The Engagements

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  Kate was startled by his words, and touched that on what was supposed to be his day, he was still thinking of her.

  “You may be right,” she said, and squeezed his hand.

  2003

  Her cell phone rang at eleven o’clock.

  Delphine recognized the number.

  The man’s name was Paul Lloyd. He had sounded friendly when they spoke a few days earlier. He answered her online ad, telling her that he and his wife lived two hours away, in Madison, Connecticut, in a house three blocks from the ocean with half an acre of land out back. They had six-year-old twin boys who were heartsick over the loss of their basset hound, Lucky Penny, who had recently passed away at the age of fourteen.

  “Your Charlie looks just like her,” Paul Lloyd said, in a tone that made it clear that he too was heartsick.

  The ad included a photograph of Charlie, and a brief write-up stating that he was four years old, perfectly behaved, and free to a loving home.

  “Can I ask why you’re not keeping him?” the man said over the phone.

  “I’m very allergic,” she said, and if he had any further questions, he kept them to himself.

  Now, when she answered, he said he was in the car, ten minutes away. She told him to meet her at the corner of Seventy-second and Central Park West.

  Delphine pulled an oversized tote bag from the hall closet and filled it with Charlie’s favorite toys, his blanket and his monogrammed bowls, and what remained of the organic dog food P.J. bought for fifty dollars a bag. Then she went to the bathroom and clipped the dog’s leash onto his collar.

  “Come on,” she said. “Time for your walk.”

  He looked up at her, skeptical.

  “What?” she said. True, they had lived together in this apartment for a year and never taken a walk, just the two of them. It might be overstating things even to say that they lived together. Each of them lived with P.J. and ignored the other’s existence.

  Charlie lay there on the bathroom tile like a lump.

  “Come on,” she said, tugging him. He let out a groan of protest, but got to his feet after a minute and accompanied her out to the hall, into the elevator, and through the lobby, where the old Irish doorman had taken the place of the young Russian.

  “Hey there, Charlie Boy,” he said in a thick accent.

  They walked the three blocks at a painfully slow pace, Charlie lagging behind, panting in the heat. Her heels clicked against the sidewalk. A hot breeze licked the bare skin beneath her dress.

  When they reached the park, she saw an SUV with Connecticut license plates in front of the bus stop. Paul Lloyd stepped out, looking just as she had imagined he would—he had the large, chunky build of a suburban dad on a television sitcom. He wore those long shorts that all American men wore, and sneakers with white ankle socks sticking out from the tops. In France, the men she knew wanted to stay attractive after they married. Their bodies, their clothes, the way they smelled—she had taken all of this for granted. American men drank a lot of beer and got fat. Their wives didn’t seem to mind. After a few months of living together, even P.J. had sprouted a belly, and she found herself fixating on it—the way he just let it hang there when she was around, and sucked it in each time he looked in the mirror or stepped onstage. When he peed in the morning, he left the bathroom door open. Delphine told him she found this habit disgusting, but he claimed it was a positive sign. He was feeling completely comfortable with her. She thought of Henri, who in six years of marriage had never once failed to close the bathroom door.

  The light changed now, and she walked toward Paul Lloyd, giving him a wave.

  “This must be Charlie!” he said when she reached him.

  The dog looked up at him, accepting a vigorous rub behind the ears. He wagged his tail.

  “Aww, look at him. Man, my boys are gonna fall in love. We haven’t told them yet, since we didn’t want to get their hopes up if this somehow fell through.”

  Delphine smiled. “I know you’ll give him a wonderful life.”

  He turned to Charlie, bending down and speaking directly to the dog. “Stephanie’s at Petco right now, getting you your very own bed and a few of the toys that Lucky Penny loved, and treats”—his voice slid into rapid-fire baby talk—“treats treats treats treats treats. You like treats? You love treats? Yes you do, yes you do!”

