"Well, he wasn't really handling his risk of detection very well." Lindsay smiles, trying to cheer me. She's recently gone to a lecture on the risk of detection and is proud of herself in this moment. "You'll sort it out, Lucy. You sort everything out. It's what you do best!"
"At work," I tell her. "But my personal history doesn't bear that out exactly. Two different worlds."
Lindsay looks around the airport like she's a little confused—she's wearing her confusion on her face, advertising her confusion, as if she's just for the first time heard that there are actually two different worlds—a twilight zone moment. I've been grooming her for upward mobility. She's going to be taking over while I'm on leave and she'll have to work on her toughness if she's going to make it through. I've talked to her about trying not to display her emotions so readily. I'd give her a little lecture on that right now—but I'm no model of emotional discipline at present.
"You think I should forgive him, don't you? You think I should go home and that we should try to figure it out, don't you?"
She's not sure what to say. She looks side to side and then she gives in and nods.
"Because he deserves it or because he's sick?"
She shifts. "I'm not sure that this is the right reason or not, but, well, because I've never had a boyfriend who could get past three or, maybe, four reasons why he loved me. Not that I've asked for a list or anything, but, you know what I mean. Because Artie loves you like that."
Artie loves me like that—it seems true in this instant, as if she's stripped away all of the gestures that I've taken as manipulation and just seen them purely, as a manifestation of his love—for me. I'm shocked by this way of seeing it—the bareness of it all. I'm not certain how to reply. "I'm sure you'll do fine while I'm gone," I tell her. "I know you can do it."
She's a little caught off guard. She blushes—again, something she shouldn't do, but, in this case, I'm glad to see it. She gives a little bow. "Thanks for the vote of confidence." She hands me my pocketbook and looks at my bags. "Do you have everything?"
"I'll be fine."
"Okay then." She turns and walks into the crowd. She's all business now, her chin up, her arms swinging strongly. I'm proud of her.
And just then the elevator lets out a loud ding! and I think of Artie's #57—the one that arrived this morning and that has been eating at me ever since: The way you love the sound of an elevator bell, and once said it was like a little note of hope, the idea that things are bound to change, that you are finally going to get to go somewhere and start over.
The only problem is that I don't like elevators. I've always felt they were little movable death boxes—if anything, the ding seems to me like an awfully chipper death knell. They've always made me feel claustrophobic, and, another thing, I don't particularly care for change—like, say, finding out your husband is cheating on you—and, despite all the recent travel, I've never really had the feeling that I was finally getting to go somewhere else and start anew. A little note of hope? I never said any of these things. Number 57 isn't mine. It belongs to some other woman. Number 57 belongs to some other woman the way my own life right now—my work life, my personal life—seems to belong to some other woman.
An elderly woman in a wheelchair is pushed out of the elevator by a young man—maybe her son? They move on by, and the stainless steel doors close. I see a dim fuzzy reflection of myself, and I feel like I am that other woman. As misappropriated as it seems, this life is mine.
Chapter Two
Happy Strangers Can Bring
Out the Worst in Anyone
When I step onto the plane, I wave the greeting flight attendant toward me. She's wearing extremely red lipstick so high gloss that she looks fishy—especially up close. "I'm going to need a gin and tonic, pretty much immediately," I whisper. "I'm right here, four-A."
She smiles, gives me a wink.
I've already decided to drink my way through the flight even before I look up and see the woman I'm to sit next to. She's my mother's age, giddy, freshly sunburned, overly smiley. I try not to make eye contact.
I used to be a nice person, I swear, I was. I used to say Excuse me and No, you first. I used to smile at strangers. I used to banter with overzealous seatmates. But not now. No, thank you. I'm not interested in the joy of others. I take offense at it. When I look at this woman, it crosses my mind to fake being foreign. I could muster a really sweet, "No English!" But this woman strikes me as the type to bully through a cultural difference like that— to want to play charades and draw pictures—to really connect. She looks like a combination of overly cheery and prudish. Plus, I've already outed myself as American (a desperate American) to the flight attendant, and since she has the alcohol, I want to protect that relationship.
