by Anne Bernays
I had known Alicia for more than ten years, so I was surprised when she now told me that she had, more than twenty years earlier, almost split with her husband and gone to New York to take a fabulous job in a classy publishing house. “Trying to decide whether or not to leave here was one of the most awful periods of my whole life; I think I actually may have gone a little nuts. I wouldn’t want to go through that again.”
“How did you decide?” I said. “I hope you don’t mind my being nosy.”
She brushed this off, saying she didn’t consider me the least bit nosy. “I guess I just tried to measure the potential pain of leaving my husband against missing out on a great career move. The trouble was, of course, that since both were in the future, how could I do this? Either one would have to be just a guess.”
“Can I ask you a question? And if you don’t want to answer, I wouldn’t blame you,” I said. “Please don’t feel you owe me an answer.”
Alicia told me not to worry. Beating around the bush was not her style.
And so I asked her if she regretted the choice she’d made. And she said, surprisingly, “Sometimes.”
But why should that surprise me? No human being on earth reaches fifty without dragging behind them at least a few regrets. If there are folks out there free of this baggage, I’d very much like to meet them, although they’re probably unbearably smug. I, for one, regret that I didn’t let my high school sweetheart, Barry Chang, make love to me. He was the most adorable boy. He played the bassoon and was an All-State track and field champion. I wanted more than anything to have sex with him; my whole body went into a meltdown whenever he touched me. But I wasn’t brave enough; I still can’t think of Barry without flushing. Regret stings.
“Here I am,” Alicia said, “a year or so away from retirement. What do I do then to keep me busy? I don’t know anything but editing. I’m not very good at keeping house, mainly because I don’t really care if there are dust mice under the couch. Martha Stewart strikes me as a freak of nature—God, look what she’s done to make the American woman feel inadequate. But I have Barney—he’s good company when he’s not seeing patients. Did I tell you, he’s stopped doing surgery? He developed a slight tremor in his hands. That’s it for the scalpel. But he still consults. He loves medicine the way I love publishing. So there you are. We’re going to have to figure out how to give each other the most pleasure—and I’m not just talking about sex. I’m talking about enjoyment. Sounds pretty drab, doesn’t it?”
I didn’t think so.
“And you know what,” she said, as if remembering to stick the rosebuds into the icing, “I told Barney I wish I had a spa, one of those tubs with lots of fierce nozzles and a whirlpool, in our bathroom. And of course I didn’t need it, a luxurious and expensive item like that. And he urged me to go ahead and have one installed. And when I asked him why he was so easily persuaded to spend that kind of money for something so self-indulgent, you know what he said? He said, ‘’Cause it makes you happy.’” With that, Alicia looked at her watch. “I’ve got an eye appointment at eleven. I’ve got to run. Don’t worry about Marshall; he’ll be fine. And have fun in New York.”
I took the new Amtrak Acela to New York, a smooth, almost silent ride that’s supposed to shave almost an hour off the trip down the so-called Northeast corridor. However, the train mysteriously stopped outside of Bridgeport for forty-five minutes and thus took about the same time the slower train would have taken. I had decided to stay with my cousin Caroline and her husband rather than at a hotel, mainly because I experienced an unusual spurt of family loyalty—we had spent summers together as children; it might be nice to trade versions of family history. I arrived at her apartment near the U.N. complex late in the afternoon, took her and her grouchy husband out to dinner at a neighborhood restaurant, and went to bed on the early side. I thought I was too nervous to fall asleep quickly, but the opposite was true and when, the next day, I got up refreshed and went into the kitchen where Caroline was cooking bacon in the oven and brewing coffee, I was actually delighted to hear about her perfect children.
“How do I look?” I said.
“You look great—very black. Who’s this person you’re seeing?”
“It’s a man I’ve been working with for years. We’ve never met. He’s a fan of my work. He wants to see my photographs.”
“Do you mind if I tell you something?”
I shook my head, certain it would be something less than lovely.
“That last book you illustrated? The one about the vegetable stand in Maryland? If you don’t mind me saying so, it wasn’t your best work.”
I seethed and said nothing. Caroline’s the person who told me, years ago, that Tom and I were ships that pass in the night. She seems to enjoy throwing darts at me—and she’s got great aim. But her criticism implied she had actually looked at the book, an item meant for the under-seven crowd. Or maybe she hadn’t and was lying. In any case, I suppose I shouldn’t have stayed with her in the first place.
“I’ll see you later,” I said, looking in her hall mirror to make sure I was as snappy as I could possibly be without a total makeover. Black is good.
“Come to think of it, you could use a scarf with that outfit,” Caroline said, sneaking up behind me. “Just a small touch of color at the throat.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I like me this way.”
She made a dart into the hall closet and came out with a gauzy blue scarf that would have looked just right. “Here,” she said, “it goes.” I shook my head and heard her say something vaguely hissy under her breath. But I left with my pride intact and started out on foot. The throb and noise in the City always get under my skin, not in a bad way but like a powerful upper. Wings on my heels.
