“If it doesn’t matter, then don’t bring it up,” Peter said, his voice rising. “What difference does it make whether I said ‘Great’ or ‘Fine’?”
Caroline put her hands on her hips.
“Peter,” she said, “this is a big deal, which you know perfectly well. We’ve never been invited to the Spensers’ before. Why do you act as though this is nothing? It’s not nothing. These people are important in New York. In fact they are crucial. He’s a Morgan. And she’s on the board of the Met. I would kill to get her on the board at the center.”
“‘They are crucial,’” Peter repeated scornfully. “Caroline, you sound like a fool. Why are you so excited about the Morgans? I went to school with Morgans, they aren’t descended from God. Waddy Baxter is a Morgan. He’s a complete jerk. He used to make fart noises during the headmaster’s speeches. You want to meet him? I’ll introduce you.”
Caroline made a disgusted noise. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, furious. “You’re the one who sounds like a fool. Don’t pretend that an invitation from Waddy Baxter is the same as one from Edward Spenser. You’re being an ass. Don’t treat this—” She stopped. “You act as though this is nothing special.”
“It’s just a cocktail party, for Christ’s sake,” Peter said. “They want you to give money to something. Don’t be so naive. You act as though they’ve asked us to marry them.”
Caroline closed her eyes in irritation and took the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. After a moment she looked at him.
“Don’t condescend to me, Peter,” she said.
“Don’t tell me what to do, Caroline,” Peter said, and walked out of the room.
On the day of the party, Peter had forgotten about it. He had been in Chicago the night before, and flew back in the late afternoon. There was fog over La Guardia, and his plane circled bumpily for over an hour. Peter finally landed, took a cab home, and arrived to an apartment empty of Caroline. He heard Amanda and her nanny, Maeve, in the kitchen, but in the bedroom there was only the invitation lying on his bureau, with a note: “See you here, I hope.” The word hope was circled viciously.
He remembered then, of course. He looked at his watch: it was eight-twenty. The invitation said six to eight, and the Spencers lived on Fifth between Ninetieth and Ninety-first. If he left that very instant, he wouldn’t arrive until twenty of nine, maybe quarter of. And he didn’t want to leave that instant: he felt sweaty and wrinkled. He went into the bathroom to wash.
He raised a double handful of water to his face. His eyes closed, he thought of what it would be like, arriving at the party. The big marble-floored downstairs lobby, the rack by the elevator jammed with heavy coats. The elevator rising toward the festive crowd, the dread of imminent hilarity. Upstairs, the door opening onto the end of a winter cocktail party. The voices loud, the pitch shrill, the gestures wide, the gazes unfocused. People making promises about lunches and telephone calls that they would never keep. The host would be unfindable, and in any case a stranger to Peter. The hostess would be caught in a high-voiced tangle of people in an inner room, by a marble fireplace. Her polite but mystified look as he approached through the sea of strangers. The snobbish face of the waiter, with his tray of white wine and champagne. Peter felt exhausted by the prospect.
Caroline would be with their hostess. She would be part of that circle in the inner room, by the marble fireplace. She would be leaning forward, intent, anxious not to miss anything, her eyes blinking rapidly with concentration. Her laughter high-pitched and self-conscious. When she caught sight of Peter she would smile in an inauthentic way, watching fondly as he made his way through the encumbering crowd. When he arrived at her side, she would put her hand on his shoulder, as though claiming him, and lean forward.
“Mrs. Spenser, I want you to meet my husband, Peter,” she would say, proud, officious, and Peter would feel, for that moment, as though he had become her creature, under her command.
“Fuck it,” Peter said to the mirror, throwing the towel down on the sink. “It’s too late to go anyway.” He went down the hall to find Amanda.
“So,” said Emma, shocked, “you never went at all?”
Peter shook his head.
“She must have been furious.”
“She was,” said Peter. “I had let her down. And I did condescend to her. She was right.”
The headwaiter bustled toward them, a small busboy behind him. Their huge plates were swirled importantly away, and the tasseled menus handed back for dessert. They ordered only coffee. Disapproving, the headwaiter bowed, and backed into the gloom.
