But the change was infinitely worse. Oh, the blood stopped, as promised. But nobody told me what would start: the weight gain, no matter how hard I dieted. How could I get fat on rice cakes and lettuce?
The change brought other changes. My skin started to sag along the jaw. The lines from my nose to my lips deepened into trenches. My neck looked like it belonged on a stewing hen.
And my husband, the old rooster, was chasing young chicks. I knew it, but I didn’t dare confront him. I’d seen what happened to my friends when they’d faced down their rich, powerful husbands. Elizabeth, courageous, I-won’t-stand-for-this Elizabeth, had been destroyed. She’d caught Zack, her husband of thirty years, groping some not-so-sweet young thing in the dim lights of the local bar. Elizabeth had fearlessly confronted Zack on the spot. She’d embarrassed him in front of his backslapping cronies.
Good old Zack hired a pinstriped shark—one of his bar buddies. Now the elegant Elizabeth lived in a cramped hotbox of an apartment, with a cat and a rattling air conditioner. She worked as a checker at the supermarket and barely made the rent. Elizabeth was on her feet all day and had the varicose veins to prove it.
I’d taken her out to a dreary lunch last month. I’d wanted to do something nice. We went to the club, where we’d always lunched in the old days, when she was still a member. Some of our friends didn’t recognize her. Poor Elizabeth, with her home-permed hair and unwaxed eyebrows, looked older than her mother. She was so exhausted, she could hardly keep up a conversation.
That same fate awaited me. I had to stall as long as I could, until I could figure out what to do with my life. If Eric dumped me now, I’d be at the supermarket asking my former friends, “Would you like paper or plastic?”
I’d be one more useless, used-up, middle-aged woman.
I was already. In seven days, I’ll be fifty-five years old. My future had never looked bleaker. I had no money and no job skills. My husband didn’t love me anymore. Happy birthday, Katherine.
“Lie still,” Eric snarled. “Quit twitching.”
I didn’t think I’d moved. Maybe Eric felt my inner restlessness. Maybe we were still connected enough for that.
But I couldn’t lie there another moment. Not even to save myself. I slid out of bed.
“Now what? Where are you going at this hour?” Eric demanded.
“I thought I’d get some fresh air. I’m going for a walk.”
Eric sat straight up, his gray hair wild, his long surgeon’s hands clutching the sheet to his hairy chest. “Are you crazy? You want to go outside in the middle of the night? After that woman was murdered two streets away?”
“People get murdered all the time in Fort Lauderdale,” I said.
“Not like that. Some freak drained her blood. They didn’t put that little detail in the papers. The city commission wants to avoid scaring the tourists. Dave at the medical examiner’s office told me. That woman hardly had a drop of blood left in her. She went for a walk at three in the morning and turned up drained dry. For Chrissakes, use your head.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll sit on the balcony. I didn’t want to wake you.”
I put on my peignoir and padded into the living room. I never tired of the view from our condo. To the east was the dark, endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, lit by ancient stars. Straight down were the black waters of the Intracoastal. Across the little canal that ran alongside our building were the Dark Harbor condos. Those places started at three million dollars. But it wasn’t the money that fascinated me. Florida had lots of expensive condos. There was something about Dark Harbor. Something mysterious. Exciting. Exotic. Even at three in the morning.
I slid open the glass doors, careful not to make a sound. The warm night air caressed my cheek. I loved the night. Always had. Moon glow was kinder than the harsh Florida sun. I could hear the water softly lapping at the pilings on the dock, seven stories below.
Laughter drifted across the water, and the faint sounds of a chanteuse singing something in French. It was an old Édith Piaf song of love and loss.
There was a party in the Dark Harbor penthouse. Such a glamorous party. The men wore black tie. The women wore sleek black. They looked like me, only better, smoother, thinner. These were people in charge of their futures. They didn’t have my half-life as the soon-to-be-shed wife. They were more alive than I would ever be.
I sighed and turned away from my beautiful neighbors. I drifted back into our bedroom like a lost soul, crawled in next to my unloving husband, and fell into a fitful sleep.
