I walked quickly, my breath coming in hot gasps, my shoes slapping furiously against the concrete. After a few minutes I calmed down enough to take a look around. I recognized the area, and I knew that, in another couple of blocks, I’d reach a little strip mall with a bar. Perfect, I thought as I picked up my pace again. I’d sit at the counter, sip a cold beer, and figure out what to do next.
I pushed the door of the bar open with so much force that it banged against the wall.
“Sorry,” I muttered to the bartender, who barely lifted his eyes from the sports page of the Washington Post. This place was exactly what I needed, I thought as I climbed onto a stool. It smelled like stale beer, and the walls were paneled in something that was supposed to pass for wood but looked more like plastic. The floor felt sticky under my feet, and a beat-up pool table ate up most of the space in the middle of the room. I couldn’t bear to be anyplace fancy and shiny right now; I wanted my surroundings to match my insides. At my usual restaurants—the Old Angler’s Inn or The Palm—the waitstaff would recognize me and rush to offer me the wine list and anticipate my every need. Here no one would bother me. I’d be invisible.
“Sam Adams, please,” I told the bartender, who reluctantly folded down his paper.
“Need a glass?” he asked, popping the cap and handing it to me. In answer, I lifted the bottle to my lips and chugged a third of it down.
He shrugged and went back to his paper. Maybe he was used to frazzled-looking women storming in here and swilling beer like they were pledging a fraternity. I gulped some more, and the bartender absently slid a dish of peanuts closer to me.
“Don’t get too invested in that article,” I warned him, waving my bottle in the air and liking how tough I sounded. “I’m going to need another one in a minute.”
The phone in my pocket vibrated just then, and I took it out and looked at the caller’s name before answering.
“Where are you?” Isabelle demanded.
I squinted and read the sign over the mirrored wall behind the bar. “Joe’s Bar and Grill. Isn’t that a perfect name for a bar?”
“Do they serve vodka?” Isabelle asked.
“Joe, do you serve vodka?” I called to the bartender. “I’m Neil. And yes.”
“I’m on my way,” Isabelle said.
“Excellent,” I said. “Because I left my purse in the car and I’m not sure I can make enough hustling pool to pay off my bill.”
“Maybe we can hustle together,” Isabelle said.
John Mellencamp’s voice was wailing out of the speakers too loudly for me to have noticed it before, but now I picked up something straining Isabelle’s voice.
“Are you okay?” I asked as a wave of guilt flooded me. Isabelle had rescued me enough lately. And wasn’t her big date today? “Michael shouldn’t have called you. You don’t need to come down here.”
“Michael didn’t call me,” she said. “And no, I’m not okay.”
“Starter fucking marriage,” Isabelle said four vodka shots later. Which meant she actually said “starter fuckamage,” but I knew exactly what she meant.
I tossed back a shot in solidarity and followed it up by sucking on a sugar-dipped slice of lemon.
“I can’t believe he lied,” I said, licking the extra sugar off my fingertips. “Men are assholes. Not you, Joe! You’re the only guy we like.”
He poured us another round; by now he knew better than to ask if we wanted a refill.
“You’re not driving, right, ladies?” he asked.
“She has a driver,” I said, jabbing Isabelle in the upper arm with a little more force than I’d intended. “I don’t. My goddamn husband is giving away all our money.”
“Husbands suck,” Isabelle agreed. “Especially the one I’ve been dating.”
“So he picks you up, takes you out for a romantic picnic he allegedly made himself even though you recognized the sandwiches from Balducci’s, and then pulls out his wallet because he’s uncomfortable sitting on it,” I recapped.
“Yup.” Isabelle cracked a peanut, popped it in her mouth, and promptly spit it out into a napkin.
“Joe, how often do you freshen up the peanuts?” she called.
“Every day,” he lied. “And it’s Neil.”’
“I got a new outfit,” Isabelle shouted back at him. “I waxed.”
By now he was at the other end of the bar, reading the help wanted section, and I could only hope we hadn’t sparked his desire to change jobs.
