The chase for baby number two grew tiresome. Ava used to appear at the newspaper on the night of a deadline and demand that Jordan lock the door to his office and have sex with her right then. The first time it happened, their subsequent emergence garnered a round of enthusiastic applause from his staff. The tenth time, hardly anyone looked up.
In ways too numerous to count, the Prices’ obsession with progeny had ruined Jordan’s life.
When it began to seem clear that a second baby was never going to happen, when Jordan had given up hope and he believed Ava had as well, Ava returned to Australia alone. She had planned to stay for two weeks, but she ended up staying for six. During their phone calls, Jordan gently inquired as to when she might be coming home. He missed her. He missed her as his wife, and he missed her as Jake’s mother; she had left him as a single parent, and he also had a newspaper to run. Jake was only twelve years old at the time, and Jordan had to feed him, help him with his homework, and chauffeur him all over the island. Jordan was careful not to press too hard, however: Ava’s trips to Australia were a touchy subject because for all the times that she had gone back, Jordan had never accompanied her. He told her it was because he couldn’t leave the newspaper, which was true enough, but more than that, it was because he didn’t want to go. In this particular instance, Jordan understood that her extended trip to Australia was something of a consolation prize: it was what he was giving Ava because he hadn’t given her a baby.
When Ava had been gone for four weeks and three days-a detail that Jordan couldn’t forget-she mentioned in a phone call that she had been spending time with Roger Polly, the man fifteen years her senior with whom she had once been in love. The man who had broken her heart.
“ ‘Spending time’?” Jordan said. He was incensed by this news, and completely panicked. “What does that mean, ‘spending time’?”
“We’ve been out,” Ava said. She then let it slip that Roger’s wife had drowned the year before at Kuta Beach in Bali while on vacation with some friends, adding that when she heard this news, she had called him to offer her condolences. This had led to a second phone conversation, then a meet-up for coffee, then dinner at Fraser’s in Kings Park. When Jordan looked up Fraser’s on line, he learned that it was one of the nicest restaurants in Perth.
He thought, She’s not coming home.
He decided that though he’d refused every chance to go with Ava to Australia in the past, he would go after her right that second. He didn’t care if he had to walk and swim.
As it turned out, though, Ava returned of her own volition ten days later. Jordan arranged for Jake to sleep over at the Alistair house that night. Then he brought Ava home and made love to her in a way that he hoped would exorcise all traces of old, distraught widower Roger Polly, as well as establish the national superiority of the United States.
And six weeks later, they discovered that Ava was pregnant.
Now Ava was livid that Jordan wouldn’t come to the barbecue. “I suppose they’ll think we’re divorced, then,” she fumed.
“Why would they think we’re divorced when I just uprooted my whole life and left the newspaper for an entire year so I could bring you here?” Jordan asked.
That hushed her up. He had made the ultimate sacrifice. He didn’t have to shake hands, drink beer, eat kangaroo sausages, or talk about footy with a bunch of Prices. But Jake did.
“Please kiss your grandmother,” Jordan told him, feeling like the ultimate hypocrite.
“I can barely remember what she looks like,” Jake said.
“She’ll be the one on the throne,” Jordan said. “Wearing the tiara and velvet robes.”
“Honestly, Dad,” Jake said. “Can’t you please come?”
“No,” Jordan said.
“I could refuse to go too, you know,” Jake said.
“It would break your mother’s heart,” Jordan said. “Showing you off to her family has always been her favorite thing. So be impressive, okay?” He clapped Jake’s shoulder, then lowered his voice and added, “Nobody knows about the accident, nobody knows about Penny. You won’t have to talk about it. You won’t have anyone feeling sorry for you. You can just be yourself.”
Jake looked at his father. “I don’t know who that is anymore.”
Jordan swallowed. What he couldn’t tell his son was that he felt the same way. He was a newspaperman without a newspaper. He was a citizen without a country. He was a man without the woman he loved.
“You’ll be fine,” Jordan said. “You’ll be great.”
Because he wasn’t working, Jordan had every day free, but today, with Ava and Jake off at Heathcote Park for an all-day affair, he was really free. He sat on the bench in the back garden and read the Sunday Australian while listening to the gurgling of the fountain. It was a pleasant hour in the sun; the Sunday Australian was a nice little newspaper. It featured a weekly column on wine whose author seemed very well informed-Jordan usually wrote down his suggestions-and it made him wonder if perhaps he should add a wine column to the Nantucket Standard. Maybe in summer. Maybe in winter. Whenever he thought about the newspaper, he got an itchy feeling. He was just biding time here in Australia; he was treading water for Ava’s sake, for Jake’s sake. Ava had undergone an immediate and complete metamorphosis upon their arrival in Fremantle. She was drinking, smoking, and partying like a teenager; she was sailing and going to the beach and once again singing along to Crowded House in the shower. She was living. Looking at the remarkable bloom of the flowers surrounding the fountain, Jordan thought that Ava was like a native plant that he’d uprooted and transplanted in a hostile climate. Now here she was, back on home soil. Flourishing again.
But he, most certainly, was not.
He went inside. He found himself tiptoeing like a burglar to his desk in the den. He hadn’t used his computer once in the three weeks they’d been here. He had been keen to set it up, eager to establish a connection with his home ten thousand miles away, but then as soon as he’d gotten it up and running, he’d felt afraid. He wasn’t sure he could handle news from home. After all, back on Nantucket, summer was in full swing. There would be things happening every day and every night: talks at the Atheneum, concerts, plays, benefits, dinner auctions, cocktail parties, golf tournaments, fishing tournaments, book signings, art openings. There would be bands playing at the Cisco Brewery in the afternoons and at the Chicken Box at night. Jordan had never been able to make it to every event in a typical summer week, but he liked to get to as many as he could. In recent years he and Zoe had attended functions separately but together. He loved nothing more than seeing her dressed up and chatting away, sipping her wine, throwing him meaningful looks, whispering funny things as they brushed past each other in the crowd. Sometimes Zoe would be catering one of these events, and Jordan would find her in the kitchen. She would be wearing her white chef’s jacket with the words Hot Mama stitched over the breast pocket, her hair held back by a turquoise bandanna. Her Jamaican waiters would all break out in knowing smiles when they saw him: “Coming to kiss the boss lady’s hand,” they’d tease. They thought he came back to the kitchen for the food-a special ramekin of the truffled mac and cheese, his own plate of mini lobster rolls. And while it was true that Zoe plied him with special treats, really he came just to lay his eyes on her, to hear the jingle of her long, dangly earrings, to listen to the sound of her voice.