‘Why aren’t you seeing her tonight?’
‘Because you called. Her apartment’s in Tribeca—I was going to visit her after those Condé Nast drinks.’
‘Now I feel bad. You should go.’
‘After dinner. She can wait. I mean, I’ve been seeing plenty of her. I haven’t seen so much of you. It’s like you’ve been on another planet.’
Henry didn’t acknowledge this, pulling together more ingredients and intermittently tapping the ash from his cigar. Timothy decided not to push him to say anything more.
‘You’re a great friend, Tim,’ he said finally, unexpectedly. ‘This might be an odd thing for one guy to say to another, but…fuck it, I value your loyalty. You are like a brother to me.’
‘That’s not an odd thing to say at all,’ Timothy said, with no hesitation. ‘I appreciate it. Don’t expect anything in return from me. I’m unreliable, remember. You said that, when you fired me.’
‘And I can be a complete asshole. Clearly. I don’t think I gave you enough credit for holding that magazine together.’
‘Don’t be stupid. I took all the credit I needed and no more.’
Timothy went and put the television on for the Giants game, so there could be another voice or two in the room. They ate in front of the game, neither of them really involved but glad to have it there. Henry’s pasta was humble, something a cash-strapped Italian mama might have served up. In another world, where the expectations were looser, Timothy could have had Henry stay the night. They could have stayed up and got stoned and eventually gone to sleep together on these sofas. He would have liked that.
WHEN Martha couldn’t be at Henry’s side for a work-related function, she always had a reason. She often found herself enjoying the events, relieved to have a break from the reports about rape and devastation in Uganda and Sudan that occupied her days, and the constant scrutiny under which she did her job.
They were, typically, good reasons.
This evening, though, she was alone in their apartment—no illness, no travel plans—waiting for Henry to get home so she could tell him she wasn’t coming to the Fashion Week show at Bryant Park. A report from USAID on preventable child deaths shared the sofa with her, unread. The room was silent, as though holding its breath for her, waiting for something to happen.
Martha didn’t give herself permission to dwell on the past unless there was a point to it. She did miss the Village she’d loved in the eighties, though. She missed the person she’d been. The Martha Beaucanon who’d crammed her belongings and her mastiff into a one-bedroom on Jane Street, friends coming and going at leisurely will, bringing with them joints and Talking Heads records and guitars bought, like the Joni Mitchell song, at Mandolin Brothers. The Martha who could have quit her job at a moment’s notice and started up a second-hand clothes store, or become a musician, even though she didn’t play any instruments.
Her marriage to Henry hadn’t been a mistake. The way they’d handled it was. Undoubtedly. Both of them. You couldn’t cellar a fine bottle of wine in the wrong conditions and then open it years later, expecting perfection. You would, inevitably, find the taint.
Those early years were the foundation on which everything else should have rested, but the memory of them didn’t seem to rouse him as it always roused her. She had to wonder how those colourful nights, their friends, their neighbourhood, could have come to mean so little to him, jettisoned without a thought. He seemed content now to eat at the same restaurants every weekend, make the same comments on how the standards had slipped, summer in Palm Springs with Timothy Fogel and Gloria, listening to their bickering, resenting his old friend yet hanging on his every word.
He’d heard Fogel was adding a second floor to his house in Santa Monica—should they put in another staircase here? Should they time-share that property in Portugal Timothy and Gloria were always talking about? Change their vacation spot to Amalfi, because that was where everyone was heading?
It had taken Martha a while to realise that he wasn’t really interested in her answers, whatever they were.
Henry’s frustrations at work had grown over the last few years. He seemed determined to sideline himself, refusing to update the magazine’s website or launch a tablet app. Instead, he increased spending on the print edition. Consumers were prepared to spend more on the physical copies—for a luxurious experience, for the scent wafting off each page. From what Martha could gather, he was no longer listening to Timothy, who must have favoured a more modern approach. The rumour was that he had refused to sign off on any of his friend’s work unless it stuck closely to his brief. He’d already talked about firing Timothy, during some of his late-night rants. Then he’d calmed down, talked himself out of it.