Eric woke me up at five-thirty when he left for the hospital.
“Good-bye,” I said.
His only answer was a slammed door.
That night, while getting ready for bed, I looked in my dressing room mirror and panicked. I’d always had a cute figure, but now it had thickened. I had love handles. Where did those come from? I swear I didn’t have them two days ago. I burst into tears. I couldn’t help it.
I ran into the bathroom to stifle the sobs I knew would irritate Eric. But it was too late. “Now what?” he snarled. “I can’t take these mood swings. Get hormone replacement therapy or something.”
He was definitely getting something. I’d found the Viagra bottle in his drawer when I put away his socks. It was half empty. He wasn’t popping those pills for me. We hadn’t made love in months.
No pill would cure my problem. Not unless I took a whole bunch at once and drifted into the long sleep. That prospect was looking more attractive every day. Didn’t someone say, “The idea is to die young as late as possible”? Time was running out for me.
I spent another restless night, haunting the balcony like a ghost, watching another party across the way at Dark Harbour. Once again, I drifted off to sleep as Eric was getting ready for work.
Tuesday was a brilliant, sunlit day. Even I couldn’t feel gloomy. I was living in paradise. I put on my new Escada outfit—tight black jeans and a white jacket so soft, it was pettable. I smiled into the mirror. I looked good, thanks to top-notch tailoring and a body shaper that nearly strangled my middle.
I didn’t care. It nipped in my waist, lifted my behind, and thrust out my boobs. I sashayed out to the condo garage like a model on a catwalk. A sexy, young model.
I had a charity lunch at the Aldritch Hotel. I was eating—or rather, not eating—lunch to support the Drexal School. I didn’t have any children, but everyone in our circle supported the Drex. As a Drexal Angel, I paid one hundred dollars for a limp chicken Caesar salad and stale rolls.
My silver Jaguar roared up under the hotel portico. A hunky valet raced out to take my keys. The muscular valet ogled my long legs and sensational spike heels, and I felt that little frisson a woman gets when a handsome man thinks she’s hot.
Then his eyes reached my face and I saw his disappointment. The valet didn’t bother to hide it. I was old.
I handed him my keys. The valet tore off my ticket without another glance at me. I felt like he’d ripped my heart in half. I used to be a beauty. Heads would turn when I strutted into a room. Now if anyone stared at me, it was because I had a soup stain on my suit or toilet paper stuck on my shoe. I was becoming invisible.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the hotel’s automatic doors. Who was I kidding in my overpriced, overdressed outfit? I was losing my looks—and my husband.
I stopped in the ladies room to check my makeup. My lipstick had a nasty habit of creeping into the cracks at the lip line. I used my liner pencil, then stopped in a stall, grateful it had a floor-to-ceiling louvered door. I needed extra privacy to wriggle out of the body shaper.
I heard the restroom door open. Two women were talking. One sounded like my best friend, Margaret. The other was my neighbor, Patricia. I’d known them for years. I nearly called out, but they were deep in conversation and I didn’t want to interrupt.
“…such a cliché,” Margaret said, in her rich-girl drawl.
“I can’t believe it,” Patricia said. Her voice was a N
ew York honk. “Eric is boinking his secretary?”
Eric. My husband, Eric? Panic squeezed me tighter than any body shaper. There were lots of Erics.
“Office manager,” Margaret said. “But it’s the same thing. She’s twenty-five, blond, and desperate to catch a doctor. It looks like Eric will let himself get caught.”
“Can you blame him?” Patricia honked. “Katherine’s let herself go.”
Katherine. No, there weren’t many Erics with Katherines. I felt sick. I sat down on the toilet seat and listened.
“She won’t even get an eye job,” Patricia said. “And her own husband is a plastic surgeon. How rejecting is that? Eric did my eyes. Then he did the rest of me.” Her words filled the room. I couldn’t escape them.
“You slept with him?” Margaret sounded mildly shocked.
“Everyone does,” Patricia said.
