It's a while before she wears it again - she thinks she might have forgotten about it except for the new house and the Hamptons house and the packing and the repacking and then she sleeps alone four nights in a row. It's different when she's operating too because the adrenaline carries her through. That and the praise.
You don't have to please everyone! That was Derek, scolding her about something - probably her parents, that one last-ditch attempt she made to reconcile with them - but he doesn't mind when it's him she's trying to please. When she crawls over him at night with remorse or request. Giving and taking feel the same; maybe that's what marriage is. A sequence of things, a cycle. Give, take, give. Kiss, fight - what? They've stopped fighting for the most part, so maybe it's silence that will end the cycle. He wanted a baby; she wanted a second certification - that was the last fight she could remember. They didn't have a baby. She has double-barreled credentials instead and Derek has a room for his fishing rod collection. They have nine nieces. They have five nephews. Can't that be enough?
He stopped asking about babies, prodding her about the pill, making comments when they see his sisters. His mother looks at her with dissatisfaction or worse but Derek still insists that his mother loves her. Can't you see her face? she wonders. Does that look like love to you? But maybe he can't. He didn't know about Amy. Didn't know, and she only thinks about this tentatively, testing it, because it was so long ago, but he didn't - doesn't - know about Liz.
He commented a few times, in the beginning, that she seemed to be hitting it off more with Nancy and Kathleen, and of course she bonded right away with Amy. Once Addison admitted on that first visit that she, too, was excited for Mark's arrival, she and Amy became fast friends. Fast sisters. Everything Amy did was fast and Addison helped pry her out of a smashed-up car, force breath back into her drug-shriveled lungs, commit her - as easy as signing a paper - to forcible help. It's called help even if you don't want it. Derek never outright said What about Liz? but he made a few jokes, a couple of comments here and there. Do you even know my other sister's name? he asked her once and Addison flushed, suddenly as sensitive, tingling, as that long ago night. Of course. Liz is great, and she stammered a little which he thought was cute and then he was distracted and he didn't bring it up again.
She made a point the next Thanksgiving to sit near Liz. Not next to her - privately she worries she'd feel something, that the electric current Liz started might not have turned off. Amy plopped down between them and helped herself to half of Addison's sweet potatoes, most of her cornbread. I'm starving, she complained, over and over, but she was so skinny, almost wraithlike. Was that the last Thanksgiving they were all together? Then it was Amy who didn't remember anyone's name. Not even her own.
"Addison, are you listening to me?"
She raises sleepy eyes toward her husband. She knows it annoys him when she does this, drifts off when he's talking, lets her mind slide loose-limbed over the connections and pieces of her past. She's sorry, she's always sorry.
"I'm listening."
"I said I need to go to the hospital."
"Okay," she says slowly. Tries to remember why he's bothering to spell it out for her. Did they have plans or something? Her head feels slow, logy.
"I'm sorry about dinner, but we can do it another time."
Oh. "It's okay," she responds automatically.
"You're not mad?" For a minute his eyes twinkle like they used to.
She just shakes her head.
"Then why are you wearing that old sweatshirt?" His voice is light now, almost teasing.
Addison pulls the afghan tighter around her legs, doesn't answer.
"I'll be back tonight if I can." He leans over to kiss her, his scarf dangling against the letters on the sweatshirt.
"Happy birthday, Addie."
The door closes loudly. She sits cross-legged for a while, opens and then closes a medical journal. Pours a second glass of wine. A tear - just one, Bizzy would be only a little displeased - slides down her cheek and wets the fabric of her old sweatshirt. She dials the phone with trembling fingers.
"You busy? No? Want to come over? Yeah, I'm fine. Derek's - no, but I'm fine. Okay, see you soon. No, I don't need anything, Mark, I said I was fine! Okay. Okay, see you in a few minutes."