The Love Book

by Nina Solomon

  “Zach, tell them you didn’t do this,” Emily said.

  He was silent.

  “Zach?” she whispered, but he wouldn’t look at her. “You didn’t, did you?”

  For a brief moment, the boy had the expression on his face she’d seen so many times before, on the playground when he fell down the slide; when Charles’s cell rang during one of Zach’s baseball games and he missed seeing his son’s home run; the morning they took him to the wisteria arbor in Central Park and told him they were separating.

  Finally, he nodded.

  “But why?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. For fun.”

  * * *

  Freddy asked to be seated in the Bar Room in one of the red-leather banquettes. The hexagonal space was as precious as the inside of an antique music box, with the famous collection of antique toys and sports memorabilia hanging from the ceiling. Elegant waiters in white tuxedo jackets did figure eights around the tables as if on skates. They ordered oysters and littlenecks, lump crabmeat and fois gras for starters, and two bottles of champagne. Beatrice pointed out the pantless “countess” and they laughed and talked about everything and anything, except Freddy’s wife at home. Freddy had two sons, both of whom were legacies at Dartmouth, and now his eldest grandson, his namesake, was applying early decision. She shook her head. Was it college or a cult?

  When the waiter cleared their plates, Freddy smiled and looked into her eyes. He reached for her hand across the table. “Your eyes, Beatrice. I can get lost in them. You’re even more enchanting. How did I ever let you get away?”

  “Your mother, remember? Boy, was she ever a piece of work!”

  Freddy laughed. “You never did beat around the bush, Beatrice. I miss that.”

  She pulled her hand away. “Let’s skip this part, Freddy. No need to get maudlin. What’s done is done. How about we just pick up where we left off? No fuss, no muss. No strings. I don’t believe in all that nonsense anyway. You’re lucky you didn’t marry me. I would have made a pretty mediocre wife.”

  “But you would have been my mediocre wife, and that’s all that matters. We should be celebrating our forty-fifth wedding anniversary.”

  “God, that sounds awful! Like Gloria Steinem said: I can’t mate in captivity. Madame Bovary, c’est moi!”

  “If that’s my only choice,” Freddy said, clasping her hand in his. “Then I’ll be Rodolphe to your Emma.”

  “I’ll be your Rodolphe is more like it,” she said.

  A gray-haired couple at the adjacent table pretended to be surveying the menu but could barely conceal their shock. The man looked like a research librarian and the woman was dressed in a blue cardigan with a severe bob, probably a nun who had just leapt over the wall. Of course two old fogies would find it shocking, but Beatrice didn’t care. Life was short. Look at the contessa. She had her pants off even before she sat down for dinner. In the old days they waited at least a few dates. Besides, what did she have to feel guilty for? She and Freddy had preceded his relationship with Muriel, so she could plead the case that she was just reclaiming what was hers. But that judgmental look from Freddy too! She hated hypocrisy. He’d probably had numerous affairs. A man in his position and with his looks was bound to stray now and then; that was fine. She didn’t want him to leave his wife and have to deal with the fallout of divorce, the resentful adult children, financial burdens, regret. What a bore! He’d mope around for months like a lost puppy and probably want to move in with her. Men his age couldn’t be alone. But they still had plenty of life in them, with the right woman to prime the carb, inspire them, and that’s what she intended to do.

  He kissed her hand. “I see you haven’t changed.”

  “And not planning to. Take me or leave me,” she said.

  “If that’s the only choice, then I take you, Beatrice, to be my ever and always.”

  Ever and always, Freddy. That’s how he had signed his letters.

  It was nearly four o’clock; Beatrice couldn’t leave Ursula hanging. Freddy looked bereft when she said she had to catch the bus back to New Jersey.

  He placed fifty cents in the basket for the coat check girl and helped Beatrice on with her coat.

  “I have to see you again,” he said.

  “Isn’t that what ever and always usually entails?” Beatrice teased.

  “How about two weeks from Thursday? The Plaza Hotel? I’ll arrange everything.”

