It gnawed on Harry that it was Alec who took her for an emergency appointment with her therapist. It was Alec who fed her. Of course he did, because Harry had run away, scared, a coward.
When Harry came home, he found Sanya sobbing softly on a couch and Alec sitting next to her, reading a book, her hand in his.
“You need to go for a joint therapy session with her,” Alec said as he disengaged from Sanya and stood up. “And you need to stay at home and not wander off on business trips.”
“I have a job,” Harry said defensively.
“Yeah, you do, as her husband; so get to work, buddy, and don’t screw this up any more than you already have. She didn’t get here all by herself. You pushed enough,” Alec said.
Sanya didn’t even look up while they argued. Her eyes were swollen shut because of the nonstop crying. Had she been crying for three straight days?
“Don’t blame me for this,” Harry said to Alec, but his voice was shaky.
He was afraid to be with his wife because he didn’t know who she was, because this woman lying there with swollen eyes was not the happy woman he had married.
“Get your shit together,” Alec said, “and be with her for the first time in your marriage. She needs someone to be with her. And if you won’t be with her, have the balls to say so, because then I can take care of her. She needs help.”
“This is not my fault,” Harry said. A part of him was bewildered that this was happening to him, that his life had become this unbearable trial.
“She’s sick, and just like you wouldn’t leave your wife if she had the flu, you can’t leave her now,” Alec said, then sighed. “Well, you would leave her if she had the flu, so maybe you’re doing what you’ve always done. But right now, you can’t run away from this.”
Harry straightened. “Thanks for helping out, Alec. I’ll take it from here.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Alec said, and then gave Sanya’s unpliable body a hug and left.
It was a wake-up call for Harry.
Sanya wasn’t just having a bad day or a bad week or a bad month—Sanya had flown over the cuckoo’s nest, and she needed saving from herself.
Harry pulled Sanya into his arms then and promised her, “I’ll take care of you.”
Chapter 4
The Emmerys on Strandvejen
The morning after Sanya brazenly decided that she would be going to the dinner party to spite him, Harry appeared to be more hopeful than ever that his wife was coming out of it and would be her old self again very quickly thanks to the magic of changing geographies.
“It’s nice out today. I had a really good run. Looks like summer is making an entry in Copenhagen,” Harry remarked as he put on his tie in front of the mirror that hung on the bedroom door.
Sanya, who was still in bed, didn’t respond. She’d stopped responding to idle chitchat. She was done with that nonsense.
“If the weather holds, maybe you’ll come running with me tomorrow morning?” he asked.
What?
Harry went for a run every morning at six, no matter what and no matter where. He would run for thirty-five minutes; then he’d come back, make himself fresh orange juice, drink two glasses of it (he didn’t drink coffee early in the morning; coffee was for people who woke up at seven, still groggy, trying to get to work on time), and eat a bowl of muesli, the organic kind they sold at Whole Foods, with organic plain nonfat yogurt. Then he’d take a shower, after which he’d put on a Brioni suit with an Hermès tie. He used to wear Hugo Boss, but that changed when he became a partner. His ties, however, were always Hermès, block colors, the monotony broken recently with patterns like tiny seahorses and dolphins. Hermès did really cute animal prints.
Sanya, on the other hand—by the time she’d drag herself out of bed, her hair looking like it belonged on a worn-out broom until it was tamed—would look at perfect Harry in abject despair. She couldn’t compete with him. She couldn’t live up to him. And because she couldn’t, she would try to please him so he wouldn’t realize that she was a complete failure, just like her mother and sister unfailingly reminded her, and leave her.
Sanya found that the advantage of having an implosion was that she no longer looked at Harry like he was a god offering her the miracle of life. Her brain functionality did not extend to matters such as these because it was in survival mode.
“Do you have any plans for today?” he asked, trying to make conversation.
“What do you think?” Sanya asked, looking at him pointedly.
Harry almost met Sanya’s eyes, she knew, because he wanted to take her up on her challenge, but then at the last minute he looked away.
