CHAPTER 1
Marcia was uncommonly quiet as they drove to the mall. Then she suddenly burst into an almost laugh—a barely audible "ha" and then a snicker—stopping just as abruptly as she had begun. It sounded bitter, at least to Amy who was driving. She turned quickly to look at Marcia. "Something funny? What's up? Tell me." The toddlers, Marcia's Max and Amy's Julia in their car seats, also looked at Marcia, their mouths open, a little drool at the corner of Julia's mouth until Marcia reached back and dabbed at it with a tissue.
They had planned today's outing weeks before when they'd run into each other at Dan Fogel's office. Dan was their children's pediatrician and Marcia and Amy met in his office waiting room more than two and a half years ago at their first post-delivery check-up. Chatting while fussing with their newborns they learned their babies had been delivered within a day of each other, Julia on a Tuesday and Max the day after. It was the first child for each of them and they soon became the best of friends. Marcia once told Amy she was the closest friend she'd had since junior high school and it often seemed as if they had known each other their entire lives. In the months after their first encounter Marcia and Amy each met other women with children born almost the same dates as Max and Julia. They were all originally from different parts of the world—Marcia, from New York and Amy, from Hawaii, the only Americans—and, by the time the children were starting to sit up, they became a cadre of friends, informally calling themselves the "baby ex-pats" group. Over the years the group gathered fairly regularly at one or another of their homes for the children to play with each other and, less frequently, for shopping excursions. There were seven women all together. It was the biggest group of really good friends Marcia had ever had, although she remained closest to Amy and spent the most time with her.
Now, heading for the mall, Julia was chatting away, as usual, trying to get Max to pay attention to the pictures in her coloring book and her Barbie. Max was not as responsive as he generally was to her urgings, probably not so obvious to Amy and Julia but certainly clear to Marcia. She had been a little concerned about him since yesterday, for a few days really, but he didn't have a fever and he was eating as well as usual. He looked up through the sunroof each time a plane started the descent to LAX and once when a helicopter was crossing overhead. Uncharacteristically, his stare would continue for a second or two after there was nothing to be seen, even until there was no longer a sound in the sky. The word that came to Marcia's mind was "sluggish." He wasn't at all cranky, but she was at least a little worried.
She discussed Max with Michael last night as they were turning off the den lights. "Maxie looks fine to me," he said. "Let's go to bed. You worry too much." And then, after checking the front-door lock again, he followed her up the stairs, walking closely behind her. "I have a big day tomorrow, and I was thinking we might get together ..." He slid his hand between her legs, almost causing her to stumble at the top step. "What do you say?"
"Come on, Marsh. What's up?" Amy said, not giving up, and erasing Marcia's wandering thoughts.
Max looked at his mother to see if she would respond and then turned back to Julia as she offered him Barbie's Ken, dressed in a blue bathing suit.
"No, nothing to tell. Silly stuff. Really nothing," was all Marcia could say, and then they were at the mall looking for a parking space.
When Amy found one she put her hand on the rearview mirror as if to adjust it but mostly to again look over at Marcia, who was still staring ahead, deep in thought. The space between Amy's eyelids was ridged with concern, her brow wrinkled, her eyes half-shut for the moment, not quite sure what she should say. Marcia was Amy's dearest friend and she was positive that Marcia's laugh had not been a happy one. Another tough morning with Michael? Amy wondered.
* * *
A delicately pretty woman, with dark hair and even darker, almost impenetrable eyes, Marcia Kleinman was as slender as she had been before her marriage, before Max was born. Her belly was not quite as flat, more noticeable to her than Michael. He loved to put the palm of his hand on her belly and massage that extra little bit of flesh between his fingers, before reaching farther down to twist the slightly stiff pubic hairs, careful not to pull at them. "Pretty" was never quite enough to describe her. Her short dark hair framed a perfectly oval face dominated by full lips. There was a slight slant to her eyes and her upper lids were full without the usual folds—from her mother, Barbara, and Barbara's mother before her—those eyes adding a touch of distinctive and seductive mystery to her beauty. Every now and then someone who saw Amy and Marcia together would ask if they were sisters, although Amy's appearance was unequivocally Asian. Marcia had just a whisper of the Orient despite the fact that no one in the family could be traced any farther east than a shtetl fifty kilometers southwest of St. Petersburg. Slimmer than her mother and almost an inch shorter, she was unmistakably Barbara's daughter. The resemblance was even more noticeable when they glared at each other, which happened often.
In addition to her music and to her voracious reading, fiction and non-fiction, Marcia was athletic. She ran the New York City Marathon twice when they lived there "B.M."—before Max—and still jogged almost every day, at least ten miles a week, usually before Michael went to work and on weekends. She adjusted to Los Angeles almost as soon as the airplane's door opened. She loved living in a place where people played golf and tennis virtually every day of the year, even though she never tried golf and had given up tennis. Forbidden by Barbara to play most sports while she was growing up because of what might happen to the muscles of her hands, the flexibility of her fingers, she had learned to play tennis at college but never really enjoyed it with her mother's insistent warnings still inside her head, constantly exhorting her to "guard those precious hands." She earned a place on the junior varsity team but quit after two weeks when she scraped her knuckles on a metal fence while trying to return a low shot deep in the corner. A little betadine and a couple of band-aids took care of the injury but, as soon as she left the dispensary, she knew she would never play tennis again. She couldn't stop thinking about how easily it could have been to break her fingers or even her wrist and, for two days after the scrape, she kept feeling her wrist bones to make sure they were intact. She felt a grudging recognition that one day she might need her hands to be as perfect as possible.
Or maybe it was her mother overpowering her subconscious as it seemed her mother so often did.
When she started running again after Max was born it was no longer for marathon lengths. Running the New York marathon for the first time she was thrilled in the chaos and the vibrancy of the start, as the multitudes swarmed across the Verrazano Bridge, runners so close together they were mostly occupied with not tripping. She was exhilarated when her energy rebounded as she passed groups of cheering friends, particularly at that singular moment when Central Park first came into her view. Despite the excitement she was decidedly deflated...
