unborn baby just because he happened to be sleeping with the baby’s father.

“I try so hard to like him, for Chase, but I just can’t stand him,” said Becky. “But it’s not just him; everyone is like that in LA. Everyone has all these stupid ideas, all this intrigue, all these silly, meaningless dramas. It must be so refreshing not to have to be around any of that, to be in a place where people just live their lives without projecting all this crap onto them.”

“I guess,” said Jen. They were pulling up to the lake house now, driving up the long bumpy driveway.

“Everyone here seems so normal and nice,” said Becky. Like Rob. Or that woman you train with, Olivia. She’s just a sweet, normal woman who does taekwondo. What does she do for a job?”

“She works at a juice bar,” Jen said. She had stopped the car, and they were sitting in the dark driveway. Jen could see Becky’s face silhouetted in the dim light of the lamp over the garage door. She was still staring into the mirror in front of her, even though Jen doubted that she could see anything in the back seat.

“See, that’s such a nice, normal thing to do,” said Becky. “I wish I had friends like that. It must be so peaceful living here.”

“It is peaceful,” said Jen. “But you know, everyplace has its own problems.”

“If you don’t move back soon, I might just have to move out here with you,” Becky said. “You’re going to have to move in the summer since Paula’s mom will want the lake house back.”

Jen hadn’t thought of this detail, but Becky was right. She would have to make a decision about where she was going to live sometime in the next few months.

“We could get a place together,” said Becky. “I could teach at that yoga school you mentioned, and I’m sure rent is cheap out here.”

“I don’t know,” said Jen. “I don’t know if I want to stay here.”

She tried to imagine living with Becky in North Middleton, in a real rented house that wasn’t just borrowed, that they would fill with their own possessions and decorate according to their own taste, where Becky would cook nutritious meals just like in Los Angeles. It would be a real home, and Jen would really be living in Michigan.

Chapter 39