“About your offer,” I said.
“I don’t mean to pressure you.”
“I appreciate that. It was nice just talking about food for a while.”
“Yes,” he said. For a moment he waited, and I could feel him trying to assess whether it was time now to talk about business. I gave him no further help, scraping my ice cream bowl with my spoon as if I couldn’t bear to leave a single dollop behind.
Finally he said, “Do you have any questions for me? About the offer? Or perhaps the company, its goals?”
In fact, I found that I had no questions at all, though neither had I made a clear decision. My hesitation was beginning to feel like a low-grade depression. I did say, “I look forward to going to Paris.”
“Yes. And of course, when Arthur and I have finished our work, you would have a chance, whenever you wished, to be in Paris—and London also, eventually. It’s time for Nichols & Gray to have European operations.”
I realized that all through this, Alain’s hands were still. They lay on their heels, one on either side of the sushi serving block, their fingers curled and slightly lifted, and though I knew them to be important performers in Alain Bouchard’s communication, there they lay. A reflection of what? Alain’s seriousness of purpose? Or his insincerity? Or was he depressed, as well?
My mind drifted back to the prospect of Nichols & Gray finally having a Paris branch and London branch. “That’s good news,” I said and I felt as brittle as that sounded.
“May I say one more thing?”
“Yes.”
His hands finally lifted from the table, parted slightly, turned, the palms facing each other—a papal gesture, actually, which irritated me for some reason. “I want you to know my relationship with regard to Nichols & Gray from this point on.” His hands came together, the fingers intertwining. “I have a special fondness for this business, as I explained to you. So I’ve been handling this transaction as a kind of …”
He hesitated, looking for a word, and his hands came apart, turned palms up, the fingers gently closing as he finally caught the one he wanted. “Self-indulgence,” he said, and the hands clasped each other again. “I do my own work at a far remove from the daily operations of things. Do you understand?” And his hands let go of each other and came outward, wanting to fall before me, I think, though the wooden-block serving tray that sat in front of Alain made that awkward.
“I understand what you’re saying,” I said, with the rest of the thought simply implied. I didn’t understand why he was saying it.
He said, “I will not be your boss in any direct way. Even indirect. It will be as if I was in another line of business, in the exercise of my own, shall I say, power, by which I mean authority, certainly, but also any personal intimidation or influence I might have with an employee.”
Through this, Alain’s hands made a soft stirring motion in the air between us, and as this authoritative and, shall I say, powerful man suddenly and uncharacteristically struggled for words—perhaps even because of his struggle—I began to consider his hands more and more closely, seeing now the squarish shape of his nails, the thickness of his fingers—these were working hands, retired now, softened, capable of gentleness but still used to grasping a thing tightly, working hard—and then, as the men’s hands I’d collected in my memory all do, Alain’s hands struck me as naked, as intimate parts of him. I turned my eyes away.
“Do you see?” he asked.
“No,” I said, and that was the truth.
“Ah,” he said.
And we neither of us said anything more until the waiter had brought Alain the check and he’d paid it and we’d dithered around with the last of the saki and with our napkins and our water glasses and we finally looked at each other and smiled politely and his hands were down again, exhausted, I think, lying flat on the table very close to him, nearly sliding off out of sight.
“So,” he said at last. “What would you like now?”
“I don’t know.”
“To have another drink?”
“I’ve probably had enough.”
“To say good night?”
I was indeed feeling suddenly very weary. “Would you mind?”
“I am myself weirded out from the time zones.”
“Weirded out? Where did you pick that up?”
“Arthur’s secretary. Did I not use it correctly?”
“You did. Though perhaps not to describe jet lag.”
“Jet lag. That’s what I have.”
“Then we should say good night.” I suddenly felt disappointed.
“I’ll take you home,” he said.
And so we went out of the restaurant, and the Town Car was waiting for us. Alain waved off the chauffeur and opened the back door for me himself. I went in and Alain followed and we rolled off again into the night.
“Thank you,” I said at once. “The sushi was good.”
“Yes,” he said. “I will take you to a place in Paris.”
I looked at him, touched by this Frenchman’s first impulse to cater to my Asian taste even in his beloved Paris. His face, turned to me, was in darkness, but even as I looked, a light from the street flashed across his eyes.
I said, “In your city, I’ll leave my New York tastes behind.”
The light was gone but I could see his hand rise and move in a fast-rising and then slow-falling arc. Whatever I can do to make you happy, it said.
“Do you like my city already?” he asked softly.
“I do,” I said.
“Do you love my city?” he said, even more softly.
“I do,” I said. “I love Paris.”
And then the darkness that was his face, his body, moved closer, as if he were sleep coming upon me, and I could smell the deep woods at night and I could feel his hand fall naked on my forearm, lightly, and his face came nearer and his lips touched mine, very gently, his lips touched mine and then, very briefly, they took my lower lip between them and tugged it sweetly and let go. He drew back as smoothly as he’d approached and I found I was holding my breath. Then I let the breath go in words, dreamy words, relieved words: “You’re not gay.”
