People Who Knew Me

by Kim Hooper

  Drew would assume it was his, conceived on that one night we had sex together—a miracle of sorts. Yes, we finally did have sex. It was a moment of weakness for me. He came home one Friday night in August—I told Gabe I had plans with Marni—and I got a little woozy with wine. I was feeling especially guilty lying next to Drew in bed, wondering what the hell I was doing with my life.

  “You know, next month it will be nine years since we met,” he said.

  “Nine years? Wow.”

  “We should do something special. To celebrate.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  “We could have dinner at that restaurant we went to the day we got married,” he said. There was excitement in his voice that made me nauseated.

  “Old Homestead Steak House,” I said.

  “Have a couple martinis, appetizers, desserts—the works.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “It’ll celebrate the start of our tenth year—a decade!”

  “Good idea,” I said, trying to share his enthusiasm, or at least sound like I did.

  He turned on his side, put his hand on my middle.

  “I know things have been hard,” he said.

  I gave him a smile that felt weak, hoping it didn’t look it. I don’t know if it was remorse or pity or what, but when he peeled back the sheets that were covering my body, I didn’t stop him. I felt I owed it to him. It didn’t last long. He was inside me and, a minute later, he wasn’t. I could have convinced myself it hadn’t even happened except that my inner thighs were wet with him leaking out of me and my cheeks were wet with tears.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, using his thumb to dry under my eyes.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I did know, though.

  “I was thinking,” Drew said, “maybe you were right.”

  I pulled the sheets back up to cover my body, all the way up to my chin.

  “About what?” I asked. I thought—hoped—he was going to say I was right that we should split up, but then I remembered I’d never proposed such a thing, not out loud, at least.

  “Maybe I should get her a professional caretaker, come home to you,” he said. “It’s been so long. She’s not going to get better. We can’t do this forever.”

  But, see, I’d found Gabe. I’d found a way to do exactly this—forever.

  “How could we afford it?” I asked, using his own argument against him.

  “I have to get a job. We’ll make it work somehow.”

  There was a time when this was all I wanted from him—these words. They were stale now.

  “I don’t want to get my hopes up,” I said. I was mean. I wanted him to be the one to give up on our marriage. I wanted him to be the one to quit. “Come to me when you have a caretaker and a job and a balance sheet that shows we won’t be in debt for the rest of our lives.”

  He pulled away, back to his side of the bed, resumed staring at the ceiling.

  “You don’t have faith in us, do you?” he asked.

  “These last few years have done a number,” I said.

  His only rebuttal was a long sigh.

  * * *

  I knew the baby was Gabe’s. We’d taken chances—too many times. I should have gone back on the pill. I’d stopped taking it a few months after Drew moved in with his mother, telling Drew, “What’s the point?” Gabe and I were responsible, at first. We used condoms, Drew’s condoms. Then we decided to skip the condoms, because it felt better without them. He would just pull out, a method every man claims to have mastered. The first couple months, I was nervous. But then nothing happened and I felt invincible. This woman at work—Tricia—had been trying to have a baby for years. I figured it couldn’t be that easy.

  When I pictured telling Drew I was pregnant, I saw him smiling. He’d say something like, That’s awesome. He wouldn’t worry about logistics. He would be relentlessly happy, until I’d tell him about Gabe. Then his face would fall, every muscle in it giving up entirely. He would look confused and sad—not angry, though. There would be pain in his eyes, as if he’d just been knifed in the stomach by someone he thought he could trust. He wouldn’t look down at the wound, though; he’d just look at me, asking how I could do this. I wouldn’t have an answer.

  * * *

  I faked the flu for the rest of the week. I needed time to think, to contemplate the human growing inside me. I still called Gabe every day, just to hear his voice. He said he couldn’t wait to see me, he missed me. He said we’d have to make up for lost time, as if that lost time were the duration of a year rather than just some days. My stomach ached—either subtle morning sickness or nervous nausea brought on by what I’d have to tell him when I saw him.

