“Will you?”
“Probably,” he said cheerfully. “It’s not the most exciting work in the world, but the hours are usually pretty reasonable, and you’re hardly ever in court. And it’s steady. People are always going to need wills, and rich people are always going to need help figuring out how to keep their greedy kids from snatching their money.”
I answered his questions about my job, and the families I was working with, imagining what it would be like to spend time with a guy who was content and comfortable, who wasn’t constantly pushing himself, endlessly striving for something that was impossibly hard to attain.
Jay was exactly what my parents would want for me; as perfect as if they’d put him together in some kind of build-a-guy workshop. He’d gone to George Washington and spent his twenties volunteering before law school at Columbia. He’d been in two serious long-term relationships but had been single for the past year. He came from the same kind of background that I did—Jewish, but not super observant, with parents who were comfortably upper-middle-class, but not rich. His passion, he said, was Scrabble, which he played in tournaments. “You shouldn’t be too impressed,” he told me. “It’s not about being a genius. It’s more about knowing every two-letter word in the world.”
Modest, I thought. A reasonable hobby. A dry, self-deprecating sense of humor, a nice, lived-in face. I could get used to this.
On our second date—Lost in Translation at Lincoln Center and noodle soup at a new ramen place afterward—I’d told him stories of how my brother, Jonah, had been so jealous of the attention I’d gotten in the hospital that he’d once tried to feign a brain tumor so he’d get special treats, and Jay told me about his sister’s eating disorder, and how weird it had been to visit her in the hospital. “I just kept thinking, ‘Eat something! How hard can it be? Have a cheeseburger and you can come home!’ ” He rode the subway with me, even though he lived uptown, and walked me to my door. “I think you have a beautiful heart,” he said, and kissed me. His words didn’t move me as much as Andy’s once had . . . but I wasn’t sixteen anymore, and Andy was gone. I’d spent too many mornings learning that over and over again, waking up hopeful and then feeling the sadness settle into me like a sickness, as soon as I remembered what was starting to feel like the central fact of my existence: Andy is gone.
On our third date, Jay and I went out for sushi. In an enormous, dimly lit room, behind big white plates decorated with curls of white or pinkish flesh, tiny mounds of rice and wasabi, and shreds and flecks of vegetable, we swapped bar and bat mitzvah stories, and Jay told me about the first time he’d had sex, how he and his high school girlfriend had shared a bottle of wine in the room at the Days Inn that they’d gotten, and he’d ejaculated on her thigh and spent five minutes apologizing before he realized that she’d passed out. After the check for a hundred and twenty dollars came we admitted to each other that we were both still starving, and hurried out into the frigid November night, holding hands, mitten to mitten. We race-walked to the Burger Bar, hidden behind heavy velvet curtains in the lobby of Le Parker Meridien, and ordered two cheeseburgers, plus an order of fries and a brownie. Jay had a beer; I had a chocolate malted and licked ketchup off my fingers, saying, “I know it’s cool to love sushi, but I just don’t.”
“Since we’re confessing our secrets,” Jay began. I sat up straight. So far, Jay had been wonderfully transparent, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get guy. Had that been a lie, or too good to last? He tugged at his sleeves and finally said, “I don’t know how you feel about fur, if you’re one of those anti-fur people, but I figure that if this”—and here he gestured with one of his hands at the beer, the burgers, the table, and me—“is going to turn into a thing, I should tell you that there’s a fur in the family. My bubbe gave it to my mom, and my mom gave it to me, to give to the girl that I marry.”
A flush spread across my face. I wanted to sit for a minute, to cherish the possibility of actually marrying this guy, of someone liking me enough to want to be with me forever. I examined myself, looking for trepidation or anxiety, but all I felt was calm and happy. I was glad I’d found Jay, and thrilled that the hunt would be over, that I could relax into a relationship and stop trying so hard, keeping up with my manicures and my highlights and my leg waxing, making sure my date dresses were dry-cleaned, gobbling Altoids so that my breath would always be sweet, skipping desserts even when I wanted them. “Why wouldn’t your sister get it?”
