by Min Jin Lee
“How’s my baby?” he asked, stroking her head. Ella’s hair was put up loosely with a large barrette. In her reading position, her gaze downcast, she had a double chin.
“How many times did you do it?” she asked.
Ted frowned, more stunned by her angry tone than the bizarre question itself.
She repeated herself. “How many times, Ted?”
“What? Do what?” No one talked to him this way. Certainly not his wife. Except for the excellent news about the house, the day had been unrelenting. All afternoon, he’d been going back and forth with some idiot lawyers about a filing, trying to keep some uppity analysts from fucking up, and managing nervous clients who didn’t understand elementary principles of corporate taxation. This was no time for PMS-type bullshit. He had no energy for this. There hadn’t been time for dinner.
“How many times, Ted?” Ella glared at him.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Did you fuck around? I need to know,” Ella said, her voice screeching. She refused to back down or soften her tone.
Aghast, Ted froze. His mouth opened, exposing his lower teeth.
“I have genital herpes.” She threw the papers at him. The sheets flew about, cascading around his black monk strap shoes. He hadn’t taken them off yet. “I must have gotten it before I was pregnant. I don’t know. The doctor doesn’t know. She doesn’t think it’s my first outbreak, however. I. . . I just don’t understand.”
Ted didn’t look at her. He ran his left hand through his hair. He did this when he was uncomfortable or about to tell a lie. Ella knew all his tics. If he were holding a drink, he would sip something after a lie, as though he could wash it down.
“Can you be a friend to me right now and explain how this can be? I have never been with anyone else but you. You know that.”
Her first time, his penis had frightened her. She’d never seen one before. It looked alive, and she thought the thing was larger than it was supposed to be. He wanted to put it inside her—that was lovemaking, she had to remind herself—the natural course of it. She had wanted just the kissing and the fondling of her breasts to continue. He kept guiding her to touch him there, but she couldn’t help jerking back her hand whenever he wanted that. For her first time, she went to his apartment. Ted had thoughtfully placed a yellow towel beneath her for the bleeding. She had read about the possibility of the hymen tearing for virgins but had forgotten it somehow. It had hurt. Afterward, he’d wanted her to shower with him. He’d washed her hair tenderly with the Head & Shoulders he kept in his bathroom. The scent alone of that pearly blue shampoo could remind her of that night. He ran to the deli after the shower to buy her pads, and he returned instantly, it seemed, with a packet of Kotex and a tub of vanilla ice cream, which he fed her with a wooden spoon shaped like a child-size tongue depressor. Before they fell asleep, he told her that he wanted her to be his wife, promising never to love anyone else the same way. In her mind, there was no question that she would want to have him as her only lover. Her body was his to have, to give him happiness. In the morning, he wanted to do it again, and it hurt less that time.
Ella’s eyes filled with tears, but she was so tired of crying.
“Oh, shit, shit, shit,” he said, clenching his fists. He wanted to hit something. Ted measured his breathing, staring at the blue-and-green diamond pattern of the living room carpet.
“It is what it is, then.” Ella covered her face with her hands.
Ted sat at the edge of the armchair and leaned his head into his hands.
There was no denial, and Ella felt remarkably clear.
“You fuck. You fucker. You did this to our child.” She had no idea how to use these words. She’d never liked the sound of these kinds of words, how they interrupted the flow of all the other words that didn’t offend. But she found herself imitating Ted’s way of talking, the way he spoke on the phone to work when he was at home. Not knowing how to sound angry herself, she had borrowed his style.
Ted couldn’t move his neck. The words just kept striking him over and over again.
“My baby could be blind because of you. You fuck, you fucker.” Her shoulders stiffened, but, unable to stand very well, she put her hands on her hips to steady herself. The yelling made her feel worse. What was the point of this anger? Nothing could be done.
“Blind?” Ted glanced up. He didn’t know he had herpes, but it was true that he had screwed someone who’d invariably given it to him.