  I went back to work on Monday. September 10. I set my purse on my desk, then went straight to Gabe’s office. I thought I’d tell him right then, rip off the proverbial Band-Aid. But the way he looked at me rendered me speechless. He looked at me like he was witnessing the most beautiful sight in the world, taking it in, appreciating it in the way only poets can. He stood from his chair, walked past me so I caught the whiff of his cologne, and shut his office door, without care for who saw. Then he lifted me up—two hands on my waist—and set me on his desk. He lay me down so I knocked over a small wooden desk clock and the only picture he had in his office—of him and his mother, Lucy. He’d said she’d love me, that he couldn’t wait for her to meet me.

  He pushed up my skirt as far as it would go, to the very top of my thighs. He yanked down my nylon stockings. They tore.

  “I’ve been thinking about this for days,” he said, kissing my neck. My entire body tingled. I reached up and under his shirt, touched his skin.

  “I like you like this,” I said. I felt wanted—desperately wanted.

  It was quick because it had to be. Anyone could knock on the door. Anyone could hear the heavy breathing, the creaking of furniture under the weight of bodies. When we were done, I took off my nylons, put them in his trash can, underneath some already-discarded papers. He pulled up his pants and, except for our flushed faces, it was like nothing had happened. He opened the door, said loudly, so everyone in the vicinity could hear, “Thank you for the update, Emmy. Check back in a couple hours if you get any more information.”

  I nodded obediently and left, some folders in my arms as props.

  For the next few hours, he instant-messaged me on my computer. I had to turn the sound off so my coworkers wouldn’t hear the constant ding of a new message. I sat close to the screen, blocking the view of the little arriving thought bubbles containing his words.

  I already can’t wait to see you again, he wrote.

  You’re so beautiful, he wrote.

  I asked him where he wanted to go for dinner after work, told him I’d make a reservation—somewhere nice. We could stay the night at his house, for once. Drew had picked up Bruce when I told him I was sick. “I’ll get him out of your hair,” he’d said.

  Let’s just ditch work, he wrote.

  Let’s spend the day together, he wrote.

  I crossed and uncrossed my legs. My panties were wet. I told him we couldn’t just leave together in the middle of the morning—everyone would know.

  I’ll leave first. I’ll tell them I have a meeting uptown. I always have meetings, he wrote.

  You leave an hour after that, he wrote.

  An hour will give me time to prepare a picnic for you, he wrote.

  Central Park. Meet at the Christopher Columbus statue at noon, he wrote.

  I watched the cursor flicker on the screen, considering.

  Okay.

  * * *

  I walked up Sixth, toward the park. As I got closer, foreign languages flew around me every which way. The city was crawling with camera-carrying tourists, even on a Monday. They snapped pictures of art deco buildings that weren’t special, but may have seemed so. When I got to the edge of the park, the horse carriage drivers bombarded me, asking if I wanted a ride, waving brochures in my face. I wanted to ask why it wasn’
t obvious that I lived there, that I was a New Yorker, that I didn’t need a ride through the park because I could walk its paths every day if I so desired. I put my head down, shuffled past the crowds of tourists who were considering a carriage ride, and made my way to the mall.

  I could see him standing there, next to the Christopher Columbus statue, from a good hundred yards away. He was holding a picnic basket in his right hand—a wicker basket, the kind you picture in your head when thinking of a “picnic basket.” I wondered if he owned it, if he’d had it stashed in a closet at home for whatever reason, or if he’d gone out to buy it for this very occasion.

  The forecast dictated rain later in the day. A few stray clouds hung in the sky, but I was convinced they would wait to break open until after our picnic. I felt like the universe was on my side.

  He didn’t see me coming; he was facing the other direction, watching a woman in workout attire walk briskly while pushing an empty stroller. The baby was strapped to her back, asleep. Gabe was smiling, and I wondered if it was at the baby, or if he was just smiling in anticipation of me.

  I tiptoed right up behind him: “Boo.”

  He flinched. All New Yorkers knew to be slightly on edge in Central Park. We’d heard the stories.