As I'm wrestling my borderline oversized luggage into the overhead, the woman blurts, "It's my first time!"
I'm not sure how to take this. It all sounds way too personal. "Excuse me?" I say, pretending I didn't hear her clearly, and hoping that a little communication speed bump will give her time to change her mind about revealing things to strangers on planes.
She shouts—maybe thinking I'm a little deaf, "My first time! In business class!"
"Congratulations," I say, not sure if this is the appropriate response. What is? Bully for you? I stand in the aisle, waiting for her to get up. But it seems she doesn't want to relinquish her seat, not for a second—as if she's afraid someone might horn in on her privilege. I have to negotiate around her to get the window seat. I decide to go by her butt-in-face—maybe a little passive aggression is what's needed.
It doesn't register. She says, "My son got me this business-class seat. 'Who needs a business-class to fly from New York to Philly?' I say to him. But he doesn't listen. He's a hotshot like that."
I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to say, "Oh and what does he do?" But I let my cue die. I rise up in my seat to see if the flight attendant noted the distress in my voice and is working on the drink order. I don't see her now and this jangles me. I look out the window at the ground crew. I'm jealous of their headphones filled with engine drone.
The woman is staring at me. I can feel it, and I also happen to know, immediately, that she's the kind of woman my mother disapproves of—the kind who doesn't wear makeup or dye her hair or go to the gym. My mother would call her a "quitter," assuming that the woman once did all of these things, which may or may not be true. But my mother assumes that the quitters have given up on the fight. "What fight?" I've asked in the past. "The fight against looking your age." My mother is always fully dressed, often in a coordinated velour sweat suit—I call it the formal wear of sweat suits—and coifed, and overly made-up. She seems to wear so much makeup these days that she's no longer really trying to look more attractive, she's just hoping to disorient people while she safely hides behind it. I don't know if this is a fight that I want to be a part of, frankly. I almost feel tender toward the woman next to me, because she doesn't care what people think of her so very much. She hasn't quit the fight as much as she has, maybe, risen above it. But my tenderness doesn't last long.
She says, "Are you one of those high-powered female professionals they talk about these days?"
Who's they? I wonder. I lean toward her, conspiratorially. "I'm not a high-powered male professional," I admit.
She takes this as comedic. She rears and laughs up into the air nozzles overhead. She settles quickly though and asks her next question. "You're probably part of one of those high-powered couples with a baby that's learning Mozart. I've heard of those genius babies from high-powered couples. Am I right?" Her question has the air of someone on a game show.
"Sorry," I say. "I don't have a baby. No kids—genius or otherwise." This is an old wound. Artie and I had started talking about a family. We'd started reimagining the bedrooms to include a nursery. We'd taken up the habit of interrupting our own conversations to say, "Wait, that would be a good kid name." The names were always ridiculous—Ravenous, Cotillion, why
Nathaniel and not Neanderthal? In the wake of the popular trend of place names for kids (London, Paris, Montana), we were compiling a list of our own: Düsseldorf, Antwerp, Hackensack. Artie had just sold off another chunk of stock in the Italian restaurant chain and had hired a young, tough, soon-to-be mogul type to take some of the pressure off. Our lives were calming down, and we'd started trying to have kids. I hated the term trying—as if we were two bodies flailing aimlessly at each other. It implies sexual incompetence and that was never one of Artie's problems. And then just two months later, I intercepted an e-mail from a woman with the screen name "Springbird." (Springbird! It didn't seem right to be duped by a woman self-named Springbird!) I'd come across good old Springbird when I was looking for Artie's travel info and mistook her for his agent. The e-mail asked if Artie's back was okay from "sleeping on that lumpy futon" and said that this woman "loved him" and "missed him achingly."
Achingly.
