Then Came You

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Confidentially,” he said, lowering his voice to suit the word, “that wasn’t my first business.”

  “Oh?” I didn’t have to fake my interest or my smile. Marcus was easy to listen to and not bad-looking, for his age. While he was across the room, exchanging handshakes and backslaps with a tableful of businessmen, I’d slipped a handful of gougères into the empty zippered makeup case I kept in my purse. I was, I knew, long past the point where I had to steal bread from the basket, or crudités from the free spread at a bar, just to be sure I’d have something to eat the next day — I had money, plus a refrigerator full of fruit and Greek yogurt and a single emergency bar of dark chocolate studded with candied orange peel — but it was a habit I couldn’t break. Maybe when I was a lady who lunched, kept in the style to which I wanted to become accustomed, I could go into therapy and figure it all out.

  “So what were you,” I asked, leaning forward to give him the tiniest glimpse of my candlelit cleavage, with the cheese puffs warm in my lap, “before you were a seat-heating mogul?”

  He grinned, looking, with his broad, round face, like a little boy who’d gotten away with something, timing the punchline he’d clearly delivered more than once. “I sold pot.”

  I widened my eyes and turned my mouth into a perfectly lipsticked O of amusement. “I’m shocked.” I wasn’t. I’d looked him up online beforehand. The pot anecdote was one he’d told before. But I knew my lines in this play.

  He gave a little shrug, a charming smile. I could smell the starch of his suit, the juice from his filet on his china plate, his cologne, layered and complex. His big hands rested on the white tablecloth; his teeth gleamed in the candlelight. “It was the eighties,” said Marcus. “You wouldn’t remember.” I remembered the eighties just fine, but I didn’t say so. Instead, I bent my head over my folded napkin, soft hair brushing my cheeks. It was like a fencing match, parry and thrust, advance and retreat. Flash him a smile, then turn away, tracing a fingertip over the tines of my fork. Lick my lips, then let him hear my skirt rustle as I recrossed my legs; get him so bewitched that he wouldn’t even feel the blade slide in.

  I smoothed the fabric of my dress, a three-thousand-dollar Jil Sander that I’d bought at Saks that afternoon and was wearing with the tags tucked against my skin. I’d take it off as soon as I got home, sponge off any deodorant residue, run a lint brush over it, zip it back into its garment bag, and return it the next day on my lunch hour. I’m sorry, I’d tell the salesgirl, with a sorrowful expression on my face. I adored it, but my husband, not so much.

  Marcus had finished his meat and was using a bit of bread to mop up the juices, turning it in circles around the plate until the porcelain was shiny. “So how about you?” he asked. “Are you a native?”

  I kept my answers short, talking about how much I loved New York: my apartment, my friends, my freedom. After the waiter handed us dessert menus, I told him about the weekends I’d walk all the way to Brooklyn (never mind that I hadn’t done it in eight years, and when I’d done it last it was because I didn’t even have two bucks for the subway). I said that I loved the theater and the museums, and that thanks to my job I got invited to premieres and parties, special exhibits and opening nights.

  “No children?” he asked.

  I paused, knowing I had to be careful to sound like I didn’t care one way or the other, because what if he didn’t want more kids? But saying I didn’t want them would make me sound cold. “I guess. .” I began. “Well, you know. It’s probably the same for lots of women. Maybe I was too busy, and I was definitely too picky.” That last part, the “picky” part, was important. No man wants to feel like he’s just the latest chump to buy a ticket for the merry-go-round, the last one aboard a horse that everyone else has already ridden.

  “You think it’s too late?” he asked. Then, “Was that a rude question? Forgive me. I haven’t done this much — this dating.”

  I looked down again, arranging my face in an expression that was just the right combination of rueful (over the kid thing) and amused (by him). “I don’t know if it’s too late. I’ve never really tried.” This was the truth — the one time I’d gotten pregnant, I had definitely not been trying. I let it out as a sigh, then raised my eyes to his. “All I know is, when I do it — if I do it — I want it to be right.” I hesitated, considering whether I was saying too much, but I’d had four glasses of wine by then, Riesling with the appetizers and a syrupy Shiraz with the chicken, and booze on top of a juice fast tends to loosen one’s tongue. “I want a nest egg,” I said. I’d started to say money before remembering that people who had lots of it rarely said the word. “More than I’ve got now. I’ve got some savings…” Again, true. I had a decent-size investment account, a nicely diversified portfolio that hadn’t taken too hard a hit in the latest downturn, but it wasn’t even close to being true fuck-you money, and true fuck-you money was one thing I was sure I wanted. Money, and what it could buy; what it could do, what it could keep you safe from.