  He stood up again, straightened out his t-shirt. His voice returned to normal. “I took the whole day off work. We’re going to pick the boys up from school with him in the backseat. I can’t wait. I brought him some bacon. Can he have that?”

  “Sure,” she said. “He’s your dog now.”

  He pulled a Ziploc bag from his pants pocket and removed half a strip of crisp bacon. “Can you sit?” he asked.

  Charlie sat.

  He fed Charlie the meat. “Oh what a good boy! What a good boy!”

  In Paris, dogs were everywhere—lying at their owners’ feet in outdoor cafés, trotting obediently behind them in the streets unleashed, walking the aisles of upscale boutiques. But French people didn’t baby them the way Americans did. They showed more respect. Here, they had playgrounds just for dogs and men who you paid to walk them in a group of ten in the afternoon. She half expected Paul Lloyd to slap a bonnet on Charlie’s head and a pacifier in his mouth. And stupid Charlie, American that he was, was loving every bit of it.

  She had feared a fight out of him, but when Paul Lloyd opened the car door, Charlie jumped right in.

  “Oops, let’s get your doggie seat belt hooked,” he said, reaching into the backseat. Delphine raised an eyebrow.

  Before he left, he cupped her hand in both of his.

  “Thank you so much,” he said. “You don’t know what this means to us.” As if she had just given him one of her vital organs. “Do you want a moment alone with him, to say goodbye? I could take a walk.”

  Delphine shook her head. “Oh no. We’ve said our goodbyes.”

  He looked confused. He was probably thinking she was a heartless French person, what could you expect?

  Was it heartless of her? She knew it would hurt P.J. more than anything else she could ever do to him. But it wasn’t cruel. Cruel would be strapping a brick to the dog and dumping him in the East River. Charlie was going to love living in a big house by the sea, being adored. And after what P.J. had done to her, there was no form of revenge too terrible.

  She knew she could not expect sympathy. She had betrayed her husband, and now she herself had been betrayed. An outsider looking in would probably say she got just what she deserved. And yet, wasn’t it human to expect that you might be the exception to that? To hope that the world might understand your reasons even when you yourself could not?

  She turned back toward the building, and lit a cigarette. A woman holding the hand of a little girl a few feet ahead was doing what all New York mothers do—teaching their children constantly, because they must be the best! Not only that, but everyone around must know it!

  “What do you see, Ella?” she asked loudly.

  “A ladybug.”

  “That’s right! And what color is it?”

  “Red.”

  “And?”

  “Black.”

  “Very good!”

  These New York children would probably never get to have a quiet, contemplative moment until they went off to college.

  As Delphine passed, the woman turned to give her a poisonous look, glancing toward her cigarette. New Yorkers were so self-righteous about smoking, as if they weren’t killing themselves just as hastily through their love of diet soda and cocktails and carbohydrates. Delphine gave her a tart smile.

  The sight of a mother during the week was a rarity. Most of the children around here were white, with black nannies who pushed them in strollers, looking bored, talking on their cell phones. In France, they had a terrific daycare system. She had never thought about it until coming to the U.S., but it was something to be proud of.

  “Be careful,” the woman said, p
ulling her daughter to her as if Delphine were about to burn a hole in the child.

  The mothers here were so afraid. Be careful! She heard them yelling, in the park, at the curb, as they stepped off the bus. Careful, careful, careful! In such a doomsday tone, as if all of life were just a disaster lying in wait.

  When she reached the Wilfred she prepared for a question from the doorman, but he did not ask about Charlie. Maybe he thought she’d brought the dog to the vet or the groomers, or an SAT tutoring session, dogs in this neighborhood having almost as many social obligations as children.

  She stepped into the elevator. With nothing to do but regard her own reflection, she felt surprised by the bones in her cheeks poking out, the dark half-moons beneath her eyes. She had lost twelve pounds without meaning to, and she looked sickly now.