Then I went to Artie's partner's secretary. His own secretary is an austere, tight-lipped woman who'd never tell a thing. But his partner's secretary, Miranda, is a legendary gossip. I took her to lunch at her favorite place, the All U Can Eat King Chinese Food buffet, pretending to seek her advice, pretending to know a lot more than I did. She spilled the news over sweet-and-sour chicken and fried dumplings that Artie had someone on the side. She'd seen an e-mail or two herself and corroborated the name Springbird, but didn't have much beyond that. My fortune cookie read "You will visit the Nile." What's that supposed to mean? Was that supposed to be a metaphor?
When I got home, I confronted Artie while he was taking a shower. He stepped out and told me the truth, the whole truth, not just about the woman Miranda had mentioned, but he confessed to the two other flings—dalliances. He said he'd tell me anything I wanted to know. Full disclosure. He said, "I'll do anything to make this right." But I didn't want to know any details. He sat on the edge of our bed, a towel around his waist, shampoo still in his hair. At this very moment, sitting next to this woman in business class, staring at the upright tray table in front of me, I despise Artie as much as I did then. I despise him for what? Not so much the infidelity—this sometimes overwhelms me—but I despise him for his carelessness. How could he have been so careless with our marriage, with me?
"Well, now," the quitter muses aloud, " high-powered isn't right. Not exactly. That's more like what they call newfangled cell phones. What do they call them? Power couples? Is that right? What does your husband do?"
Finally the flight attendant is walking down the aisle, my drink in hand. She smiles. She bends down and hands it to me.
"What does my husband do?" I repeat the question. "Well, flight attendants are always a big favorite."
The older woman says, "Oh . . . well . . . that's not what I meant!"
The flight attendant isn't startled at all. She gives a sad, wry, guppy-lipped smile—as if to say, You think it's easy being me?
I shrug.
I've successfully shut this conversation down, and I didn't even have to pull out the great guns of I'm an auditor, which tends to clam people up. The older woman opens up a book that she's made a little cloth jacket for— to hide the cover. A bodice ripper? I'm not interested in her little jacket-wearing book.
I turn my head to the oval window. I fiddle with the plastic shade and I feel my throat tighten up, and I know that I'm about to cry. I don't like being emotionally messy. I try to distract myself with little mental notes about which partner to call to talk through how this necessary leave of absence from work will be sorted out, who will lead my team of managers, who will hold the hands of my clients. I decided to be an auditor because it sounded so sturdy. I was drawn to it for its tidy rows of numbers, for the way those numbers can be ordered around, for the emotionlessness of it. Auditor. It's the kind of job my father never could have held down. He was an "entrepreneur," but never discussed the details of what that meant. He was, in many ways, the first lovable cheat that I fell in love with. I went through a phase in college of being a lovable cheat myself, but I couldn't stomach hurting people. I tethered myself to the role of auditor to keep me steady. Auditors don't cry. They don't get emotional about your tax choices. They pore over digits. They calculate. They decide whether those numbers are accurate or fudged. I chose to be an auditor because I knew it would put me in stuffy room after stuffy room with other auditors—mostly men and none of them anything like my father. I imagined falling in love with a fellow auditor and leading a very well-ordered, emotionally tidy life. Auditing would toughen me up, shut me down. And maybe it did for a while. Maybe it did. But then I met Artie.
I stop fighting the crying jag. I just let the tears slip down my cheeks. I pull a tissue from my pocketbook— digging around Artie's love notes—and pinch my nose. I drink the gin and tonic straight down, order another before takeoff.
Chapter Three
There Is Barely a Blurry Line
Between Love and Hate
With each exhale, I'm aware that I'm steaming up the shuttle van with gin fumes. I'd apologize to the driver, but I can hear my mother telling me not to apologize to those in the service industry. It's so middle class. The fact that we were middle class throughout my childhood never seems to matter. I decide not to apologize though because I don't want to make the driver uncomfortable. Apologizing for drunkenness is something that you shouldn't have to do while drunk—that's one of the benefits of being drunk, right? That you don't care if people know you're drunk. But the fact that I want to apologize is proof that the drunk is wearing off, sadly. I pop a few chocolate-covered cherries bought off an airport rack and make idle chatter.