“If the asshole’s going to pretend to be single, he shouldn’t carry a photo of his wife in his wallet,” I said. “That’s basic Adultery 101.”
“I don’t think he was planning on pretending,” Isabelle said. “I mean, we both stared at the photo when he tossed his wallet down on the blanket and it flipped open. He could’ve just said the picture was of his sister or something if he wanted to keep on lying.”
“A photo of his sister in his wallet?” I wrinkled my nose. “I think that’s worse than him being married.”
She laughed for the first time since she’d come into the bar with bright red spots of anger high on her cheekbones and a dark stain on her shirt. (“I meant to throw my wine at him,” she’d said. “I guess I was sitting a little too close to him.”
“How close?” I’d asked. “In his lap,” she’d said.)
“So why aren’t you speaking to Michael?” Isabelle asked now.
“All of a sudden he’s regretting that we didn’t have kids.” I picked up a peanut and bounced it against the bar. “Can you believe it? Today he told me he was sorry he didn’t take me on a honeymoon.”
“And?” Isabelle prodded.
I looked at her questioningly.
“That’s pretty much it.”
She paused. “Look, I know I’m the president of the Anti-Men Club right now, but I don’t get it,” she finally said. “Hate Michael because he wants to give away all his money, sure. But because he’s apologizing for not spending more time with you and for not having a baby?”
I sighed and slumped down on my stool. That was the part I’d been turning over and over in my mind, too. Why hadn’t I gotten furious at Michael years ago for all of those things? If they meant so much to me, why hadn’t I fought back then?
“Here’s the thing,” I finally said. “Marriages have all these unspoken rules. You know which part of the newspaper each of you gets first, which side of the bed you sleep on, and exactly how far you can push one another before a little disagreement turns into an ugly fight. It’s like every marriage is a country, with its own customs and rituals and bartering systems. And one of the big things is that you both know what’s off-limits to discuss. Michael and I don’t talk about kids. We don’t talk about the honeymoon we never had. We’re not close enough to go there. We haven’t been in years, Isabelle.”
I rolled my shot glass between my palms, wishing it was full again, but Neil was avoiding eye contact with us and I couldn’t really blame him.
“Talking about stuff—really deep stuff—isn’t something Michael and I do anymore,” I said softly. “It is possible to live with someone and not really know them. It’s easy, in fact. I can tell you what kind of underwear Michael likes and what his computer password is. He knows I’m terrible at remembering people’s names, so he has to jump in and greet them first. We know all the superficial details about each other, like the kinds of things they quiz immigrants on during citizenship tests. But does knowing how many stripes are on the flag teach you anything about living in America?”
Isabelle nodded. “I get it,” she said after a moment. “You guys just seemed … I don’t know. As happy as anyone, I guess. I mean, I know he fooled around with that little bitch, but that’s been over for a while, right?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. But I still check his e-mail and voice mail all the time. Such a lovely, trusting marriage we have.”
And Isabelle didn’t know all of it, I thought as my eyes skittered away from hers. There were some parts of our
story that I was too ashamed to share even with her.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway, if I get dragged into having all these deep talks with him, we’ll have to go through the pain of figuring out what went wrong with us. Why didn’t we go on a honeymoon? Every couple does, if they have enough money. And”—my voice dropped; I couldn’t bear for even Neil to overhear me—“why was I willing to trade less of Michael for more money? I think I hate Michael because he’s forcing me to think about all of those ugly questions.”
We sat there in silence for a moment, then Isabelle exhaled loudly and said, “Well, hell. What are we going to do next?”
“You’ll be fine. There are lots of other guys out there,” I said, sweeping my arm around to encompass the room. Two white-haired men sipping Miller Lites at the other end of the bar smiled obligingly at Isabelle, and one lifted his beer mug in a toast.
“Maybe that’s what I need,” she said. “I mean, not them.”
She paused and squinted, then shook her head. “Definitely not them. But a normal guy. All the men I know are too rich. It warps them.”
“You sound like you’ve been talking to Michael,” I said. “You know, it is possible to have money and still be a decent person.”
“Obviously,” she said. “Look at me.”