  Marcus sat back in his chair, his eyes unreadable. I imagined the feeling of a fishing line, formerly taut, going slack in my grip. Shit, I thought. I lost him. Then, unexpectedly, he leaned across the table and took my hands.

  “I like you,” he announced. It had the tone of finality, like a manager saying you’re hired, or a groom saying I do. I felt my body uncoil. My head was humming with relief and the wine. His hands were big and warm and strong and dry — all the things you’d hope a billionaire’s hands would be. Even better, they felt no different than the hands of a man my own age, which was encouraging, because I suspected — correctly, it turned out — that his body, while well maintained, would reflect his age. Things drooped — his ass, his balls, the flabby little man-breasts that you couldn’t see underneath his made-to-measure shirts with his monogram in violet thread on the cuffs.

  Marcus took me to dinners and on trips that made Kevin’s steakhouses and long weekends look like jokes. Together we went to the best restaurants and the fanciest hotels, spending long weekends in the George V in Paris and on islands you could only reach by private jet. We had tickets to the opera (I guzzled Red Bull in the ladies’ room to keep from dozing off during the arias) and invitations to museum openings and galas. I’d take him places, too, getting us tickets to events that I thought would amuse him and establish my hot-younger-woman-about-town credentials: a rock concert in a club downtown; out for a falafel, which he ate gamely, licking tahini sauce from his fingers, tucking a paper napkin on top of his tie.

  His children, when I finally met them, were what I’d expected: overbred, overprivileged trust-fund brats with big white Kennedy teeth, thin lips, and suspicious eyes. One of the boys was in a band (of course, I thought to myself, keeping my smile on my face as he told me about how one of their songs was blowing up YouTube), the other boy was a lawyer working for Marcus (of course, take two), and the girl was an associate in the objet department at Kohler’s. I didn’t like the way she looked at me, narrowly, across the dinner table, then again while I was washing up (Miss Thing, of course, hadn’t bothered to clear so much as a teaspoon). I could practically read the balloon over her head, the one that said gold digger. Let her think it, I told myself. Let her imagine the worst. When it comes down to a battle between two women, whether it’s wife versus mother-in-law or girlfriend versus daughter, the woman who wins is the one he’s taking to bed.

  After five dates, Marcus told me he loved me. True, he’d been having an orgasm at the time, but it still counted. I’d wiped off my mouth on his thigh and wriggled toward the headboard until I was cradled in his arms. I would never challenge him, never argue, never behave as if I was his equal. I’d be his comfort, his cheerleader, his appreciative audience, his unconditional supporter. Love you, too, I whispered, kissing his cheek, smoothing his hair off his forehead, acknowledging, to my surprise, that it almost felt like it was true.

  One night in June, we went to an opening at the Museum of Modern Art. At the dinner, I was se
ated across from the honored guest, Laurena Costovya, a Polish performance artist in her sixties who’d come to America for a retrospective of her work. For three months, young artists would re-create some of her most famous pieces — the one where a man and a woman danced a topless tango, bashing their bodies against each other until they bled; the one where a man balanced naked on stilts for ten hours at a time, his face hidden behind an executioner’s black leather hood.

  Stately as a statue at the head of the table, Laurena wore a kind of nun’s robe made of raw white silk, with her hair, still brown, in a heavy plait over one shoulder, and no makeup except for a single slash of red on her lips. When she was in her twenties, she’d carved swastikas into her belly with a shard of glass, and done installations where she’d run face-first into pillars until she collapsed. She’d lit her long hair on fire, and stood perfectly still for hours with her partner holding a switchblade to her throat, his thumb hovering over the button that would pop the knife into her neck. Here in New York, she was performing a piece entitled See/Be Seen, where she’d sit at a table for eight hours at a stretch, across from whoever cared to face her. After dinner, there was a preview. I remember the appreciative murmur as she gathered her skirts and crossed the room to take her seat. I thought about how silly the whole thing was, how far from what I thought of as “art,” as she took her seat, arranging the folds of her skirt. To me, art was a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music, not some senior citizen sitting behind a desk.