Though he sought her out for counsel, her advice—to be guided by the numbers, and his team, rather than relying on his convictions—only irritated him, and he apologised curtly for bringing it up in the first place.
They hadn’t collaborated on a feature since Gucci’s partnership with UNICEF three years ago. Adequate coverage, but less than she’d anticipated. No real attempt to raise awareness of women’s and children’s rights. A forgettable little article that had focused on the collection’s aesthetic appeal, overpowered by the photographs, which did nothing to stand out from all the other glossy spreads. The opportunity to say anything of consequence wasted, again.
He supported charities, publicly, trading on her reputation, but his true involvement in these causes was minimal, handled as a series of transactions, a duty rather than the passion it should have been. When asked directly, he proclaimed himself proud of what she was doing, yet he seemed embarrassed, sometimes even offended, by her own commitment to her work.
She could have forgiven that if he hadn’t taken her support for granted. He expected her to appear at events like an accessory, regaling wealthy society types with stories about her adventures, preening at the reflected admiration, when they were impressed, quick to criticise when they weren’t, chastising her for lecturing powerful people or spending too much time on others whose opinion meant nothing.
She hadn’t minded the fights, at first. Real couples fought. They got through them and learned more about each other. What stung was his casual indifference, his diminishing patience for what she did or any hint of the problems she might have been struggling with herself. That patience had once made him a desirable partner, but now it seemed closer to a lack of interest.
She hadn’t seriously considered leaving Henry until eight years ago, when the journalist’s threatened take-down piece about her had mysteriously disappeared. It wasn’t until Martha overheard a conversation between two of her superiors a few years later that she discovered what had happened, and how close it was to common knowledge.
Henry had used his contacts to stop the story from being published. No doubt saying he would withhold advertising funding, or using whatever other clout he had at his disposal. Henry had denied it when she’d confronted him about it. No surprises there. She could have found proof, but it wouldn’t have helped. She didn’t seek explanations after the fact. He’d done it. Gone behind her back. A successful move on his part, and one that he must have thought was unlikely to get either of them in trouble.
But it had tainted her reputation—people who disapproved of Henry and his wealthy friends had decided she was tarred with the same brush. His silence on the subject was what upset her the most, and she speculated about what else he might have done without her knowledge.
So Martha had debated with herself, for years, about whether to destroy the life they had together: the lie world, the other reality he’d created for her, where everything was made of the finest crystal and balanced precariously on shelves she had to navigate her way around. It should have been easy, but it wasn’t.
The door opened and Henry slammed it behind him, the way he always did when he was in a hurry and wanted everyone to know, which she hated. He came through and found her on the sofa, with her reports and
a tumbler of whisky. Dressed in the same blouse she’d worn to work and a pair of jeans, her feet bare.
‘You should get changed,’ he said. ‘We’re already running late.’
‘I’m not coming.’
‘Why? You’re not feeling well? People are expecting to see you. And we got hold of a reservation at Jean-Georges for later—your favourite.’
‘I can’t do it tonight. I’m so sick of doing these events.’
He came over and leaned on the back of his sofa, running a hand across the buttoned surface, contemplating the leather, which was worn out, cracking. Probably calculating how much it would cost to replace.
‘Why?’ he said again, with more emphasis. ‘You know people care more about you than they do about me. They’re fascinated by what you do. You’ve got them eating out of your hand.’
‘Please don’t give me that bullshit. They think it’s quaint. If I told them what it’s really like in Uganda, how much of a role they’ve played in creating those conditions, you’d lead me away like a schoolgirl again. You’re always reminding me about the valuable connections you’ve introduced me to, but those people can’t help me effect real change. They don’t give a shit about poverty unless it’s the subject of some pretty photographs by Pieter Hugo or whatever—and neither do you.’