“Robin’s a vegan. Hasn’t eaten food with a face since she was eight. And she’s not one of the quiet, don’t-rock-the-boat kind, either. Her ring tone is ‘Meat Is Murder.’ ” Jay leaned back in his chair. Unlike Andy, who was always jigging and tapping, Jay could sit in a chair or lie on my couch as still as a lizard sunning itself on a rock. “I don’t know. I think it’d be different if it was a mink, but it’s not. Sheared beaver. Doesn’t that sound pornographic? My bubbe used to wear it on High Holidays.”
“Of course she did,” I said. You rarely saw furs in Florida, but the handful of times I’d been to synagogue when the temperature had dipped below sixty degrees, out they came. The ladies would fan themselves with their announcement brochures, with their coats draped over their tennis-tanned shoulders and their handbags hanging from their golf-muscled forearms.
“So you’re fur-tolerant?” He looked so funny and so hopeful that I laughed.
“When I was six I had a rabbit fur coat. In Florida. With a matching muff. Which also sounds pornographic.”
“Matching muff,” Jay repeated. Underneath the table, his knee bumped mine. It retreated, then returned, pressing firmly, and I could feel myself getting flushed and wobbly.
He leaned across the table and kissed my cheek, then nuzzled the spot just below my earlobe. I shivered, letting my eyes slip shut. “You’re a cutie,” he whispered in my ear.
“You’re a sweetheart,” I whispered back.
“Are you busy tomorrow?”
I didn’t even try to be coy, to make up some excuse or tell him something about needing to check my calendar. “Busy with you.”
Over the spring and the summer, we went to restaurants and movies and plays. We spent afternoons in parks and museums. We strolled across the Brooklyn Bridge—from Brooklyn to Manhattan, so it didn’t bring up memories of that terrible, wonderful day—and had falafel at the flea market. We ventured to Jamaica Plain in Boston because Jay had read that a restaurant there had the best samosas in the world; we sampled bulgogi in Queens and arepas in the Bronx and poured liquefied chicken fat on our potatoes at Sammy’s Roumanian on the Lower East Side.
Jay was sweet and funny and endlessly solicitous, always offering to carry whatever packages or bags I had, always holding doors. At restaurants, he’d pull out my chair and stand when I left the table; in bars and clubs, he’d stake out someplace comfortable for me to sit. I could get used to this, I thought again, on a bench at Rockefeller Center, with Jay kneeling in front of me, lacing up my rented skates. Out on the ice, he held my elbow as I giggled and slid into the wall. My cheeks glowed underneath my wool hat, he looked handsome in his blue plaid scarf, and every time a voice spoke up in my head, whispering Not Andy, informing me that while this guy might be a perfect match on paper, he didn’t make me feel the way Andy had, I would tell the voice to shut up. Andy had left me, not the other way around. I’d loved him, and he’d left me, and now I had to move on.
Before long, Jay had essentially moved into my apartment. I’d been worried about everything my friends and various magazines had told me that living with a guy entailed—socks on the floor, wet towels on the bed, dishes in the sink. It turned out that Jay was neater than I was, though he never criticized when I dumped my bag by the front door or left my sweater on the couch.
When the Olympics began, I ignored them, willing myself to walk past any television set that was tuned to the games, tipping Jay’s sports-related magazines directly into the trash. I kn
ew that Andy had won a gold medal—as much as I tried to avoid any news, I couldn’t stop myself from finding that out—but I wouldn’t permit myself to try to learn where he lived, or send him a note that said Congratulations. If I couldn’t wish him well, I could at least leave him alone, just as he was leaving me alone, to find the life I was supposed to have . . . one, it seemed, that did not involve being with a star athlete, sanding myself down so that I could fit into the crevices and corners of his life, subsisting on the scraps of his free time and attention, waiting patiently while he ran and stretched and ran and lifted and ran and soaked his touchy left calf in the whirlpool. I would never be the girl in the stands, applauding as he stood on the podium; never be the one thanked in interviews for her support, or named as an inspiration. I would have more ordinary pleasures, a life that was quieter but still fulfilling, and I would be fine.
