Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

Phoebe could go on and on explaining and still not quite capture what she was trying to get across. She did not fight with Reed. When they disagreed, they did so nicely. They knew each other too well to fight; they understood each other completely. The bottom line was: Phoebe had never in her life felt lonely. Because she always had Reed. Her best friend. Her double. He was she, she was he, they were pink and blue, two halves of a whole.

Reed met a girl and got married. Moved to Connecticut. Phoebe loved her sister-in-law, Ellen Paige, and helped her organize Junior League luncheons in New Canaan. Phoebe then met Addison and moved to Nantucket. The Wednesday lunches became a thing of the past, but Phoebe and Reed still talked on the phone two or three times a day. They spent a week together in Wisconsin at Christmas. Reed and Ellen Paige came to Nantucket for a week in June; Phoebe and Addison went to Connecticut for a week in October.

Ellen Paige got pregnant and had a baby boy. His name was Domino, but Phoebe called him Sweet Reedy Junior. She spoiled him rotten, sending him a monogrammed bathrobe, a full Brio train set, a four-foot stuffed giraffe from FAO Schwarz. I’m an auntie! The auntie. Reed’s baby was her baby.

In my will, Phoebe said, everything goes to him.

What could Phoebe say about September 11 that hadn’t already been said in sixty languages? It was a beautiful day. Addison got up early to go shark fishing with Bobby D. Phoebe was headed to the gym, but she gagged and spit in the kitchen sink over the smell of her usual espresso. She was grossed out, but she was happy, too.

She was pregnant! She, Phoebe Wheeler, was going to have a baby!

Phoebe hadn’t even realized she wanted a baby. In fact, when asked, she was adamant that she didn’t want a baby. She didn’t want to ruin her body, she didn’t want to cramp the lifestyle that she and Addison had cultivated, she didn’t want to deal with poop or vomit or her own filled-to-bursting milkmaid breasts, which would undoubtedly leak all over her Elie Tahari camisole tops. But since Domino had come into the world, Phoebe had softened toward the idea. She would have a baby girl, and her daughter and Domino would be Reed and Phoebe, the next generation. On September 11, she was eleven weeks and four days along. She and Addison had gone for an amniocentesis and found out that the baby was perfectly healthy, and yes, it was a girl.

There was no reason Phoebe couldn’t exercise, the doctor said. In fact, she should exercise. Just don’t overdo it, and be sure to eat! (Phoebe blanched; she was not a big eater. She feared calories as if they were poisonous spiders, and now, with the nausea, even her usual diet of espresso, celery sticks, and fat-free yogurt dip wouldn’t stay down.)

At the gym, Phoebe got on the treadmill. Only three days until her first trimester was over and she could tell people she was pregnant. She had told her parents, of course, and Reed and Ellen Paige, and Delilah and Jeffrey and Tess and Greg and Andrea and the Chief. But, for example, Jeremy, the adorable boy who checked IDs at the front desk of the gym, didn’t know. He must have looked at the slight swell of Phoebe’s belly and thought she was eating too much banana pudding, complete with Nilla Wafers and whipped cream. (This was Phoebe’s favorite dessert, but she didn’t let herself get within a hundred yards of it.) Phoebe wanted to stick by the first-trimester rule, because she felt that the only thing worse than miscarrying would be people pitying her for miscarrying. Phoebe had always been lucky and blessed; her life had been happy. Pity was foreign and horrible to her; she feared it more than calories or poisonous spiders.

As Phoebe ran, she watched the Today show. It was eight-thirty. There was a half-hour limit on the machines at the gym, but if there wasn’t a line (which there wouldn’t be, now that all of the summer people had gone home), she could push it to sixty minutes. At five minutes to nine, Phoebe was hitting a wall. She was feeling worn down, shaky, short of breath. The doctor had told her not to overdo it. She should stop. She had a Pilates class at four, anyway. But she put on her headphones and kept going.

She was listening to Taylor Dayne sing “Tell It to My Heart,” and her feet were moving now. She had her second wind; she was feeling better than she had all summer. And this was what all the pregnancy books said: the day will come when the nausea and fatigue will end and the pregnant woman will feel good. Phoebe was thinking about this, wondering if it was okay to believe that her turning point had arrived today, Tuesday, September something, when she noticed something happening on TV. The Today show was cut short; they had Tom Brokaw on, looking very serious. Then there was footage-a plane flying into the side of a tall building. People crowded in among the treadmills, trying to see the TV. Jeremy from the desk was among them.

Phoebe was hesitant to slow down or stop; her pace was perfect. She was having that experience when her body and the machine were working optimally together.

She kept going. Again they showed the plane flying into the building. More people crowded in. They didn’t want to use the treadmill, they just wanted to watch the news. Phoebe removed her right earbud and said to Jeremy, “What’s going on?”

“A plane hit the World Trade Center,” he said.

Phoebe gagged. Okay, wait. Wait! She punched the correct sequence of buttons on the treadmill to make it slow down, then stop. Her insides were a brewing storm; she was going to lose her bowels right there on the treadmill in front of everyone. Another indignity of the pregnant body. She could not get her breath. She had that shaky, hot, diarrhea feeling. She was afraid to move for fear of erupting. There was a word on her tongue, one word, but she had to deal with her personal emergency first. Get out of the gym! She had to get her bag, her phone, she had to get to her car. Before leaving the gym, she checked the TV screen again. The World Trade Center? In New York City? Of course that’s what the building was. She had been watching the screen just like everybody else, she had seen the plane fly into the building-through the building-just like everybody else, but she had been so inward-looking, so consumed with the cardiovascular and reproductive systems of her own body, that she had not thought to wonder where the building was. If pressed, she would have said Jerusalem or Lebanon, or some other part of the world where planes flew into buildings, either because political strife was a part of the everyday or because they just weren’t as careful as Americans. But New York City? The World Trade Center?

She was holding the word in her mouth like a piece of hard candy. She spit it out.

Reed!

She ran down the stairs to her car, dialing. Number one on her speed dial, before Addison even, was Reed at work. Cantor Fitzgerald, hundred and first floor, the World Trade Center, Tower One.

She got his voicemail.

“Jesus, Reed, call me!” she screamed.

Two women Phoebe knew vaguely were getting out of their cars in the parking lot. One of them, Jamie, said, “Hey, Phoebe! Are you okay?”

Phoebe waved, got into her car. Call Addison! The receptionist at Addison’s office, Florabel, answered the phone. Phoebe detested Florabel and suspected the feeling was mutual.

Phoebe said, “Addison, please?”

Florabel didn’t recognize Phoebe’s voice, because Phoebe’s voice was held hostage by panic. Florabel said, “Mr. Wheeler is out of the office today. Would you like his voicemail?”

Shit! Addison was fishing! Phoebe hung up. She tried Addison’s cell phone and got his voicemail. He was so far offshore, he would never have reception.