  As the numbers lit up above the doors—third floor, fourth floor, fifth, sixth—she imagined what P.J. would think when he came home. Would he assume at first that he’d been burgled—flatulent, overweight dogs being such a popular target among thieves these days? How long would it take him to discover the truth? He would have to piece it together with the doormen, or perhaps he would just know.

  She looked down at the ring. She slid it off her finger for a moment, held it in the palm of her hand. For the first time, she evaluated it as merely a piece of jewelry. It was very pretty. She thought it might be Edwardian, or perhaps even Victorian. All together, the stones were probably three carats at least. In France, a woman wouldn’t wear a diamond smaller than a carat—if you couldn’t afford more, you’d simply choose a less expensive stone. A few years back, sapphires were popular. But in America, all the women wore diamonds, and they came in every size, from golf balls down to specks of dust.

  She had given a lot of thought to what the best thing would be, and decided that she ought to give the ring back to its rightful owner. She thought of the Stradivarius, how perhaps it had been taken all those years ago. The two of them, the ring and the violin, were linked in her mind: both objects of great sentimental value that should not have left a family. It was really his mother’s ring anyway. She had never wanted Delphine to have it.

  After P.J. gave it to her, Delphine wondered why his mother was willing to part with such a stunning piece of jewelry, her own engagement ring. But she never asked P.J., and when she eventually learned the truth, she wished she didn’t know.

  They arrived in New York from Paris in mid-August. The heat was oppressive. Delphine had never sweated so much. It reminded her of the tropics, damp and unrelenting. P.J. said you got used to it.

  He had the rest of the month off, apart from a couple of summer festival performances. They spent their time exploring the city, and taking weekend drives to Tanglewood, where he delighted the audiences with his rendition of Bach’s Violin Concerto no. 2 in E Major. One critic wrote that listening to the music he played on the Stradivarius was “such an incredibly perfect experience that no other joy in life will surpass it.”

  P.J.’s manager was trying to eke every last bit of press out of the Stradivarius story that she possibly could. She had him doing two or three phone interviews each day, with newspapers and music websites and National Public Radio. Delphine left the room when he did this, after once hearing him say, “The previous owner was a French collector.” Henri. The knowledge pierced her heart as if she had just that instant learned the truth.

  When P.J. left the apartment with the Strad in a simple backpack violin case, she would fill up with a strange mix of fear and exhilaration. Henri had treated it like a museum piece, but P.J. saw it as just a beloved instrument, meant to be played.

  He came back from his travels with the funniest stories, laughing no matter what the inconvenience. A stewardess in Germany insisted on putting the Strad in the overhead compartment; she covered it in gym bags and laptop computers. In Japan, he was forced to buy an extra seat for it.

  “That’s absurd!” she said, but P.J. only shrugged and said, “Violinists have it easy. A cellist always has to buy a seat for his instrument. A bass player can’t even bring his, because it’s so big.”

  “So what do they do?” she asked.

  “They have to rent one in every town. Can you imagine?”

  He was once detained by airport security in Poland for three hours. They said he should have brought proof that he owned the Strad. But eventually a guard came on duty who had seen him perform with the Warsaw Philharmonic the night before.

  “He asked for my autograph and sent me on my way,” P.J. said when he came in that afternoon. “I’d probably still be stuck in that hellhole if it wasn’t for him. I guess I should carry the papers from now on.”

  “You should,” she said. “There are so many sad examples of what happens when documentation goes missing.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  He was flipping through the mail on the small table in the foyer.

  “Do you know anything about the history of the Nazis taking violins like yours from their owners?” she asked.

  Now he looked up.

  “No.”

  She told him the story of the woman who had come into the shop, and when she was done P.J. frowned and said, “How awful.” But he didn’t make any connection to himself, at least as far as she could tell.

  “Have you heard of Rose Valland?” she asked.

  “Nope. Who’s that?”

  The dog was at his feet, looking for attention. P.J. dropped to the floor and began to rub his stomach.

  Delphine didn’t go any further. She could tell he wasn’t listening.