“Blind,” Ella said. Dr. Reeson had said the odds were overwhelmingly against such a possibility. That afternoon, Ella had researched the family medical books she kept in the house for women’s health issues; she had even called a herpes hotline—as it turned out, there was such a thing. She was a doctor’s daughter, she had reminded herself, she had to be calm, do her homework. Dr. Reeson had told her that the baby would be okay. “It’s possible.” Ella pointed to all the papers scattered about his shiny black shoes. “You can read about it. I’ve been looking at all that. All afternoon. All night. I could write a paper on it.” She chuckled. Something in Ella’s laugh had turned sharp.
Ted bent to gather the papers, arranging them in the folder. The day had begun with everything he’d ever wanted being possible and true. He had wanted first place, the grand prize, the best of whatever was worth getting: education, job, girl, and house. Two points determined a line, three points determined a plane, and four made a thing that much more stable and with greater dimension. Just that morning, he’d had those things. In less than a day, they’d slipped from his grasp. His education and job were intact, but the latter two, harder to affix, were vanishing into infinity. That morning, he had called his ailing father to tell him about the town house, thinking that it might cheer him up. “How is Ella’s health?” Ted’s father had asked him right after saying hello, though he’d just spoken to her on Sunday night—on Ella’s regular call to to his mom and dad. Would Ella tell his dad? She would not be so vindictive, he told himself, but he’d never seen Ella this way; this rage was new. Ted held the folder with both hands, sat back down on the armchair. His actions were irrevocable.
“Darling, please rest. The baby. The doctor said—”
“Shut up, Ted. Don’t you tell me your concerns about the baby now.”
Ted closed his lips, his jaws locked. No one had told him to shut up since he was a boy.
“Who?” Ella asked. “Who did you sleep with?”
His only chance of recovery, Ted figured, was full disclosure.
“This girl at work. An assistant.”
“Casey?”
“No!” Ted looked at her, disgusted. “I would never sleep with Casey.”
“Who, then?”
“This woman Delia. She’s been there forever. She’s screwed everybody.” How could Delia not tell him? He had given herpes to Ella, the only person he had ever known who was truly kind. Truly good. “God, Ella, I am so, so sorry.. . . I. . . I never intended—”
“Are you in love with her?”
“No. No.” He shook his head violently. “I am not in love with Delia.” He touched his hair.
“She’s a friend of Casey’s,” Ella mumbled out loud, recalling the name. Casey had spoken of her.
“Yes. I think so.” He shrugged. “Ella, baby, I am sorry. You have to believe me.”
“Why should I believe you? You know what? I hate you. I’ve never hated anyone before. But I know what it feels like right now. To hate. I want to die. God, I want to die.”
Ella walked to their bedroom and shut the door behind her. She shouted from the room, “Don’t come in here. I swear if you do, I’ll jump out the window.”
He had to get her, but his legs wouldn’t yield. For several years, Ted had run the New York Marathon—each year with an improved time. He was also a brilliant sprinter. But his long legs were frighteningly immobile. In that moment, he didn’t think he could flex his toes. He picked up a few pages from the carpet, but the words made no sen
se now. The text floated in front of his eyes. He had lost the ability to read. He rested his head on the back of the chair and shut his eyes as if it were all a bad dream. What was Ella going to do? He’d never heard her say the word fuck.
The first time he’d had dinner at Delia’s apartment, she’d put away the dishes in the sink, then pulled out another bottle of beer for him from the fridge and said, “Don’t you want to fuck me, Ted?” and he had replied, “Yes, Delia, yes. It’s all I thought of all day.” Delia liked that answer and rewarded him for it.
It began last year. A small deal had closed, another banker who knew Delia had invited her to the drinks party they were having at Chachi’s. At the end of the evening, the group spilled out of the bar onto Second Avenue, and she turned to Ted, asking him to take her home because she felt light-headed. The taxi drove past K-bar, and she made the driver stop. She locked on his eyes, tugged his jacket, making him come in with her. The guy at the door knew her and waved them in without having them pay the cover. At the table, she ordered a bottle of red wine without opening the list. The waitress brought it to them, and they were left alone in the high-backed banquette.