“It’s a beautiful day outside; I hope you’ll go out and explore,” Harry said. “It’s a really lovely city. You’ll like it.”
“Have a nice day, Harry,” Sanya said, and she might as well have been saying fuck off.
Harry grinned like he had an ace up his sleeve. “Well, I’ll be home around six. We have that dinner at seven. The one you told Lucky you really wanted to go to. So be ready.”
She heard him whistle as he walked through the narrow corridor into the living room. Son of a bitch, Sanya thought, and then she sighed and said, “I don’t have anything to wear.”
To rectify her lack of an outfit for the dinner at the American ambassador’s residence, Sanya called Lilly Nielsen, the real estate agent who had helped them find their new home. At the apartment showings, she had looked smart in a Chanel suit.
“I’ll pick you up at one,” Lilly said.
“I don’t want to go to a department store,” Sanya warned her.
“Of course not,” Lilly said. “I’m going to take you to the street where all the rich people shop.”
With the word rich hanging around her, Sanya opened her wallet to find she had a Wells Fargo bank card, an American Express card, and a Visa bank card called a Dankort. Lucky had given her the Dankort the other day and advised her to use the Danish bank card to avoid foreign currency charges. He had also given her a PIN for the card, which Sanya had typed onto the notepad in her iPhone. For someone who used to play with numbers in long Excel sheets and could remember revenue figures and calculate percentages inside her head with ease, she was certainly struggling with four measly ones to unlock the bounty in their Danish bank account. But how much bounty was there, and what did a dress cost in Copenhagen?
Unsure of her financial prowess anymore, Sanya called Harry. He picked up on the first ring, a new habit forced by her condition, because the last time he’d missed a call from her it had been when she was alone in her office meeting room, wailing her guts out and waiting for the paramedics and/or Harry to show up.
“Are we rich?” Sanya asked him.
Harry paused for a moment. “You can buy a new dress for tonight, but if you’re planning on picking up a car, I’d very much like Lucky to check it out first. They charge a two hundred fifty percent tax on cars in Denmark.”
“I hardly leave the house; why on earth would I want to buy a car?” she asked.
“I’m fine with it if you want to buy a car,” he said.
“I don’t want a car. Lilly wants to take me to the street where all the rich people shop,” she said. “She thinks I’m rich.”
“We’re okay,” Harry said.
“Am I okay?”
“As long as I’m okay, you’re okay,” Harry said.
“I guess since I am living off you now,” Sanya said. Despite the fact that she currently couldn’t hold down a job, a part of Sanya, the one that used to be financially independent, felt caged.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Harry snapped. “Look, we’ve been together for way too long, long before prenuptials were fashionable, to be having this conversation. Not that either of us had any money when we met anyway.”
“Do you want one now? I’m sure your whippersnapper lawyer . . . what’s her name? Tara Hansen? Maybe she can put one together, a postnuptial agreement,” Sanya suggested.
/> “You’re being silly. I’m glad you’re going shopping,” he said, changing to a safe subject.
“I’ll be glad if I make it downstairs when Lilly comes to get me,” Sanya said seriously.
Anxiety is depression’s good friend, and sometimes they party together.
“You look good,” Lilly said in her accented English when Sanya sat down on the plush leather seat of her BMW 645.
“Thank you,” she responded automatically, and then added, “you look good as well.”
A tall, slim blonde, she really did look good, and, though roughly Sanya’s age, she seemed much more sophisticated than Sanya had ever been.
“Strandvejen is the most exclusive street in all of Denmark. Strand means ‘beach’ and vejen means ‘road,’ so it’s ‘beach road,’” Lilly said as she expertly navigated traffic on Østerbrogade, the main street in Østerbro that turned into Strandvejen, after the large and famous Tuborg beer sculpture.
Lilly, who was a good saleswoman and therefore an excellent conversationalist, probably realized that Sanya wasn’t much of a talker and spent the entire time they drove showing off Strandvejen to her.
Lilly pointed to various shops and cafés as they drove down the beach road.