Six months after Jay had moved his suits and wing tips and loafers into my closet, after his Scrabble board had taken up residence on my kitchen table and I’d had dinner with his entire family twice, Jay took me ice skating again. We held hands as we glided around the rink, and when we were done, he said, “Let’s go get a drink,” and walked me to the bar where we’d first met. I wasn’t surprised when he pulled a velvet box out of his pocket and presented me with the perfect ring—a round-cut diamond, substantial but not ostentatious, in an ornate Victorian setting. He didn’t get down on his knee, didn’t make a spectacle or embarrass me in front of a roomful of strangers, or do something cutesy like hide the ring in a dessert, where there was a possibility that I’d eat it. Instead, Jay held my hand, looked into my eyes, and said, “I will love you forever. Will you?”
“Of course I will,” I told him, and he slipped the ring on my finger, then kissed me, and said, “Mrs. Kravitz.”
This is what I waited for, I thought. This is what all the pain and suffering was about. I’d thought that Andy was my destiny, but maybe he was more of a life lesson, a hurdle I had to keep clearing to show the universe that I was worthy of the life intended for me: this life, with this man.
PART III
* * *
Lost Time
Rachel
2005
Rachel!” I turned, feeling the muscles in my back tensing, as if for a blow, as I saw Kara and Kelsey and Britt coming at me, walking shoulder to shoulder, like Charlie’s Angels, looking almost exactly the way they had in high school.
I’d been on the fence about coming to the reunion. I had worried about what Jay would think, meeting people who probably remembered me as a spoiled, prissy girl who cared more about her hair and her clothes than the world around her. I’d quizzed my ob-gyn about flying at eight months, hoping for an excuse to stay home, and then, when she’d given me the go-ahead, I’d hated myself for still being so shallow while I visited five different stores for a maternity dress that wouldn’t make me look like a viscose-clad dirigible.
The night of the reunion, I sat on my bed, with Marissa tugging at her Hervé Léger knockoff in front of the mirror in my childhood bedroom, and made one last attempt to get out of it. “I don’t feel so great.”
Marissa didn’t even bother to look at me. “Rachel—you won. You’ve got a hot husband, gorgeous ring, a beautiful house, you’re knocked up . . .”
“First of all, it’s life. You don’t win. And Kara and Kelsey and Britt all know about Andy, so if I go, I’ll have to talk about him, and I don’t want to.”
“For God’s sake. He was your high school sweetheart. What’s the big deal?”
“He won a gold medal. In the Olympics. That’s the big deal. People are going to want to know what he’s up to, and if we’re still in touch.” I tugged at my bra, shifting around on the bed, trying to get comfortable, when I hadn’t been anything close to comfortable in weeks. Foolishly, I’d envisioned myself sailing through my pregnancy, getting a cute basketball belly and a beautiful glow. Instead, the universe had served up acne, bloated breasts, and an enormous ass, and I’d developed all kinds of odd pains and discomforts. My back ached; my breasts throbbed. Even my vagina hurt. When I complained, my doctor just shrugged and smiled and said, “Well, you’re pregnant.” Thanks for that, I thought.
I was tired all the time. Tired from carrying around the extra weight, tired of the little swimmer inside me, who rolled and kicked all night long, tired just thinking about my reconstructed heart now having to pump for the baby, too. I was also increasingly tired of the conversation Jay and I kept having, one that wasn’t quite an argument but was on its way to becoming one. He wanted me to stay home once the baby came. I wanted to go back to work after three months. He said that I’d want to be with our baby once it was born. I said that I’d seen enough newborns on the job to know that I found them as interesting as potted plants that pooped and cried, and that if I was stuck with one I’d go crazy. He said it would be different when it was my own child and not some client’s, and we’d finally agreed to table the matter until after the birth, but it was like someone had left the window open in the room that was our marriage, and a chilly wind had blown through. My easygoing, affable husband became almost scary when he didn’t get his way, with his lips clamped shut and his nostrils flaring and the condescending, scolding, Father Knows Best tone that made me want to clamp my hand over his mouth. I felt like I was getting a preview of what he’d look and sound like in forty years, and the picture did not thrill me.
