All You Could Ask For A Novel

SAMANTHA

I WONDER IF IT happens this way for everybody.

For me, it has always been like this: any time I am feeling my best, strongest, and healthiest, I am also at my most emotional. And maybe never more than right then, strolling that beach for the last time. I was so strong I was practically bursting with energy. For the past six weeks, I had eaten and drunk only the best fuel (except for three glasses of wine with Eduardo), slept nine hours a night, practiced yoga breathing during long walks on the pristine beach, listened to the waves crashing and the children laughing in the surf. Now, for two days, I had been at rest, conserving all my strength for tomorrow, permitting myself nothing more strenuous than this final walk on the sand. I would compete tomorrow and then go back to my life, the one I had before Robert. Back to New York, back to working, to traveling. Back to men, too, I suppose. I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted to handle that part of it. My guess was that it would handle itself. I didn’t plan to be looking for anyone, but I did expect someone to find me. It might take months, or years, or less than a week. However that works out would be fine for me. I was a wiser, stronger woman than I’d been before. I was a different person. I looked forward to seeing how this person fared in the world, like a character in a movie that I’m rooting for. That is what I was, I figured. A character. And I was rooting for me.

So, if I was as strong as I had ever been, physically and mentally, why couldn’t I seem to keep from crying? Every sound, every wave, every gull, every breath made me sentimental. I was nostalgic for this part of my life already, even though it wasn’t over. But once you know how something is going to turn out, I suppose it is over, in a way, and I knew how this would turn out. I would compete tomorrow, and it would be wonderful; I hadn’t any doubt of that. Then I would go back to the world and begin anew. And even if I did someday come back to this place, I would never come back to this time. This time rescued me. It nourished me, brought me back to myself and beyond, made me better than I have ever been, and once I leave, it will be gone forever. In a way, I wanted so badly to stay, to remain here for the rest of my life, but I knew I couldn’t, because this wasn’t my life. All of this had been preparation, though I didn’t yet know for what. But I was sure it would be for something, and I was also sure that when it happened I would know what it was.

I walked to the end of the beach and back, more than three miles on the sand, and when I returned I found Eduardo waiting for me. He was wearing a white jacket and using his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. The breeze had picked up in the afternoon and it blew his hair away from his face. He was always so tidy it was jarring to see him in the wind.

“You look very casual,” I said to him, “you ought to try it more often.”

“I do not spend much time on the beach,” he said. “But for your last day, I gladly make an exception.” He sounded sad. You’d have to know him well to hear it in his voice, but I could hear it. “Have you got everything you need?”

“Anything with carbs, I’m eating it. I had pancakes this morning; I think my system almost went into shock. I have so much energy, if this race doesn’t start soon I’m going to jump out of my skin.”

“I asked Chef to prepare a special dinner for you tonight,” he said. “Fresh pasta, he makes it himself, with a delightful sauce that is just a bit rich with cream and fresh vegetables. It is fabulous. He prepares it for me on my birthday.”

I put my hand on Eduardo’s cheek.

“What time would you like it delivered to your room?” he asked.

“About five,” I said. “I want to try to be in bed at eight. I don’t know if I’ll sleep at all but I’ll try. I’ll be down for breakfast at five.”

“I’ll make certain the kitchen is ready for you.”

My hand was still on his cheek. I took my other and wrapped it around his waist, thrust my face into his shoulder, and let it all go. I cried hard, really hard, and it felt wonderful. Eduardo said nothing at all, just held me gently at the waist.

He left it to me to decide when to stop, so I stayed buried in his jacket, his embrace, his smell, until the tears stopped and then longer than that. It felt so good to be held.

“Thank you so much for everything,” I said, my face still embedded in him. “You have made this all so perfect for me.”

He did not respond, which was unlike him, and so I peeked up into his face and found, to my surprise, that he was crying, too. Softly, not enough that you could hear it, but from as close as I was there wasn’t any question his eyes were welling with tears. I had a feeling if I asked about it he’d have blamed it on the sun, but he’d have been lying. I put my face back into his shoulder and let him hold me. There wasn’t any reason to say anything about it. There wasn’t any reason to say anything at all.

KATHERINE

IF THERE’S ONE THING I pride myself on, it’s my musical street cred.

And by that I mean that I am a straight-up gangsta. Yes, I’m a white girl from Greenwich, and I have no tattoos and I’ve never busted a cap anywhere, but I have gravitated toward hip-hop music since the first time I heard “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash. I know the entire genre well enough that I could host a hip-hop show on an urban radio station. From Grandmaster Flash to Sugarhill Gang to Run-D.M.C. to Public Enemy to N.W.A. to Tupac Shakur to Biggie Smalls to Snoop Dogg to Jay-Z, I have been there, faithfully, through it all. I belittle all other forms of musical expression and I belittle anyone who doesn’t appreciate the beauty, simplicity, ferocity, and authenticity of hip-hop.

