Jennifer Weiner - Fly Away Home

Fly Away Home

A LSO BY J ENNIFER W EINER

Good in Bed
In Her Shoes
Little Earthquakes
Goodnight Nobody
The Guy Not Taken
Certain Girls
Best Friends Forever

Fly Away Home

A NOVEL

J ENNIFER
W EINER

A Division of Simon Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Jennifer Weiner, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Books hardcover edition July 2010

ATRIA BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon Schuster, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for the excerpt from Mascara Tears on page 139: Words and music by Richard Thompson. 1994 BEESWING MUSIC (BMI)/Administered by BUG MUSIC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation .

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com.

The Simon Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weiner, Jennifer.

Fly away home : a novel / by Jennifer Weiner.1st Atria Books hardcover ed.

p. cm.

1. PoliticiansUnited StatesFiction. 2. Sex scandalsFiction. 3. Politicians spousesFiction. 4. Mothers and daughtersFiction. 5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3573.E3935F59 2010
813'.54dc22 2010014689

ISBN 978-0-7432-9427-0
ISBN 978-1-4391-8396-0 (ebook)

For Joanna Pulcini and Greer Hendricks

Fly Away Home

Contents

PART ONE

Something About Love

SYLVIE

Breakfast in five-star hotels was always the same. This was what Sylvie Serfer Woodruff thought as the elevator descended from the sixth floor and opened onto the gleaming expanse of the lobby of the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. After thirty-two years of marriage, fourteen of them as the wife of the senior senator from New York, after visits to six continents and some of the major cities of the world, perhaps she should have been able to come up with something more profound about human nature and common ground and the ties that bind us all, but there it washer very own insight. Maybe it wasnt much, but it wasnt nothing. If pressed, Sylvie also had some very profound and trenchant observations to make about executive airport lounges.

She took a deep breath, uncomfortably aware of the way the waistband of her skirt dug into her midriff. Then she slipped her hand into her husbands and walked beside him, past the reception desk toward the restaurant, thinking that it was a good thing, a reassuring thing, that no matter where you were, London or Los Angeles or Dubai, if you were in a good hotel, a Four Seasons or a Ritz-Carltonand, these days, when she and Richard traveled they were almost always in a Four Seasons or a Ritz-Carltonyour breakfast would never surprise you.

There would be menus, offered today by a girl in a trim black suit who stood behind a podium in the plushly carpeted entryway, beaming at the patrons as if their arrival represented the very pinnacle of her day and possibly of her lifetime. Richard would wave the menus away. Well do the buffet, hed announce, without asking whether there was one. There always was. Of course, sir, their waiter or the maitre d or todays black-suited girl would murmur in approval. Theyd be led through a richly appointed room, past the heavy silk drapes, elaborately tassled and tied, past mahogany sideboards and expensively dressed diners murmuring over their coffee. Richard would deposit his briefcase and his newspapers at their table, and then theyd proceed to the buffet.

Thered be an assortment of fresh fruit, slices of melon, peeled segments of grapefruit and orange and sliced kiwis, arranged like jewels on white china platters. There were always croissants, chocolate and plain, always muffins, bran and blueberry and corn, always bagels (yes, even in Dubai), always shot glasses layered with yogurt and muesli, always slices of bread and English muffins, arrayed next to a toaster, and chafing dishes of scrambled eggs and bacon and sausage and breakfast potatoes, and there was always a chef in a toque and a white jacket, making omelets. Richard would ask for an omelet (spinach, as a nod to health, and mushrooms and Cheddar cheesehe liked onions, but couldnt risk a day of bad breath). Once the order was placed, hed hand off his plate to Sylvie and return to their table, to his New York Times and his Wall Street Journal and the eternal consolation of his BlackBerry, and Sylvie would wait for his food.

The first time her mother, the Honorable Selma Serfer, had seen Sylvie perform this maneuver, shed stared at her daughter with her mouth open and a dot of Crimson Kiss lipstick staining her incisor. Seriously? shed asked, in her grating Brooklyn accent. Sylvie had tried to shush her. Selma, as always, had refused to be shushed. Seriously, Sylvie? This is what you do? You fetch his eggs?

Hes busy, Sylvie murmured, shifting the plate to her right hand and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear with her left. I dont mind. She knew what her mother was thinking without the Honorable Selma, first in her class (and one of seven women) at Yale Law, former chief judge of the state of New York, having to say a word. Sylvie should mind, and Sylvie should be busy, too. Like her mother, Sylvie had gone to Barnard and Yale. Sylvie was meant to have followed in Selmas footsteps straight up to the Supreme Court, or at the very least practiced law for more than two years. Selma and David Serfers only child had been intended for better things than marriage, motherhood, committee work for various charities, and collecting her husbands breakfast.

Ah, well , she thought, as the chef swirled melted butter in a pan. She was happy with her life, even if it didnt please her mother. She loved her husband, she respected what hed accomplished, she felt good about the part that shed played in his career. Besides, she knew it could be worse. In cities all over the world, women went hungry, were beaten or abused; women watched their children suffer. Sylvie had seen them, had touched their hands and bounced their babies on her lap. It seemed churlish to complain about the occasional small indignity, about the hours shed spent campaigning, face smoothed into a pleasant expression, mouth set in a smile, hair straightened into an inoffensive shoulder-length bob, wearing hose that squeezed her middle and pumps that pinched her toes, standing behind her husband, saying nothing.

Normally, it didnt bother her, but every so often, discontent rose up inside her, spurred by some unpleasant reminder of her unrealized potential. A few months ago, the forms for her thirty-fifth reunion at Barnard had arrived in her in-box. Thered been a survey, a series of questions about life after college. One of them was Tell us how you spend your time. If youre working, please describe your job . Before she could stop herself, Sylvie had typed My job is to stay on a diet so that I can fit into size-six St. John knit suits and none of the bloggers can say that my behinds getting big . Shed erased the words immediately, replacing them with a paragraph about her volunteer work, the funds she raised for the homeless and the ballet, breast cancer research and the library and the Museum of Modern Art. Shed added a sentence about her daughters: Diana, who was an emergency-room doctor right here in Philadelphia, and Lizzie, vexing Lizzie whod given them such heartache, now several months sober (she didnt mention that), with her hair restored to its original blond and all those horrible piercings practically closed. Shed added a final beat about how for the last fourteen years she had been lucky enough to travel the world in the company of her husband, Senator Richard Woodruff, D-NY. But sometimes, late at night, she thought that the truth was the first thing shed written. Whatever ambition shed possessed, whatever the dreams shed once had, Sylvie Serfer Woodruff had grown up to be a fifty-seven-year-old professional dieter, a woman whose only real job now that her daughters were gone was staying twenty pounds thinner than shed been in law school.