“I think when you get divorced you never feel it’s your fault, no matter what,” Emma said. “Everyone feels they’ve been driven to it, by someone else, against their wills. Everyone feels they’re nice people who’ve been wronged.”
Peter raised his eyebrows, not quite agreeing. “I suppose so.”
“That’s how Caroline and Warren must feel: unsuspecting innocents, ambushed by villains. And so do we. We all feel wronged, and innocent.”
“I know,” Peter said, now giving way. “Caroline was always the same, from the beginning. I was the one who changed. I thought, in the beginning, that our differences wouldn’t matter.”
They were silent for a moment.
“But what about the cooking?” Emma said. “You said the last straw was about cooking.”
“Oh,” said Peter. “The cooking was really tangential. That night, Caroline came home after the party around nine or nine-thirty. By then I’d made myself an omelette. I was in the library, very happy, with a book and a glass of wine.
“Caroline was furious about everything, of course, but what we ended up fighting over was the fact that she had to cook dinner for herself that night. She’d expected that I’d turn up at the party and we’d go out to dinner afterwards. But now, because of my inconsiderateness, she had to make herself something to eat.”
Peter shrugged his shoulders. “It was the last straw, for me. It was the terminal moment. While we were arguing, it came to me like a sort of promise that I was not going to spend the rest of my life in this kind of argument, with a woman who took these things seriously. I realized, during that argument, that we had nothing in common—no goals, no principles, no attitudes, nothing. We didn’t even like doing the same things. Caroline would rather watch TV than read, she’d rather read a magazine than a book, and she’d rather go to a cocktail party than anything else in the world. It was a revelation. I’d known these things before, but I’d known them separately, not as part of a whole, and they’d meant nothing. I’d thought they didn’t matter, individually, because there was something central that bound us together. But in that moment I realized there was no central thing, and that what I’d thought was love was actually affection and pity. This all hit me at once, and the next thing I thought was, I’m not going on with this. When that came to me, it was like a balm, a moment of overwhelming relief.”
He looked at Emma ruefully. “It sounds extreme, now. It sounds unfair to Caroline: it was just another argument.”
Emma shook her head. “They build up. They aren’t moments, they’re crescendos. And it sounds as though Caroline was really angry at you. Underneath.”
Peter nodded. “She was. She resented a lot. I never took things seriously that she wanted me to. She wanted me to be much grander than I was. What she really wanted was for me to inherit Axminster; it truly irritated her that I hadn’t. When she finally met my cousin Roger, as soon as she realized who he was she started flirting with him. I thought it was funny. ‘She’s after Axminster,’ I told him. Roger’s face lit up. ‘She wants it?’ He turned to her and said, ‘It’s yours. It needs a whole new roof, new wiring and new plumbing. The electricity bill is so big we’re listed as an asset at Northeastern Power and Light. When would you like title?’”
Emma laughed. “What did Caroline say?”
“She knew she was being teased, but she didn’t quite know how. I don
’t know what she said, something charming. She can be very charming.”
Rebuked, Emma did not answer. Why did he suddenly have to tell me Caroline is charming she wondered. Emma lowered her gaze to her coffee cup, reminded that Peter still felt loyalty toward Caroline, affection, regret. It was painful but she admired it.
“When I met you,” she said, “at your cocktail party, you seemed so sure of everything. You seemed so confident, so married.”
Peter shook his head. “By the time of that party we were barely speaking. When we were alone we hardly spoke at all. We didn’t have meals together, we spent the evenings apart. It was near the end.” Peter looked at her. “What about you? When did you know things were over? Did you have a moment?”
Emma nodded. “It was when Tess was about six months old. I quit working when she was born, though Warren didn’t want me to. He wanted to brag about how fast I’d gone back to work, but once I’d had her I didn’t want to go back at all. In the beginning I didn’t have a nanny, or anyone, I was alone with Tess, all the time. I was exhausted, but I loved it. I got up in the middle of the night. I’d feed her and change her and sometimes I’d climb into her crib with her and sleep there the rest of the night. I woke up when she woke up, I slept late with her in the mornings, I took naps in the afternoon. It was sort of a dreamworld, just nursing and changing and sleeping and holding her. I didn’t have any other life. I was besotted.
