She hit the call back button. When she first heard the voice on the other end, she thought maybe she had had a heart attack, after all, and was now hallucinating. Because the voice calling out—“Maribeth, is that you?”—did not belong to Todd or Sunita. It belonged to Elizabeth.
“Maribeth, where are you?” Elizabeth was asking. “Jason is going insane.”
Elizabeth had called her? Why? And why was she talking to her about Jason?
“Maribeth, say something!” Elizabeth cried.
“Elizabeth?” Maribeth asked, so confused. “Where are you?”
“Where am I? I’m in the country. Where are you? Are you okay?”
Maribeth stared at her phone. Pittsburgh’s area code was 412, not 413, which she now realized was Elizabeth’s area code in the Berkshires. That clarified where Elizabeth was, but only muddled everything else.
“Did you call me?” Maribeth asked.
“No, Jason did. He’s been trying to reach you for the last hour.”
“Jason’s there?” Maribeth asked. “With you?”
“He was. Now he’s frantically trying to get cell coverage in case you call him back on his cell. He said you had another heart attack.”
“I didn’t. They think it’s just gas. Where is he?”
“He’s headed to Lenox. Or Pittsburgh. I don’t know. He’s losing his mind, Maribeth. I’ve never seen him like this. You know how the cell coverage is up here, very dodgy. But it came on enough for him to get your voicemail. And he tried calling back and couldn’t get you. He’s taken the kids to town to call you. Or e-mail you. Or send a carrier pigeon. I told Tom we should get Wi-Fi here but you know how he likes it rustic.”
They were in the country? Jason and the kids? With Elizabeth and Tom?
“Why?” Maribeth asked.
“Christ, I don’t know. Because he wants it to be a sanctuary from the stress of daily life.”
“No. Why are Jason and the kids up there? With you?”
“Oh. Because tomorrow’s Christmas,” Elizabeth replied, as if that explained anything.
“But . . . why?” Maribeth repeated.
“They’ve been coming up a lot, on weekends. And they came for Thanksgiving,” she said.
Maribeth let that sink in. Jason and the twins. With Elizabeth. Weekends. Thanksgiving.
Elizabeth continued: “So we thought we’d have a quiet Christmas together, just family, except you’re not here, though your mother thinks you are.”
“Wait. What? My mother’s still in New York?”
“God, no. Jason knew she’d completely freak if she knew what you’d done so he told her you’d come up here on a retreat and she should go back to Florida. She thinks you’re still here. That Jason and the twins see you on weekends but that you’re not talking to anyone else. I call her with updates. Now she’s talking about trying her own retreat. Her friend Herb has done one, apparently.”
“You and Jason did that?”
“We colluded.” She chuckled softly. “That’s been the one fun part in all this.”
And with that, Maribeth started to understand. And when she did, she started to cry.
“Oh, darling,” Elizabeth said. “Please don’t cry. I didn’t mean that. It’s been great spending time with the twins. And they’re doing fine. Really. Jason fired that flakey babysitter and hired this great new lady who they love. And he’s with them a lot and Niff comes in the evenings and a bunch of your twins parenting friends have pitched in. And I’m here. I know I should’ve been here more before, and I’m so sorry that I wasn’t. But I’m here now, so you have to believe me when I say that O and L are okay. They have that twins thing where they rely on each other. They miss you. God, do they miss you—we all do—but Jason shows them a nightly video of you and they draw you pictures for when you get back. They know you’re coming back. Please don’t be sad.”
But Maribeth wasn’t crying because she was sad. She was remembering the night of her engagement party, when she’d envisioned herself and Elizabeth and Jason as the steady bases of her three-legged stool. Sturdy enough to hold her. To hold, it now seemed, her whole family.
So this was how it was. People entered your life. Some would stay. Some would not. Some would drift but would return to you. Like Elizabeth. Like Jason. And now, like Maribeth, herself, who had left, just as her own mother had, but who would return, as her own mother could not.
And that’s when she knew it was time. To return to Jason. To Oscar and Liv. To her life, though she had no idea what that life looked like anymore. Everything about it felt inchoate. Like a scar still healing. Or perhaps like a story still being written.
HE MUST HAVE been back in cell coverage. Because this time Jason picked up on the first ring. And there it was, that voice, the one she’d fallen in love with more than twenty-five years ago, the one she had never stopped loving.
“Jase,” she said. “It’s me.”
“Lois,” he managed before the voice broke wide open. And then all she could hear were the shuddering gasps of her husband’s silent crying.
“It’s okay,” she told him. “There was no heart attack. I’m fine.”
He still didn’t speak. In the background, she heard the boppy sound of the They Might Be Giants CD they played to keep the twins happy on long drives.
“Jason, listen. I’m coming home. Elizabeth’s already on her way to pick me up. I’ll be back tonight.”