Love in Mid Air

by Kim Wright

  “Burn them,” she said.

  Flipping through, I could see that there were ten, maybe twelve of them and they were in chronological order, which surprised me. Kelly isn’t usually that organized.

  “It doesn’t look like much, does it?” she said. “But then, when I stop and think about it, I didn’t know him for very long.”

  Holding the letters made me feel a little sick. “Are you sure you want me to do this?”

  “You have to. I can’t do it myself.”

  That night, after Tory was down and Phil was asleep I got up and built a fire. Let me be very clear about this. I never intended to burn the letters. It was more to set a mood. I poured myself a glass of wine and stretched out on the couch and began to read.

  I had seen Kelly and Daniel together several times and I had witnessed the desperate way his eyes followed her every movement. God knows I had heard every detail of their sex, but I was still stunned by the raw passion in Daniel’s writing. The humor, the openness, the sense of a shared history, the way he seemed to notice everything about her and remember everything she said. Daniel had done to Kelly everything a man can do to a woman—he had pursued her and screwed her, worshipped her and betrayed her, but somehow it had never occurred to me that he’d loved her.

  Of course, that didn’t explain why he fled to St. Louis, or wherever it was that he actually went. It didn’t explain how she ended up in that tawdry public clinic, or why she was now marrying a man who I could only think of as Plan B. But the more I read the less I seemed to care how their story ended. Of course I couldn’t burn the letters. She had known that all along. She had entrusted them, in fact, to the one person who she knew would protect them with her life. I carefully put Daniel’s letters back in chronological order, bound them up, and hid them in a bag in the back of my closet.

  Occasionally, even now, I take them out and read them. When it’s late and I’m lonely or sad. Daniel had followed the rules of infidelity beautifully—the letters contain no names and no dates, which makes them perfect for my purposes. Over time it has become easier and easier to pretend that these are my letters. Over time it has become easier and easier to pretend that someone had written them to me.

  * * *

  I heard from Daniel one final time. We’d been born on the same day, and that had always given us a funny sort of connective tissue. A sense of shared destiny, he once told me, when we’d met at Kelly’s apartment to blow out the sixty-eight candles she’d stuck on a cake—thirty-one for me, thirty-seven for him. So I suppose I shouldn’t have been completely surprised when he called me, a couple of years after his disappearance, to wish me a happy birthday. Talking to him was so bizarre that it took a while for the reality to sink in and me to become really angry. We chatted as if we had seen each other just the week before, and finally he came to the point.

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s getting married.”

  I will never forget the sound he made next, a sort of raw animal sound, almost a wail. I was hit with a wave of anger. I started to tell him she’d been pregnant when he left, did he even know that? And how she had wasted away in the weeks and months that followed and if he cared so damn much how could he have just walked out?

  But then he got himself together and asked, “Does she love him?”

  “He’ll take care of her.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “It seems to me you’ve forfeited the right to ask anybody anything.”

  “She’s really going to do this?”

  “We’re going lingerie shopping tomorrow. For her honeymoon. He’s taking her to Paris.” Actually he was taking her to Vegas, but I figured Paris would sting more.

  “Should I come back?”

  “Why? Has anything changed?”

  “Are you even going to tell her that I called?”

  On the day of the wedding, Tory was Kelly’s only attendant. She walked carefully down the makeshift aisle of the hotel ballroom in her blue organza dress, dropping white rose petals one by one. I couldn’t stop looking at the door. Maybe this was the day that all the romantic hysteria was finally leading up to. Maybe Daniel was going to burst in like that scene in The Graduate, scoop Kelly up, and carry her away.

  He didn’t, of course, and at the reception Kelly came up to me and said, “So now I’m married.”

  “Yeah, you’re one of us.”

  “It doesn’t seem real,” she said. “How long does it take before you actually start feeling like you’re somebody’s wife?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  I think I was right not to tell her about Daniel’s call, although my decision is one I still wonder about, even after all these years. Kelly looked happy, borderline radiant. “White’s your color,” I said, and we were laughing as we linked arms and turned to gaze at our husbands. It was a pleasant little scene. Mark was quite handsome in his tux, very stately with his cigar. He waved it expansively as he talked to Phil, who was leaned back against the silk-covered wall, holding Tory. She had been wound up with excitement for days and she’d fallen asleep nearly the minute the ceremony was over. She lay sprawled in her father’s arms, her head thrown back, her mouth open, still clutching the basket of rose petals. Kelly sighed.

  “Do you think it will work out for me this time?”

  “I hope so.”

  “I’d never do anything to hurt Mark.”

  “I know that.”

  “It’s different, but it’s good in its own way. He’s there for me and that’s worth something.”

  “It’s worth a lot.”

  “You burned the letters, right?”

  “Of course I burned the letters.”

  She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. She knew I was lying.

  Chapter Twelve

  October comes and goes. He continues to call.

  Not every day. But often enough that we develop a sense of continuity, a strangely detailed knowledge of each other’s lives. He listens to me talk about the sort of things that are either so big or so small that you ordinarily don’t discuss them. The pot that came out more blue than green, the expensive shoes that Kelly gave me because they pinch her feet, the dream where my mother turned into a bear. This strange white patch of hair that has shown up in my eyebrow, seemingly overnight. It means I’m getting old. It means I’m going to die. I tell him I’m afraid to die. I tell him I’ve lost my favorite ink pen.

