Man of the Year

by Caroline Louise Walker

  “Nick?” I say, but I say it softly and mindlessly. He isn’t here. I shouldn’t be here. But again, it’s my house—the one place on this planet that belongs to me. The wastebasket is full of wadded Kleenex, magazine subscription cards, empty soap packaging. He’s a Nivea fan, apparently. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what I hope to accomplish by opening the shower door and crouching low and inspecting the drain, looking for—what? What am I doing? Looking for Elizabeth’s hair, I guess, like I’m some kind of Perry Mason. The German song commences its irritating first few measures, and I check myself. Enough.

  Nick’s voice echoes in this empty shower stall. “Dr. Hart?”

  I don’t react. For several long seconds, I continue to kneel without spinning around. He’s been standing there how long? That sickly composer must have intercepted my radar. I rise and wipe my hands on my suit pants, as though they were Carhartt coveralls and I’m the handyman. “Nick,” I say.

  He’s wearing gym clothes and standing in the doorway with his fingers laced behind his head. He’s blocking my exit. Power move. “Is everything okay?”

  “Oh, fine.” I shimmy past him, past his sweat smell. “Where have you been?”

  “Went for a run,” he says, following me. “Like to knock it out before it gets too hot.”

  “You are a go-getter, aren’t you?”

  He snickers. So cocky, so cool, so transparent. I’m embarrassed for him and would just as soon leave and never acknowledge this whole run-in, but Nick asks, “Is there something wrong with the shower?”

  “No,” I say. “Thought there might be, but it turns out everything is fine.”

  “Oh.” He shadows me into his messy room. “Well, that’s good.”

  I step outside, but the power line connecting my brain to my feet misfires, bringing my whole self to a halt. I wasn’t prepared to see Elizabeth tiptoeing toward us like she is. Her head is down. Her feet are bare. She’s wearing short shorts with the elastic waistband rolled down and that sweatshirt that hangs off her shoulder, no bra. Again. She’s too busy sidestepping twigs and anthills to have noticed me standing here yet, because when she looks up and sees me and not Nick in the doorframe, her body jerks. Her face falls, and yet, her face looks neat. Her hair is wet, water dripping down her neck. Her lips shine pink.

  “Robert,” she says. “I thought you’d left.”

  “Good morning,” Nick says from over my shoulder.

  Elizabeth shakes her confusion and smiles past me. “Morning, Nick.”

  “Are you wearing makeup?” I ask her.

  “No, Robert,” she lies.

  “Really? Because it looks like you’re wearing makeup.” I’m as mortified for myself as for her, but if I resist holding her accountable for these shameless appeals for attention, she’ll keep right on humiliating herself, and I value my respect for her too much to let it go.

  “Oh my God. You’re being such a weirdo.”

  “Well then,” I say, biting back the rest, “I’m off to work.” I smile at the both of them and leave my wife, barefoot and blushing, alone with sweaty Nick.

  “I’m grilling branzino tonight,” she shouts after me. “You’ll be home early?”

  “Barring catastrophe,” I say without turning.

  I trudge through the grass as though swimming in gelatin—trying to eavesdrop or make sense of what I saw—and still I’m haunted by a maxim that made the rounds back in medical school: when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. The most obvious, reasonable diagnosis is the best place to start. I don’t want to encourage my first instinct, but it would be irresponsible to deny it. The most obvious, reasonable conclusion I first drew is that Elizabeth got all prettied up and snuck over to visit Nick when she thought I was gone, because for whatever reason, Nick has an effect on her. She likes his attention. He likes hers. My stomach turns.

  So that’s my first impression, but there’s a whole swarm of sensible alternatives. It’s possible, more likely even, that Nick needed directions or advice or assistance with some domestic thing, and I should favor these possibilities, as I’d much prefer to see my wife for the woman I love and trust and value unequivocally than to see her as the other thing. We vowed to protect each other, to put each other first, to honor each other, and Elizabeth is principled and worthy of me, so why would I make her my enemy? She’s getting attention from a boy who doesn’t know better. Nick’s foolishness is not my Lizzie’s fault.