I walked—a matter of a mile or so—to the building in which the publishing house occupied the entire eleventh floor. I gave the man in the lobby two forms of I.D. I thought I was going to have to give over a drop or two of blood before he allowed me on the elevator. On eleven the elevator doors slid open to reveal a chrome and glass waiting room with a wall against which hung the firm’s latest hits, none of them children’s books. I went over to the woman sitting at a glass desk behind a glass partition and told her who I was. Soon a person in a miniskirt, looking to be about fifteen and introducing herself as Ashley, came out to collect me. “David’s stuck in a meeting. He said to tell you that he’ll be with you in about five minutes. I’m supposed to take you to his office and ask you if you want something to drink.” I was thinking maybe a shot of whiskey to calm nerves unexpectedly jangling, but declined her offer. I followed her down a couple of corridors off which lay tiny offices containing one person each, at work. A couple of them glanced up as we passed. Hadn’t he told me his assistant was middle-aged? “Are you new here?”
“I’ve like been here three weeks? David’s old assistant had to retire. She’s got lung problems. It’s not cancer.”
Ashley left me in her boss’s office. It was just large enough for a desk, two chairs and dozens of what I assumed were manuscripts waiting to be read on the shelves against one wall. I went around to his side of the desk to look at his things. A computer, a glass paperweight, a ceramic buffalo, a fake glass pen, a picture of two small inauthentically happy children within a metal frame, along with the usual pads and memo sheets, calendar, and clock. His desktop was not especially forthcoming, if what you had in mind was revelation. It was neither messy nor compulsively neat but somewhere in between. The only thing that might have given something away was the photograph, and the subjects could be anyone—his kids, his niece and nephew, godchildren. I wondered briefly why I was being so nosy. I reminded myself: “You are not single, Dannie, and this is not a blind date. This is a man who provides you with work. Period.”
“Is that Dannie?” I jumped; he’d caught me snooping at his desktop.
“Mr. Lipsett?”
“David. Please.”
“David.”
“Did Ashley get
you something to drink?”
“I didn’t want anything, thanks.”
I was embarrassed, as if I’d discovered, too late, that I was wearing shoes from two different pairs.
“Well,” he said as he settled himself in the high, back-leaning leather chair on his side of the desk. “Do you have those pictures with you? Let’s take a look.” I noticed, as he brought his hands together, that he was missing the little finger of his right hand. This so unnerved me that I began to babble about his old assistant while trying, at the same time, to untie the black ribbon securing my portfolio. I finally got it open and laid them out for David to look at.
He examined the pictures, twelve by fifteen each, in silence, one at a time. I sat on the other side of the desk, trying not to look at the place where his finger should be and watching him for some reaction, which he maddeningly kept hidden. For a moment, it seemed more important than anything, ever, that he like them, that he tell me I was a great photographer and that, in fact, these pictures were too good for a children’s book; they should have a show of their own in a gallery, later to be reproduced in a book of their own. The fantasy stopped abruptly, when he said, “They’re not bad. I’ll have to think about finding the right book for them. Kids like drawings, I guess because the artist takes so many liberties the photographer can’t.”
Was he telling me he couldn’t use them?
“You can fool around with photographs, you can do amazing things…”
“I know,” he said. It was at this point that he smiled broadly, implying, I thought, that what I’d just said was too obvious to be put into words. “Of course you do,” I said.
Meanwhile, as this back-and-forth was going on, I was studying him with far more interest than I would have admitted at the time. He was hovering in the fifty-year range, no beard or mustache, and his skin color was either Mediterranean or sun-exposed. He had on trendy, oval-shaped wire-rimmed glasses and seemed not to have lost much if any hair along the way. He was wearing a gray tweed jacket, striped shirt closed up to the highest button, no tie. His shoes were hidden but I would have bet a million dollars they didn’t have tassels on them. There was a looseness to the way he moved that most women find very appealing, as if a puppeteer with not much experience was working his strings. You want to steady him. What I was trying not to admit was that I found him wickedly attractive. As I looked at this man, I formed an instant emotional opinion about him. Whether, later, I would be forced to revise or stick with a good hand, didn’t figure in my calculation.
“You know,” he said, tapping the pictures together into a neat stack, “I may be able to use something of yours—not necessarily any of these—in a book that’s still being written, about a whale watch. You’ve been on one?”
I nodded. “Have you?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Maybe you can tell me how it’s done. I’ve made a reservation for lunch nearby. You’re free, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Can I leave this here?” I asked, pointing to my portfolio. Only after asking did I realize that leaving it would mean I’d have to come back to retrieve it.
The restaurant was subdued, with plenty of room between tables, a maitre d’ who welcomed David Lipsett by name and told him how nice it was to see him again. He led us to a banquette where we both faced out toward the other tables and diners. The light in the room was so subtle and diffused it was hard to figure out where it came from. David told me the place was popular with folks in publishing and pointed out an author whose name I recognized, sitting with his agent “rumored to be his sixth. He goes through them like popcorn.”
