by Sally Koslow
“Luke, that’s enough,” I said. “Let’s agree I was a baby. A self-centered idiot. I’m sorry.”
“Unless you have something else in mind.” The expression on his face read, I double-dog-dare you.
“Such as?”
“The thing about you, Molly, is that you don’t know what you want or who you want it with.” He shrugged and walked away. Two days later, he sent a friendly enough text message, as if everything were back to normal. I knew, of course, it wasn’t. Everything had changed.
Twelve
KISS, KISS
here’s Snuffleupagus, Mommy.” Whenever we passed the sprawling granite outcropping crouched over Central Park, Annabel pointed it out. But today, as she holds Delfina’s strong, slim hand, the beast who rules my daughter’s imagination doesn’t get as much as a glance. She soldiers ahead, silent and grim.
Delfina and Annabel enter the elevator at our synagogue, and the nursery school director swoops down to four-year-old level. “We’re so happy to have you back, Annabel,” she says. “We’ve missed you.”
Though Annabel used to greet this woman with a giddy grin, she bites her lip and says nothing. When she and Delfina reach the threshold of the classroom on the sixth floor, Annabel turns to Delfina. “Do I have to?” she asks.
“Your friends want to play with you,” Delfina says. “And school’s your job. We all have our jobs.”
Annabel’s face carries the worry of an old crone. I wait for tears.
“Your dolls?” Delfina asks. “You’re thinking about your dolls?”
Annabel nods.
Delfina bends to whisper. “Can you keep a secret? If you go to school, when I pick you up we’ll eat with your friend Ella. It was going to be a surprise.”
Annabel allows a small smile to creep across her face and turns to search the classroom. She catches the eye of her best friend, who’s already in the playhouse. Ella sees Annabel and runs across the room on her chunky legs. “Annabel!” she shouts. “I’m making pizza. C’mon.” Ella towers over my daughter and, in the tradition of anatomy as destiny, considers herself older, wiser, and now responsible for looking after her friend whose mommy died by the river like a character in a goose-pimply Grimm’s fairy tale, the ones she won’t let her dad read to her anymore.
“See you later, alligator,” Delfina says to Annabel, and bends to give her a hug.
“After a while, crocodile,” Annabel says. One of her purple mittens is missing, but she hangs her red jacket with the furry trim in her cubby, which features a family picture—Barry, me, Annabel as a toothless baby. Every move is fluid and concise. I hope Barry remembers that I had planned to enroll her in ballet. I am positive she is on the Clara track for The Nutcracker.
“I’ll be the mommy,” Ella says, “and you’ll be the girl.” They play until the teacher asks all eighteen students to gather in their morning circle. Annabel walks with the rest to the center of the classroom.
“Good morning, class,” the teacher says.
“Good morning, Miss Rose,” the children sing out.
“Let’s talk about what we did this weekend,” she says. “Did anything interesting happen to anyone?” A girl raises her hand. “Emily?”
“I saw Shrek,” she says.
“Me too,” a few others yell.
“Class, we wait until we’re called on, remember?” A boy waves his hand as if he’s conducting an orchestra; with his wild curls he looks like a vest-pocket-size Simon Rattle. Miss Rose points in his direction.
“My gerbil died,” he says.
“Last month we had to put our dog to sleep,” another boy says. “He had bad cancer inside him.”
I beam down on Annabel, trying to absorb her pain. But Annabel does … nothing. She looks at the window and fixates on dust floating in the brilliant morning sun. A few children turn in her direction, but soon Miss Rose calls on Ella. “My babysitter, Narcissa, let me stay up until eleven o’clock,” she says.
In the hallway, there’s a racket. A mother and child are late for school. “Kiss, kiss, Jordan,” the woman says to her son. He is a thin child with sad, deep-set blue eyes and wiry red hair cropped short. He pecks her cheek. The mother is a heavily highlighted brunette whose distinguishing characteristics are very large teeth, very long nails, and very high heels. “Kiss Mommy goodbye.” I listen closely. I know that nasal voice.
Stephanie.