  For some reason Beatrice hesitated. She glanced over at the bartender who was shaking two cocktail tumblers like maracas. But this was no foxtrot flirtation and there was no bar between them as a buffer. This felt like more of a plunge than that frigid dip in Occom Pond fifty years ago.

  “Well?” Freddy said again. “Meet you in the Oak Room?”

  “I’ll be there with bells on,” she replied.

  As he embraced her, Beatrice caught her reflection in the mahogany mirror above the bar. Burnished, polished, but soon to tarnish.

  In the cab to Port Authority, Beatrice slumped against the backseat. The Plaza on Thursday? What on earth was she thinking?

  * * *

  Emily couldn’t even look at Kenneth as she and Zach walked out of the headmaster’s office. They took a taxi straight to Charles’s office. She’d packed his clothes and snacks for the Jitney and had no intention of being late. She wouldn’t give Charles the ammunition or Clarissa the satisfaction.

  Charles didn’t react at all the way she thought he would when she told him about the meeting. All he said was, “If he worked at this firm, he’d be fired.”

  An hour later, she was walking home from Whole Foods when her cell phone rang. It was Charles. “Guess where we are?” he asked.

  “On the Jitney?”

  “No, Brooks Brothers. We missed the Jitney, thanks to you. I don’t know why I trusted you. You were supposed to pack Zach’s bag.”

  “I did.”

  “We’re going to the Hamptons, not a surfer convention. Billabong? American Eagle? Why do you do this to me?”

  “Charles, he’s ten. That’s what kids wear.”

  “I told you he needed a blazer. Maybe you should spend less time with your loser boyfriends and pay more attention to your son. Now we’re going to be stuck in traffic for hours.”

  “Can I talk to Zach?”

  “He’ll call you Sunday. Oh, and I’m deducting this from next month’s child support.”

  She felt entirely frozen, incapable of an appropriate response. His cruelty had only increased since their separation and while she knew she should not accept such insults from him, she didn’t know how to make Charles stop.

  A few months after Charles left, Zach had come in to her room, all dressed except for his tie, his first real (not clip-on) tie. She told him that someone at the bar mitzvah would put it on for him. But he refused to leave without it. She looked up Windsor knots in How to Do Just About Anything, a book she would come to rely on when she needed to fix the toilet or repair a leaky faucet.

  Now she pictured Zach in his Brooks Brothers outfit, a blue blazer, khaki pants, and red-checked oxford shirt—a miniature replica of Charles. It still made her sad that the doorman had been the one to teach Zach how to tie a tie and not his father. She’d always blamed Charles, but it was her fault. Maybe she was unfixable.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IN THE ZONE

  EMILY WAS AT HER DESK rereading an email Duncan had sent her while he was in Oslo. For the past two weeks or so, she and Duncan had corresponded several times a day. The sound of her phone pinging caused in her a Pavlovian response. Her heart would pound and she’d feel blood rush to her cheeks. His emails struck a nerve in her. Composing her responses was a painstaking process. Every word had to be right. She’d press send, then wait. An hour felt like agony. Had he forgotten her? Then ping! And all was right in the world. She’d never felt so alive, so present, so inspired. Duncan said they were atomes crochus, which she cut-and-pasted into Google Translate and very much liked th
e sound of. One particularly arresting email was written entirely in French. A tiny part of her wondered at first if it had actually been intended for her, but she shooed the thought away. It was too racy for Google and even for Babblefish. What little she could understand caused her to be tongue-tied for hours. Anyway, it was two weeks of sheer pleasure that she never wanted to end. According to The Love Book a woman doesn’t fall into love, she falls into obsession, although to Emily it was a semantic distinction. Whatever the technical term for what she was feeling—love, obsession, or a mixture of both—she didn’t care. It was intoxicating. Even rereading his emails momentarily stopped her heart.

  I am willing you the spirit of John Donne today. He will sit on your shoulder and be your muse, and if you lose concentration he is authorized to enter your heart!