‘Fucking hell, Martha. I can’t change the world for you.’ His voice rose an octave, the veins in his temple swollen. ‘What would I do, in the alternative reality where I agreed with you? Quit my job? No chance. Not after I’ve achieved so much.’
‘This was never what we were trying to achieve. You told me, years ago, that you wanted your work to have some kind of significance. Let’s be honest—it never has. And that’s why you’re not happy. Which, to tell you the truth, is becoming a real burden.’
‘I’ve done the best I can for you, and this is how you repay me? You never used to operate like this. You were cool. What the fuck is it you want from me?’
‘I never asked you to do anything for me. I’m asking what we’re doing.’
‘We’re building something.’
What had they built? Their apartment, their life, made her feel nothing. They were two installations in an art gallery, locked in plexiglass, staring out. Quiet, static, sterile. ‘I wanted to build something for other people, Henry, not some beautiful palace stuffed with your beautiful things. It could all have been different—if I’d taken that job in Rome, if you’d come with me and found something more useful to do with yourself. I’ve watched so many people move on while we stick around in this safe, insular, privileged world and do what we always did.’
He’d dispensed with the first wave of indignation. Now he was holding himself to reasonability. She knew him well enough to see this. He poured himself a whisky, bigger than hers, taking the time to think it through.
‘I hardly recognise you, Henry,’ she said, quietly. ‘You’re not the man I loved. He wasn’t obsessed with this idea that unless we fit a certain shape we’re unacceptable, worthless.’
Henry set his glass down, hard. ‘Please, Martha, be reasonable. We don’t get to start over. We squeeze all we can out of what we’ve got, while we’ve got it. That’s the game, and it’s not a dry-run.’
‘You’re not listening to me,’ she said. ‘Are you? You haven’t been listening to anyone.’
He cradled his whisky, pressing the cold, perspiring glass to his forehead, hunched over the sofa.
‘I guess it’s easy,’ he said, ‘judging the lifestyle you signed up for. If you don’t like what we have, too bad. We have it. Guess I’m guilty of creating a safe haven where we get to be ourselves. Maybe you should’ve married one of your asshole law school friends, let him hold you captive in a house out in Westchester while you raised his children.’
She faced away from him, out the window, towards the city below, hazy through the summer smog, the planes from LaGuardia taking off into a threaded weave of cloud and sunset. Martha bowed her head, her strong wrist shaking as she pressed her nails into the skin of her cheeks. ‘You have no respect for anyone unless they make themselves pliable for you. I don’t need you to protect me, like I’m some…fragile object. That makes you no different from any other asshole out there.’
Henry began pacing the room, checking his phone. He had to go. Timothy had already texted, asking what was taking him so long.
He could apologise to Martha, accept responsibility without meaning it, then push on free of guilt, but he wasn’t going to show himself that disrespect. He needed to make sense of her unhappiness, identify its source, so he could carry on with the story they were supposed to be writing. He thought about it, trying desperately to come up with the answer to what could have gone wrong, why there had been so much discontent for more than half their married life.
‘I see what’s going on here,’ he said. ‘Of course. You wanted a child. Why didn’t you tell me that? We could have done it.’
Now she could face him. ‘Henry. My God, you really aren’t listening. I’ve never wanted children. Don’t you know me at all?’
‘Yes, yes. I see it. So clearly. You’re trying to fill the hole with work, keeping up this unimpeachable moral reputation. You’re more like your mother and my sister than you think. Ha, ha. Can’t you see how lucky we are? We earned this. You’d miss this life if it wasn’t here, waiting for you when you get home from being good.’
‘That sounds like a threat.’
‘You’ve burned yourself out.’ He adopted his bargaining tone, the one he knew she hated most—he wasn’t seeking a resolution now, more an end to the conversation. ‘Let’s make time to travel in December. Just us. We could go to Hawaii. I know people with a place on Lanai.’