So this John Denver thing is really hard for me to explain.

Let me start when Marie and I made our way down the mountain from our hike to Cathedral Lake. Walking through the forests, alongside the streams, the rushing water echoing in my ears, I realized that all my life I have been yearning to be here and didn’t know it. All this time I have known that something was missing and now I knew what it was.

It was this place. I felt as though I was finally home. I said as much to Marie when we reached the bottom. I was leaning against the hood of our car, and I pulled out my water bottle. My back was aching and tightening up and I rubbed it. “I need a massage,” I said.

Marie walked up behind me and started to knead my shoulders, and I laughed.

“That wasn’t a request,” I said. “It was a suggestion. Let’s go back to the hotel and book massages, my treat, one for you, one for me.”

“I’ve never had a massage,” she said. “Is it weird?”

“It is weird that you have never had a massage, yes. But having one is not weird at all. In fact it is rather wonderful, and the perfect way to complete an afternoon spent climbing up and down a mountain.”

“Do I have to be naked?”

I took a long swig of water. “On this trip, darling, you don’t have to be anything.”

She seemed to like that.

I looked up into the sun, toward the distant peaks, watched an eagle sail lazily across the horizon. “My god, I love it here,” I said. I feel like I’ve come home.”

“Just like John Denver.”

I almost did a spit take. “What’s that?”

“From the song ‘Rocky Mountain High.’ He says he came home to a place he’d never been before. It was here he was singing about; he lived in Aspen.” Marie smiled. “My mother loved John Denver. We listened to him all the time when I was growing up.”

“Really?” I said, amused. “You grew up in Brooklyn listening to cheesy country music?”

“First of all,” Marie replied, insulted, “John Denver was not a country singer, he was a folk singer, and he was a poet and he was brilliant. He wasn’t cheesy. If you love hiking in the woods you would love John Denver, that’s what all his songs are about.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, relenting. “I’m sorry I said that. Tell you what. Let’s go take off all our clothes and hire two handsome men to rub us down, what do you say?”

She smiled. “I don’t know if Adam would like the way you said that, but it sounds good to me. And I’m going to make you listen to John Denver while we’re here, and I promise you’re going to like him.”

I stretched my aching back, got behind the wheel of the car, and gunned it back into town. I was looking forward to a massage, a steak, a bottle of wine. I didn’t expect John Denver’s name would come up again, not on this day, this trip, or ever again.

I was wrong about that one.



OUR FIRST WEEK IN Aspen was blissful, nothing short of that, and that’s not a word I throw around. I rose with the sun every morning and did not, I repeat did not, say “f*ck him.” There seemed no reason to say it. Maybe it was the altitude, or the way the sun glowed as it rose above the mountain, or the way the food tasted, the air smelled, the wind sounded. I got into the car only to drive to the more distant hikes; everything else was within walking distance or easily reached on a bicycle. I even got Marie on horseback. She sat with her eyes glued shut as an aging mare named Tank moseyed around a field at the base of Buttermilk Mountain.

It was on our seventh day that word about Phillip reached us.

It reached Marie first; she had her BlackBerry on the table as we shared granola and yogurt and multigrain pancakes at an adorable breakfast spot called Peaches. The phone reverberated so fiercely it shook the silverware beside it, and Marie absently picked it up to look.

“That’s a text,” she said. “I’ll just make sure it’s not an emergency.”

Then her already-wide eyes bugged out cartoonishly, and I became scared that it was an emergency, except she didn’t look upset. She looked enthralled. She looked as though she had watched an entire suspense thriller in a quiet movie house and just now found out who the killer was.

Then she looked up at me and smiled. “What is it?” I asked.

She looked once more at the BlackBerry. “I have no idea how you’re going to feel about this,” she said. “I’m just going to show you.”

She handed it to me, gingerly, as though I might drop it if she were not careful.

“What the hell is it?” I asked, before I looked. “You’re making me nervous. Is this bad news? Am I going to be upset? You know I have no interest in being upset out here.”

“Just read it,” she said. “You won’t be upset.”

So I did. And I wasn’t upset.

BROOKE

WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I wanted to be a clown.

Like in the circus. I always loved the clowns, because I loved the makeup. I have always loved makeup; sometimes I think I may have missed my calling, that I should have gone to Hollywood and been a makeup artist. I think I would have had the best time with that. I would have loved transforming a handsome actor into a werewolf or a zombie, or even the less dramatic stuff, just making the actresses look as pretty as they could. That sounds like fun.