“Warren didn’t really like it: he was used to getting all my attention. He loved Tess too, but from a distance. He’d do things for her when I asked him, but he didn’t really want to. I didn’t care, I loved being in charge.
“One Sunday we were in the living room, reading the papers. Warren was stretched out on the sofa, and I was sitting on the rug with Tess. She was fussing, so I started walking her around, reading the paper over her shoulder. She went on whimpering, not hard, but sort of steadily. I wasn’t paying much attention to her, and then Warren said, without looking up from the paper, ‘That kid is a real whiner.’
“I said, automatically, ‘No, she’s not.’
“Still without looking up, Warren said, ‘Listen to her. Never stops.’
“I said, ‘She’s not a whiner. She just needs a nap.’
“Warren said, ‘She just got up. She’s a complainer.’ He shook his head, as though he were the authority.
“And I suddenly thought about what he was saying. I looked at my watch. I said, ‘She did not just get up. She’s been up for four hours, and she’s had breakfast, and now she needs a nap. She’s not a whiner, and you know nothing about it.’ I took Tess and stalked out of the room.
“It was the first time I ever contradicted Warren. I was furious that he could criticize his own daughter in such a casual, contemptuous way, and that he was so completely and totally wrong, so unfair. I remember standing in the bedroom with Tess, settling her in the crib, smiling, calming her down. But my heart was pounding, and I kept thinking, That’s it. That’s it. I felt jubilant. I didn’t know really what I meant. I wasn’t thinking about a divorce, but I felt freed. I suddenly felt higher than he was, larger, as though I’d become a cloud, vast and airborne. I knew I wasn’t going to go on like this, putting up with the things he said. I would have put up with them forever, for myself, but I wasn’t going to for Tess. I felt freed.” She looked anxiously at Peter. “This feels so disloyal. It sounds so callous.”
Peter took her hand and stroked it. “It’s no worse than what I’ve told you. We’ve done the same thing. I tell myself it’s not callousness, it’s resolution. But it’s sad.”
He wished he could get past this sadness, get through these layers of guilt, rage, shame. He wanted to be over all this, to be certain of his life again. He wanted everything to be decided. He wanted Amanda to be happy. He wanted Emma.
The headwaiter arrived, ponderously discreet. Eyes lowered, mouth compressed, he bent over and slid a small brown folder onto the table next to Peter. In a low rasp he whispered, “The check, Señor.”
Peter put a credit card inside the folder, the headwaiter picked it up and vanished.
Emma glanced after him and shook her head, smiling. “Poor thing,” she said to Peter. He smiled.
“You’re kind,” Peter said suddenly, fervent. “You’re kind and brave.” Now he longed for her kindness. He longed to be alone in the world with her, to close his eyes and receive her kindness. He leaned toward her. “There’s nothing you should be afraid of telling me,” he said, “nothing. I know you. Nothing you say will change that. I know who you are. I love you, I love what you are. You can trust me.”
Emma raised her eyes to meet his. Without speaking they looked steadily at each other. Her gaze was generous and clear: it was what he yearned for.
6
Opening her eyes into the nighttime silence, Emma saw first a high shadowy ceiling. The room around her was dark. A shaft of light slanted sideways into the dim space, through a narrowly opened door. The harsh brilliance of the light suggested a bathroom, but this door was in the wrong place. It was on the wall to the right of the bed; in Emma’s bedroom the bathroom door was on the left.
Blurry eyed, half asleep, Emma tried mentally to reverse the door’s position. In the murky light she blinked, struggling to place the doorway where it ought to be. It stayed immobile, glowing, lit mysteriously from beyond.
