‘It’s Bougainville,’ he said, with the French tripping off his tongue; and though he smiled as he said it, he immediately regretted it, because they both knew it was an attack, a subtle way to put her back in her place. Later he would wonder what prompted his correction. He decided that it was her fault, really; that she typically offered up so little of herself – she was like one of those sheer-faced mountains that affords climbers no purchase, no place to grab hold – that he felt the need to dig in when the rare chance came.
And also: it was an opportunity to remind her that while she might be a charming enigma, a pretty girl with a quick wit and a steely reserve, who dressed well and carried herself gracefully, he was still a Van Bender, and he had come from a family where class had been passed down over generations and not simply learned at some women’s college in Massachusetts, in dollops of thirty-two credits per year.
That day in the museum, when he said, ‘It’s Bougainville,’ she pressed her lips together and made a face that might, to the other museum patrons, anyway, resemble a grateful smile, but Timothy knew he had gravely wounded her. She was quiet for the rest of the afternoon.
Could that have been the first sign? Should he have recognized then that their marriage would not be an easy one?
Later there were other signs, too. The night before their wedding, their first serious fight arrived, at approximately the same time as the out-of-town wedding guests. They were in Menlo Park, in Father’s house, upstairs in the study. Their two families were below, taking seats at the dinner table. Her family had arrived from Boston that afternoon: her mother and father, her sister, even her grandmother – then almost ninety – and dozens of out-of-town guests. In the back yard, two white and green canvas tents had been raised for the next day’s party.
There in the upstairs room, Timothy asked her to sign a prenuptial agreement.
The agreement, he explained, would preserve his family’s assets in the unlikely event of their marriage ending in divorce. It was something Father wanted, not himself, and certainly she could understand?
But of course she could not.
From downstairs came the sound of sudden activity before dinner was served: of chairs scraping the floor, of ice clinking into glasses, of clattering plates, of sudden laughter and raised voices. In the background a television set droned a summer baseball game.
Upstairs, Katherine stared at the one-page prenuptial agreement. She turned the page over to look at the empty back of the sheet.
‘It’s only one page, Katherine,’ he told her.
‘I don’t care how long it is,’ she said. ‘I’m not Simon and Schuster. That’s not the point.’
It took him fifteen minutes to calm her, and then she signed the agreement with her thin freckled lips pressed together so hard that they were white. After that, neither of them spoke about the agreement again, for twenty years.
Sometimes it surprised Timothy that they had managed to stay married for so long. Over the years she seemed sad so often that he wondered why she didn’t drive away one afternoon when he was at work, without leaving a note or saying goodbye. He could imagine the scene: his wandering through the house, carrying his briefcase from room to room, calling her name, wondering – did she go to the grocery store? Did she visit Anne Beatty down the street? At what point would he realize that she never was to return? Would he realize that first night she was gone? The first sunrise without her?
Timothy understood the secret that it takes newlyweds years to learn: the way to insure a long marriage is to fantasize about its being over. Timothy had tried, often, to imagine life without Katherine. Sometimes the thoughts came when he heard about yet another divorce of an old friend, information always imparted by a colleague who clucked about it in jealous tones. Sometimes the thoughts came when Timothy sat at his desk, and his mind drifted, and he realized that Tricia Fountain, with her twenty-three-year-old body, was mere feet away, and so available. He toyed with the scenarios: what would he do when single? Would he date many other women? Would he sell his Palo Alto house and move into a more manageable apartment, a bachelor pad, maybe something closer to the Stanford campus, with its bounty of sun-buffed co-eds? Would he date Tricia? What about the lithe, tall Asian hostess at Tamarine, who always smiled at him when Katherine’s back was turned?
How long would he have to wait before it would be decent to be seen with another woman? Could he bring a new girlfriend to the Circus Club? Would he be able to play golf every Saturday, and go sailing every Sunday, without guilt?