Delia had incredible red hair; soft, natural curls tumbled down her shoulders. Her work clothes appeared professional enough, but her breasts, dusted lightly with freckles, overflowed from the open wedge of her white-collared shirt. She wore no stockings beneath her skirt. At the office, she’d slept with many of the men, but her choices were random. It wasn’t the obvious managing directors—she had slept with several high-powered ones, but it was said that she liked Santo, a mailroom guy, and had dated him for a year. Some men claimed to have been with her but actually had not. How old was Delia? Mid-thirties? She had no wrinkles. Ted couldn’t tell, and he didn’t know how to ask. A married bond trader Ted knew called her “a talented girl”; she was choosy in her own way and, thankfully for all the men involved, discreet. She’d fuck only the men she wanted to. The trader had added, “I’d hand over ten percent of my bonus for her to do those things to me again. Just one night.” But sadly for him, she didn’t take money. She’d favored him only once. The trader had shrugged in the telling but smiled at the memory of Delia sitting on his lap, her skirt hiked up, his hands on her magnificent fanny.
K-bar was in the basement of an office building a block down from the St. Regis Hotel. It was dark inside, with red leather chairs and red tweed upholstered furniture. The seating area was dark, but the large, square-shaped dance floor was lighted. No one was dancing. The crowd was not so young, and the waitress was another pretty girl who’d tried modeling but had given up.
After the waitress left, Delia took Ted’s hand and slipped it up her narrow skirt. He felt her immediately, and she guided him to give her pleasure. Before Ella, Ted had had sex with three other girls—decent sex with girls his age, where he pretended to be knowledgeable about what he was doing. It was astonishing, shocking, and thrilling to have a girl leading him. He felt gratitude. He couldn’t pull away. A few moments into it, she closed her blue eyes, which seemed to grow darker with the evening, and she climaxed, then pushed his hand toward her again so that it would continue. She made a little gasp, and Ted almost passed out from excitement. His head felt both clear and hot. She opened her eyes and faced him, amused and delighted. With him. She moved closer to stick the tip of her tongue in his ear. With a free hand, he poured her a glass of wine. He wanted to give her something, for her not to stop. She pulled away, took a small sip almost for show. Delia pointed to his suit jacket, and he took it off and gave it to her. She placed it over her shoulders in a practiced way, slid under the table, and blew him. He took a lengthy breath when she was done, and he handed her a cocktail napkin. She returned to her seat, grabbed her purse, and walked steadily to the ladies’ room. When she came back, he held her bony hand, which wasn’t small, and they talked for the first time since the taxi. She told him silly stories about her brothers who lived on Staten Island—two cops and a building inspector. There were funny bits, too, about the other men at work. Nothing carping, but hilarious. Delia seemed to think life was humorous, and it was obvious that she enjoyed the moments that added it up. He was laughing out loud, feeling as though his shoulders could finally relax, because he was with her, and he didn’t want to go home. If she were awake, Ella would be fussing with a menu for a fancy Sunday brunch, or as soon as he walked in the door, she’d jump on him to ask his opinion on the wedding photograph proofs or something like that. He wondered if what he was feeling for Delia was love.
The next day, he bought her a cup of coffee at the cafeteria, and she invited him to her apartment after work. She lived in a large, rent-stabilized one-bedroom in Chelsea. They ate Chinese take-out, and he asked her more questions about her family. She was one of four kids, the only girl and the only one to leave Staten Island. “Hard to imagine that being a sales assistant is a white-collar job, isn’t it, Ted?” Her whispery voice hinted at sex. There was no other way to describe it.
“You have a very nice collar,” he told Delia, staring at her neck.
Then they had sex on a bed, and he thought he had never seen a prettier girl naked, including porn, and he was amazed by the naturalness of her movements, how her lush body rose to meet his, and how she enjoyed everything about what they were doing. Delia was not reluctant.