  On my drive to work, I decide that my first instincts were zebras after all. I went to bed angry. I woke up late. By the time I get to the office, my anxiety has faded. There are no stampedes, just a bad night’s sleep.

  “Morning, Doctor,” Simone says when I walk in the door. She stifles a knowing smile, the type born of poorly kept secrets.

  “Morning.”

  “You see the paper yet? No? Never read your own press, huh?”

  “Something like that.” The last time I got local press, it was for an architecture thing by that uppity historian who published images of our widow’s walk on the front page, making our roof look like a charming gazebo aimed toward the sea—a proper pagoda—rather than a pile of rotting wood and peeling paint. I have a theory that all that hoopla in the press was orchestrated just to shame me into renovating. I’d been talking to the HOA about razing the roof. Now I’m stuck with an antique exterior. So no, I don’t read my own press anymore.

  Simone hands me my Americano and pops out of her swivel chair so she can follow me to the staff lounge.

  “They say anything nice?” I ask.

  “See for yourself.” On the large round table in the middle of the room, a dramatic bouquet spills out like a fountain: tiger lilies, alstroemeria, eucalyptus, lisianthus.

  “Strange arrangement,” I say.

  “I think it’s beautiful.”

  “Big enough. Who’s it from?”

  Simone shrugs. “No card.”

  “When was it delivered?”

  She shakes her head, unreasonably delighted. “I don’t know any florists who deliver before seven in the morning—and I was on time today. Scout’s honor.” She holds up three fingers in the okay gesture, which I’m pretty sure is not the Girl Scout pledge. “They were sitting by the back entrance when I got in.”

  “Probably the foundation or something,” I say. “Or the city. Who knows.” I’ve already shifted focus to the local newspaper displayed beside the vase. I blow pollen from the front page.

  “That’s poisonous to cats, you know.”

  “Hm?” There I am above the fold, dancing to “Lady in Red” and being kissed on the mouth by my wife.

  “Lilies,” she’s saying. “Lily pollen will kill a cat.”

  The headline: “CITY TOASTS CITIZEN OF THE YEAR: DR. ROBERT HART.”

  “So sad. Good thing we don’t have cats in the office, huh?” She laughs and pats me on the shoulder. “Congratulations again.”

  “Thanks, Simone,” I say without taking my eyes off the paper. At the bottom of the front page is a full-color picture of my family, which would be a point of pride had some idiot editor not chosen the shot with Nick as our surrogate son.

  “Oh,” Simone says, pivoting to face me. “Forgot to tell you: I think I found your diamonds.”

  “Hm?” I didn’t know I’d lost any diamonds.

  “The anniversary diamonds? There’s a gorgeous pair of earrings at Jamison’s Jewelers across town. You need to go look at them when you can. Wes is expecting you.”

  “Oh.” I glance back and forth between Simone, so eager to please, and this photograph that feels threatening, somehow. On the front page of newspapers distributed all over town, my wife’s fingers grip the shoulder of a boy who is not my son. That boy’s arm cradles Elizabeth’s waist. A terrible chill rises up the back of my neck, and I finally give Simone my full attention. “You know what? Maybe diamonds are too showy after all. She wanted tin. Let’s give her tin.”

  Now it’s Simone’s turn f
or suspicion. “Are you serious?”

  “Dead serious.” I leave the newspaper on the table. It can wait. There’s work to do now, patients to see, a reputation to live up to. “If anyone can track down an elegant piece of aluminum, it’s you, Ms. Bristol.”

  She beams with the satisfaction of knowing her role is essential in my life, and it is. “Okay. I’ll let Wes Jamison know you changed your mind. Aluminum it is.”

  I turn my back on poisonous lilies and the photograph actively etching itself in my mind.

  Simone hands me a leather-bound iPad with a clipboard on its case. “Jeremy Levy will be in soon for his seven thirty,” she tells me. “Acid reflux and Botox.”

  7.

  I swab my last throat culture of the day and hang my white coat on a hook. Simone is organizing the front desk.

  “You almost out of here?” I ask.

  She smiles and taps her pen on a stack of insurance forms. “Soon.”

  I shake my head slowly and smile: a proud father figure enjoying the glory of his influence. “Simone, you’re too good.”

  “Oh, come on,” she says.