  He set down the picnic basket and put his arms around me, lifting me off the ground far enough that my shoes dangled off my toes, my heels bare. He took my hand and we walked down the path, the trees arching overhead, as if the branches on one side of the mall and the branches on the other side were desperate to touch each other. Every other park bench was occupied: one with a man in a business suit, maybe out of the office for a rare breath of fresh air; one with a woman who had a sketchbook in her lap; one with a couple and a toddler having a temper tantrum so loud that the couple couldn’t bear to make eye contact with us. They were embarrassed, clearly, shushing the young girl and promising things—cotton candy, a stuffed animal, a horse carriage ride—to get her to shut up.

  “They must be from out of town,” Gabe said once we passed them.

  “How do you know?”

  “They’re forcing an outing to Central Park when that kid is in a terrible mood.”

  The way he said it—that kid—made me uneasy about telling him about my kid, our kid.

  “It’s probably their last day here. Long weekend trip. From Rhode Island, I’d guess,” he said.

  Drew and I used to do this—watch people and guess their circumstances. The more outlandish, the better.

  We didn’t walk through the park; we meandered, the way lovers do, announcing with their slow stroll that they are in no hurry to be anywhere else. When we got to the Great Lawn, Gabe took a carefully folded, red-and-white-checkered blanket from the messenger bag slung over his shoulder and shook it out onto the grass. He sat and I did the same.

  In the heat of summer, when kids were out of school and tourists were at their peak, the lawn was crowded with people tanning, throwing Frisbees, playing catch. On this day, we were mostly alone.

  We were facing the Belvedere Castle, Central Park’s oddest attraction. It looked to have been lifted by a crane from Victorian England and transported to America, dropped in the middle of the park with no discernible rhyme or reason. When I was a little girl, I asked my mom if a princess lived there and she said, with a snort, “There are no princesses.”

  “I always thought it would be nice to get married there,” Gabe said, nodding up toward the castle.

  I’d never heard of a man who dreamed about his wedding day.

  “It would be,” I said.

  “People do it,” he said. “Someone from the office went to a friend’s wedding there.”

  “And I bet a thousand different strangers have pictures of it.”

  “True.”

  He took a bottle of wine out of the basket, along with a sleeve of crackers and a plastic-wrapped plate of cheese cut into little squares.

  “I did the best I could with the hour I had,” he said.

  “Pretty impressive.”

  He poured wine into plastic cups—one for each of us. Thankfully, the cups were red, not see-through. I took a fake sip and set my cup behind me. I’d pour out some of the wine whenever he turned around. It was silly, but the only alternative I could think of to blurting out, I can’t drink, I’m pregnant.

  “So,” he said, with a long exhale that warned me he had something on his mind. I’d hoped this would be one of those romantic outings when both parties maintain the illusion of having nothing on their minds besides each other.

  “So,” I repeated.

  I nibbled on a cracker, nervously.

  “We’ve been together a year now,” he said.

  Had it been a year? It all went by so fast.

  “Have you and Drew talked about the trial separation? Like, making it a permanent separation?”

  I gazed off at the castle, thought of the princess I’d imagined, her storybook life.

  “Not exactly. Not yet,” I said.

  “I think it’s time,” he said, resolved. “You can move out and move in with me.”

  I thought of the teachers in school saying at the end of exams, “Time’s up.” I had to know this moment would come. Maybe it was meant to come. I was pregnant now, after all. It sounded idyllic—living with Gabe, having this child with him. I just couldn’t imagine telling Drew. Maybe I could just end things with Drew without him ever knowing about the pregnancy. There were all kinds of ways to be a coward.

  “I want that,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “So do I.”

  His sincerity made me understand the phrase “tugging at heartstrings.” I felt that—the physical pull in my chest.

  “I think about us sharing an actual life, taking vacations together, getting married one day.”

  Starting a family? I wondered.

  “You have the imagination of a woman,” I said. I was trying to be funny, but he was tight-lipped in response.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “What we’re doing now isn’t enough.”