I take another lingering peek at Annabel, and while I long to stay and watch her, I cannot resist getting a closer look at this woman who each evening is verbally tucking my husband into bed. I look closely to see if Stephanie was among the unknown bereaved rubbing away their mascara streaks at my funeral, but she looks only vaguely familiar, one of many faces I may have seen milling around the school, waiting to collect a child. Her son enters his classroom and she returns to the elevator.
Downstairs, Stephanie meets another woman, one who has apparently seen Vertigo one too many times. The companion has pulled her hair, bleached to platinum, into a French twist, and her sharply tailored gray wool gabardine skirt and jacket recall 1958. She is fiercely attractive, with porcelain skin and carefully reddened lips. Although the weather is brisk, the pair leave their coats open as they walk down the tree-lined street. The height of their heels doesn’t prevent them from quickly reaching a coffee shop four blocks away. As they settle into a table near the window, the light betrays Kim Novak. I can see that she is older than I’d estimated, probably early forties. Maybe ten years beyond Stephanie.
“Aren’t guys lucky?” Stephanie says. “They can be in the world’s worst marriages, but when they lose their wives, the universe genuflects at their doorstep.”
“At least you are,” the companion says. “What’s going on? Did he actually say his marriage sucked?”
Stephanie pauses, sits back in her chair, and looks her friend straight in the eye. “Not exactly, but how good could it have been if he’s showing this much interest?” she says, and smiles as she stirs sweetener into her paper cup.
Is this the circulating myth, that Molly Marx’s marriage was as dead as she is now?
“He’s been showing interest for some time now, actually,” Stephanie adds.
I feel as if I’ve turned into Lucy; I’d like to tear out this Stephanie’s eyeballs after I pull off each long eyelash one by one, pee in her vente latte, rage like Tinker Bell on crystal meth. What marriage is a perfectly made bed, never creased or spotted, without its secrets and disappointments? Like a criminal defense lawyer, I long to defend my relationship with Barry, flawed as it may have been, despite what he might have let dribble out in a chance occurrence with a woman, this woman, any woman.
The blonde puts down her coffee, leaving a kiss of MAC Russian Red on its rim. “Steph, you think you might be getting a little ahead of yourself?” she asks. “And why this guy? He’s not the only single man in New York, and you’re not exactly staying home every night plucking your eyebrows.”
“Some women ask why. I ask, why the fuck not?” She shrugs and sips her latte. Her teeth are as white as its foam.
“Has he even asked you out?”
My bullshit meter is going off so loudly I’m surprised they can’t hear it.
“He’s saying he wants to wait a few weeks, even a few months,” Stephanie says. “‘What will people think?’ You know me—Ms. Patience.” She pauses, examines her nails, and looks up. “I give it two weeks.”
“I’ve been single for three years and had one boyfriend who was sixty-two and dumped me for a salesgirl from Circuit City,” the blonde says with what I am fairly sure is affection. “You’re single for a year and have—I can’t count that high.” This surprises me. The blonde wins the beauty bake-off, but I was always an innocent, thinking that perfection had anything to do with lust or, for that matter, love. “You should be teaching a course at the Learning Annex.” She looks at her watch, an Ebel I used to covet because four dozen diamonds don’t stop it from masquerading as sporty. “Keep me
in the loop on this.”
“See you at the gym,” Stephanie says as her friend collects her shopping bags and walks out the door. “Kiss, kiss.”
Stephanie opens her Times. She scans the Thursday Styles section, turns to the movie listings, then reaches for her phone and speed-dials Barry’s cell phone.
“I know you’re probably in surgery,” she says, leaving a message. “But I just wanted to tell you I’m thinking about you.” She lowers her voice. “All the time. I’m ready whenever you are.”
Wolves, I recall, are highly social animals.
Thirteen
PLAYDATE IN PARADISE
hat kind of old lady goes to bed at seven-thirty?” Luke said, standing in the door of my room.
“The kind who’s exhausted.” The kind who’s trying to behave.
“Want to join me?” He had changed into flip-flops, linen pants, and a faded Hawaiian shirt. I was always a sucker for a shirt that says aloha.