But the fantasies, initially so appealing, quickly grew dreary. He tried picturing spending time with Tricia. After the sex, what would they do? What would they talk about? What woman, besides Katherine, would he enjoy a conversation with? Who would verbally spar with him? Who would keep him humble, would remind him to tithe to the church with a single deadpan comment like: ‘Where would any of us be without the Father?’
Whom would he spend time with? Who would put up with – and then tease him about – his flaws, his arrogance, his egotism? Who would make fun of the limp in his left leg, teasing him in front of friends about his ‘war wound from ’Nam’ when in fact the injury happened thirty years ago on a Yale squash court. (‘Come, on, Gimpy,’ she would stage whisper at a dinner party, using her pet name for him. ‘Tell them what happened to your leg that night in the rice paddies.’)
Who would remind him what he liked to eat when they ordered in a restaurant? Who would talk to him about work, would advise him about how to treat a prickly investor, would reflate him after Father knocked him down? Who would pack for him the night before he traveled? And with whom would he lie in bed and talk to in the dark about nothing in particular – about the latest neighborhood gossip, about the couple moving into the house down the street, about who had been refused a zoning variance, about whose kid had turned into a pot-head at Wesleyan, about who had totaled their car on Highway 101 but really wasn’t hurt?
The fantasies about being single, far from weakening his will, always ended the same way: they made him more committed to their marriage, and reminded him that despite her bitterness and sadness, he loved Katherine more than any other woman, and that – after twenty years – he knew there would be no other woman, not ever, and that, chances were, he would die before she did, still married to her, and still very much in love.
And now, standing behind her on their patio, with his arms on the back of her chair, he said, ‘It’s hard to be spontaneous after twenty years. Twenty years is a long time.’
‘Are you tired of me?’ she asked.
‘A little,’ he admitted. ‘But that’s the point, isn’t it? You’re supposed to grow tired of each other. That means you’ve succeeded at staying married. Excitement is for young kids.’
‘Timothy,’ she said. She looked up at him, squinted into the sun behind his shoulder. ‘I don’t know if that’s the nicest thing or the meanest thing you’ve ever told me.’
‘The nicest,’ he said simply. ‘You’re my wife, and I love you more than any woman in the world, and we’re going to spend the rest of our days together.’
‘Oh my,’ she said. For the first time she had no brassy comeback, and the words sounded choked in her throat. He thought – but couldn’t be certain – that tears welled in her eyes. ‘What’s gotten into you?’
‘Since when is it illegal to be in love with your wife?’
‘It’s not illegal,’ she said. ‘Just not customary.’
‘I don’t know what part of the world you’re from,’ Timothy said. ‘But in my neck of the woods, marriage means forever.’
‘In sickness and in health?’ she asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘Good times and bad?’
‘Yes.’
‘For richer and for poorer?’
‘Let’s not get carried away.’
She smiled.
She reached up for his hands, pressed them hard into her shoulders. It felt good to be held by her, to
be a good husband, if only for a minute or two, and he thought maybe this weekend would turn out all right after all.
5
Big Sur is a ribbon of coastline ninety miles long, running from Carmel to San Simeon. The earliest Spanish settlers in Monterey called the swathe of unexplored land straddling the Pacific Ocean the ‘Big South’ because everything about the land was vast and dramatic – the surf that pummeled the rock-cragged cliffs, the miles of undulating dunes and marsh, the dark forests where hundred-year-old redwoods sliced sunlight into horizontal shafts.
The drive took two and a half hours. Katherine and Timothy rode their black BMW two-door, first east across the Santa Cruz mountains on hairpin Route 17, then south on 85. Timothy drove, and for long stretches Katherine slept.
They stopped for lunch in Carmel at Grasing’s. While Katherine headed to the table, Timothy excused himself. ‘I’m going to call work,’ he said.
He passed the maitre d’, who nodded to him, and walked out the front door. Out on the street, he used his cell phone to call the Kid. The yen was down again, now at seventy-three. Osiris had made a paper profit of a million dollars in less than a day. Only twenty-three million to go, Timothy thought.
