• • •
After an hour of interview questions and crocodile tears, we make it out of the office, down the elevator, through the lobby, and to the parking lot before drawing an honest breath. Jonah opens his mouth to talk, and I say, “Later.” We’ll discuss it later.
He ignores me and speaks anyway, though, saying, “Thank you.”
He can’t know the extent to which his little lie covered my ass, too, but he lied so well that I say, “You’re welcome,” to this person, this human being who came from me and carries bits of me, but who hated me enough to fight dirty. My son and my wife conspired to hurt me with their bodies. Hate like that doesn’t grow from indifference. I say, “You did great in there.”
He nods. In this moment of softness, I’m tempted to ask my only question. Jonah could tell me who Nick was referencing when he mentioned a crush on an unavailable woman. But tying my loose ends might untie Jonah’s, and anyway, none of it matters anymore.
We stand here on fresh blacktop on a pleasant day in June, parting ways, with the opportunity to choose our parting words wisely. My son and I are dangers to each other. Maintaining our balance matters. It especially matters now. But we’re also partners. My son and I just created something together. We told a lie together. We vowed to hold our secret sacred, and our secret is the first thing we’ve shared since he was a child. Is this healthy? Surely not. But maybe it is a starting point. We might systematically hate each other until something changes our minds, but if a change is in the cards, we will have reserved a foundation in our present balance. Like the trump card I’m withholding from Elizabeth—my knowledge of her darkest act, her most scathing betrayal, the most wretched wrong—this day could be the token we save, me and my son, to be redeemed as a starting point should we ever start again.
I choose to keep the token pure. I bite my tongue and do not break the spell. Instead I say, “I love you, Son.”
He is part child, part man—part alien, part me—when he says, “Thanks. I love you too.”
ONE MONTH LATER
36.
“Is that it?” I yell.
Simone pops her head around the corner. “That’s it,” she confirms. “Last one.”
“All right. I’m making a run for it.”
“Come up here before you leave, okay?”
I change out of my lab coat and walk back down the hall to Simone’s desk, meticulously organized and freshly adorned with a fishbowl full of glass flowers. She has been a gem ever since I decided to give her a raise. Fifty percent and an extra week’s vacation. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, they say—and while Simone is hardly an enemy, she could’ve become one if I’d allowed it. I won’t allow it. Instead I’ll keep her in-the-know, an accessory to anything she could ever criticize, and I’ll make sure she’s happy.
“Now don’t be weird about it,” she tells me, guarding her laptop screen. “Have an open mind. I swear there’s no subtext. This artist is hot. A good investment. I think it’s perfect.”
She rotates her computer to reveal a thoughtfully photographed piece of Mexican folk art from a gallery in the city. On a frame of intricately tooled sheets of tin, two panels are opened like church doors on tiny hinges, revealing a mirror inside. Above it all floats a sculpted tin heart crowned in flames. On either side stands a painted tin figure: a pair of skeletons—one wearing a tuxedo, one in a wedding dress—flashing full sets of teeth etched into a smile without flesh.
“They’re the Día de los Muertos bride and groom,” Simone points out. “Sugar skulls. You can use it as a mirror, or close the doors and it’s a standalone sculpture. It’s functional. It’s beautiful, timeless, playful, romantic, and—it’s aluminum.” Her cockiness is well earned.
I pull my wallet from my pocket. “Simone, it’s perfect.” She takes my credit card. By Monday morning, the wrapped gift and a lovely note will be waiting for me on my desk. All I’ll need to do is sign my name. “Buy yourself a nice lunch on that while you’re at it,” I say. “Have them call me if they give you any trouble.”
She smiles and says, “Will do.”
• • •
Elizabeth is painting her face when I get home. She’s leaning over the bathroom counter, wearing only a strapless bra and a slip that starts at her waist. In front of her is a crystal tumbler marked with bright pink lipstick kisses.
“Has it been thirty days already?” I ask.
She nods.
“And?”
“Eh.” She dusts her cheekbones with gold powder. “Same old vodka.”
I smile. “Well, you did it. I’m impressed.”