  “I’ve never done this before,” he says. “Whatever this is we’re doing.”

  The phone lies on the kitchen counter, a constant temptation, like a cake on a plate. Just a nibble here, a smear of icing on my tongue. This, of course, is the most enormous kind of cheating there is, the fact that I have made this man my confidant, the fact that I have become his. The fact that he reads me road signs as he drives by them, the fact that I open the refrigerator and tell him I forgot to get cream. The fact that I know his best friend’s sister tried to kill herself or that he helps me solve the Sunday crossword when they have a word in Latin. He knows when I start my period. I know it took eleven hundred dollars to fix that dent in his car. I tell him that the red and yellow peppers in my frying pan smell like summer, smell like the last of summer, like the end of something, and he tells me he’s in line at the drive-thru but he wishes he was there in the kitchen with me. He wishes he could walk in the door, come up behind me, and put his arms around my waist. I close my eyes and hear the surprisingly clear voice of some teenage girl in Boston asking him if he wants any sauce with that. “My life sucks,” he says and I unclench my fist, releasing the pine nuts into the pan. There’s not a word for what Gerry is to me, although Kelly, when I finally broke down and told her the whole story, arched her brow and called him “the distraction.”

  I phone him each time I leave counseling. Jeff always ends our sessions by reminding me I should do something for myself. A little something for myself every day, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean calling Gerry, but t
hat’s the only thing that soothes me after the impossibility of a therapy session. Fifty minutes of trying to describe what I wanted at the beginning of my marriage and trying to describe why it’s no longer what I want. Fifty minutes of realizing that I’m no longer sure exactly what I want but that I’m pretty sure Phil will never be able to give it to me. Fifty minutes of admitting that I’m using the wrong language and that really, of course, of course, it’s my job to give things to myself. Fifty minutes of Phil looking at me in exasperation, Jeff nodding eagerly and telling me to go on. Because, after all, the more confused and inarticulate I am now, the greater the adulation he will receive when he saves me. I am the lost sheep whose return will bring about more rejoicing than the others who are now safely munching arugula in their pastures.

  Behind Jeff’s head are rows of marriage manuals crammed from every direction and angle into an overstressed bookcase. Jeff has a hundred guides, each with a hundred theories on how marriage should work, and he won’t rest until we have explored them all. “Each marriage is its own country,” he said at our last session. “The married couple are the king and queen of that country and they can decree whatever rules they want.” I felt a momentary flash of pride when Phil said, very calmly, “That’s got to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” Even Jeff had to laugh. Never mind. If we don’t like that analogy, he’s got plenty more. I wonder how many people leave therapy because they’ve really figured something out and how many leave because they’re so worn down with the steady drip of words that, in the end, they’ll agree to anything just to get out the door.

  So each time in the car, on the way home from Jeff’s office, I hit number 3 on my speed dial. This is not the time for talking about small things. This is time for a conversation that propels me to the mall or the airport or the track where I sit alone in a remote section of the parking lot and listen to this man explain how he will run his tongue down the furrow of my spine and press the arches of my feet to his forehead. Gerry never asks me what I want.

  It can’t happen,” I tell him.

  “So why do we keep talking about it?”

  “Because we like to torture each other.”

  “Okay, torture me now.”

  “You know I bought some lingerie.”

  “Great, great, wait a minute. Service stinks in this area. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I can’t talk long. The ladies and I are getting ready to walk.”

  “Tell me about the lingerie.”

  “I didn’t get it for you. I got it for my husband. He’s going to take one look at this new underwear and everything is going to be totally different. He’s going to say, ‘Hallelujah, I see you as both a wife and a mistress and this marriage is absolutely forever one hundred percent saved.’ ”

  “What did he say? Give me a second. I’m on a bridge…”

  “He didn’t say anything. I haven’t worn it yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m afraid. He has this way of being sarcastic, I think he’s trying to be funny…”

  “Poor baby.”

  “I know. I keep taking it out of the bag and spreading it across the bed and looking at everything.”

  “Tell me about it. Describe every piece.”

  “Well, there’s a camisole, do you know what that is?”

  “Yeah, that’s great.”

  “And on the bottom are these black hose with elastic tops that are supposed to stay up by themselves, and high heels.”

  “That’s really great.”

  “When I tried them on in the dressing room, I imagined my legs sliding around your neck with the hose on. I imagined that sort of swooshing noise the hose would make against your skin if I…”

  “Wait a minute, damn, trucks everywhere. I’m going to take one of the exit ramps and find a place where we can really talk. Wait a minute. Hold that thought. Are you trying to kill me?”

  “I’m trying to kill something.” I’ve just pulled into the elementary school parking lot and my car is the first one there. I tell Gerry not to find an exit ramp, that the other women are bound to show up any minute and I’ll have to hang up. He says he wants us to meet. He has told me this before. I haven’t said yes but I haven’t said no. This is dangerous, he tells me. It’s stupid, I tell him. He says he just wants to make sure we’re clear about everything. On the plane I told him that marriage was a door people walk in and out of and I need to understand he’s not going out that door.

