“More cooking?”
“That’s a brilliant idea! You could make something fantastic when we have Mr. and Mrs. Beckett over. Duck a l’orange. How about that? Doesn’t that sound good?”
“Such fun!”
Kent gave a sigh. “Okay, so you don’t want to take any more cooking classes.” He looked at his watch—a gold Piaget that her parents had given him as a wedding gift. “I have to go. We’re working on a big merger today and I have to be there. Tonight we’ll sit down and talk about everything and I’ll try to find something for you to do.”
“Then you’ll be home tonight before dark?”
“Of course. No. Wait. Today’s the eighteenth, right? I have to attend a...well, something tonight. Take a bubble bath and curl up with a book. Use my absence to enjoy yourself.” He gave her cheek a quick kiss, then hurried out the door.
Elise stood by the window and watched him drive away in his 700 series BMW, a car owned by her father’s company. Across the lawn, through the trees, she could see the side of her parents’ house and wondered if her mother was watching as Kent left.
Where they lived had once been a guesthouse, used for overnight clients of her father’s management company. But when Kent and Elise got married, everyone—except Elise, that is—thought it would be great for “the children” to live there.
Turning, she looked to the right and could see the corner of Kent’s parents’ house.
They were kinder, less financially ambitious than Elise’s parents.
The two mothers had met in college and they were so opposite that they were a perfect match. Elegance and ambition wer
e their overriding characteristics and they learned from each other.
When they met men like themselves, they snatched them up so fast the men weren’t sure what had happened. The women got their husbands to buy two big houses next door to each other. The wives acted as though they were one property and loved to call the place “an estate.”
There was great disappointment when one got pregnant and the other one didn’t. A boy was born, Kent, then two more children. It wasn’t until years later that Elise was finally born. She would be an only child.
From the time she was a year old, her mother was disappointed in her. Elise was a quiet, ethereal, dreamy child who was more interested in art than in being better than the other kids in her class. She wasn’t competitive, didn’t seem to have any ambition, and liked to step back and let other people win. “It makes them so happy,” she said, and that was enough for her.
The only thing that pleased her mother was Elise’s blind adoration of Kent. Whenever he was near, Elise would put her paints and crayons down and watch him.
“I think they should marry,” Kent’s mother said one sunny afternoon as all the children were playing in the pool, their nannies close by.
“Agreed,” Elise’s mother said, and that was that. They never spoke of it again. But then, they didn’t need to. It was settled.
As Elise looked out her window at both houses, she felt trapped. She couldn’t figure out why her husband was so distant with her. She couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong, but there was something missing. There was a gap in their marriage and she had no idea how to fill it.
With a sigh, she got dressed in knee-length shorts, a sleeveless linen blouse, and sandals, then cleaned up the kitchen that she’d never liked.
On the wall was pinned a list of things she was supposed to do that day. Pick up Kent’s dry cleaning. Call Mrs. Beckett to ask if she or her husband had any food allergies. Take Kent’s shoes to the shop to be repaired. Go to a department store and find a gift for one of Kent’s clients—who Elise had never met. Drive twenty miles to the fishmonger Kent liked and get their red snapper.
Elise pulled the list off the wall and had an impulse to crush it, but she didn’t. She tried to put it in order of what to do when. Feeling defiant, she dropped the list on the little kitchen desk and picked up a novel she’d had for a week, and went outside.
There was a small patio at the back of the house that couldn’t be seen from the big houses. It was a haven to Elise. There was a larger stone terrace to the side, where they had a grill and the obligatory fire pit. It was what the designer Kent had hired called an “entertainment area.” It was only used for clients he wanted to impress.
What Elise liked most about the guesthouse was the small patio. It was shaded and had a short stone wall around three sides. It made her feel safe, protected.
When they’d moved in, Kent had wanted to tear it out. “We’ll bring in a dozer and flatten the area and make it five times as big,” he’d said. The landscape designer—a very nice older man—had seen the way his young bride looked like she was about to cry. He told Kent that was a terrible idea and the new entertainment area should be on the sunny side of the house.
When Elise had mouthed “thank you,” he’d smiled.
Last summer, she and Diego, the Mexican man who took care of the gardens for all three houses, planned how to make the little area beautiful. She sketched her vision of it on a drawing pad, but she didn’t know enough about gardening to make her ideas reality.
“My brother knows about plants and he’s coming here. He’ll tell me what to put in to make it look like your drawing,” Diego said.
She smiled at him; she’d always liked him. He’d been working there since she was in middle school. His sister, Carmen, was often there and they’d shared a few laughs—until the first time Elise came home from college, that is. Carmen had glared at Elise as though she were an enemy. Elise asked her what was wrong but Carmen wouldn’t say.
By the time Elise and Kent were married, Carmen was so hostile that Elise stayed away from her.