“I feel better mentally. Emotionally. It’s empowering to know for sure I’m not dependent on it. Laurie’s still the anomaly.”
“Well,” I say, “congratulations. I’m glad that’s over.”
The first week had not been pretty. Without alcohol to anesthetize her, Elizabeth shuffled around weepy and out of sorts, but then it got better. Then we started talking. Not about Jonah, of course. Not about the Unspeakable Thing, but about Nick and loss and grief and about what the two of us have lost—simply by virtue of staying together long enough to lose eras of infatuation, to witness change in each other, to be changed—and about what we hope to discover yet. In solidarity, I teetotaled too, at first, but she let me off the hook after a few days, and I obliged.
Then came the call from Zebadiah Walsh. Cause of death: blunt cardiac injury as the result of a self-inflicted fall from height. End of story. So my need for a drink declined naturally.
There wasn’t any mention of drug use, as far as I know. Maybe Naomi Miller got the full report, but I’d like to think Walsh spared her. I made the request. That’s all I could’ve done.
Elizabeth buckles her feet into formal combat boots that are somehow also sandals. Half-naked in high heels, she asks, “Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?”
“Yes,” I say, marveling at how, after everything, the messes and worse, this woman still drives me crazy sometimes. I run my fingers along the curve of her waist, slipping my hand under the elastic of her skirt. “Are you sure we only have fifteen minutes?”
She is unamused. “Yes. Hands off. I spent half an hour on this face and hair.” She slaps my wrist, and I release her to disappear into her closet.
“Fine. Later.”
“Yeah,” she says, “later.” She returns wearing a steel-gray dress held up by a chain around her neck. She turns so I can zip her, and I do. “We have to be on time. I told Bess we’d pick her up at six.”
“How is Bess?”
Elizabeth smooths the creases on her dress and digs through her jewelry box. “All right. She and Rick are on the rocks.”
She stops there, daring me to ask for details just so she can say, “Don’t worry about it.” She’s been getting some kind of kick out of hiding the inner workings of a friend-crush on Rick’s almost-ex-girlfriend, Bess. Elizabeth explained, one time, how Bess satisfies something unique for her—something I can’t provide, in other words—and when I reminded Elizabeth of how capable I am of meeting all her needs, she only rolled her eyes, so now I play along. In truth, I think she’s hoping to make me jealous, so it’s sort of cute.
She chooses a pair of aquamarine earrings and carries them with her, patting my cheek as she leaves the room. “Twelve minutes.”
I dress in a suit and tie. From the hollows of my walk-in closet, I ask Elizabeth if she’d like to join me in checking out speedboats this weekend.
She asks, “You’re really doing this, huh?”
“Deal’s almost done. My Lucia will be captained by a retired mogul in Fort Lauderdale come Monday. No regrets.”
She sings, “If you say so,” then appears before me, jewelry in hand. “You about ready?”
I tell her I am and follow her downstairs. It is a good house, our house. I briefly considered satisfying the HOA with a rooftop remodel, but that would nearly eat up my whole speedboat budget, determined by the sale of My Luci
a, so instead, I changed the lock, sealed the door. Good enough.
In the kitchen, Elizabeth transfers her wallet and makeup from one bag to another. I eyeball a stack of mail. Flipping over a large open envelope, I ask, “What’s this?”
“Oh.” Elizabeth moves close to me, leaning in as she fastens an earring. Her skin smells warm. “Those are the proofs from those portraits that photographer took at your banquet. I asked her to send them before everything went to shit, obviously. Thought they’d make good Christmas cards, but that’s probably a little morose now.”
I shake the contents from the envelope and scan a glossy sheet of thumbnails, honing in on two images circled in red crayon. Elizabeth stays by my side, staring at the pictures too.
“Those were her favorites, I guess,” she says.
In the first, Nick Carpenter, alive and reasonably well, grips Elizabeth’s arm. It is the very same photo published in the newspaper two months ago, when all I saw was Nick’s hand on my wife. I’d been blinded by a diversion. The second picture is of just the three of us: me in the middle, my wife on one side, my child on the other. We are close and we are laughing, digitally captured in a state of joy and intimacy.
