Read Online Recalculating by Jennifer Weiner - Free Book Online Page A

Laura called The Big Squeeze, treating themselves to lunch after. They’d been doing it for years, long enough to recognize the staff, the radiologists and the nurses, but the last time they’d gone, a new, young nurse had joined Maureen in her little cubicle. The nurse had a tattoo that read FRANKI on the soft flesh of her upper arm, visible beneath her scrubs, and a clipboard in her hand.
    “Just a few questions,” she said in a thick Philadelphia accent, planting her broad bottom on the wheeled stool.
    Maureen stifled a sigh and the urge to tell the girl that nothing had changed. She had the same address, the same insurance, the same social security number and date of birth as last time, as indeed every time she’d come. But she let the girl do her job, asking for her home phone and cell phone and the date of her last physical. Then she’d come to the question that had startled her. “Are you experiencing violence in your home?”
    “I’m sorry?” Maureen asked.
    The nurse repeated the question, reading each word distinctly. “Are … you … experiencing … ”
    “No, no. Of course not.” She tried for a chuckle. “I mean, look at me!” Maureen was tall, five feet ten inches, broad in the hips and the shoulders, and pretty much everywhere else these days, too, since she’d turned fifty and some malevolent god had summoned an extra twenty pounds out of the air and sent them to live around her midriff.
    The young nurse wasn’t looking or laughing. She just looked bored, like she’d rather be anywhere else, anywhere but here interrogating some flabby old lady in a paper gown. “So that’s a no?” she asked.
    “Right. Yes. No.”
    Later, at lunch, she’d asked Laura whether she’d gotten the same question. “Yup,” said her sister, lavishing butter on her cheddar-cheese biscuit (Laura had one of those zippy metabolisms, and no matter what she ate, she maintained her slim Jackie O figure, trim hips and bottom and token nubs for breasts). “I said, if anyone’s getting abused in my house, it’s Stan, not me. Of course it’s not like he doesn’t deserve it.” Maureen forced her lips into a smile and toyed with her salad. Laura looked at her closely.
    “Why do you ask?” Laura inquired.
    “Oh, no reason. It’s just that they’ve never asked me that before. I wondered if it was a new thing.”
    “Probably some new law. They’ve probably got to ask everyone.” Laura ate her biscuit, and they were chatting about the skirt they had seen at Joan Shepp—marked down once already, but Laura was hoping for additional discounts—when her sister changed the subject.
    “Maureen,” she said, “you know, if there was something going on, you could tell me.”
    Maureen, who thought they were talking about the skirt, stared at her, puzzled. “What do you mean, something going on?”
    “With Tommy,” her sister amplified. She made a face. “I know he doesn’t like me very much … ”
    “Oh, Laur, that’s not true,” Maureen said, even though the lie tasted like paste in her mouth.
    “Come on, Mo,” said her sister. “I don’t like him, he doesn’t like me, that’s neither here nor there. What I want to know … ” She drew a breath and looked at Maureen steadily across the table. “He’s not hitting you. Is he?”
    “Of course not,” said Maureen. She sounded shocked, and she was sure she looked surprised. Her sister’s face relaxed, and Maureen relaxed, too. After all, she’d told the God’s honest truth. In their thirty years of marriage, years that had brought them two children, a boy and a girl, Tommy had never once raised a hand to her in anger.
    Tommy was a pincher.
    * * *
    The first time it had happened was three nights before their wedding. All weddings were stressful, Maureen knew. She’d been a bridesmaid for two of her sisters by then, had seen firsthand the way people behaved, or misbehaved, as that amped-up confluence of money and family drew closer. Laura had thrown