“Point taken.” I held up my glass for another shot, and Neil reluctantly shuffled over with the Smirnoff bottle.
“So Michael thinks you should have had kids? There’s still time, you know. I mean, if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t know what I want anymore.” I thought about the stacks of holiday cards we got every year, and how I’d begun to dread opening them and seeing the photos of children—babies in tiny Santa suits, and older kids posing on the beach or clustered with their parents in front of a Christmas tree. The sharp longing those photos conjured in me was one of the reasons why my fingers kept reaching for the divorce lawyer’s card in my wallet. If I left Michael, maybe I could start over with someone else …
I sighed and stretched out my arms, trying to shake off the thick, heavy feeling that had settled over my body. The room’s two windows were covered by neon signs that allowed only a little sunlight to filter inside, catching the dust motes swirling in the air and adding to my sense of gloom.
“Michael wants me to give him three weeks before I decide anything. It’s like he wants to live the rest of the month in suspended animation, without thinking about the future. But there’s no way I’m doing that. I’m calling a lawyer tomorrow morning to see what I’ll need to do if I decide to file for divorce and go after some of Michael’s money. I have to be ready to fight him, Isabelle.”
She nodded. “I was wondering if you’d try to do that. I probably would, in your place.”
“So I guess that pretty much rules out me having kids with Michael.” I blinked hard, twice, then glanced at Isabelle.
Something in her expression made me blurt out a question I wasn’t planning on asking: “Do you want kids?”
She started to say something quick and light, then she cut herself off and began again.
“Actually, I, ah, had one, once.” She looked down into her empty glass. “A baby. I was eighteen.” She held up a hand to cut off my murmur of surprise, still not looking at me.
“I didn’t know who the father was. I could narrow it down, obviously, but it wasn’t like I had a boyfriend, let alone anyone I really cared for. You didn’t know me back then, Julia. I got pregnant the summer after I graduated from high school, when I was living in my parents’ house. I’d been at boarding school since I was thirteen, and by then I figured out they’d shipped me off to get rid of me, not because they thought it was the best thing for me.
“Maybe it was a form of revenge, maybe I was looking for attention any way I could get it—take your pick. I’m sure a shrink could come up with a whole smorgasbord of theories, especially since one of the guys I slept with was old enough to be my father. I screwed anyone I could find: the lifeguard at the country club pool, my tennis instructor, one of the young guys who did our lawn. Even a lawyer at my father’s company.”
Her voice grew rougher. “I couldn’t believe it when I missed my period. I thought about an abortion. I knew girls who’d had them, in school. I got a brochure and everything. But for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
I wanted to reach out and cover her hand with mine, but I sensed she was a thin layer away from tears, and I knew even a gentle touch would push her through it.
“I deferred college for a year, and traveled. At least that’s what my parents told their friends, who probably knew they were full of shit. I grabbed a credit card—I was a rebel, but I still needed Daddy to pay my way—and I went to live in Seattle. I wanted to put a whole country between my parents and me. I lived in a little apartment and worked part-time in a used bookstore, and for the first time in my life, I just breathed, you know? I learned how to make vegetable soup from scratch. I’d never cooked before, so I ruined the first few batches, but I finally got it. A pinch of cinnamon—that was my secret. Funny … I haven’t thought about that in years. I read a lot, and on Saturdays I took long walks along the water and got hot chocolate afterward.
“Part of me wanted to keep her.” Isabelle’s voice almost broke, but she fought past it. “But I was still so screwed up, there wasn’t any way I could’ve raised a child. There was another girl I met at the adoption agency who was giving up her baby, too, and she kept talking about the couple she’d picked, how they’d be able to give the baby anything it wanted. You’d look through the files and see these people who had already established college accounts, and they’d include pictures of their houses and the room for the baby, but I kept searching the files, flipping past those postcard-perfect parents, until I found a woman who was an art teacher. Her husband was a physical therapist, and they’d already arranged their schedules so one of them could always be home with the baby.”