I try not to imagine what they were thinking that night, just as I so often try to unimagine the entire nightmare. Of course, sometimes I can’t help wondering where Elizabeth goes in that pretty head of hers. I watch her leave the house early for work, or draw a bath right away when she comes home. I pay attention to whether her eyes are open or closed, and how she moves with me, and how she toys with me, and I’ve determined that the worst is behind us. I’m the one with the secret now, and she feels it, and the undeniable weight of her curiosity—sensing, as she does, that I know something damning, and that the thing is too dangerous to speak out loud—lets me know that she’s wondering, too. We’re latched together by our twin secrets, by our twin curiosities, and the little bits of not-knowing fortify the thing that binds us. In our love, the gaps aren’t losses, but endless pools of possibility.
And yes, I wonder too about Jonah, who is lost to me, but still very much alive to me. He’s my son. I’ve asked myself if it’s possible that everything he told me was a lie, a story meant to hurt, but what kind of person goes that far? That’s not the child I raised. That’s not the story I can live with. Besides, Elizabeth’s silence on the matter has all but confirmed its validity in my mind. She does not ask about Jonah or reference him in passing. These are not the omissions of an innocent woman. So then, it is almost impossible to hope that Jonah’s story was a lie. What is possible is that I could forgive him. Not yet or now and maybe not ever. But unlike with Raymond, who may as well be dead to me, there is still possibility with Jonah. There is hope. We are family, after all. In the messes we make, the awakenings, the messes we fix, the lives we choose and the ones we inherit, in the better or worse, the ambiguity and ambivalence, in the things we can never undo and the things undone in effort, and the parts we maintain—in our bodies, in our molecular composition, in our lust and our ambition, and our best attempts at right and wrong—we are family: part of a pack, a school, a pride. It is cruel and it is vital, and at the end of it all, I will know that I did my best for him, my son, my seed. This is my life and my legacy. Heaven knows I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Elizabeth
My train leaves the station just before noon. This wasn’t how I’d planned to spend the day, but now that I’m en route, it feels so right. Flexing the soles of these old boots feels so right, too. I tap my heels together: stacked leather against worn leather. Through double-paned safety glass, the world whirls pink and green.
To think: a crucifix did this.
At coffee this morning, when Bess noticed me noticing the turquoise-and-silver cross around her neck and answered, “No, I’m not Catholic,” before I could ask, she explained, with a straight face, how the pendant is her superhero talisman. It had belonged to her late mother, who’d charged it with love and strength. Now Bess wears it to prep for things like job interviews—or, even though she’s sick of talking about him, her impending breakup with Rick, who is too boring to see Bess as more than an object of his desire or proof of his desirability. We agreed that a crucifix-as-armor is doubly fitting when confronting an emotional vampire.
Bess said, “I know it’s silly, but . . .” so I told her the truth: to me, it isn’t silly at all. Then, before old superstitions (if I talk about it, I’ll ruin it) could intervene, I confessed that I used to do something similar with a pair of boots—the Frye shit-kickers I wore all through high school and into college, the ones I was wearing when Shae went through the windshield of her sister’s Camaro while I thought, Keep your knees down, Elizabeth. Keep your feet on the floor, and, Don’t you dare look away, and, Oh my God, don’t you dare go away.
Bess didn’t call me morbid or self-centered for turning her story into mine. She called me a wonderful friend. Then, zero judgment, she let me change the subject. We talked about her job prospects and how I plan to spend my days before school starts again, and everything was normal—so normal, in fact, that I rode the feeling all the way home, straight into the house, straight up to my closet, where I took the shoebox down from the highest shelf like it was the most unremarkable thing to do. Despite the late-summer heat, despite not having done this in a decade, I stuffed my feet into socks and slipped my socked feet into harness boots supercharged with Shae’s love and strength. I didn’t rationalize or reflect—even as I removed a cotton-wrapped bundle from the bottom of the box, put the lid back on the box, put the box back on the shelf, carried the bundle downstairs, pulled a faded paperback from my office shelf, marched to the kitchen, and left Robert a note: Heading into the city for the day. Will catch the 5:51 back. There’s spaghetti pie in the freezer. xo E. Without overthinking my feet or their direction, I just walked, feeling Shae stir with every step: love and strength holding me against the world. Now I’m halfway to a ritual I thought I’d put to rest—armed with a pair of time machines, no less.
