Read Online Grand Avenue by Joy Fielding - Free Book Online Page B

finances? Vicki was married to a wealthy man. She had no understanding of what it meant for a man to work at a job he hated in order to keep food on the table. Money was tight right now. Tony was right to have her on a strict allowance, to make her account for every dime.
    “First thing Monday morning,” Vicki was saying, “I want you to go to the bank and open your own account. You hear me, Chris?”
    “I hear you,” Chris said, deciding it was easier to agree than argue.
    “I’ll go with you,” Barbara volunteered, patting Chris’s hand. “I’m embarrassed to say I don’t have my own account either.”
    “God, I don’t believe you two,” Vicki said. “What century are you living in anyway?”
    “Why don’t we pull over,” Susan suggested as they turned right onto Sunshine Lane. “Walk for a bit.”
    Immediately, Vicki pulled her car to the side of the road. Four doors opened. The women stepped into the warmth of the September afternoon.
    “It’s so peaceful here,” Barbara said, grabbing on to Chris’s hand, swinging it back and forth, as if they were schoolgirls. Vicki walked several paces ahead, Susan several paces behind.
    “Can we slow down just a little,” Susan asked.
    Even twenty pounds overweight, Susan was lovely, Chris thought, with her fine brown hair curving toward her strong jaw, the roundness of her cheeks erasing any telltale signs of age, making her look even younger than she had at their first encounter.
    “Come on, ladies, I can’t walk this slow,” Vicki groaned. Typical, Chris thought. Vicki’s patience was limited. Hadn’t she gotten tired of waiting for her perm to grow out and impatiently hacked her hair off to within an inch of its life? Luckily, the pixie do suited her. Chris smiled. Vicki had a way of spinning even the dirtiest straw into gold.
    They walked along the side of the road till they reached Cayuga Drive.
    “That’s it for me, ladies,” Chris said, stopping abruptly, feeling suddenly sick to her stomach. “The heat’s getting to me.” She felt her knees buckle, give way, watched the ground rushing up to meet her as she fell to the pavement.
    Comforting arms immediately surrounded her.
    “My God, Chris, what happened?”
    “Did you hurt yourself?”
    “Take deep breaths.”
    Chris tried to push away their concern with a wave of her hand, bursting into tears instead.
    “What is it, Chris? What’s wrong?”
    “I think you need to see a doctor.”
    “I don’t need a doctor,” Chris said.
    “How long have you been falling down like this?”
    “It’s nothing.”
    “Chris, you fell down the stairs. Montana said youfall down all the time. Now you collapse in the middle of the street.”
    “It’s hot.”
    “Not that hot.”
    Chris took a deep breath, pushed the seemingly unstoppable flow of tears roughly toward her ears, burying her hands beneath the ponytail at the back of her neck. “Oh God,” she wailed.
    “What is it?”
    “Please, Chris. You can tell us.”
    Chris searched the worried eyes of her friends. Could she tell them the truth? Could she? Dear God, what would they think of her? “I think I’m pregnant,” she whispered.
    “You’re pregnant?” Barbara repeated. “That’s wonderful.” She paused. “Isn’t it?”
    Chris lowered her head to her chest, her shoulders shaking as she cried.
    “Is it wonderful?” Susan asked quietly.
    “I don’t know,” Chris heard herself wail, hating the sound. It sounded weak and desperate and ungrateful. “It’s not that I don’t love my children.”
    “Of course not.”
    “I love my children more than anything in the world.”
    “We know that.”
    “And it’s not that I don’t ever want more kids. Maybe in another year or two, when things have settled down a bit. It’s just that the timing seems so wrong.” Chris raised her arms in defeat, then dropped them to her sides. “We had to take out a second mortgage on the house last month, and Tony hates his new job, he’s