Something about Hattie’s voice always sounds so distant. It’s not that she’s in California with orange-spray and earthy wines, while Lina is here in the east coast with all the skyscrapers that Harry looked at before choosing the one he’d walk out of (his office window.) She resents the distance between her and the entire god-damn human race – but especially Hattie – like she does those fourteen floors. Lina doesn’t want the faux-compliance, the hesitancy: she yearns for the real stuff. The expensive stuff. The soul. They had such soul when they were young, two girls in a car, in a bed, in a world of their own. Hattie’s soul is still there. Lina examines her red nails. The thought invades her mind: Hattie, a candle, and Lina, a cold draught. “Mhmm. We’ll meet before the wedding at the least.” Given that there isn’t a wedding to speak of, the only way for them to not see one another before that is if they never see one another again. And what’s the likelihood there? About as high as Hattie’s dull-and-perfect little fucking bore of a husband doing the honest thing and offing himself, too. It’s only fair. Lina and Hattie always do as the other does. But then Hattie says something so abominably foul that Lina holds the phone a foot from her face, aghast. Hattie is expecting, because Hattie is fecund with love of all manner for her husband, and it’s absolutely abhorrent. For a moment she wants to burst into tears because she cannot have children the way Hattie can and she cannot love husbands the way Hattie can and she cannot be content like Hattie can and she is supposed to be the better of them both. She’s supposed to be the superior of everyone, but there’s something about having loved someone from childhood that makes that betrayal all the keener.

There’s acid in her throat. She wants to be sick, but she won’t let herself.

“I don’t understand how you do it.” Lina says flatly. In her mind’s eye her lids are dull and low, her hand is blasé and poised. She’s stringing the chord of the phone around a languid finger. “Some of us have figures to think of.” She says it like she’s playing a game. A trick she learned from Hattie herself, except with her own unique spin: the only goal here is to belittle. The reality is that she’s sitting as she sees it in her minds eye, but as if there is a rabid dog before her that will savage her to death if she dares move a hair out of what the image of herself ought to be. Gil had left her after getting some stupid broad pregnant. Harry had killed himself in the middle of a last ditch attempt to be parents to a baby. Whatever was left of that who torrid affair was probably washing away, pink and swirling, in her bathroom, or burning in whatever landfill her sheets ended up in. “But Harry is lucky that you’re oh so obliging.” Better to pretend it’s not something she wanted.

Being so far apart so frequently these days, Hattie could almost forget how cutting Lina can be -- like a piece of glass, like a shard of ice. She wilts a little with the shocked disappointment of it and she feels suddenly as though she's been doused with cold water. That simple little bubble of happiness that's been glowing inside of her for several days now feels as though it has been ruptured, and as though to make sure that it hasn't been stolen away by the power of Lina's words alone, Hattie's hand strays to her lower belly searching for the comfort that she inevitably finds in that gentle, innocuous little bulge settled just below her waistline.

For a moment, she doesn't say anything in response to Lina's disparaging comments -- for a moment, she briefly considers hanging up the phone altogether and leaving her alone in her misery. Her face falls and her feet shuffle idly on the tiles of her kitchen floor.

( She knows it's only a matter of months before she'll have to forgo her beloved heels again -- her feet swell terribly with each pregnancy, much to her displeasure. )

But then Lina says something, a slip of the tongue, that breaks Hattie's heart for her all over again. Harry had been such a kind man, and surely her beloved friend is still reeling from the loss of him. What fun they had all had together in New York, Lina and Harry and Hattie and Bobby. She'll remember those soirees fondly, along with the gentle soul that poor Harry had been.

She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and makes a vow to be more patient. When her eyes open again, fixed back upon her children playing in the yard, she's attached a winning smile to her face once more, her hand still firmly, protectively, upon her midsection.

"Oh, I'll bounce back," she assures her friend with a good-natured laugh. "I always do. After the first three, I know just what to expect. Anyhow, Bobby and I are just delighted."

There's a beat before she speaks again.

@harrietegan didn’t ask for a starter.

“I have a new fiancé, actually.”  She’s lying. But it’s unbearable to be outdone down the phone this way, when Hattie can’t see any of the empire she’s built herself. Lina’s finger curls the red Bakelite phone cord, and she scratches the entwined nail over her desk-wood. What? Is she supposed to say: things have gotten worse since you came to my husband’s funeral. I’m suffocating under the weight of my own head.             As if.         Defeat?   No thank you.

“He’s a real dog. Handsome, too.”  He’s manufactured to appeal to Hattie’s imagination. The woman’s across the continent in California. If this is all Lina has to say to stop the weekly pity-calls, the tentative needling of her personal affairs, then hell. She’ll say it.  A part of her wants to ask: why not me? You know I’m tied to you beyond all reason. Why wouldn’t you marry me instead? People don’t keep in touch with their teenage friend like this normally. It’s not normal. It’s special, special, special.  But she knows how it’d go, so she sighs.         “How’re the children?” 

In California where things are bright and the air smells like oranges, Hattie leans across the cool tile of the kitchen counter. Her children - two boys and a girl - are playing on the lawn, well within her line of vision, running through the sprinklers. It's been dry this summer. She could almost drown out her beloved friend's boasting -- and then she feels awfully guilty for the thought alone.

"Oh..?" Against her will, her response comes out sort of hesitantly. It's awfully soon, she thinks, and perhaps if she wasn't a little scared of Lina biting her head off for it, she would say as much. But Lina has been through a terrible time of it lately, and if she's found someone to maybe finally make her happy, well, then Hattie is happy too.

"I'm glad," she says, and tries for all the world to mean it. "Well, I'd love to come and meet him before the wedding." Somehow, she feels like this is tricky territory. All too often, talking with Lina can feel like walking into a trap.

She's glad when a new topic is introduced -- her very favourite one, and she glows at the mention of her babies.