Isabelle smiled sadly. “Do you know what I did? We met at a restaurant to talk, and afterward, I pretended to leave, but I snuck back around the side of the building and followed them. I wanted to see what they acted like when they didn’t think I was watching. You should’ve seen me, Julia: I’d brought along this big bag with a hat and sunglasses and a jacket so the couple wouldn’t recognize me. Of course, I had this huge belly I couldn’t disguise, so I’m sure the jig would’ve been up if they’d just turned around, but they didn’t. They walked a block or so to their car, and when they got there, they didn’t get in right away.”
Isabelle’s eyes grew faraway, and I knew she was back on that street corner, scared and confused and eighteen years old, seeing it unfold all over again. “They stood on the sidewalk, and then they reached for each other at the exact same time and hugged. Her head was resting on his shoulder, and I could see him whispering something into her ear. The next morning, I signed the papers. I never even saw my baby. I never held her, or kissed her good-bye. I couldn’t. But I know”—Isabelle finally lost the fight and her voice broke—“I know she’s a girl.”
Now I reached out to her; I couldn’t bear not to.
“For a while I self-destructed,” Isabelle said, wiping her eyes with her knuckles. “I did some drugs and stopped eating. I kept staring at babies when I passed them on the street, wondering if she’d be about the same size. Finally I moved back home. It became easier to stop thinking about her then.”
“I had no idea,” I said, squeezing Isabelle’s hand and wishing I could think of something comforting to say.
“No one does,” Isabelle said. “Except probably this friend of my mother’s who grilled me about my year abroad. She kept asking if I’d seen the Sistine Chapel or the Louvre like she was a private detective, and finally I snapped, ‘No, I spent most of my time in the red-light district in Amsterdam. You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted the brownies there.’”
We both laughed then, and I handed Isabelle a napkin.
“This isn’t
the one I spit the peanut into, is it?” she asked, a smile trying to fight its way through her tears.
Oh, Isabelle, I thought as I blinked back tears of my own. This was what I loved best about her; her spirit never stayed hidden for long. She always strode confidently into parties, casting around her perfect smile and slipping into conversations as easily as if she were diving into a cool, deep swimming pool. She jaywalked across busy streets, her long legs drawing whistles and stares, and gave the finger to anyone who honked in protest. Once, when a store manager was berating a young salesman for putting the wrong scarf on a mannequin, Isabelle interrupted with a steely smile: “Actually, I like that one much better. Yours looks like something my aunt Bertha would wrap around her curlers before going out to get her newspaper. Actually, is that Aunt Bertha’s scarf?”
I’d always seen her strength and poise; but somehow, I’d missed the vulnerability that lurked just beneath it. Or maybe I hadn’t missed it; maybe Isabelle had kept those jagged parts of herself hidden until I’d revealed just how vulnerable I was as I lay sobbing on the boutique carpet. Maybe friendships had rules, just like marriages, and Isabelle and I were in the process of rewriting ours.
“The adoption is open, but the parents and I haven’t had much contact. They send me photos every year along with a little note about how she’s doing. Her name’s Beth, and she’s so beautiful. In her first school photo, she had this tiny red headband holding back her hair, and the next year she looked completely different—she had bangs and her cheeks had lost some of their baby fat. Now she’s tall and slim, and she probably has a boyfriend and is thinking about applying to colleges. I put all the photos in an album, but I only look at them once a year, on her birthday. I toast her with champagne, and I flip through the album and watch her grow up. There’s just one thing I did. Actually that I didn’t do … and I’m ashamed of it,” Isabelle said slowly.
“So tell me,” I said, keeping my voice light.
“That day in the hospital, when her parents came to take her away, they stopped by my room first and said they were going to tell her about the adoption as soon as she was old enough to understand it. I promised I’d write a letter for them to give to her. I started to do it dozens of times, but every time, I just froze. I couldn’t think of what to say…. And the longer I waited, the harder it got. I kept thinking, What if she hates me for giving her up?” Isabelle’s voice was so soft I barely heard what she said next. “And maybe now she hates me for not writing. Maybe they all do.”
Skipping a Beat Page 11