"So, any hobbies?" I ask the driver. I've had drivers who were epic gamblers, brutal genocide survivors, fathers of fourteen. Sometimes I ask questions. Sometimes I don't.
"I give tennis lessons," he says. "It didn't used to be a hobby, but I guess it is now."
"You were good?"
"I've gone a few rounds with the best of them." He looks at me through the rearview mirror. "But I didn't have the last little bit it takes to push you to the next level. And I didn't take it well."
He looks like a tennis pro to me now. He's tan and his right forearm muscle is overdeveloped like Popeye's. "You didn't take it well?"
"I took to drink—as my grandmother would say."
This is alarming—he's at the wheel.
He must read my nervousness. "I'm in recovery," he adds quickly.
"Ah." I feel guilty for being drunk now—like the time Artie and I brought a bottle of wine to the new neighbors only to find out he was a recovering alcoholic. I'm sure the driver can tell I've had my fair share today. I want to make excuses for myself, but I try not to. More talking just means releasing more gin fumes—this is my drunken logic at the moment. In a fit of paranoia, I wonder if I'll become a drunk. Is that the way I'll go down? Will I be the type to stick out AA? I fret about my constitution, and then I burp, and I hate the stink of it so much that I know I'll never be much of an alcoholic. I lack some essential heartiness, and I'm relieved.
"Do you play?" he asks.
I look at him, confused.
"Tennis?"
Oh, right. I shrug, give him the sign for "just a little," by pinching my fingers together and squinting.
The van is winding through my neighborhood, past the plush lawns of the Main Line. I've never really fit in here. There were barbecues and cocktail parties, and millions of those other little checkbook parties where women gather to drink wine, eat chocolate, and muster an unhealthy adoration for candles or wicker baskets or educational toys. There was one sex-toy party, but it's strange how, after enough stiff Main Line conversation, vibrating pearl dildos can seem as boring as vanilla-scented tea lights.
There are friends, still, but not the kind I ever wanted. In fact, when things started to go wrong, I was happy to leave before they started phoning in with their alarmed condolences. I didn't want their sincere sympathy and I certainly didn't want the fake sympathy de
signed to get me to hand over the inside scoop, which would then hiss around the neighborhood. I was angry at Artie. For the betrayal, but also for the wounded pride. I was the fool. I didn't appreciate having the role forced on me. I wondered what Artie told his women about me. I existed in those relationships he had, but I was absent, unable to defend myself. What version of me appeared? The obstacle, the shrew, the dimwit? There are only so many choices for the cheated-on wife to become—none of them good.
We round the corner and I know that if I look up I'll see the house. I'm not quite ready. Artie and I had gone halvsies on the house. He'd wanted to pay for it outright, but I'd insisted. It was my first house and I wanted to feel like it was really mine. My mother thought I was insane to storm off and leave Artie there. My mother has policies on how to divorce well. She told me, "When leading up to a divorce, the most important thing is to stay in the house— and it doesn't hurt to hide some of the expensive finery, either. If you can't find it, how can you divvy it up? Become a squatter. I always stay and stay until the house is mine." I told her that I didn't want the house and I didn't want to hide finery. But she hushed me like I was being blasphemous—"Don't say things like that! I raised you better"—as if my reluctance to be a squatter in my own house were a social flaw, like not writing thank-you letters or wearing white shoes after Labor Day.
It's been almost six months now, and I'm not sure what kind of monumental change I'm expecting, but as the airport shuttle van pulls in the driveway, I'm surprised that I recognize the house at all. Did I expect it to fall into immediate disrepair? Artie had fallen into immediate disrepair, it seemed. The heart infection was detected just a few weeks after I left. The timing was suspicious from the get-go. I'd always thought it was a prank, a plea for sympathy, but now it seems more like his sickness is my fault. I lean forward in the van to pay the driver, and, despite the fact that we're strangers, I have the overwhelming urge to tell him Artie broke my heart. I didn't break his. I restrain myself.
My Husband's Sweethearts Page 2