Reluctant to make us sound like one of those magical couples in the New York Times’ Vows column on Sundays, where every bride and every groom are so brilliant, funny, original, free of spirit, different (or “special”), I still maintain that our first conversation was nothing other than brilliant, funny, free of spirit, “special.” We talked about ourselves, mostly as a means of getting the outward layers peeled away quickly. He was divorced, had been for some time. There were two children, one in college, the other in high school. “My ex and I are on pretty good terms, considering.” I was glad he didn’t tell me that they got on much better now that they were no longer married. (Of course people get on better after the divorce; they don’t have to clean up the other person’s emotional shit.) I told him, as briefly as I could, about Tom and Beth and Mark, determined to make the fantasy of being single last longer than the few hours embracing it.
I had planned to order something I had never cooked and maybe not even tasted. So I ordered a quail salad, and when I looked at the six bird corpses arranged prettily on a nest of mesclun, their legs no larger than Q-tips, I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat the poor little things. David must have seen me hesitate. “We could order you something else if you don’t want to eat that,” he said.
“I’m going to try,” I said. “Either I eat them, or they get thrown out with the coffee grounds. Do you think people working in the kitchen ever help themselves to the food left on plates?” He said he certainly hoped not but wouldn’t be surprised if they did. He asked me if I’d read George Orwell’s book about being a dishwasher in Paris, with roaches and rats running around the kitchen. “After I finished it,” he said, “I never wanted to eat in a restaurant again. Yet here we are!” I told him I’d read the book and had had the same reaction. The funny thing was that the quail were too small to have any discernible flavor; I might as well have been eating tiny bits of anything from the bird family. We shared a pastry for dessert. By the end of the meal, when the maitre d’ came over to pull out our table—and although I hadn’t summoned the nerve to ask about the missing finger—I wanted to hug David and lick his ear. But I behaved myself in the manner of a married, middle-aged book illustrator who wants more work and no funny business.
“Where are you headed?” David asked as we left the restaurant.
“Back to your office,” I said. “I left my portfolio there, remember?”
His cell phone sang. “Excuse me a second,” he said. He talked into it, said something about a meeting at three. I looked at my watch. It was almost a quarter of three.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Life would be a lot less complicated without these contraptions. But you know, I’ve begun to feel naked without it.”
Naked? “I’ll just pick up my things and be off.”
“Would you like to know what I’m thinking right now?” he said. “I’m thinking you’re the most attractive woman I’ve ever seen.”
Now I know what I look like, and while I’m quite sure no one would turn away from me in horror, I also know that compared to a truly beautiful woman—let’s give her a ten—I barely make a six. My chin is a little weak, my nose a little crooked, my eyes pale rather than saturated. I should take off about fifteen pounds and strangle the gray hairs that have started to appear like weeds in a neglected lawn. Well, I thought, either he’s nuts or he’s smitten.
I looked down girlishly; felt girlish.
“That’s a statement, Dannie,” he said. “It doesn’t require an answer.”
With this extravagance he had jumped way over the line I myself was not prepared to cross. What did he have in mind? He had paid me one of the two compliments a woman most wants to hear, the other being “You’re the smartest woman I’ve ever met.” Did he want to tell me he liked the way I looked and leave it at that—a compliment no more significant than if he had told me he liked my shoes—or did he want to cut short the journey from cozy lunch to bed? I thanked him in a faint voice and did not turn my head to look at him.
“Jesus! Watch out!” David yelled, grabbing my arm and yanking it so hard I nearly fell over. “That kid on a bicycle almost killed you.”
“What kid?” David pointed to a boy on a bicycle, wearing a black leather jacket, already halfway up the block, speeding blithely to his next delivery. David seemed more shaken than I was. Of course, he’d seen the near miss. I hadn’t.
�
�If he’d been driving a car, I would have got his license. Damn.”
“I’m fine, David, really, he missed me.”
“By inches.”
“That’ll do it.” I wanted to look cool, unconcerned, even as my heart was racing and my mouth had gone dry, while David told me about how he’d been hit by a cyclist on Seventh Avenue a few years earlier and landed in a hospital with a serious concussion. “It happened just the way it happened a minute ago,” he said. “They thought I might be brain-damaged. But I was okay.”
When we got back to his office, David insisted that I sit down and drink some water. He rang for Ashley, who didn’t seem all that happy about being a gopher. “Where did you say you were staying?”
“Well, actually, I’m planning to take the five o’clock train back to Boston.”
His four fingers and a thumb fiddled with something on his desk. “That’s a pity. If you were staying another night, I’d say let’s have dinner together.” His suggestion, falling just short of an invitation, was so graceful that I nearly told him that I’d do it, I’d stay over and do anything that came into my head, consequences or no. I got up, gathered my things, shook hands with David, who said, “Hey, I’ll walk you to the elevator.”
“Thanks so much for the wonderful lunch.”
“And the close call,” he said.
On the train heading north I tamped down my excitement and prepared for reentry into the familiar. The image of David kept undercutting my best intentions. I couldn’t let myself believe that I might have fallen for a near stranger. I was fifty-three; this sort of thing had gone out of my life years earlier. What the hell was I thinking?
Chapter
6