  “Go on,” said Marcus, urging me toward the empty space across from the artist. I crossed the floor, heels clicking, and sat down, my smile firmly on my face, my hair swept into an updo, my makeup professionally applied (at two hundred dollars a pop it was an unwelcome expense, but I couldn’t skip it, not with photographers on hand).

  Laurena regarded me. I looked back, legs crossed, hands folded in my lap. My eyes were on hers, but my mind was wandering. I was thinking about how many calories I’d consumed that day and whether the walk I’d taken at lunchtime, twenty blocks up Fifth Avenue with a circle around Bryant Park, had burned most of them off. I was wondering how soon Marcus would ask me to marry him, whether he’d ask me what kind of ring I wanted or just buy something himself, and thinking about my little apartment and whether I’d keep it, whether he’d give me the kind of allowance that would let me slip twenty-three hundred dollars to the landlord each month unnoticed, and whether there was anything besides my clothes that I’d take with me. Probably not, but I wanted to keep that apartment. It was my secret lair, my bolt-hole, my hideaway, in case I ever had to run, to go to ground. Thoughts like this were running through my head in a pleasant, lazy loop when suddenly the artist’s gaze caught me and pinned me. My face flushed, and my eyes widened. I felt as if I was being X-rayed, like my skin had been stripped off, like this woman with her plain, strong-boned face knew not only everything I was thinking but everything I was, and everything I’d done to turn myself into the woman who was sitting before her, all the parts I’d manipulated, reduced or amplified, edited and changed.

  Before I could stop myself, before I knew that I even intended to speak, I found myself blurting, in a husky whisper that hardly sounded like my voice, “It wasn’t really a baby.”

  Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. The moment seemed to spin out forever. I felt my skin prickle and my mouth go dry as I sat there, trembling, every muscle tensed, waiting for. . what? For her to say something? To stand up and yell liar, or fraud? For her to proclaim, in the accented voice I’d heard on tapes of the performances she’d given, that she knew my real name? She couldn’t speak, I reminded myself. Silence was part of her shtick — her performance, to use a nicer word, but shtick was what it was. She sat. She observed. She could see and be seen, but she would never say a word.

  I sat, forcing myself to hold still until my heartbeat had slowed and my legs weren’t shaking, until I was sure I had control and that no one in that well-dressed crowd had heard what I’d said. You might see things, I told the artist in my head. But I go out, I walk in the world, I do, I change. Then I gave her a smile — more of a smirk, really — and rose from the chair. With my head held high and my face composed, I crossed the enormous room, gliding over the marble floor, feeling the lights that had been set up for the taping burn against my skin. Marcus slipped his arm around my waist. “Welcome back, gorgeous,” he whispered into my ear, and I felt adrenaline surge through my body. I win, I thought. I win.

  A few days later, we woke up in bed together, and I put my arms around his neck and murmured, in my sleepiest, sexiest voice, “You know, we can’t keep doing this. It’s not a good example for your children.”

  “Well, then,” he said, and reached across me, opening the drawer of the bedside table and pulling out the little velvet box I’d been waiting for since I’d spotted him in Starbucks: my diamond as big as the Ritz. “I know it’s early days,” he said, his voice curiously humble, “but I’m sure about you.”

  I spent three months planning a wedding — his kids, my friends, a few of his business associates and all of his assistants, who probably knew him better than any of us. Then there was the honeymoon, moving into his place, which spanned two entire stories of the San Giacomo, one of New York City’s grand old apartment buildings that stood along Central Park West. It was months before I had occasion to think of the artist again, the way she’d looked at me, the mocking curl of her lips, the way her eyes had widened as she’d stared and seemed to say without speaking, I know what you are. I know exactly what you are.