I reach into my bag and choose the faded paperback first, flipping it open to a dog-eared page, skimming highlighted passages and trying to remember why they once moved me, but my eyes drift to the backs of my hands marked with sunspots I call freckles. I should be more diligent about SPF. I should be more disciplined about cleaning my diamond. Once upon a time, I cleaned a ring routinely. Now I rarely take one off.
I really did leave my first ring in that worthless ultrasonic cleaner on the day I wandered into Robert’s seminar at Columbia. I truly forgot to put it back on my hand—an honest mistake, with a case to be made for selective memory—but Robert had no excuse. He left his wedding band behind on purpose. All it took was me introducing myself after his lecture for Robert to suggest we continue our conversation over drinks. I knew he would seduce me with his body language, with his other world, with a life I recognized from magazines and soap operas and Victorian novels, and I was ready to seduce him in turn. I fancied myself Colette bypassing her vagabond years, flying straight into the arms of high-brow Husband Number Two. How tired I was then, having learned as all spoiled bohemians do that Bohemia is only fit for Prague and fiction, when along came Robert Hart, MD, booking suites at The Lucerne twice a week, insisting I order whatever I desired from a room service menu that never changed. And so I ate duck à l’orange and steak au poivre and escargot and pot de crème, and I took bubble baths in an actual bathtub, and for two months, I was in heaven. This was before the menu grew tiresome, before Stuart grew suspicious, then wise—long before Robert would start expecting me to be the one to prepare the pot de crème, the duck à l’orange, the steak tartare. The tartar sauce.
I fan my fingers, letting my diamond catch light, throwing rainbow confetti on the ceiling of this train car. A little girl pops her head over the back of the seat in front of me, raises her eyebrows and puckers her mouth in the shape of ooh with no sound. I smile and rock my hand back and forth, demonstrating cause and effect for the towhead
with a sateen bow in her hair, and we ooh silently together until her mother asks her to please sit on her bottom.
Rolling past Babylon, I swap one book of poems for another, running my hand over the cover of a Moleskine I haven’t touched in ages and hesitate to crack, even now. My body warms just holding it. If I break the seal, I’ll have to negotiate whether the warmth is warranted—whether its pages deserve their place in my heart—jeopardizing the reasons I hold them dear. There was never a reason to have hidden the book all these years, except for the vague comfort drawn from knowing relics of my former life exist, carefully preserved just so I can keep a secret with myself. A book of poems. A ratty T-shirt stolen on my way out, plucked from the bottom of Stuart’s hamper, just-in-case. I was afraid of wanting both worlds, of craving his smell, but I chose Robert and never looked back.
This book, however, slightly more than just-in-case, is one of those things—pralines, David Lynch films, Stuart’s poems: the things I can’t resist that make me sick—and so I turn to the inside cover, where one of us Scotch-taped a cyanotype of dandelion tufts and our cat’s whiskers. White lines on Prussian blue twist a thorn in my heart. I flip the page, confronting haikus and triolets. An elegy. Stuart’s crusade: a return to poetic form.
I admire designs made by words on paper without yet reading the words themselves. Unlined pages tattooed with ink and tea stains, tear stains, lipstick stains like passport stamps where I’d kissed Stuart’s verse—kissed his portraits of my body, my psyche, my effect on him. His perception of my effect on the world. I stop at a page marked by a stem of pressed sea holly and feel a pang of guilt for not remembering why I marked it, not recalling any particular fondness for this sonnet at all. It must have meant something to me, though, and so I read—North of Blue Eye, due south of Marvel Cave—and hold a hand to my mouth, tracing the line of my rebel smile. For a moment, I’m twenty-eight all over again.
Man of the Year Page 27