  After that, he continued to play the Stradivarius without a hint of guilt or hesitation. Delphine wondered why the whole thing bothered her so much when no one else seemed disturbed in the slightest.

  In September, when his performance schedule started up again, she was alone two or three nights a week. She walked the streets, or stayed home and read a book, trying to keep busy. She reminded herself that there was so much to discover—museums and theater and SoHo boutiques. She wanted to think of New York as a brave new adventure. She had always dreamed of coming here. But she found the city bland compared to Paris.

  All of Paris was a work of art. Delphine had never really appreciated that until now. The architecture, the window boxes spilling over with geraniums in June, the tall white shutters. She longed to stand before just one of the thousands of massive wooden doors painted blue or red or green, privée entries that disguised cobblestone courtyards, lush gardens. A treasure hidden behind every one.

  In Paris, the people were unique. Here, they all wore the same shoes, and carried the same purses and read the same books and drank the same coffee. She had heard about Saks Fifth Avenue, but when she shopped there, she found it to be just like any other department store. She missed the gorgeous and grand Galeries Lafayette, with its gilded balconies and vaulted stained-glass ceiling.

  The simple translations of everyday life exhausted her. When she saw a neon sign flashing the time and temperature outside a bank, she had to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius in her head. The subway maps seemed designed to confuse, and when she accidentally went uptown instead of down, there was often no easy way to get back to the train she was meant to be on. She had to go outside and cross the street, pay the fare twice. She felt a small sense of victory when she got something right, but it was usually canceled out by some other frustrating mistake within hours.

  One morning, she decided to surprise P.J. with tickets to Shakespeare in the Park. She had read in the paper that they were free, and could be claimed starting at eleven a.m. She arrived at eleven-fifteen to find that all the tickets were gone.

  “They all went in fifteen minutes?” she said to the man behind the counter.

  “People lined up starting at seven,” he said, as if queuing unnecessarily for four hours in the blistering heat made any sense at all.

  The next day, she took a taxi to Greenwich Village to do some shopping. She had a long, lovely chat with the driver about his
honeymoon in Nice. When she paid him the exact fare displayed on the meter rounded up to the next dollar, he grew cold. “Screw you, lady,” he said, and she felt stricken. It wasn’t until she told P.J. the story later that she remembered that here you were expected to tip an extra 15 or 20 percent.

  It became clear quite quickly that for her, New York was only one person, and without him the city meant nothing. When P.J. was home, she felt full of life. They made love every night in a fever, with a passion she could never have imagined with Henri. While P.J. worked, she stored up tales to tell him and busied herself making the apartment perfect for him. She got manicures and pedicures and facials at a spa run by Chinese women who didn’t speak a word of English. In Paris, she had gotten her hair cut and colored at the same place every few weeks for the last eighteen years, but here she could not find a salon that she liked. She tried to ration her lotions and cosmetics, knowing that when she ran out she would have a hard time replacing them. She had one bottle of Avène Hydrance Optimale, her favorite cream, which she vowed not to open for as long as she could bear it.

  At first she made P.J. the meals she would have made in Paris, but when he dismissed them as too rich or too strange—they were always too something—she started experimenting with American cooking, the sorts of recipes his mother had prepared for him when he was a child: spaghetti Bolognese, pancakes and bacon, macaroni and cheese. She was never happy with the way any of it turned out, even though he said it was delicious. Delphine herself avoided these things and tried to continue eating as she always had: three meals a day, and that was all. For dinner, she had vegetables and a small piece of meat—simple, basic food, though she could never get it to taste the way it did in France.

  “I’m missing French groceries,” she said, exasperated, one night.

  “Just say ‘I miss French groceries,’ ” P.J. corrected her. “Otherwise it makes you sound like you’ve misplaced them.”

  He told her to go to Fairway if she wanted to be impressed. The store had a good enough selection, but to her mind, going to Fairway felt like going to war—the customers so pushy, the men at the deli screaming, Next! Next! Next! before she could gather her thoughts or find the right words.