The Kid said, ‘And I keep getting calls from Pinky Dewer.’
‘Oh?’ Timothy said. He stood on Mission Street, outside the restaurant. With the cell phone pressed to his ear, he began walking west on the cobblestones, toward San Carlos Street.
‘I did what you said,’ the Kid said. ‘I didn’t take his call. But he’s tried three times. It’s hard to keep pretending I’m in meetings. He knows I’m not that important.’
‘You’re important to me,’ Timothy said. He crossed San Carlos and walked west on Sixth, toward Dolores. He passed art galleries and bistros. It was a sunny Friday afternoon during peak August tourist season, and Carmel was crowded with window-shoppers and sidewalk cafe tables. To Timothy it seemed that there were more bottles of Perrier on this single street than all of France.
Down the block Timothy saw what he was looking for. A small, understated sign said: ‘Michael Sherman Jewelry Design.’
‘All right, Kid,’ Timothy said, ‘I have to go. Call if something happens. I’ll see you Monday morning.’
‘Have a good weekend, Timothy.’
Timothy snapped his cell phone shut and dropped it into his blazer pocket. He entered the store. The air conditioning was cool and the store dark. Small halogen spotlights illuminated glass counters filled with diamond and platinum rings.
A petite woman in her fifties appeared behind the counter. She had dark hair, an olive complexion, and tiny features. Her skin was pulled tight across her face – too many facelifts.
She approached slowly. ‘Hello,’ she said, and smiled.
Timothy had no time for the soft sell. ‘Okay,’ he said quickly. ‘Let’s cut to the chase. My wife is waiting for me in a restaurant up the hill, and by now she’s mad as hell that I left her alone. It’s our twentieth wedding anniversary, and I don’t have a gift. I need something big and expensive, something that will make up for all the terrible mistakes I’ve made, and all the mistakes I don’t even know about. You’re a woman. Tell me what to buy.’ He pulled his wallet from his back pocket. He removed his Black American Express Card and placed it on the glass counter in front of him. ‘I have fifteen thousand dollars to spend. And about sixty seconds to spend it.’
The woman smiled and raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s twenty seconds more than you’ll need,’ she said. She took his charge card before he could change his mind, and led him to another glass counter. She leaned over, pulled a key from her pocket, and unlocked the case. She removed a necklace, mounted on black felt, and placed it on the counter before him. Diamonds were mounted along its entire length, gradually increasing in size toward the bottom, where a pendant – sapphire and diamond and gold – dangled. It glittered electrically, blue and white, under the point spotlight.
‘Eighteen carat white gold,’ she said. ‘One hundred and five near-colorless diamonds. The pendant is one carat diamond and one carat sapphire. Total diamond weight is nine point five carats. And, luckily, it’s fifteen thousand dollars exactly.’
‘What a coincidence,’ Timothy said. ‘I’ll take it.’
She smiled, flicked his charge card through the magnetic reader mounted on the wall behind her and keyed in a number. From the speaker came the brief sound of computerized phone dialing, and then silence. After a moment, the display said ‘APPROVED.’ What a country! Timothy thought. The entire annual GDP of some godforsaken province in Bangladesh has just changed hands between two strangers, and no one saw coin or cash.
‘I assume you don’t have time for gift wrapping,’ the woman said. ‘So here’s a pretty box.’
Back at the restaurant, Katherine had ordered a glass of wine, and had finished half of it. He sat down across from her.
‘You’re sweating,’ she said. ‘Are you hot?’
‘I was hurrying to get back.’
‘Is everything okay at work?’
‘Everything is fine,’ Timothy said. ‘Jay says hello.’
‘And what does Tricia say?’
‘She says hello, too.’ Timothy kept his voice neutral.
‘I’m a little jealous of her,’ Katherine admitted.
Timothy was surprised. ‘Have you even met her?’