“You’ll love Birgitte Green. Everyone shops there,” she said, and by everyone, Sanya knew what she meant. “Birgitte Green’s store has all the right brands, and she takes care of her customers. I also shop at Trois Pommes, you know, for everyday stuff. You should check it out. And if you like to read, there’s a lovely English bookstore across from the Bang & Olufsen shop, Books & Company. The owner, Isabel, is a good friend of mine. And Øresund is just down the street, so the views are just spectacular from some of these places. I’ve sold many apartments in the area. This is the it street.”
“I’m not a high-end-clothing kind of person,” Sanya said, gesturing to the jeans and sweater she had chosen for the shopping trip—though “chosen” was a euphemism in this case. Sanya had spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about what to wear so she wouldn’t be cold or uncomfortable.
“What kind of clothes do you like to wear?” Lilly asked.
“Just . . . regular stuff,” Sanya said, and didn’t elaborate. When she used to work (just a few months ago), she tended to wear suits or work dresses. She favored Hugo Boss at bonus time; otherwise, Ann Taylor, J.Crew, midrange brands.
“I wear Chanel when I work because I do real estate at the high end of the market,” Lilly said. “The rest of the time I like a pair of jeans. But dinner at the ambassador’s residence warrants something special.”
Sanya realized she should never have said yes to this dinner. It was hard enough to leave the house, remember to lock the door, remember to take house keys, remember . . . oh, so many things. She had just wanted to piss Lucky off in the moment, so she had acted impulsively, and now the joke was on her.
“I have a showing at three,” Lilly said, as she parallel parked on the busy street, Strandvejen. “So . . . I may have to leave . . .”
“I’m not picky,” Sanya quickly said. “It shouldn’t take that long.”
If Sanya had imagined an expensive European boutique, Birgitte Green is what she would’ve imagined it would look like. When they came in, Birgitte asked if they’d like a glass of champagne. They turned her down, but it was that kind of store, ornate and classy, an exclusive little space with no mannequins but stylish and expensive clothes displayed on hangers with coordinating shoes underneath them; jewelry on large, dark stones; and a green-and-white floral upholstered antique couch artfully positioned in front of the dressing rooms.
Birgitte immediately sized Sanya up with her eyes and pulled together a couple of dinner-party-worthy dresses and hung them in a dressing room with a speed that Sanya found admirable. She and Lilly spoke to each other in Danish, leaving Sanya completely out of the conversation. Sanya would find out later that Danes did that kind of thing all the time and didn’t consider it rude. Sanya didn’t, either, considering her eagerness to avoid being asked questions or participate in small talk.
The first dress Sanya tried was in her comfort zone. A little black dress. It draped without clinging, and she felt luxurious in the obviously expensive fabric. It was simple. A small bow in the back was the only embellishment. It had a V-neck in the front and a lower one in the back. It came right above her knees. It was demure and classy. It hid all the dodgy areas (the belly fat) and accentuated the tits and ass, which had not gone south yet, well, not Deep South, anyway. The price tag was gigantic even though the dress was seventy percent off.
“I don’t think this is the dress,” Birgitte Green announced after a long moment during which Sanya waited for a pronouncement.
Birgitte stood with her arms crossed, eyeing Sanya up and down speculatively, while Lilly sat looking through her phone, completely disinterested in the Prada, Gucci, and Célines around her. Sanya felt a pang of guilt for wasting her time.
“Try the LWD,” Birgitte suggested, pointing to the white dress she had chosen and hung on Sanya’s dressing room door.
“And what’s that?”
“The little white dress,” Birgitte said. She was another Lilly. Tall, blond, and gorgeous. The national look of Denmark. “With your dark complexion, you’ll glow in white. Trust me.”
Sanya looked at her watch when she saw Lilly look at hers.
“Lilly, you don’t have to wait for me,” she told her, even though her heart was in her throat and a panicked voice inside said, How will I get home?
“You can take a taxi home,” Birgitte suggested.
