Page 3 of Engineering a Love Story

Even so, in the soft light this morning, I fear tearing this all apart might be like taking a wrecking ball to a perfectly solid structure. There’s nothing wrong with any of this, not really, nothing harmful or catastrophic. Ash and I are companionable, friendly. Isn’t that supposed to be enough? It’s more than so many ever get. We’re not miserable here, and I have no idea if misery is a prerequisite for destruction.

At The Symp and then on the plane yesterday, I’d been so certain. All those guys lined up to speak to me, the thrill of delivering my talk to a packed room—Walter. Life here seemed small in comparison. I thought the truest path would be to finally admit that nothing here has ever fit quite right, that the five years I’ve been married to Ash have felt like driving down a very pleasant road in entirely the wrong direction.

But maybe that’s silly. This morning, Orlando feels a million miles away. This is my life, my real life, one I’ve worked hard to attain. It’s solid and with plenty of good in it. Throwing it all away would be just the kind of immature, impulsive act I’ve always avoided. My marriage isn’t perfect, but then nothing is.

Room by room, I wander and sit and analyze and walk and worry and rationalize, listening for Ash’s car and trying to decide what I’ll say when he returns. By noon, I’m jittery and tense, my stomach churning with sour coffee and emptiness. I go to the kitchen and find an open box of cereal. Tucking this under one arm, I drag a chair onto our empty back deck, another space we haven’t found the time to furnish.

Eating cereal straight from the box, I listen to neighborhood noises, kids playing and the background hum of lawn mowers. Saturday sounds, I realize. The Symp had such an out-of-time quality to it, a pop-out from everyday life, I’ve lost my bearings. Not only is it Saturday, I remember now that it’s Memorial Day weekend.

And then I know where Ash is. He even reminded me, yesterday in the garage. Long weekends, vacations, and most holidays are spent with Ash’s family on Squam Lake. This time, he’s gone without me.

I wonder how Ash has explained my absence. Thinking of what the Kelseys might all be saying about me—it figures flashes in my mind—I lower the cereal box to the deck.

It’s lunchtime and at the lake, the Kelseys have no doubt spent the morning on industrious tasks. Ash’s mother, who is named Elizabeth but has gone by Boops—even her children call her this—since her days as a prep-school field hockey star, always insists on a project at the lake. We tromp outside with paint cans or go with buckets to empty gutters. Once we even bent to remove fallen sticks from the woods; it almost doesn’t seem to matter what we accomplish as long as it’s something. And then the Bloody Marys can be consumed at lunch.

It was just this time of day when Ash took me to meet his family. “It’ll be fun,” he promised when I hesitated before accepting his first invitation to the lake house. We were at the end of our junior year of college and had been dating for six months. It seemed quick to me. I wasn’t sure I was ready to meet his family, but even then Ash had a friendliness that assumed cooperation.

Had that been Memorial Day weekend too? If so, that would make it ten years ago, almost to the day.

Ash’s stories of his family generally centered hijinks and elaborate pranks, antics that were as foreign to me as the country clubs and prep schools he so casually mentioned. I barely knew what those things were, though the Kelsey name on one of the oldest investment firms in Boston—even I understood that. “It’ll be too cold for swimming,” Ash said before our trip north. “But we can take the boat out. Have dinner at the club, maybe?” I raised my eyebrows, but he reassured me. “It’s New Hampshire. Nothing fancy. Only nine holes.”

When we first entered the lake house, Boops stood at the kitchen counter, an array of juices and jars around her. After Ash made introductions, she crossed the room and hugged me. “Chelsea. We’ve heard so much about you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Kelsey.” I tried not to stiffen in her unexpected embrace, unable to remember when I’d last hugged anyone in my own family.

“It’s Boops,” she said, pulling back and taking me in. Like Ash, Boops coaches three prep school sports, and I was certain she wouldn’t see the point of me, given my absolute ignorance of tennis racquets, hockey sticks, and whatever those net things are in lacrosse.

But Boops looped her arm through mine, asking if I wanted to learn the secret to Uncle Monty’s Bloody Marys. “It’s the Worcestershire,” she whispered, steering me across the kitchen and setting me to work filling glasses with ice and celery.

Her kindness that day wasn’t a one-off. As time passed, and Ash and I stayed together, Boops was always demonstrating things—like how to fold cloth napkins or arrange vases of tulips. Implicitly, I also gathered how to act when you can’t remember someone’s name or when you have to ask paid help to perform an unpleasant task—cordial, yet immovable. She included me in the family jokes and ensured there were gifts for me among the mounds under their tree, even in the early days.

By the time Ash slid a small box to me across a table at the country club one evening, saying, “I thought we could make it official,” I was already part of the family.

***

After another restless night in the guest room, I wake late and groggy the next morning to a bright sun and a ringing telephone. Shaking off sleepiness, I cross the hall to our bedroom, which already seems full of stuffy, unused air, and grab the cordless off its cradle.

“Thought I’d take a chance,” my college roommate Bethany says after a chipper good morning. “Surprised you guys aren’t up at the lake.”

I sink onto the bed, relieved to hear Bethany’s voice. We talk more lately, since she gave birth to Madison a few months ago. She’s on maternity leave and calls while she’s breastfeeding, wanting to hear about my Gilroy trips. Living vicariously, she says.

This is a role reversal for us. When we were in college, Bethany was the one returning from school breaks with stories of travel she’d done with her family, while I rarely left campus unless I had to. I always stayed and picked up extra waitressing shifts, needing the money and avoiding my father’s house as much as possible.

“Remind me,” she says. “Where was it this week?” Bethany’s voice has the low, soothing tone I like, the one she uses when her baby is close. There’s a rustling sound, maybe a shifting of positions.

“Orlando,” I say, and before she has a chance to ask anything more, I talk nonstop for five minutes. I tell her about Walter and what I said to Ash in the garage, feeling the relief of releasing my ceaselessly swirling thoughts into the air.

“Wait. What? How do you work with someone and not know him?”

I explain the size and scope of Gilroy, the largest and most influential tech market research firm in the world. Gilroy has research analysts all over the globe, who gather annually at The Symp.

“At the start of the week, I saw it for what it was—this older guy, you know, hanging around. And I thought I could just enjoy his attention. Have fun. But then it made my head spin. All Walter’s tales of European life, the excitement of being away—it was like I was someone else, living a different life.” I catch my breath. “I’m not even sure I found him attractive.”

“Really?” Bethany sounds disappointed, though her voice is still quiet.

I try to picture Walter, who had a graying waviness in his dark hair that, as the days passed, I longed to sink my fingers into. His eyelashes were so long, they seemed to brush against the insides of his funky black glasses whenever he looked at me—which he did all week. And he swaggered on the main stage when he gave his presentation, a combination of arrogance and intellect I found irresistible.

“I don’t know. Maybe. But I also felt like the other women there were watching us. Like, I was the flavor of the week. Or the year. Or whatever.”