At least he looked good, I thought, dressed that night in a crisp button-down and khakis, with a confident walk and an easy smile as he introduced himself to my classmates and their dates or spouses, hand extended, saying, “Jay Kravitz,” and then cocking his thumb and adding, “I’m with her.” Jay had gone to work with his father, and with a little help from his parents and a little more from mine, we’d purchased a beautiful brownstone in Brooklyn, with fireplaces and a small backyard and enough bedrooms for three or even four kids if we wanted them. He was perfectly comfortable in places like the Clearview Country Club, to which my parents belonged and I would have, too, if I’d stayed in Florida.
“Raaaa-chel!”
Britt’s hair was a brighter blond than it had been in high school, and she’d either grown it out or gotten extensions for the occasion. Her dress was short, red, and fringed, her heels impossibly high, and she was doing her makeup the same way she’d done it in high school, heavy on the black eyeliner, flicked out at the corners. “Honey!” she squealed, throwing her tanned arms around me. “Where’s your guy?”
“My husband, Jay, is over there,” I said.
Britt’s head swiveled, along with Kara’s and Kelsey’s. “Oooh, nice!” she said, like Jay was a handbag I’d bought on sale. “So, okay,” said Kelsey, grabbing my arm. “Last summer I was watching the Olympics, and I saw his name, and I screamed . . .” She raised her voice to Olympic-viewing-scream level. Heads turned. “I said, ‘Oh my God, I know that guy!’ And it was him, wasn’t it? The same Andy Landis?”
“The same,” I said, resting my hand on my belly and shooting Marissa a look. I’d finally settled on a black jersey tunic with an empire waist, black leggings, a pair of high-heeled boots that I was already regretting, and a statement necklace I’d borrowed from Nana, three strands of amber prayer beads, the first row small as peas and the last big as gumballs. “But how are you guys?”
Britt was teaching fifth grade in Clearview (I wondered what the boys there made of her long blond hair and even longer tanned legs). Kelsey was planning her wedding to a hotel manager named Rick, and Kara had gotten a nursing degree and worked on the labor and delivery floor. “But never mind us. What about you?” Britt grabbed my arm and pulled me close enough to smell the white wine she’d been drinking. “Are you and Andy still in touch?”
“Not really,” I said. “Things fizzled out after college.” Never mind my years in Portland; never mind that Andy had been living with me when he’d met Maisie. They were still together,
I knew. I tried not to care and I tried not to Google, but over the years I’d had a few slips. I decided to try out Marissa’s line. “How many people marry their high school sweetheart?”
Grinning, Britt pointed at Patti Cohen, who, per her nametag, was now Patti Cohen Mendelsohn. She’d actually married Larry. I hoped he’d improved as a kisser.
“Not every couple makes it,” she said. “But if I had to bet on anyone, I would have bet on you two. You were so . . .” And then she spotted Pete Driscoll by the buffet. Our former quarterback had gained fifty pounds and lost all his hair. Britt shrieked, “Pete, oh my God, you ASSHOLE, you didn’t tell me you’d be here!” Giving my arm a final squeeze, she teetered away, with Kara and Kelsey behind her, leaving me limp and tired and wanting desperately to be home.
I looked for Jay. When I didn’t see him or Marissa, I got a glass of water at the bar, sat down at a table for ten that had emptied once the music started, and surreptitiously kicked off my boots. I was rubbing my right foot and flexing my left when someone walked up and said, “Hi, Rachel.”
It took me a minute to recognize the woman, and when I did, it took a considerable effort not to gasp. Bethie Botts was wearing a dress. Short-sleeved, dark blue, made of jersey that skimmed over her body, showing off her bare arms and creamy skin. Her hair, which wasn’t the least bit greasy, was pulled back in a bun. She wore dangly earrings, a beaded comb in her hair . . . and on her left hand, I saw a tiny diamond flash.
“Bethie?”
“It’s Elizabeth now.” I saw her little teeth, the ones I remembered from high school, like kernels of corn. Hardly anything else was the same. At some point, either she’d swapped her glasses for contacts or she’d gotten the surgery. Her eyes were blue-green, and she had a genuinely pleasant expression on her face.
“You look beautiful,” I blurted.
Who Do You Love Page 26