  “I’m serious. You’re the best.”

  She spins in her desk chair, a sort of victory lap. “You’re welcome.”

  I laugh. “Thank you. Don’t stay too late, okay?”

  She is smiling when she turns back to her pile of papers. “Good night, Dr. Hart.”

  “Night, sweetheart,” I say, cringing before the word has fully left my mouth. Sweetheart? Really, Robert?

  I bolt before Simone can give me shit. Once outside, I return to myself. The sun is still bright and high in the sky. There’s plenty of time between now and branzino. I call Elizabeth to ask if there’s anything she needs from the store, and she requests onions, lemon thyme, and crusty bread. I select overpriced herbs in excessive packaging and nearly stop for rainbow cake displayed behind glass in the bakery, but it kills me to give second-rate cake a second glance. Tabloids and travel magazines line the checkout aisle. The local paper is not on display. Not that I need extra copies. I’d bet money our neighbors will bring theirs to the house, if they haven’t already. Lizzie’s friends, the few she has, might clip the front page and send it in the mail. That’s what women do around here. With fine-point Sharpie pens, they draw arrows and write Bravo! or Fabulous night! on monogrammed sticky notes affixed next to people’s photos. They’ll draw a big black heart around our kissing picture, maybe, and obscure the article by writing, King AND Queen of the night! Or not.

  The rage I managed to contain throughout my workday comes trickling back before flooding, full force. In my mind, I see Nick’s hand on Elizabeth’s waist. I hear her saying, Don’t you think it’s cruel to make him watch us . . .? How can someone so smart be so clueless?

  She’s expecting lemon thyme, but we won’t be eating for another few hours. Thyme can wait. So can Elizabeth. My de-escalation is in everyone’s best interest. There’s not a soul in Sag Harbor I can call—not one good friend or mild acquaintance who could lend an ear without clanging the gossip chain—so I call my one good friend and mild acquaintance not in Sag.

  Ray picks up on the first ring. “Hey, buddy,” he says.

  “Raymond.”

  “Sorry I pulled an Irish exit the other night. Couldn’t get through the pack of groupies riding your dick.”

  “No groupies. Just a bunch of bums angling for free medical advice.”

  “Right, right.”

  I called for a very particular reason, but my concerns get stuck in my throat.

  “So what’s up, man?” he asks. “Did I run out on my bill or something?”

  “Don’t be a jerk. I called to say thanks for coming.”

  “Yeah, sure. You’re welcome.”

  “Thought maybe you’d want to grab a drink after work. We hardly got a chance to catch up at that thing.”

  “Tonight?”

  “If you’re free.”

  “You in the neighborhood or something?”

  “No, but I could be in”—I check my watch: four o’clock; traffic is a gamble, but I feel like gambling, so—“an hour fifteen.”

  “Real thirsty, aren’t you?”

  I don’t reply.

  “Yeah, sure,” he says. “Bar None at five thirty?”

  I do the math. We’d get half an hour, maybe an hour, to hang. Even if there’s traffic, I’ll still be back well before eight, just in time for fish and rosé. “That’ll work.”

  “I can’t stay long. Bianca’s got some field hockey thing at six thirty, just a scrimmage, but I promised I’d go.” He pauses before asking, “You okay, Bobby?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “All right,” he repeats. “See you then.”

  I exit the Citarella parking lot and head south, passing through Bridgehampton, driving into sun glare as I merge onto Sunrise Highway. Strange how time doesn’t translate from city to space. In the city, I’d think nothing of budgeting an hour to hop from place to place. Manhattan is only thirteen miles long, two miles wide. The length of its hour is proportionate to its distance. This sixty-mile drive from Bridgehampton to West Babylon, while still only an hour, is a trip, not a night out.

  The trip is worth taking this evening, and the drive is especially easy. No traffic, which is unusual. No construction. No complaints. When I get off on Livingston Avenue, I’m a little early, so because it’s right here, right in front of me, I turn directly into North Babylon Cemetery and pull up to a spot alongside the service road. The perspective is achingly familiar, although I haven’t visited in almost a decade. The shape of the shade below the trees has hardly changed. My mother’s tombstone stands tall between a pair of dwarf spruce invaded by Virginia creeper. The granite shines. Nobody brings flowers to her grave.