  “So all we would be is sex,” I say.

  “Friendship and sex,” he says. “Can you handle that?”

  I tell him I can handle that.

  He figures maybe it would be best if we meet somewhere neutral, at least the first time. Somewhere other than his town or mine.

  “New York,” I say immediately. I have a friend there. Nobody would think anything if I went up to see her. It’s good for him too—there are a million reasons for a person to be in New York. He says there are ways to set up a business file in my name so I’ll look like a client and he can pay for my ticket. The client thing seems a little double-edged. Maybe he’s done this before, and that’s not good. But if he’s going to the trouble of setting up a file on me, he must be planning for us to meet more than once, and that is good. My system is flooded with something—adrenaline, endorphins, some liquid that I imagine to look just like vodka, running clear and straight to my brain.

  “Can you hear me?” Gerry asks. “There’s so many fucking bridges here.” He’s breaking up.

  “I heard you. This is never actually going to happen.”

  “So what will you be wearing in New York?”

  “You’ve already forgotten what I look like?”

  “I know what you look like. I’m trying to talk dirty.”

  “I’m going to wear the lingerie tonight.”

  “Yeah, I guess you might as well give it a stab. Call me tomorrow and let me know how it went.” Nancy’s van has pulled into the parking lot and she is driving toward me. Gerry’s voice is nearly lost in an ocean of static. “If it goes well I’ll never hear from you again, will I?”

  “You’ll have the consolation of knowing you saved a marriage,” I say, watching Nancy get out of the van and tighten the ties on her walking shoes. “You can tell all your friends that meeting you was what turned me into the greatest sex kitten of Charlotte, North Carolina.”

  “You’re right. That will be an enormous consolation.”

  “Besides, cheer up. The odds are it won’t go well.”

  “If it goes badly will I see you in New York?”

  I say goodbye and hop out of the car, slamming the door and walking toward Nancy. She is strapping her heart rate monitor around her chest and she looks up, squinting in the sun as I approach.

  “I can see right through you,” she says.

  “What?”

  “That top is a little thin.”

  “It’s that new breathable fabric. I have a sports bra underneath.”

  “Oh yeah, well, I didn’t mean anything bad. As long as you have a sports bra. It looks comfortable. Want to start?”

  “Sure,” I say, and we head down the steps toward the track.

  “Is it okay if I run something by you? It’s kind of big.”

  “Sure,” I say again. “We tell each other everything.” I’m still a bit unnerved by the seeing-right-through-me line, but the lie comes to me easily. Nancy’s big news is that she’s thinking about putting down hardwood floors in her kitchen, and I murmur, acknowledging the enormity of the decision. It’s not entirely rational. We work so hard to create a façade and then we blame each other, just a little, for not being able to see past it.

  She tells me the exact dimensions of the space and how much the laminate costs per square foot versus how much the real wood costs and she tells me what Jeff said and how, if they go with the real wood, the price could cut into their vacation plans and she tells me, in detail, the three places they’re talking about going for fa
ll break. Kelly’s car pulls into the lot with Belinda’s right behind it. I help Nancy do the math in her head. Three hundred and twenty square feet of laminate equals a whole week in Cancun and is this or is this not greater than 320 feet of hardwood and four days at Hilton Head? Telling someone everything is just another way of telling them nothing.

  That night after Tory has gone to sleep I go into the bathroom and put on the camisole, stockings, and heels. Phil usually comes into the bedroom just before the ten o’clock news begins and, right on schedule, he walks through the door and sees me there, draped across the bed.

  “What are you doing?” he asks, smiling faintly.

  I feel foolish at once, lying on the bed with high-heeled shoes on. I struggle to pull the camisole down over my belly.

  “What exactly are you trying to be?” Ah, the question that has no answer. “Really,” he says, “where’d you get this stuff? Did you borrow it from Kelly?” I bolt from the bed and teeter my way into the closet, my face burning with shame.

  “Don’t be mad,” he calls after me. “Just let me watch the weather and then you can come back in here and be that little thing.” But I have already pulled the camisole over my head and the stockings down around my ankles, I am already beginning to cram the evidence of my stupidity back into the pink Frederica’s bag. “You’re not taking it off, are you?” he calls again. “Because really, it’s kind of cute.” I pull on my loose gray sleepshirt with the big UNC on the front and pad back into the bedroom.

  “I guess you’re pissed,” he says.

  “At least now you can’t say I never try.”

  “Okay,” he says, making an imaginary notation in an imaginary notebook. “Let the record show that on October 27 at 9:56 p.m., Elyse tried.”

  Two days from now, when we tell Jeff this story, Phil and I will remember it differently. I will tell Jeff that Phil had smirked at me and asked me what I was trying to be. Phil will say that he didn’t smirk, he only smiled because he was surprised. “I’ve never seen her wearing anything like that,” he will say to Jeff, but Jeff will not be looking at us. When we get to the part in the story where Phil describes my outfit, Jeff will swivel his chair away from the desk and shut his eyes.