As a girl, I thought makeup was so glamorous. Probably because Mother wouldn’t allow me to wear any, none at all. Not to church, not to school, not to sleepovers, not even alone in the house.

“That’s for women,” she would say, when I fingered her brushes or lipstick. “You are not yet a woman. Be a girl. You’ll have plenty of time to be a woman.”

I haven’t followed that path with my daughter, not at all. I had Megan playing with makeup when she was three years old. I bought her lip gloss and eye shadow and blush and let her play with them to her heart’s content. So I take great pleasure in seeing my daughter in makeup. But never more than today.

As I lounge on my bed, curlers in my hair, champagne in an ice bucket on the end table, I’m watching as Edith does Megan’s face. Edith is my stylist; she’s been doing my roots and blowouts for five years, usually at the salon. This is the first time she’s been in the house. But special occasions demand special accommodation, and it doesn’t get much more special than this.

Megan’s eyes are so bright, wide like mine, but the lucky girl got her father’s turquoise sparkle. I watch Edith apply just the gentlest dash of mascara, a splash of color on the cheekbones, a hint of eye shadow. Nothing garish; there is an appropriate amount of makeup an eight-year-old girl can handle and Edith knows exactly what it is. She and I spent an hour on the phone making that clear so that today I wouldn’t have to worry about it.

Today I don’t have to worry about anything. I awoke alone in my bed. Scott had spent the night in a hotel. The groom isn’t allowed to see the bride on the wedding day, even the second time.

I walked on my treadmill for forty minutes while Scott took the kids to the diner for breakfast. They had pancakes, I think, though he promises me he made them eat scrambled eggs as well. I’m not sure I believe him; Scott would eat a shoe if you put maple syrup on it, and that unfortunate appetite has been handed down, but today isn’t the day for fighting over that. Let them eat chocolate bars if they want—I’m in too good a mood.

I worked out and then took Lucy for a long walk into the woods. That’s heaven for a golden retriever. It was one of those spring mornings that promise to get hot in the afternoon but at nine A.M. you need a light sweater. Lucy and I tramped in the woods for about half an hour, then came back to the house where a massage table was waiting in my bedroom.

I had the massage and then Edith arrived and brought the champagne, and we drank it together and spent about an hour on my hair. And now I am lolling in bed, watching my angelic daughter being made up so she can be her mom’s maid of honor. She looks as happy as I feel. And why not? Half her friends’ parents are divorced, and two more separated within the last year. I was afraid the kids might be embarrassed by the idea of their parents renewing their vows, but to my delight I see they take it as what it is: a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

Jared is downstairs with his father. Proud, too, like his sister; eight years old and his father’s best man. That was the first thought I had: this time the kids could be part of it. It’s corny, I guess, but it’s perfect.

It’s not a wedding like our first one, more like a cocktail party with a minister on the guest list. Six couples, just our closest friends, and Mother. Fifteen in all if you count the kids. Seventeen if you include Scott and me. And the pastor makes eighteen for dinner, if he stays. We told him he was welcome, he said he’d play it by ear.

Now Edith has finished with Megan and my daughter looks more beautiful than I have ever seen her. “Edith, it’s perfect,” I say, and get back in the chair myself so she can finish my hair. It’s almost time. We will be married again at six, have cocktails for an hour and then enjoy a lovely dinner. Everyone is already here, hopefully enjoying the hors d’oeuvres. Who doesn’t love shrimp wrapped in bacon? And smoked salmon over cucumber slices? And lots of champagne.

I will join them all in about twenty minutes. Megan will go down before me and announce that it is time. There will be no music or anything like that, no marching down the aisle. Everyone will just take a seat and I will meet Scott in the center of the room and he will take my hand, and the kids will be by our sides, and Reverend Walsh will say a few words about how refreshing it is in this day and age to perform a second marriage for people who aren’t divorced. And everyone will have a nice laugh at that, because if you think about it it’s rather a funny line. Then he’ll say something about how special it is for the children to be present, special for them and special for us, and if I’m going to cry at all today, that is going to be the time. But that’s all right, because Scott will probably tear up then too, and even if he doesn’t, Pamela will be bawling on the sofa, so I won’t be alone. And then the reverend will simply ask if Scott and I promise to spend the rest of our lives together, and we’ll say we do, and then we’ll all have steak and sea bass. And it will be perfect.

“This,” I say to Edith, raising my glass as she puts the final touches on my hair, “is the very best day of my entire life.”