  JULES

  I was in the basement of T.I., one of the eating clubs on Prospect Avenue, standing in a circle of three other couples with a beer in my hand, nodding while my boyfriend Dan Finnerty talked about a hockey game. Whether this was a game he’d played in or merely a game he’d seen I wasn’t quite sure, and it was too far into the conversation to interrupt and ask him, so I nodded and smiled and laughed when laughter seemed required. When my telephone buzzed in my pocket, I tried not to look too eager as I grabbed for it.

  “Excuse me,” I shouted in the direction of Dan’s face, then trotted up the stairs to the second-floor ladies’ room. You could feel the bass of the stereo thumping through the floor, but it was by far the quietest place in the building.

  “Hello?”

  “Julia?” It was my father…and he sounded like he was drunk. Even in that single word I could hear the edge of his voice, the way the I of my name sounded mushy.

  My heart sped up. “Where are you?” I asked as I imagined the possibilities. In a bar. In a bus station. In a car accident, on the side of the road, in a spill of twinkling glass, with an ambulance’s light washing his face in red.

  He didn’t answer. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Dad.”

  “No, it’s not.” He sounded stubborn; a little boy refusing to believe it was bedtime. “It is not okay. It’s not okay what I did to you guys…what I did to you mom. I’m so ashamed of myself.” He was crying now, horrible choked-sounding sobs, and even though it wasn’t the first time he’d done this, called me up apologizing and crying, I could never keep from crying myself.

  “Dad.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and I could hear the sound of something slamming. Was he pounding his fist against a table? Was he hitting himself? “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Dad.” I leaned against the wooden wall. Somewhere not far away, normal college students were enjoying a normal college night. Soon someone would suggest a game of croquet, where you chugged a beer every time you whacked your ball through the wickets. Dan would be the game’s most enthusiastic participant.

  “You deserve better than me.”

  An icy blade slid into my heart. “Dad,” I said carefully. “Are you thinking about hurting yourself?”

  He managed a chuckle. “More than I have already? Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

  “You’re going to be okay,” I told him. “Just hang
on. You’ll go to Willow Crest. They can help you there.” But I was talking to a dial tone.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Tears were rolling down my cheeks. Where was he? Was he all right? And who could I call to ask? Not my mother. She wouldn’t go looking. Not the cops, because what would I say? He called me and he was crying? I sat on the toilet, cradling my face in my hands. How had it come to this?

  “Jules?”

  I peeked through the crack, and there was Kimmie Park, a girl I knew slightly. She’d been one of my first-year hallmates and, this year, a coworker in the admissions office.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, still sitting on the toilet. Here I was, five weeks away from graduation and the bright future my degree was supposed to ensure, and I was huddled in a bathroom, crying. Maybe it was the hormones.

  I’d called Jared Baker three days after I’d met him in the mall. The questionnaire, all twenty-five pages of it, had arrived in my mailbox the next day. I’d sent in the forms, and then, a week later, biked to the clinic for an interview and another lengthy survey. What was my favorite movie, my favorite food, my favorite song? I gave answers that were somewhere between the truth and what I thought would please the customers, saying Hitchcock and Jane Austen instead of Pretty Woman and the occasional trashy celebrity biography, writing that I loved listening to classical music, which was true only on nights I couldn’t sleep.

  The next week I’d undergone the most thorough physical of my life, plus an interview with a psychologist, an earnest young woman with curly brown hair and small round glasses. A middle-aged nurse with an iron-gray bob and, I eventually learned, disturbingly cold hands showed me how to give myself hormone shots, right underneath my belly button. A doctor wrote me a prescription for the needles and the medications I’d inject, drugs to maximize the number of eggs I’d produce. “You may experience some mood swings, or feel like you’re having really intense PMS,” he told me, but what I’d noticed was feeling weepy all the time. Alone in my room, the sounds of people shouting and laughing outside, a half-dozen different songs blaring from iPod speakers propped up against open windows, I’d pull out the one picture I kept of my father, from a trip we’d taken to the beach. I’d look at my younger self, the cutoff jean shorts and the braces, my father, strong and handsome in his jeans and alligator shirt, and just cry and cry, which wasn’t like me at all. My mother was the family’s designated weeper. I got angry. I made plans. Mostly, I kept myself to myself, acting the part of a normal girl, a girl who belonged here, a heedless, laughing, bright-future girl whose father had never been in the newspapers, or in rehab, or in prison.