I could almost hear her shrug. I wanted to rush out and strangle her. I wanted to blacken her stretched eyelids. But I was half-dressed, and my jiggly middle would prove she was right.
“It’s part of the package,” Patricia said. “My skin never looked better than when I was getting Dr. Eric’s special injections.”
“You’re awful,” Margaret said. Then my best friend laughed.
“It’s part of my charm,” Patricia said. “But someone better clue in Katherine, so she can line up a good divorce lawyer before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late,” Margaret said. “Eric’s already seen the best lawyer in Lauderdale, Jack Kellern.”
“And you didn’t tell Katherine that Eric hired Jack the Ripper?”
“How could I? He’s my husband.”
And you, Margaret, are my best friend. Or rather, you were. Margaret had also had her eyes done by Jack. Did she get the full package, too?
I waited until my faithless friends shut the restroom door. I rocked back and forth on the toilet in stunned misery. It was one thing to suspect your husband was playing around. It was another to learn of his betrayal—and your best friend’s. I was a joke, a laughingstock. I had even less time than I thought.
I pulled my clothes together, pasted on a smile, and found my table. A waitress set my salad in front of me. I studied the woman. She was about my age, with a weary face, limp brown hair, and thick, sensible shoes. This time next year, would I be serving salads to the ladies who lunched?
Only if I were lucky. I didn’t even have the skills to be a waitress. I picked at my salad but couldn’t eat a bite. No one noticed. Well-bred women didn’t have appetites.
A polite clink of silverware on glasses signaled that the headmaster was at the podium. He was a lean man with a good suit and a sycophantic smile.
“You’ve heard that Drexal has one of the finest academic records…” he began. My thoughts soon drifted away.
Menopause had killed my marriage, but it had been dying for a long time. I knew exactly when it had received the fatal wound: the day my husband asked to cut on me.
I was thirty-five, but looked ten years younger. Eric was itching to get out his scalpel and work on my face.
“Just let me do your eyes,” he said, “and take a few tucks. If you start early, you’ll look younger longer.”
“I look fine,” I said.
“You don’t trust me,” he said.
“Of course I do,” I said. “You’re the most successful plastic surgeon in Broward County.”
But not the most skilled. Eric was right. I didn’t trust him. He’d never killed anyone, unlike some Florida face sculptors. But I saw his work everywhere. I could recognize his patients: Caucasian women of a certain age with the telltale Chinese eyes and stretched skin.
Eric gave them face-lifts when no other doctor would. He’d give them as many as seven or eight, until their skin was so tight they could bikini wax their upper lip.
I pleaded fear of anesthesia. I invented an aunt who died from minor surgery when I was a child. But Eric knew the truth: I was afraid to let him touch me. I was his in every way, except one. I would not surrender to his knife.
For ten years, he never stopped trying. He nagged me for a full face-lift at forty. At forty-five, I knew I could probably use one, but still I wouldn’t submit.
“Nothing can make me twenty-five again,” I said. “I’ll take my chances with wrinkles.”
It was the worst rejection a plastic surgeon could have. I made him look bad. Everyone could see my lines and wrinkles. These normal signs of aging became an accusation. They said every woman but his wife believed Eric was a fine surgeon.
When I turned fifty, Eric quit asking. That’s when our hot nights together cooled. I suspected there were other women, but knew the affairs weren’t serious. Now things had changed. Eric was going to marry a twenty-five-year-old blonde. In another five years, she’d submit to his knife.
Suddenly, I was back in the hotel ballroom. The headmaster’s speech had reached its crescendo. “We have almost everything we need to make the Drexal School the finest educational institution in Broward County. Only one thing is missing. After today, we’ll have it all. I’m pleased to announce the creation of the Drexal Panthers—our own football team. Your donations have made it possible.”
The lunching mothers cheered wildly.
I looked down at my plate and realized I’d eaten an entire slice of chocolate cheesecake with raspberry sauce.
Worse, I hadn’t tasted one bite.
No wonder I was fat.