  I was nine years old when my mother died. Colorectal cancer. We were both too young for her passing. I didn’t even know how to dress myself yet. I wanted to wear my blue sailor suit to her funeral. She’d loved those navy trousers and the matching jacket with white piping. I loved them, too, because when my mother dressed me for special occasions, she would squat low to the ground and tie a white silk ascot around my neck, and I would stare at her staring at the perfect knot between her fingers, and I could see up close how much she loved me. She smelled like black licorice and a leathery fragrance I now know to have been Hermès Doblis, which was discontinued ages ago. I once paid two hundred dollars for the dredges in an ancient bottle, having caught a faint whiff of childhood coming from some lady in a Marriott elevator. I forked over the cash right then and there and gave her instructions on where to leave the bottle after she’d retrieved it from her room. A bellman delivered it to my suite that evening. With the door closed, the world locked out, I popped the cork on that tiny glass vessel with its gold stickers and purple velvet bow, and I breathed in those final drops, breathed them in and in again until nausea knocked me to my knees. I barely made it to the toilet before vomiting up my tuna-and-rye from the conference buffet. The Doblis went in the trash. I haven’t smelled childhood since.

  That sailor suit. It didn’t fit. I guess it had been a while since my mother had played dress-up with me. Two days before the funeral, my father walked in on me struggling to button the double-breasted coat. With zero affect, he said, “Take it off. You’re too big for that now.”

  I knew exactly what he meant by that. He meant the darling outfits my mother loved so much. He meant the little-boyness she treasured. I remember looking in the full-length mirror and seeing for the first time what my father must have seen all along, made even more cloying by a recent growth spurt. The gold buttons on my suit barely stretched to their buttonholes. The cuffs on my sleeves and pants rode high above my wrists and ankles. I looked like a boy wearing doll’s clothes. I looked like a twit.

  The next day, my father cut the tags off a brand-new Brooks Brothers suit that was slightly too big on my nine-year-old frame, and still it was nicer than any suit he would ever own in all his life. �
��You’ll grow into it,” he said upon inspection. With the rare nod of approval, he added, “Wear that to the service.”

  I did.

  After the burial—after prayers and processions, quiet whimpers from strangers, booming wails from Nona—my father lit a cigarette and told me and only me, “Beautiful or faithful: You can never have both.”

  “Who?” I asked, or maybe, “What?”

  “Women,” he explained. “They can either be beautiful or faithful.” He pointed at my face with two fingers and the cigarette clamped between them. Ash floated from his hand like sparks from a tiny gray firework. “Do you understand, Robert?”

  I nodded.

  Recognizing, perhaps, that I was still a child who might not grasp this key message without cementing it in the cornerstone of my psyche, he said, “Someday, God willing, you’ll be sharp enough to pick a wife of your own. She will either be beautiful, or she will be faithful. Do you know what faithful means, Son?”

  I nodded, thinking of churchgoers worshipping on Palm Sunday.

  “Good. So that’s your choice.”

  Strangers patted me on my shoulder as we walked toward a parade of cars with little orange flags clipped to antennae. When my father finished smoking, he let me stomp on his glowing Kent cigarette butt. I twisted my shoe into the gravel until he said, “That’s enough.”

  We climbed into the limousine and the driver closed the door. Only then did I finally ask, “Which one was Mom?”

  My father brushed a flake of ash from his lapel and cracked a smile that turned into a sneer. “Oh, she was beautiful all right.” Staring through a tinted window toward the canopied burial plot, a tender grin lingered on his face. “She was one hell of a beautiful woman.”

  From this, I deduced that my mother must have been faithless, and so I reasoned—and for a long time believed—that Father was breaking the news that Mom would not be admitted to heaven after all. The preacher had been so cocky, so sure. But then, what do preachers know about women? Then again, what did I? My mother hadn’t lived long enough to explain birds and bees and intercourse and the like. It would be three years before I found a cozy corner in my father’s storage shed where I could masturbate to my stepmother’s Victoria’s Secret catalogs. It would be two years after that before I’d secure my first girlfriend. Infidelity, as a concept, didn’t even exist for me yet.