Me Times Three

by Alex Witchel

  There were silences between us, even though people from other tables stopped by to talk. Mark seemed diverted enough not to notice that I wasn’t exactly as engaged as I’d been in Philadelphia.

  But after the decaf cappuccino was served, he turned toward me. “Are you still mad at me?” he asked.

  “No, not at all,” I said, squeezing his arm as reassuringly as I could. “I’m just distracted, by Paul and everything. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  He said yes and smiled gamely, but I could see that he was disappointed. And even though all I needed to do was just focus a minute, ask him a question, any question, I somehow couldn’t. Without the added impetus of being Mark’s editor, I somehow couldn’t force myself to concentrate. Truth be told, the only thing I could focus on, God help me, was the idea of seeing Bucky again.

  Mark and I were out on the street before I stopped to realize that maybe I’d blown it, that I might never see this man again. He walked me toward the corner and raised his hand for a cab, and I looked at his kissable throat, fully exposed above his open shirt, and I felt a twinge, but from a great distance. It was as if I were getting my tonsils out again, and the doctor was saying, “Count backward from a hundred,” and I was in on the joke about how life would just fade and I’d be back when the bad part was over.

  I thought about explaining things to him, about how Paul was dying so Bucky had returned, about how important it was that I be with him now because I had missed him. It was like a sign, I wanted to say, that in my hour of greatest need, the man I loved had come back to me.

  A cab pulled up, and Mark opened the door for me. I turned to thank him, but his face seemed closed. I got into the backseat with that feeling you have when you know you’ve done something wrong and feel awful about it, because you never meant to. But I couldn’t change it now.

  The feeling lasted for the next few blocks, but then I brightened. Saturday was only three days away.

  By Friday, Paul was back at Sally’s. “He’s breathing fine again, and there was nothing more they could do for him at the hospital,” she explained. “He wanted to be home.”

  “Can I talk to him?” I asked. Whenever I had asked in the last week, he hadn’t been awake.

  “Well, you can try,” she said, “but he may not answer, Sandy. He hasn’t spoken in days, really.”

  “Okay.”

  I heard some fumbling and Sally saying, “This is Sandy, she wants to say hello. Go ahead,” and I could hear the receiver being placed near Paul’s ear.

  “Paul, it’s Sandy, how are you doing?” I trilled. Nothing. I listened for his breathing, but all I could hear was Sally moving the phone around, trying to find a good position. “I just wanted you to know that I miss you and I’m thinking about you,” I continued.

  Silence on the other end.

  I stopped. This was too awful.

  Sally came back on the line. “I’m sorry, Sandy,” she said. “I thought he was awake, but I guess he’s not.”

  “That’s okay,” I answered. “Thanks, anyway. Will you let me know what happens next?” As I asked the question, I wished I could take it back.

  There was only one thing that was going to happen next.

  Six o’clock Saturday evening, Bucky picked me up in a car with a driver. He had refused to tell me where we were going. It was all a surprise.

  “Where are we off to so early?” I asked, stretching my legs out in the plush backseat.

  “Well, first we’re having drinks with the Dickinsons,” he said.

  “We are?” I asked, feeling a scintilla of alarm. “Don’t you think that’s odd, considering the circumstances?”

  I hadn’t seen Arthur and Nancy Dickinson—Bucky’s uber-WASP Fifth Avenue friends—in I couldn’t remember how long. But I wondered why they weren’t away for the weekend, off to their mammoth family-money house in Oyster Bay. I had seen the house once; they were both descended from the right people, and the walls were covered with the kinds of portraits you see in museums, of inbred Colonials with pink-lidded eyes and narrow nostrils, holding a fan or pointing a buckled toe. I could never figure out who her right people were, but one of his was John Dickinson, a Pennsylvania signer of the Declaration of Independence, but also a British loyalist who was one of the last holdouts against forming the United States, preferring a reconciliation with the crown instead.