  It was the last day of Zach’s three-day suspension and Charles didn’t think he should be allowed any “privileges,” including spending the night at his apartment. He’d sprung this on Emily at five thirty, on the dot, just as she was about to send Zach downstairs. Having Charles stay with Zach this evening at her place would never have been Emily’s first choice, but there was no time to make other arrangements. Duncan had returned from abroad last night and invited her to a literary salon. He said he’d “collect” her at seven. She liked the idea of being collected. No one had ever said that to her before. So many of the things he said to her, whether in email or during their five-hour phone conversations, had rendered her speechless. Even a recipe for homemade mayonnaise recited by Duncan could slay her. Commercial mayonnaise, he told her, was poison.

  Emily went to say goodbye to Zach. Charles and Zach were in the middle of a highly competitive Nerf basketball match. Charles was up by nineteen points. Zach had just stepped on his father’s foot trying to block a shot. Charles was at the foul line. He was wearing one of Zach’s old Knicks jerseys and a pair of tight white athletic shorts. He looked like one of the Village People. Emily had chosen her outfit carefully, a black knit dress and knee-high boots, an outfit Clarissa might wear.

  “Interesting choice of outfit,” Charles said from the foul line.

  She took a deep breath and practiced being Zen, imagining herself covered in bubble wrap. She wasn’t going to let him throw a poison dart at her but neither was she going to play doormat. He seemed disappointed when she didn’t react.

  “It’s Rosh Hashanah not Halloween,” he said, preparing for his second shot. “When did you become a member of the Einsatzgruppen?”

  “You should talk, Charles,” she countered, almost tempted to do the arm motions for the song “YMCA.” “Make sure Zach does his writing journal. His teacher says he hasn’t been keeping up with it.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Kommandant!”

  “Jawohl, Mom!” Zach echoed, giving Charles a high five.

  “See you later, Zach, sweetie. Love you.”

  “Air ball!” Zach shouted, jumping to get the rebound.

  “Love you,” she said again.

  “I heard you. Bye.”

  She stood at the front door, listening to the reassuring sounds of a father and son playing in the other room. It was as if time had collapsed, four years hovering in midair like the blades of a revolving propeller, an optical illusion. A feeling surfaced, which she tried to push away. And though it was an undeniably fractured image of hearth and home, it was comforting all the same. Someone was waiting for her.

  * * *

  Duncan kissed her hand when she stepped off the elevator. “I have a present for you,” he said, presenting her with a hard copy of his book. “It’s a first edition. I inscribed it.”

  With tenderhearted feelings to a

  fellow writer and friend.

  —Duncan Lebow

  A fellow writer. She liked the sound of it. But after their two-week correspondence, she felt like much more than a friend. The book did not fit in her handbag and therefore she would have to carry it around all night in the crook of her arm.

  The salon was on Central Park South at the home of a man who was on the board of directors at the National Endowment for the Arts. The living room was all windows and glass. Emily sat next to Duncan on a white leather couch. He was wearing a form-fitting ribbed turtleneck and black jeans. She wasn’t certain, but his hair seemed to have a slightly coppery tinge. It was probably just the lighting. When Emily was a girl, her father’s gray hair had turned yellow from the fluorescent lights in the kitchen. Every once in a while Duncan would press his thigh against hers, which made it hard to concentrate on the discussion of art and gender politics. Afterward, he clasped her hand and they made the rounds as if choreographed. Duncan mingled among the guests, all of whom he knew on a first-name basis, tossing bon mots more effortlessly than finger rolls.

  “Liam! How the hell are you?” he said, slapping a man with a thin goatee on the back. “I hear you’ve been nominated for the National Book Award. Chapeau!”

  Swish!

  Emily admired how he worked the room. He was the “big man” on his home court, in the “bubble,” navigating his way through conversations with film critics, award-winning novelists, philanthropists, editors, as proficient as a top athlete in the zone. He had the Midas touch, never once losing possession of the ball. He made easy layups, assists, showed off with a few no-look bounce passes, Dime! established his pivot foot, dribbled past defenders, hit every three-pointer and free throw, and then scored with a huge slam dunk. “Why of course, I’d be honored to give the keynote. Here’s my publicist’s number.” Bang!

