Prologue
The stuffiness of a summer evening ran down my temple in drops of sweat. I blew the strands stuck to my face away and craned my neck, checking how far it was to my stop. The bus looked ready to disgorge no fewer than fifty grown people just like me, worn out after a long working week.
Right now I could have been sitting on my little balcony with a white vermouth, two ice cubes and an olive floating in it. But Mom had insisted I come over immediately.
At the stop I broke out into air trembling with heat, exhaled, and blotted my face with a napkin. I’d only recently started as a junior associate at the most respected firm in the city, and I was putting in ten-hour days, sometimes twelve, not counting running around town on a Saturday. The senior lawyers had decided that since I was new I’d naturally want to prove myself to management, so they loaded me up until it was time to start begging God for longer days.
Even on a Sunday my legs ached from high heels. But I stubbornly tramped toward my parents’ house.
I opened the door with my own keys and announced myself loudly:
“I’m here! Get the ice out or I’ll melt.”
Nobody answered. Strange. I heard whispering in the kitchen, and more voices than I’d expected.
I thought I caught Nathan’s deep voice among them, which was impossible. My fiancé wasn’t due back from his business trip until next week. I’d been preparing carefully for that. Bought an immodest set of lingerie that cost me a kidney and planned to leave work early to meet him properly, because I’d missed him.
“Knock knock, what are you all up to?” I walked into the kitchen and stopped short.
At the table sat Mom and Dad, my younger sister, and Nathan Reed: my high-school love and, as of recently, my fiancé.
“Goldy, what took you so long?” Mom asked, displeased, then thawed and started fussing over me with cold lemonade.
And I looked at Nathan and couldn’t understand what was happening. Why was he back early, and why was he sitting in my parents’ kitchen?
“Nathan, when did you get in, and why didn’t you call?” I stared without blinking at the face I loved.
He looked away and clenched his fists.
The premonition of disaster locked around my heart. I let Mom seat me between her and Dad, while Ellie sat almost pressed against Nathan. Panic caught in my throat and blocked my speech. Like a mute fish I looked at my family and understood there was bad news for me. But what?
“Sweetheart, don’t get worked up. The young people have news for you,” Mom opened.
I looked at her, uncomprehending. The young people? Who did she mean?
The oppressive silence stretched my nerves to their limit. I didn’t need the ice; I’d gone cold on my own. Spots swam in my eyes, and everyone kept quiet. Only the wall clock wasn’t shy about counting down the seconds until my heart broke into pieces.
“Ahem. Goldy, Ellie and I are getting married at the courthouse tomorrow.”
The guillotine blade came down on my neck, and I think I’d laid my head under it the moment I walked into this house.
A train went over me. I forgot how to breathe.
“Why?” What left my lips was either a moan or a dying woman’s rasp.
“I’m pregnant!” My sister gave me an innocent smile and laid a tender hand on her flat stomach.
With the eyes of a beaten dog I looked at my parents and saw no regret in them, and no anger at my sister. The blissful smile seemed to be contagious, because they were both glowing with happiness.
“And what about me?” I asked these people who had become strangers.
“What about you?” Ellie bristled at once. “You’re married to your job, and my child needs a father.”
“Then let the child’s father marry you. What does my fiancé have to do with it?” I looked at Nathan, pleading. Why was he silent? Why wasn’t he laughing at this cruel joke?
Only now was the full wretchedness of the situation starting to reach me.
“You… with my sister…” I prayed I’d gotten it all wrong, that it was a nightmare and I’d fallen asleep on the bus.
“Goldy, stop it!” Mom cut off my babbling, irritated. “We’re informing you so you don’t throw a scene tomorrow in front of people. Can’t you see the children have found each other? And a child is a very serious step. At your age it’s already too late to be thinking about children, so don’t get in your sister’s way.”
At my age? Is that what she calls twenty-seven? My sister had just turned twenty-two and hadn’t worked a single day anywhere. I nodded like a wind-up doll at my parents’ absurd arguments. Dad played the doormat and backed the head of the family in everything.
“And what do you say?” Everything swam in front of me, but for some reason it mattered to hear what the love of my life would say.
“It’s a set of circumstances. Goldy—” He caught himself. “Marigold, you know I grew up without a father, and I can’t let that happen to my own child,” Nathan mumbled, never once looking at me.
Ellie stroked his shoulder and gave me a triumphant look.
Since childhood she’d stamped her foot and gotten everything that was mine. At eighteen I moved out of my parents’ house just to have something of my own. It was hard. For a long time I drifted through rented rooms, and finally I had my own place.
And now Ellie had wanted my fiancé and gotten him. And for Nathan it was merely “a set of circumstances.” Concise, I’ll give him that. He must have been walking along, tripped, and bang: a child appeared.
I saw no more point in staying in that house. Everything had turned foreign and cold in one stroke. I needed to be outside, in the heat, to feel alive again.
I got up from the table without a word and went to put my shoes on. I swayed and had to hold the wall to keep from falling.
“Marigold, I… didn’t want you to find out like this.” Nathan caught up with me in the hallway.
That hateful voice would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. Realizing I might not get another chance, I turned sharply and slapped him with everything I had left. With more strength I’d have charged him like an enraged bull, but I still had to make it home.
My sister saw the scene, shrieked, and started spitting venom. I didn’t even look at the viper.
“Best wishes to the happy couple!” I shouted, and slammed the door behind me.