  In spite of his ancestors, Arthur Dickinson, who did the same kind of work as Bucky, was a down-to-earth guy. I had always liked him. I remembered Nancy’s obsession with the Junior League and hoped we could find something else to talk about.

  “Not so odd,” Bucky said as the car made its way uptown. “They haven’t seen you in ages, and I told them how important it is that we try to be friends and how badly I felt about what happened between us. Arthur’s given me endless shit about it.” He smiled. “He thinks I’m awash in youthful indiscretions.”

  “How F. Scott Fitzgerald,” I said distractedly as Macy’s flew by my window. Was I doing the right thing, here? I hadn’t seen Bucky in a year, and the first thing he wanted to do was have drinks with people I hardly knew?

  “What’s after cocktails?” I asked.

  “We’re having dinner someplace you love,” he said cheerfully. “You’re going to be very, very happy.”

  In the elevator on the way up to the Dickinsons’ apartment, I leaned into Bucky’s outstretched arm and fit perfectly underneath, as I always had. Bucky was a touchstone for me. It was important to have a touchstone, now more than ever. I started feeling better. This could be fun.

  “Welcome,” Arthur exclaimed, waiting at the open door. He shook Bucky’s hand heartily, then mine.

  “Hello there,” said Nancy, coming up behind him. She was wearing a kilt and penny loafers. “Nice to see you, Sandy.” I felt immediately overdressed in a black sweater and pants with gold jewelry. Not to mention makeup.

  “What are you drinking?” Arthur boomed.

  “Scotch and soda,” I said obligingly.

  “And you, Buck? A beer, as usual?”

  “Great, Arthur, thanks.”

  Nancy led us into the den, and we sat amid the city branch of ancestors. “I just love Jolie!,” she exclaimed as the boys began to talk sports, and I knew I was trapped. She especially loved the home-design section, mentioning it at least three times before jumping up suddenly and disappearing. “I forgot the hors d’oeuvres,” she said, returning after a while with a dish of peanuts and a plate of cheese cubes with toothpicks in them.

  “Salud,” Arthur said loudly.

  “Cheers,” I answered, swigging my drink. Bucky raised his glass, but didn’t look at me.

  “So, Sandy, we haven’t seen you in so long,” Nancy cooed. “Tell me what you’ve been up to. But first tell me if you’ve given any more thought to joining the Junior League.”

  Great. I took a breath. “Well, you know, Nancy, I’ve been so busy,” I started.

  “But that’s true of everyone in the organization,” she said quickly. “Most of the women have careers, but they still remember how important it is to volunteer and give of their time to help the less fortunate.”

  I glanced at Bucky, deep into basketball scores with Arthur. My eye darted around, trying to find something else, anything else, to talk about. I spotted something in the dining room, through the open entryway.

  “Nancy, I promise to think about it, but first you must tell me about those fabulous wall coverings.” She turned reverently toward the walls covered in blue-and-white-striped silk, like pajamas.

  “Boys, boys,” Nancy trumpeted, and Bucky and Arthur fell silent. “Sandy was just complimenting me on the wonderful wall coverings. Isn’t that something?”

  “Let me give you the grand tour,” Arthur said, coming to pull me out of a chintz cushion on the couch into which I had sunk past dignity. “We’ve freshened things up around here recently.”

  I followed him. “Be careful of that umbrella stand,” he cautioned, steering me a
way from the front door. “It’s an antique.” Well, that’s smart, I thought, looking at the unusable copper receptacle. It was peculiar that they hadn’t replaced the worn carpeting around it. Nor had they done anything about the water stains in the corner of the ceiling.

  Arthur was especially proud of the living room, which was indeed pretty and looked like every other living room I’d ever seen on the Upper East Side: flowered fabrics, patterned rugs, fat pillows, silver picture frames, knickknacks, and sculpted china dogs guarding the nonworking fireplace.

  I spotted a bathroom. “Excuse me, won’t you?” I asked Arthur, who genially withdrew. I closed the door behind me with relief. I didn’t think I could stand another second of this. Yes, that was an enchanting silver cigarette case on that end table! But what was it doing in a house where no one smoked?