‘Then come home and pick up right here, where we left off?’
Henry’s hands trembled. The alcohol wasn’t doing its job. He needed a cigarette. None in the house—not since he’d quit.
He drained the whisky glass and dropped it carelessly on the bar cart. Then he went to get changed, following his formula. Shirt. Right one for the occasion. Right jacket. Right amount of wax to keep his hair stiff. Right application of the sandalwood aftershave, the bergamot cologne, the woody, rosemary-infused moisturiser on his hands. Then he left, with a final, cursory glance towards Martha on the other side of his apartment, her head in silhouette against the evening light. He made a wish that she would be gone by the time he returned, so he could have some peace, enjoy this place as it was designed to be enjoyed. Anything to avoid more of these irrational arguments.
Martha didn’t stir from the sofa. She stayed there for the rest of the evening, calmly toying with a loose thread on the nearest cushion. Henry would be there at the runway show, charming his way through the crowd, proudly explaining that his wife couldn’t make it—she was off overseeing a new UNICEF project somewhere in the amorphous third world.
She saw him take his front-row seat. Skinny arms and legs marched past him, the flashbulbs hitting retinal veins and sunglasses. Her seat would be filled by an assistant, to avoid questions.
He wouldn’t be thinking about what she’d said. Martha mourned him—that man who’d weighed up her ambitions against his own and concluded they both deserved to be explored. Who made no demands. Had she imagined him?
As the last visible jet plane curved across the distant roofs of Elmhurst, Martha decided that it was time. Reaching for her cell phone, she dialled Cathy.
CLINTON Hill and the surrounding area had been built on pure speculation. Miles of blocks laid out in the 1890s were filled in with ornate brownstones, waiting for an influx of wealth: a massive bedroom community to house Manhattan’s pent-up middle classes. Instead, when the Great Depression hit, these homes were overrun by poor immigrant families. Only now was the true value of the exquisite Victorian architecture being reassessed.
Henry’s crowd had avoided this place in the eighties and nineties, when it was the background to turf wars and race riots, and he was surprised to find the area aro
und Fulton Street in the advanced throes of gentrification. Shining glass condos towered over the old brownstones, the synagogues and mosques, the sleepy neighbourhood stores with For Rent signs over their doors. It was a shame, he thought. He and Martha might once have enjoyed living here.
He’d seen an already-drunk Timothy into an outer borough taxi and walked over here, through quiet, tree-lined streets past the same Victorian row houses, many of which were under scaffolding. A little tipsy himself, he’d become lightheaded as he thought how baseless their conflict had been, how they’d never stopped behaving like teenagers towards one another.
He’d sent Maggie a few texts asking for the address over the last hour, to which she finally replied. She was already there, she said, and he would find her in the nave. Her texting language was so blunt, so matter-of-fact. He wondered if she was like that with everyone else as well.
Whoever owned the converted church apartment on Lefferts Place must have been proud of it. The restoration was tasteful: a cast-iron walkway crossed the nave, new rooms supported by weathered industrial pillars. The skeleton of the floor plan and a large stained-glass window cut in two by the dividing floor were the only hints that it had once been a place of worship.
Henry realised that he could live here. He was overcome by a vision of his future. He could buy a space like this one, convert it, fill it with his own furniture. Take a job at Vogue—not the one he wanted, but one with enough prestige to see him through the door at the right parties, the right restaurants. Go to Fogel’s place for cocktails, discover an incipient generation of talent, introduce them to the world.
The atmosphere reminded Henry of a fashion show, with the same low lights and flickers of mystery. Young people hung moodily around the nave, restrained and joyless, in keeping with the John Cage and Stockhausen-influenced music and the rows of books by German intellectuals on the shelves. Trust fund babies, some in their parents’ vintage clothes, others trying for laboured homeless chic with unkempt hair and shapeless coats.
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