  He had the ultimatum of a woman, too.

  I fiddled with a cracker, turning it over and over in my palm like old men did with dominoes during afternoon games in the park. A dog barked behind us. When Gabe turned around to look, I tipped over my cup, let the grass drink my wine.

  I had to make a choice, finally. I couldn’t keep putting it off. Gabe would end it. And then I’d be left with Drew, unhappy again. It was a risk to choose Gabe, to hurt Drew. It was becoming clear, though, that I had to take it—not just for me, but for the baby.

  I looked up at the sky, scattered clouds descending on me and Manhattan.

  “Do you want a family?” I didn’t realize how scared I was to ask until the question left my mouth.

  “Of course,” he said. He leaned back, weight on his hands, pressed firmly into the ground.

  The relief, oh, the relief. That was it—I would leave Drew.

  “Come here,” he said. He reached out toward me, coaxing me to fall into him. I crawled across the blanket and let his arms envelop me. He made me feel small; he made my worries feel small. He lay back onto the blanket and eased my body down to join his. He was lying flat, gazing up at the sky. I pressed up next to his side, one leg swung over him, head on his chest.

  We lay like that, intertwined like a couple of homeless people trying to stay warm, until a cloud broke open and a few raindrops fell. Then he said, “Let’s go home.”

  * * *

  We lay in his bed, in the middle of the afternoon, naked. We’d lost any sense of time, alternating between sex and naps for hours. It was luxurious, hedonistic, what I imagined a honeymoon to be. I’ve never been the kind of person to use the phrase “made love,” but that’s the only phrase appropriate for what we did in the middle of that afternoon.

  “You know, if you had a life with me, I’d annoy you,” I said, sitting up in bed. “Eventually, I mean.”

  He sat behind me, rubbing my shoulders, leaning in eve
ry few minutes to kiss my neck. If he was trying to convince me to be with him, to choose him, he was doing all the right things.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But I’m fairly certain my adoration of you would outweigh the annoyances.”

  He seemed so sure, so confident.

  “Sometimes I clip my nails while I’m sitting on the couch. The noise will drive you crazy,” I said. “And I’ll blame you for things that aren’t your fault. I’ll have bad moods. I snore. Did you know that?”

  He laughed. “I want to know all the details of you—even the ones you consider bad,” he said. “And, yes, I know you snore.”

  I turned around. “Do I keep you up at night?”

  “Nope,” he said. “I just nudge you a little, ease you onto your side, and the snoring stops.”

  I turn back, face forward again, looking at the TV that isn’t on.

  “What if you feel this way—we feel this way—because this isn’t real life we’re living?”

  He was quiet.

  “This is a fantasy,” I said, stretching my arms out wide to indicate I was referring to his bed, his home, us. “That’s what all affairs are, aren’t they? An escape?”

  “This isn’t an affair for me,” he said. I’d offended him.

  “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s more than an ‘affair’ to me, too,” I said, putting air quotes around the offending word. “But if we’re not sneaking around, if it’s not so thrilling, maybe we’ll feel differently about each other.”

  “Em,” he said, coaxing me to turn around and face him. I did. “I never wanted thrilling. I’m not twenty years old anymore. I can’t even tolerate roller coasters. I’d love to be boring together. Not bored—never bored. Just boring. Ordinary. Together. I’d love that.”

  I hung on that word—“love.”

  “Boring together,” I repeated.

  Maybe it wasn’t cowardly to leave Drew. Maybe it was cowardly to stay. I’d told myself to sit through things, to wait it out, like an antsy child in the backseat during a seemingly endless car trip. I’d told myself the destination would be worth the journey. We would trudge through and count ourselves as one of the bruised and battered—but emboldened—couples who “stuck with it.” I’d heard older couples tell stories of their own turmoil, how they stood by each other’s side when leaving would have been easier—even better. I respected them, applauded them, looked to them as the example that my own mother could never provide. But I’d come to wonder if they deserved the accolades. Perhaps applauding them was just applauding cowardice.