Blinking, confused, she raised her head from the pillow, half blind, half panicky. She squinted into the transparent gloom, trying to force it into focus. For a moment she could not decipher the room. She was in bed, in the dark, a man beside her. She felt a flicker of the awful Asolo panic, of being hurled through the air. Fear set a cold clamp on her, and she opened her mouth to breathe. In the next moment, as she stared into the dark, the room came suddenly clear, resolving itself into a space she knew. Peter’s room, Peter’s bed.
Emma dropped her head back onto the pillow and lay still, looking at the ceiling. Peter lay on his side, facing away, his bare shoulder a smooth silhouette rising from the crumpled sheet. Emma, awake, was no longer alarmed, but uneasiness lingered. Risk still coiled around her; she was still in someone else’s apartment, someone else’s bed.
She lay motionless, flat on her back. She drew long quiet breaths to calm herself. It was still dark, though the tall windows were slowly becoming luminous. Light spread mysteriously upward from the foot of the white shades, pulled almost down to the windowsills. The shades gave a papery rustle as they breathed gently, in, out, on the shifting early morning air. On either side of the windows, dim outlines began to appear of the heavy damask curtains, too long, which fell into soft rumpled heaps on the rug. The standing lamp in the corner dimly announced itself against the wall. The landscape was no longer strange, but unease persisted.
The clock said six-twelve, time to leave. She wanted to be home when Tess woke up, to give her breakfast before leaving again for work. Tess would be asleep now; Emma’s urgency was for Rachel. She didn’t tell Rachel when she spent the night out. She wanted to creep quietly back into the apartment before Rachel was up.
Each time, returning home, Emma was seized by guilt. Unlocking the door, in those last seconds before she stepped inside the apartment, Emma was struck by fear that something had happened, that her undeclared, selfish, illicit, irresponsible absence had resulted in disaster. Each time, turning the key, her heart pounding, she swore to herself that the next time she stayed out she would tell Rachel. Each time, entering the apartment, moving quickly through the hall, she found Tess sleeping peacefully in her crib, healthy, pink, undisturbed.
Emma didn’t tell Rachel when she spent the night elsewhere because she didn’t want to see the look on Rachel’s face. Rachel would grin broadly, raise one eyebrow and say something Emma did not want to hear—something intimate, about her sex life. Or else Rachel would raise both eyebrows coldly and say nothing at all. Emma didn’t mind Rachel knowing about her private life, but she didn’t want to hear Rachel’s opinion of it.
She would have to tell Rachel eventually. Things would change; they would either become more permanent or less so. Emma wanted to wait until she could make a real announcement. Until then, she returned surreptitiously, and fished anxiously for her keys, consumed by guilt.
Now, Emma slid quietly out of bed, tucking the sheet around Peter against a draft. Naked, barefoot, she stepped across the shadowy room, through the crepuscular silence. She felt invisible.
Her clothes lay in a careful pile, and she dressed rapidly, with distaste. Her unwashed panty hose were dry and gritty, bagging sourly at the knees. Her red silk dress, pristine and smooth the night before, now felt dank. Emma swung her long hair to one side and tugged the zipper up her back. She stepped into her high heels, her ankles wobbling: it was too early for this sexy off-balance tilt. Her nighttime self—short skirted, high heeled, mascaraed and perfumed—now seemed absurd. Last night, leaning across the table at the restaurant, in the dense glow of candlelight, dancing later at the club, Emma had wanted to look just exactly as she had looked. Now, all this seemed noisy, shameless, coy. Now she was a mother. She wanted jeans and sneakers, heels flat on the ground.
Emma was dressed, though not really up: her face unwashed, her teeth unbrushed. All she was doing here was leaving; she would address the day at home. She put on dark glasses to conceal the mascara smears below her eyes. She coiled the chain of her purse in her hand, muffling it.
Soundless, she leaned over Peter’s sleeping face. He lay now on his back. His lips were barely parted, and he took a long silent breath as Emma watched. Along the top of his cheekbone was a faint ruddiness, a bloom in the pale skin. Below the clean line of closed eyelids was a dry tangle of eyelashes. It made her anxious, this silent invasion, examining his sleeping face without consent. She bent quickly to kiss him good-bye.
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