  I put on some more lipstick, even though Nancy wasn’t wearing any. I hoped we weren’t going to stay for another drink. Between the Junior League and the upholstery, I’d need coffee instead.

  When I opened the door to start back, I got completely turned around and headed the wrong way down the hall. I ended up near the kitchen, where the swinging service door was propped open with a phone book. I heard furious whispering.

  Suddenly I was spying. But on whom? It was Nancy, mostly, berating someone—it must have been Arthur. But no, that was Bucky who answered. How odd. Could the two of them have something going on that Arthur didn’t know about? I leaned forward, straining to hear.

  And I heard. I most definitely heard. I fell back against the wall and stayed there for what seemed a very long time. Then there were footsteps. It was Arthur, coming to fetch me.

  I sat back in my chair, sipping the excellent Burgundy that Bucky had ordered, holding the glass in both hands. I looked out the window at the blinking city lights as he talked about the land upstate he was planning to buy. In horse country.

  “You don’t ride,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. Had I said it out loud, I wondered, or only thought it? I couldn’t tell.

  A knock came on the door. “May I clear this for you?” the waiter asked. We made way for him, moving our chairs so that he could roll the table through.

  We were in a room on the twentieth floor of the Essex House hotel, which is where Bucky had arranged for our dinner to be served. The Essex House was a place we had gone, over the years, for birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions. In the mornings we would have room-service breakfast in front of the picture window overlooking Central Park. We hadn’t tried dinner before. It was a first.

  Once the table was gone, we sat back down to finish the wine. I sneaked a look at my watch. Without the burble of romance to act as a filler, conversation had proved something of a chore. I did talk about Paul, but soon realized that after my exhaustive monologue of the other night, there wasn’t much fresh material. It went without saying that Bucky hadn’t read a book since Ancient Evenings—and the only topics he seemed to warm to all night were real estate values and Range Rover prices. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He still liked the Judds.

  “I have something for you,” he announced, presenting me with a large brown envelope. I opened it and found pictures of Paul from when we were in school, some from New Haven, some from New York.

  “I always meant to give these to you but never remembered,” Bucky said. “I thought you’d like to have them now.”

  “Yes,” I managed. There was one of the two of us together, at a party, laughing uproariously, heads back, mouths open. His arms were wrapped around my waist. It was Paul. My Paul. The young and healthy and beautiful Paul whom I hadn’t seen in such a very long time.

  “They’re just wonderful,” I said, blowing my nose. “You were always such a great photographer. Thank you.”

  After I put them away, we sat silently for a while. “Tell me what you’re thinking about,” he said finally. “Is it the pictures?”

  I put down the wine. “Sort of. I guess I realized something tonight that I’d never understood before.”

  He straightened himself in his chair, prepared for praise. “And?” he asked.

  “I realized that after all the years we spent together, I never really knew you.”

  His face fell. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I just can’t figure how you can be the person who takes these beautiful pictures of Paul, and be the same person who did what you did tonight.”

  “What do you mean?” He held his arms out, indicating the room, the dinner, the view.

  “No, not this, Bucky. I was talking about the Dickinsons.”

  “What?” He kept up his innocent outrage.

  “I heard you in the kitchen with Nancy tonight,” I said, watching his mouth open and his eyes pop. “So I know that you are, in fact, still very much engaged to Wendy. And that the reason for the little cocktail party tonight was to convince me to promote Wendy’s work, including the Dickinsons’ apartment, in the hallowed pages of Jolie! magazine.”

  His face had gone ashen. “Sandy, it’s not what you think,” he began.

  Another lie. But the amazing thing was that I didn’t care. I had no rage left. No anger, just a sort of consolation: I didn’t have to do this anymore. This whole world of Bucky’s—from the country clubs to the Betsy Ross House—was all based on lies. I had found them so mysterious, so beguiling, for so long. I had never perceived them as lies—only myths, traditions.

  But now, suddenly, there they were, heaped in a spindly pile, like kindling. The spell was broken.