On the way home, I picked up some college catalogues. I made myself a stiff drink and settled into my favorite chair in the great room to study the glossy catalogues. I looked at careers for legal aides, dental assistants, and licensed practical nurses. One choice seemed more depressing than the other.
What had I wanted to be before I met Eric?
An English teacher. Back then, I saw myself teaching poetry to eager young minds, watching them open like flowers with the beauty of the written word. Now, I knew I couldn’t cope with the young ruffians at the public schools. Would the Drexal School hire an Angel down on her luck? Would the headmaster remember how often I’d lunched to make his dream team possible?
If I went back to college, how many years would I need to complete my degree? Would my life experience count for anything? What had I done in fifty-five years?
I fell asleep on the pile of catalogues. I woke up at midnight when I heard Eric unlock the door. I hid the catalogues with my arms, but he never noticed them. Or me. He went straight to bed without even saying good night.
I woke up at three. I couldn’t sleep through the night anymore. I kept vampire hours now. I drifted into the living room and watched the condo across the way. There was another party tonight. This time, the music seemed livelier, the guests more keyed up, more dramatically dressed, as if they were at some special ceremony.
Our condo walls seemed to close in on me. I slipped on my jeans and a cotton shirt. I was going for a walk along the water, even if it killed me. I’d rather risk death than suffocate inside.
The night air was delicious, cool but not cold. I was drawn to the lights of the Dark Harbor party, and picked my way along the docks until I was almost underneath its windows. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel the contained excitement inside. The walls seemed to pulse with life.
“Wish you were here?”
I jumped at the voice—very rich, very male.
The man who came out of the shadows wore evening dress. His skin looked luminous in the moonlight. His hair was black with a slight curl. There was strength in his face, and a hint of cruelty. I couldn’t tell his age. He seemed beyond such ordinary measures.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to trespass,” I said.
“You aren’t trespassing, Katherine,” he said. “You spend a lot of time watching us, don’t you?”
“Am I that obvious?” I said.
“No,” he said. “But I feel your yearning. It makes you very beautiful—and very vulnerable.”
In
side the condo, there was a shriek of triumph, followed by polite tennis-match applause.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I must return to my guests. My name is Michael, by the way.”
“Will I see you again?” I said.
“If you want to,” he said.
He was gone. Only then did I wonder how he knew my name.
I floated back to my condo wrapped in soft, warm clouds of fantasy. How long had it been since any man had called me beautiful?
I was beautiful. Michael made me feel that way. I crawled into bed beside my husband and dreamed of another man.
In the morning, I woke up smiling and refreshed. For the first time in months, I didn’t check my mirror for more ravages. I didn’t need to. I was beautiful. Michael had said so. I was dreamy as a lovesick teenager, until the phone shattered the sweet silence at eleven a.m.
“Katherine, it’s Patricia.” Of course it was. She’d slept with my husband and confessed it in a public restroom. I’d know her honking voice anywhere. Except today it had a different note. She sounded subdued, even frightened. “Have you heard about Jack?”
“Jack who?” I said.
“Margaret’s Jack. They found his body in the parking lot of his law office early this morning.”
“What happened?” I said. “Was he mugged?”
“They don’t think so,” Patricia said. “The police say the murder didn’t take place there. They think he was abducted.”
“Kidnapped and murdered? But why?” Which wife killed him, I wondered. How many deserted women wished him dead?
“No one knows. But it gets worse. Jack’s body was drained of blood. Completely dry.”
“That’s awful,” I said. “I’ll go see Margaret immediately.”
I hung up the phone quickly, hoping to hide my elation. Jack the Ripper was dead—horribly dead. My husband no longer had a divorce lawyer. I felt a brief stab of shame for my selfish thoughts, but Jack’s death was poetic justice. Someone had sucked the blood out of the city’s biggest bloodsucker. Someone had given me more time.
I put on a navy pantsuit and a long face, and stopped by a smart specialty shop for a cheese tray and a bottle of wine. My long-dead mother would be proud. She’d taught me to bring food to a house of mourning.
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