Take a what? Sanya couldn’t even remember her address. This woman obviously knew nothing about anxiety.
Sanya licked her dry lips and tried to stay calm. “I’ll go to the café you showed me on the way here. The one you said everyone goes to? Harry can pick me up from there. What was it called?”
“Emmerys,” Lilly said. She gave Sanya a hug and wished her luck and left ten minutes before the clock struck three.
Sanya tried on the white dress. It was one of those lace numbers that came right below her knee. Sanya felt uncomfortable in it, even if it was a Miu Miu.
As she watched Sanya in the dress in a mirror outside the dressing room, Birgitte made small talk and wanted to know if Sanya had bought a house from Lilly.
“We’re renting.”
Birgitte nodded. “I think this is a good dress but . . . let’s try something else.”
She went to a rack and got Sanya a yellow dress with big red flowers. There was no way, Sanya thought, that she was wearing a yellow dress. It was too fucking happy. But she didn’t want to be rude—Old Sanya was still there lurking in the corners—so she went into the dressing room again and put on the happy dress. It was a dress with a tight bodice and a full tulle skirt. Sanya felt she looked like a cross between a ballet dancer and a tequila sunrise.
“Oh, it’s lovely,” Birgitte said. “Your skin color just works with everything.”
“Actually, I prefer the black dress,” Sanya said. “I’m more of an LBD kind of girl.”
Birgitte smiled at her. “Are you sure? This is really . . . you know? Va va voom.”
Sanya nodded and then shook her head but didn’t say anything. She went into the dressing room and changed out of the happy outfit back into her jeans and sweater.
“Are you an Indian expat?” Birgitte asked Sanya as she changed.
“I’m American,” Sanya said.
She was American, but when she said so, some people, particularly Europeans, who didn’t always understand the intricacies of being ethnic-looking and still being American, raised their eyebrows and she’d have to explain. “I’m ethnically Indian. My parents immigrated to the United States in the seventies. I was born and raised in the United States.”
“And your husband is . . . American?” Birgitte asked curiously when Sanya came out of the dressing room, holding the black dress on its hanger.
Sanya knew Birgitte was eager
to learn Harry’s ethnicity, but she wasn’t about to satisfy her by blurting, He’s blond and white, just like all of you. So Sanya nodded vaguely and looked at the clothes she had just tried on and felt claustrophobic. She had hit her wall.
Ultimately, Sanya bought the little black dress. Birgitte seemed dissatisfied with her choice. Partly, Sanya thought, because the LBD was seventy percent off and maybe partly because she really felt that Sanya glowed in the LWD or the tequila sunrise dress. She showed her disappointment amply as she packed up the dress.
Join the disappointed-with-Sanya club, lady, Sanya thought. Maybe there’s room in the back.
Thank goodness Emmerys was just a couple of hundred steps away from Birgitte Green, because Sanya was having heart palpitations that she would get lost.
People were sitting outside in the spring sun against a backdrop of the window display of homemade jams and jellies and bio vin, which Sanya guessed meant organic wine. Chilled from the short walk, she joined the line inside with her dress in a cloth bag hanging on her arm. Birgitte had shown her how to hold it upright on its hanger so it wouldn’t get creased, but her words were lost in Sanya’s fog of fatigue.
She should have been tempted by the pastries and countless types of bread, some so warm she could smell them, but after the shopping ordeal, all she could stomach was coffee.
The place was popular, because Sanya had to stand in line for ten minutes before she could order.
“You take cards?” Sanya asked, because she had no cash.
“Yes, Dankort,” the woman behind the counter said.
Sanya nodded and stayed calm. She had just gone through the drill with Birgitte. And once again she checked her iPhone for the PIN. How muddled is my mind, she thought, that I can’t remember four little digits?
As soon as she took her latte to a table and settled the bag with the dress on the chair next to her, a woman approached Sanya. “Hi,” she said in a strong American accent. She carried a paper bag with a baguette sticking out of it.
The Copenhagen Affair Page 3