  I thought of Mark Lewis then and felt a pang about our last dinner at Orso. The man must have thought I’d lost my mind. Which I had. I would fix that immediately, first thing tomorrow. There was a whole other world out there. It was time for me to join it, once and for all.

  I stood.

  “Wait, Sanny, I can explain,” Bucky said hurriedly.

  I looked at his imploring face. “No, let me,” I said. “You didn’t really lie about Wendy, because even though you’re still engaged, the truth is you may marry her, you may not. You will marry someone eventually, but in the meantime it would make you feel better, more certain, to see me again. I’m a touchstone. You can decide all the other stuff later.”

  His face stained red.

  “The decorating thing is a separate issue,” I went on. “That was Nancy’s idea. And you went along with it because you knew it would never happen, but they all would think you were a hero for trying, and when it fell through it would be all my fault.”

  “No—”

  “Yes. And none of it matters, Bucky. Truly. Forget it. Though I do appreciate the pictures.” I walked to the door.

  “Sanny, please,” he wheedled, rushing toward me, pushing aside the chairs. “You were so right about the touchstone part. I don’t want to let you go yet, Sanny. I can’t. As long as I have you, I have the best part of myself, the part that you see I can be someday. When you look at me, even now, I still feel that I might find it. Remember?”

  He fixed his eyes on mine. I looked into them, that dizzying sky-blue heaven I had spent so long trying to infiltrate. This was Bucky, my Bucky. I held his gaze, too, as if it were the final shot of a favorite old movie I was not quite ready to turn off, and I barely noticed that he was unbuttoning his shirt, unzipping his pants, peeling off his underwear, until he stood there in front of me, nude, with a hard-on. He grabbed me, grinding himself against me.

  “I need you, Sandra, I need you so much,” he crooned into my hair, his hands clutching at me. “Please. Please stay here with me.”

  I stood for a moment, feeling him against me, but when he pushed his mouth onto mine, it was as if I had been slapped. This was no movie. Yanking myself out of his grasp, I threw the door open and ran down the long, silent hallway. I heard the door slamming shut as I hit the elevator button three, four, five times.

  Suddenly the door opened and he came running down the hall, naked. Ah. The grand statement of passion.

  I watched h
im start toward me as the door closed, then locked, behind him. He turned toward it, startled, then looked back at me. He clearly hadn’t thought this through. I shrugged as the elevator arrived.

  “Hold that elevator!” he yelled, returning to his door, frantically grasping the immovable doorknob.

  “Sandy, wait!” he called, running down the hall.

  “Going down,” I called back.

  “No, Sandy, come on. I mean, I’m really locked out. You have to help me here.” His eyes were wild. “Please.”

  “Okay, calm down,” I said. “I’ll go to the desk and bring back the extra key. Don’t worry.”

  “Hurry up,” he said as the doors closed.

  In the lobby I walked past the front desk and signaled the doorman. “Taxi, please,” I said, and rode off into the night.

  15

  #77 The Crippling Slipper

  by Sandra Berlin

  The maiden had traveled long and far on her journey, and she was very tired. She stopped beside a stream to drink and rest. A frog jumped up on a stone beside her.

  “Dear maiden, you look so tired from your trip,” he said. “Where are you headed?”

  “I’m going to the Emerald City to see the Wizard,” she said. “I’m hoping he will grant me three wishes.”

  “What do you wish for, fair maiden?” the frog inquired.

  “I wish for a loving husband. I wish to live happily ever after. And I wish for three more wishes.”

  “Why is that?” the frog asked.

  “So I may always have whatever I need,” she answered. She leaned down and looked at him more closely. “Listen, if you’re enchanted, I have no problem kissing you so that you turn back into a handsome prince. Then we could live happily ever after together.”

  The frog laughed. “You have much to learn, maiden,” he said. “I am not a prince. But I will travel with you, to see that you get to your destination safely.”

  And the maiden and the frog ventured down the road for quite some distance until they came upon a small village on the outskirts of the Emerald City suburbs.