It was two months past Treena, who’d become engaged to her Wall Street wizard. Luke and I were on location, this time in a warm, sunny place. On the plane, we chatted like two bubbes at bridge, and I was cheerful as a baboon—until we landed. That’s when I discovered that the eight enormous suitcases of borrowed objets d’art I’d schlepped from New York—in case I needed to pull an alabaster statue or two out of my ass to accessorize the house we were photographing—were missing. The bags would be arriving on the same once-daily flight the next afternoon, or so Air Banana promised.
Always one to careen toward a worst-case scenario, I was convinced the bags had been delivered to the Bermuda Triangle. Even if they did show up, we’d be getting a late start the next day. Suddenly, I was so tired I couldn’t remember my phone number. Luke had to help complete the claim form. I thanked him, but sulked as we drove to the resort where we’d be staying for the next five days, and as soon as we checked in, I escaped to my room. After a call home and a long shower, I emerged smelling like a smoothie—the management had cornered the market on papaya-infused products—but in a vastly improved state. I was looking forward to room service and an early night. That’s when I heard a knock on the wall. Bump-bump-de-bump-bump. Bump. Bump.
I knocked back, but this time the return knock was at my door. Through the chain lock, I could see Luke wearing a smirk as silly as a party hat.
“Sorry, Molly Marx is closed for the night,” I said.
“I know you’re young, but you’re not eight,” he said. “C’mon.”
“Nope, I have a rule against drinking anything that pink,” I said, pointing to the half-empty glass in his hand.
“House specialty,” he said. “A lot more potent than it looks.”
Was it bitchy of me to abandon Luke? The rest of our team had arrived the day before yesterday, and they’d left us a note saying they were off to the other end of the island for roast suckling pig. Luke and I were on our own for the evening, and I’d left him stranded. I stood there, barefoot, trying to decide what to do, when he decided for me.
“I love a woman in pajamas,” he said, eyeing me up and down.
I was wearing chaste white cotton PJs—it was my mother’s tradition to give Lucy and me a matched set every year for our birthday. The cuffs were embroidered with purple pansies. My hair was wet. I laughed and blushed.
“And I love a woman who blushes.”
I didn’t say what I was thinking: You’ve had a few of those drinks already, haven’t you, Luke? But he looked lonely. Or maybe that was my justification machine talking. “Meet you in the bar in fifteen minutes” slipped out instead.
I towel-dried my hair, put on a minute’s worth of makeup, and changed into a white eyelet sundress. My vestal virgin image intact, I walked to the resort’s outdoor bar. Next to Luke, a drink the color of a lawn flamingo was waiting, its umbrella angled as if it were an index finger pointing at me. Get with the program, Molly, it seemed to say.
“Isn’t this better than hibernation?” Luke said as I hopped up onto a tall bamboo stool next to him.
“It depends on whether or not this drink comes with food,” I said.
Luke got the attention of our server, and a bowl of chilled jumbo shrimp arrived along with a tangy sauce and a basket of crisp fried plantain chips. We nibbled and drank while the sun faded into the horizon over the quietly lapping sea. Steel band music played in the background, its rhythm easing us into the evening. Soon enough, we could count stars in the navy blue sky, and at the outdoor restaurant next to the bar every table glowed with a fat candle. I had one of those moments when I thought I should pay the magazine for allowing me to be their decorating editor. Tonight was a playdate in paradise.
The maître d’ led us to a table close to the sand. As I began sipping Champagne—compliments of the house, as thanks for renting six rooms in what was the shoulder of the off-season—I realized I hadn’t been this relaxed in weeks. No, longer, much longer.
Luke and I reviewed minutiae, making plans for far more setups than we’d ever be able to squeeze into one day. “This is all assuming the bags show,” I said.
“Why do you worry so much?” he asked. In case I missed the point, in his best West Indian accent, he sang “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
“Worrying is my job,” I said.
“You do it well,” he said. “The job. Not just the first-class fussing.”
“As do you.” We clinked our crystal flutes.
Luke and I had quickly become, everyone in the industry agreed, a formidable team. He was hot fudge to my vanilla ice cream, and together we became better than each of us alone. We’d already had an offer from another magazine to buy us out of our contracts at the end of the year.