  The evening was so unlike the dreary real estate dinners where Emily had often felt like an accessory for Charles, a pair of cuff links, a mouchoir or pocket square, where the only topics of discussion were apartment renovations or summer vacation homes. It was easy—all she had to do was smile and not say anything controversial—but deadening. Whenever attention was turned to her, it was always the same. You’re a writer. How interesting! Have you ever been published?

  This was something altogether different. Duncan was in his element, drawing people out, making introductions, congratulating them on successes, empathizing over lackluster reviews. It was a level of networking she’d never witnessed, all accomplished without the least hint of the flagrant self-promotion that it could be construed as. He was the Merv Griffin of the intelligentsia and took pleasure, maybe a little pride, in “making things happen” for other people. He even introduced her to a features editor at the Atlantic who gave her his card and told her to send her portfolio and clips. She felt like she was in the HOV lane, on the fast track to her heart’s desire, even though she was the only passenger in the car.

  While they were on line at the buffet, Emily explained that she had to be home early because Charles was watching Zach.

  “You seem to have a very amicable relationship with your ex,” Duncan said.

  “I wouldn’t say that, exactly. He can be a little, well, very controlling. He’s a lawyer.”

  “I’m not a controlling man,” he said, and picked every single poppy seed off a whole wheat bagel before spooning tuna fish onto it. She wondered if he knew it was probably made with gobs of mayo.

  “I believe in self-empowerment,” he said.

  A tall woman entered, a yoga bag over her shoulder, drawing all eyes, including Duncan’s, to her. She shook her blond mane of a ponytail. She was wearing a miniskirt and a fitted red leather jacket. In her arms was a basket of exotic fruit, a traditional Rosh Hashanah gift. Emily assumed it was for the host and hostess, but the woman handed the basket to Duncan.

  “Shana Tova,” she said, kissing his cheek. “For a very sweet New Year.”

  “Lara, late as always,” he replied. “This is Emily. Lara is my research assistant. Her husband is a colleague of mine. How is Cyrus?”

  Lara gave him a Cheshire cat smile then wiped some tuna from the side of his mouth. Emily had noticed the tuna fish and a poppy seed or two between his teeth, but would never have presumed to even mention it. She watched his r
eaction, but ever gracious, Duncan laughed it off.

  Around ten, when Emily told Duncan she had to leave, he said, “I’ll walk you home.”

  She smiled. “That would be nice.”

  “It’s on the way,” he said.

  Lara touched Duncan’s arm. “I was hoping we could discuss that project . . .”

  “Ah, yes, I’ll call you later,” he said.

  Lara didn’t say goodbye to Emily and neither did Emily feel the need to mention to Duncan that he had forgotten the basket of fruit at the party.

  As they neared Lincoln Center, a four-piece band was playing and people were dancing by the reflecting pool. Duncan took her in his arms and, whispering the lyrics to the Burt Bacharach song in her ear, waltzed her around the plaza. The sky was a deep blue. There was a sliver of a moon. A new moon. The burden of the past seemed to lift. Emily felt hopeful. New York had never looked so beautiful.

  * * *

  Upstairs, she hung her coat in the closet. Charles walked into the front hall, his face crosshatched with the pattern of Zach’s comforter. His expression was more impenetrable than a piece of carbon hardened under pressure deep in the earth. She knew he was waiting for her to thank him for staying with Zach, but she couldn’t utter the words.

  “Parents’ night is next Wednesday,” she said.

  “I know, Emily. He’s my son too.”

  “Zach wants to ride twice a week now,” she said.

  “If you want to pay for it, fine.”

  “Child support is supposed to cover afterschool activities.”

  “Did you get my name off the proprietary lease?”

  “The board will never approve me without a guarantor. I don’t make enough money.”

  “Get a job,” he said.

  “I’m working.”

  “I know you’re a good writer, Emily, but an article here and there isn’t going to pay the rent. I guess you’re going to have to bite the bullet and sell this place.”

  She held the door open. “Goodnight, Charles.”