A lain laughed as gently as the kiss.
I understood now why he’d flailed around for words about his not actually being my boss. He was trying to establish how it would be all right for us to become involved.
“I’m sorry to have waited so long to do this thing,” he said. “If that’s what gave you the impression …”
“I’m not that vain,” I said.
“Perhaps I should not ask you then how I gave this impression.”
“It wasn’t you. You’ve done everything just fine.”
“Yes?”
“Everything.”
He laid his hand on mine. Just right. He kept it there and we said no more until we stopped in front of my apartment building. Also just right.
Now we faced each other and the chauffeur was getting out to attend to the door and my doorman was coming up too and it was not time to ask Alain to come up and still we did not speak. I simply turned my hand beneath his and our palms kissed and the door opened and I was out of the car and across the bright hardness of the lobby and I was rising in the elevator, alone, with the faint whir of the cable and the ping of the floor counter and I thought of him being here now, this Alain Bouchard, and suddenly I jump up on him and hook my legs around his hips and take his face in my two hands and kiss him some more and we make love in an elevator. And would that make me a hypocrite? Did this little fantasy subvert my recent self-possession? No. Alain and I had gone slow enough. We’d been to a restaurant. I’d even disliked him for a brief time. And it would be my act. And my actual, real-life act was not even to kiss him a second time, just to touch the palms of our hands.
The elevator stopped and the door opened and I moved along the hallway thinking he would one day soon be walking beside me in this very space and I squeezed this giddiness out of my head and I unlocked my door and went i
n and I leaned back against the door as it clicked shut. I would not get ahead of myself. There were still too many unknowns about this man.
But it was true that as I stepped into the middle of my apartment, the silence had a different quality, no longer being a thing unto itself, a thing without a beginning and promising no end, but a silence of caesura now—voices have just spoken and have paused and will begin again. I ran the tip of my tongue slowly along my lower lip.
And I found myself looking at the answering machine. A habit. Also by habit I touched the play button, as there was a red 1 announcing itself. And the voice in the room was Missy’s, saying, “I need to see you. I’m divorcing Jeff.”
She wanted to come into the city and I met her the next morning at the lower-level information booth at Penn Station amid the smell of donuts and pee. She came up to me from behind, saying my name. I turned to her and I don’t know who initiated it but we hugged, which we hadn’t done in a long time.
“Where can we go?” she said.
“Inside or out?”
“I don’t give a damn,” she said. “Let’s just walk, I guess.”
We went up the escalator and out onto Seventh Avenue and it was a warm Sunday morning and I thought Missy would have wanted privacy for this, but she seemed not to notice anyone in the street. We just headed off uptown and she said, “Don’t rub my face in this, okay?”
“Would you expect that from me?” I asked and I knew the answer at once. Of course she would expect that from me. We’d given each other little better for years.
She said, “It’s bad enough I don’t have anybody else to talk to about this.”
It seemed a good sign, her giving me a hard time right off. She was ready to fight.
“Where are the girls?” I said.
“Oh, there are plenty of other-mom friends to give your kids to.”
“Do they know? The girls, I mean.”
“They know we’ve had a big stink and daddy’s gone off on a trip. Do they know our lives are about to fall apart? No. Who ever knows that until it just happens?”
I pulled Missy back from plunging off the curb in front of traffic. “Pay attention,” I said.
“It’s a little late for that,” she said.
“I mean the cars.”
“Pay attention, my ass,” she said.
I was still having to hold her back at the curb. She was utterly unaware of anything but what was jumping around in her head. This did not seem a good sign.
“Wait for the light,” I said.
“Oh sure. That’s easy to say.”
“I’m talking about the fucking traffic, Missy. Wake up.”
She looked at me squarely. “Nobody waits for the fucking light in New York City.”
“As much as I like you talking dirty, little sister, I want you to settle down for a few minutes and tell me what happened. Can you do that?”
She looked first at the light, which was still telling us not to walk, and then east on 33rd, and she said, “See? We’re good.”
She shook off my hand and bulled on into the intersection and she was right this time, we had a few beats before another gaggle of cars, plenty of time by New York standards, and we were across and setting a brisk pace up Seventh.
The energy of her anger, the little signs I’d obviously misread at our recent dinner, the abruptness of all this, suggested that another woman was the problem. But Missy wasn’t talking for the moment and I knew enough to let it go. After a block of power-walking I did say, “I’m sorry you can’t come to me without fearing I’d give you a hard time.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, as if that were a complete thought.
“If you’ve got to end your marriage the only thing I feel is sorry. That’s all.”
“Mama’s gonna shit a brick.”
Ass, fuck, and shit, all coming from Missy’s mouth within a few minutes of each other—if crisis brings out the hidden self in us, I was very pleased to meet my sister at last. Not that I dared compliment her at that particular moment. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Mama will blame me for everything.”
“I don’t care.”
I didn’t know if she meant about the blame or the brick.
“Do you?” she said.
“Care if she blames me?”