Since we’d been collaborating I’d become more excited about my work than ever. People who haven’t tried to explode their creativity might not understand the high that comes through stretching your imagination, but all of this was very important to me. Where a few months earlier I’d basically checked out, now I woke in the middle of the night to scribble and sketch ideas I dreamt. Half of them weren’t bad. After a bike ride, when my mind inevitably wandered, I’d usually get on the phone to tell Luke I knew exactly what we needed for the next job, right down to the vintage gilt napkin rings, the color of the parrot tulips, and the number of almond-stuffed olives in a bowl.
As we were finishing our dinner—pompano for both of us—and sharing coconut sorbet in a frosty aqua dish, the music gave way to a singer performing the kind of tunes my parents play in the car. What the soloist lacked in talent, he made up in enthusiasm. “Dis next song is for de lovers,” he said, his gold tooth flashing. Luke and I, who’d finished our Champagne, wore the kind of dopey smiles common to people who flunk Breathalyzer tests.
“Do you wanna dance under de moonlight?” the singer crooned. His rendition crossed the Beach Boys with John Lennon, but the slow calypso beat was all his own. “Hug and kiss all through de night, now. Oh baby, do ya wanna dance?” As he repeated choruses of “wanna wanna wanna” he boogied over to us and motioned for Luke and me to get up on the tiny, empty dance floor. Luke stood.
I hesitated. I didn’t trust myself in Luke’s embrace. But his look beguiled. I got up to join him, stumbling in my most stratospheric sandals. He grabbed me and held me close. I could feel his heart beating, and within a few minutes, I realized our hearts were beating together. He felt pleasantly warm and smelled of citrusy aftershave, his own sweet sweat, and papaya body scrub. As I swayed in his arms—I was more than a little dizzy—I nestled my head in his neck and tried to name the other fragrance I was picking up. What was that bottom note? I knew that smell, that perfect smell. As the song ended, I figured it out. Desire.
“Do you wanna?” he whispered.
I did.
“I know I do,” he continued. The three-piece orchestra had struck up a quicker beat, but we were still moving in slow motion. I, for one, didn’t want anything about that night to move fast.
He locked his fingers in mine
and rubbed them gently. The gesture was both tender and erotic. “I’m waiting for an answer,” he whispered.
“I’m too tired.”
My second lie.
“Then just come to my room and sleep.”
“Sleep?”
“I’d like to know how that would feel.” I’m not sure if Luke spoke those words or if I just thought them, if he was reading my mind or if I was reading his.
Conventional wisdom suggests that infidelity is about punishing the husband or the wife. I beg to differ, and always did, starting that night. It’s too late now to sort this out with Dr. Stafford, my marriage counselor. More’s the pity, since last month our health insurance certified Barry and me for ten more sessions. In our therapy, which we went to for several months, I always claimed that I never got involved with another man to get back at him. Well, it’s past my dying day, and that’s my story and I’m sticking with it. Luke was never, ever the not-Barry. He was always Luke, with his own magnetic field. I can’t explain why I was drawn to Luke Delaney. Why does someone love the color orange or a Mozart sonata? I just was.
People who contemplate an affair imagine or pretend that they are on their own little islands, encapsulated in a romantic snow globe, safe from reality. The fact was, Luke and I had indeed landed in Margaritaville. We were literally on an island, fifteen hundred miles away from home, good common sense, and, on that evening, sobriety.
Did Barry have not-Mollys? It’s my guess that throughout our engagement and marriage he felt intercourse was compulsory with at least a half dozen women who weren’t me. I never tried to prove this in a court of law—only once did I snoop through receipts—yet at some level I always knew he was a cheater and I looked away from it. But this wasn’t what was on my mind that night. At the moment when Luke took my hand to walk me to his room, I was thinking only about Luke. Well, condoms and Luke. Carefree I am not.
At his door, he fumbled with his keys. The maid had turned down the quilt, set the rattan ceiling fan to a lazy whirl, and put two chocolates on the pillow. He unwrapped one chocolate and put it in my mouth. I did the same for him. The evening was cool now—it was past midnight—and he lit a candle. The flame danced in the room like a trailer for a romantic French movie.