They saw each other two or three times a week for almost a month, and one night he went to her apartment after work. He had bought her a gold bamboo bangle from Cartier to surprise her, and he couldn’t wait until they were supposed to meet. At the store, it had pleased him enormously to think of it adorning her body. When she opened the door, he spotted Santo the mailroom guy sitting in the chair Ted usually sat in, the Chinese take-out cartons on the table, and he left, never calling her again. Delia never explained herself to him, and he saw that he did not owe any explanations to her, either. He returned the bracelet and bought Ella a pair of diamond-encrusted earrings that cost twice as much as the bangle.
Ted thought about her. Sometimes he thought he could smell her perfume in the elevator. She wore Fracas—a perfume that came in a square black bottle. When she switched to the Events Planning Department on the tenth floor, he was relieved. He never had reason to go there. When he jerked off at home or when he traveled, thinking of her red hair helped him to come. When he made love to Ella, he wished his wife’s body were more like Delia’s—the feminine hollow of Delia’s narrow waist and the full S-curve of her bottom. Making love to Delia had made him feel complete. Happy. Was that what the married bond trader had been talking about? Ted was almost tempted to ask him as much. But Delia was a slut. This was what Ted reminded himself when he felt like punching her four-digit extension on his phone keys. She was a common Staten Island slut with a pretty face and a perfect ass. A whore. He had good reason to hate her, but even now he found that he could not.
Delia had taught him that it was possible to want two women, and to perhaps love two women, at once, and this knowledge terrified him, because it upset the way he thought of things. Life was easier to operate when objects were in their place.
He could hear Ella crying in their bedroom. What did she want him to do? If she told him to leave now and never return, he’d have done it, because she deserved as much. And he thought of church and God and all the things he had learned from his simple parents, who had worked in the same fucking cannery for thirty years, about never lying or stealing or wanting something that you have no right to have, to know his place in the world and to never overreach, and how he had disagreed with so many of their tenets because he didn’t want to be them. But now he thought: They never hurt me. Except by their failure. Ted clutched his head with both hands. The older men at the cannery always said his father, Johnny Kim, was a man whose yes was yes and whose no was no. Ted had let himself get defiled.
He stretched his legs and got up from the chair. He stood by the bedroom door.
“Ella, Ella, please let me in,” he said. “I’m sorry, baby.
I’m so sorry. I haven’t seen her in a year. I made a terrible mistake. I know I can’t take it back. Please let me in. You are my best friend. You are my only friend. I have no one in the world. Ella—”
Ella wiped her face on the pillow and got up. She moved slowly toward the door because her steps were awkward. She twisted the latch to the open position, then returned to her spot on the bed. She laid her head on the hot, wet pillow. She could not face him and turned her body away from his. Ted lay down behind her, feeling safer there, and stroked her tangled hair. Ella let him do this, not knowing what else to do. He had killed her. Her mother had died in childbirth. Ella’s life had killed her mother. And now Ted had killed her. How fair, Ella thought. How just. How symmetrical life was. How many lives did a person have to die? She felt desperate to drain her mind of anything bad, and she tried to recall happier moments. Even as short a time ago as this morning, she had felt joy even as she experienced nausea as the call car took her to the hospital for her appointment. She had talked to her daughter in her mind, saying, I want to feel you so much, and I will take care of you forever. Even Ella’s limbs had felt hopeful or cooperative, if that were possible. She had believed that morning that her daughter was conceived in a pure kind of love. Ella believed in an infinite love—a kind of endless emotion that made life seem eternal. Ted was her heart first. You were supposed to forgive seven times seven times seven. Didn’t she believe that?
Ella had read stories about adultery, heard tales of people who had cheated or had been cheated on, and although she had compassion for them—the cheaters and the cheated—now she saw how flawed her feelings had been, because she hadn’t known a damn thing about it. All she felt was hatred. She felt a strong wish to disappear.