“Care who she blames.”
“No.”
“It’s his fault anyway.”
“Are you ready to tell me?”
She plowed across another intersection, just ahead of a honking cab.
But she stayed silent as we strode on. I thought of our last private conversation in Sea Cliff, watching the harbor. You do it all for the kids, she’d said.
“Well, for one thing, he’s seeing somebody,” Missy said.
I looked at her. Her walk slowed abruptly. The blunt talk had vanished. Seeing somebody. All my life I’d hated her prissiness. Now it just seemed pitiable. I wanted her to curse again. “Are you sure?” I said.
“Yes. And when I told him to get out, he went straight to her. You know? I called—I found some things written, I got her number—I actually got up the nerve to call her and he answered.”
“You did the right thing,” I said, softly.
“And it’s his goddam couch.”
“I noticed that.”
“The TV’s an eyesore and it cost way too much. But can we just order Chinese for dinner on the spur of the moment instead of having to anticipate it by six hours so we can get the cheap lunch specials and then heat them up later? No way.”
“No fucking way,” I coached.
“No fucking way,” Missy said.
“Thata girl,” I said.
But it was her last curse of the day. Missy dipped again and again into the box of odds and ends that held the collection of her husband—the grinding of his teeth in the night, discourses on portfolio management over dinner, the meticulous gathering of the crumbs at the bottoms of cereal boxes for a “free breakfast,” eight-percent tips in restaurants because it’s still better than the prime rate, the unilateral decorating touches—it was a grubby batch of stuff indeed and she lost her edge. And even when she circled back around to the “someone”—who had a sexy voice and a Queens telephone exchange—she couldn’t work herself up. Instead, she wept. We sat in the back corner in a deli off Times Square and she wept quietly for a long while and I patted her hand and I tried to reassure her that divorce was okay. I asked her if she needed help finding a lawyer and she said Sea Cliff was full of them. I asked if I could do anything to help with the girls and she said maybe.
Then we walked back to Penn Station and I went down to the platform with her and waited until her train was sliding into the station. She squared around to face me. “Thanks,” she said. Her eyes were puffy and weary but they tried to hold still on mine.
“I wish there was more I could do,” I said. Then I thought of something. “Would you like me to tell Mama for you?”
“I’d be eternally grateful,” she said.
I was appalled at how fast she accepted. Though the offer was sincere, I’d hoped she’d decline.
“I just can’t face her right now,” Missy said.
“But you want me to go ahead and tell her right away?” I said, and I regretted it at once.
The train doors opened and Missy looked in. Though she’d stopped cursing, not once had she questioned the finality of her husband’s act.
“I’ll do it tonight,” I said.
Missy’s eyes were on mine once more. “Why should we bring her into it at this point?” she said.
I willed myself to say the right thing now. “Because you’re going to divorce this man. It’s best for you and it’s best for the girls. You can’t teach them to let a man get away with this, can you? And after she beats up on me, Mama will be there for you.”
Missy nodded and this seemed to be the moment for another hug. But in spite of some wiggling of the shoulders it didn’t look like it was going to happen.
“Go on
to your girls now,” I said. “I’ll take care of Houston.”
We did an end-of-weekly-lunch bend from the waist and buss on the cheek, and Missy disappeared into the train.
I went along the platform and up the stairs and I thought not of Missy and her broken marriage, not of Mama and her unhappy marriage, I thought of Amy and Alain. I’d been a good sister all morning. But now I thought how—contrary to Missy’s chronic self-righteousness about our respective lifestyles—it’d been me who’d always done things right. Look at the story of Amy and Alain. Here, Missy my sister, let me put the palm of my hand on the back of your head and press you down into the mess you’ve made doing things just so.
Sunday seemed like a good time for Mama to get a dose of the truth. And I wanted to get this over with. So as soon as I got back to my apartment I curled up on my couch and dialed Houston. Mama answered on the first ring.
“You were sitting by the phone,” I said.
“Hello? Who is this?” Mama said, feigning ignorance. She didn’t like me simply to start up a phone conversation without a certain ritual of courtesies.
“You know my voice, Mama.”
“Hello? Who’s speaking please?”
“Cut it out, Mama.”
“Can’t we just do this right once in a while?” she said.
“Mama.”
“Remember, this is Texas you’re calling.”
“Okay, Mama. Hello. This is Amy Dickerson your eldest daughter calling.”
“No need to get snippety.”
“Would you like me to hang up and call again and we’ll do this the Texas way?”
“Is that a serious offer?”
I thought about that a moment. “Yes.”
“Then no. We’ve gone this far, let’s just keep on going.”
“Things sound like they’re getting to you, Mama.”
“They are.”
I thought about calling back later. This was not the way to tell her about Missy, after this kind of start. But before I could make a decision, she was crying. And it wasn’t one of her exaggerated-for-effect Texas sob shows. Her crying was rather quiet, stuttery, almost repressed. In short, it sounded real.
I made my voice as gentle as I could make it. “Mama, what is it?”
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