‘No,’ Katherine said quickly. ‘Which is why I’m jealous. I’ve talked to her on the phone quite a few times. What does she look like?’
‘She’s very plain,’ Timothy said.
‘Is she younger than me?’
‘Yes.’
Timothy looked at Katherine’s arms, exposed in her sleeveless blouse, as she leaned forward with her elbows on the table. The skin below her triceps was losing its firmness. This was new, something he hadn’t noticed before, and it brought a small rush of tenderness.
‘Prettier?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Liar.’ But she smiled.
Timothy said: ‘Is it your intention to sabotage our anniversary weekend?’
‘No,’ she said.
In their twenty years of marriage, Timothy had cheated on Katherine three times, but Katherine knew about only one incident with certainty. Timothy treated his affairs the way he treated his business relationships, and the way he treated the pool boy at the club: at all times he tried to be a gentleman.
So: he confined his cheating to one-night flings in far-away cities with women he did not know. He never revealed his real name to the women, and he always insisted on using a condom – he was careful to leave nothing behind: no identity, no paternity, nothing for a woman to latch onto.
In twenty years, he had made only one mistake. It happened at his last affair. Seventeen years into the marriage, he was visiting Palm Beach for two days, raising money for Osiris Fund IV. He had looked up an old Exeter friend, Mack Gladwell. Gladwell, who had inexplicably transformed himself from clench-jawed scion of the Gladwell family fortune to drug-addled record producer, had no liquid cash to invest in Osiris, but he offered something almost as good: he insisted on taking Timothy out for a night on the town in Palm Beach, ‘Gladwell Style,’ as he described it.
They visited three bars that night. Timothy drank more than usual, and got sloppy. He wound up going home with a pretty cocktail waitress. He did not remember much of the night, only that he was careful not to use his real name, and to tell the waitress absolutely nothing about himself.
It was not until the next morning when, hungover, he tried to board his plane back to SFO, that he realized he had left his wallet in the waitress’s apartment. The wallet had his driver’s license, his business cards – his identity. Which meant that the waitress could find him.
And of course she did. She called their house in Palo Alto when Timothy was on the flight home. Katherine answered. The waitress – angry, drunk – asked to speak to her ‘boyfriend’ Timothy. She described in great detail his body, the mole on the ba
ck of his thigh, and the positions in which he enjoyed having sex.
When Timothy returned home that night, he thought Katherine was going to leave him. She had packed a bag for him, and calmly told him to take it to Hyatt Rickey’s. She made him stay there for a week, refusing his phone calls. When he showed up at the house and rang the doorbell, she declined to open the front door, yelling instead through the wood that he should leave before she called the police.
After forcing him to live in the hotel for seven days, she suddenly – and to him, surprisingly – relented. Just when he thought he had lost her, that divorce was imminent, she drove to the Hyatt, knocked on his door, and said, ‘Come home.’
He returned to the house, and they never spoke about the affair again.
Now – sitting with Katherine in the restaurant in Carmel, and discussing whether Timothy’s secretary was in fact attractive – the incident with Mack Gladwell and the cocktail waitress lurked just below the surface of their conversation like a stingray. He tried always to head off discussions before they approached dangerous waters. Avoid all talk about other women, about jealousy, and, above all, about Palm Beach. And always tell her you love her.
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘I know you do.’ She opened her menu and started reading. After a moment, she peered at him over the top. ‘They have braised short ribs,’ she said. ‘You like that.’
‘I like it when you remind me what kind of food to order.’
‘Well, after twenty years,’ she said to her menu, and sighed, and Timothy knew exactly what she meant.
Over dessert, Katherine said, ‘There’s something I want to ask you.’
The waiter, a little lithe man with a shock of dyed blond hair and the body of a dancer, pranced behind her and laid two coffees on the table. Timothy’s was black; hers had cream and sugar. She always ordered it the same way: light and sweet.
Katherine waited for the server to leave. He made a little plié, bending at the knees, and scurried off.
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