Opening Belle

by Maureen Sherry

  “I have to use the bathroom,” I said as an excuse to see more, and in a voice that suggested that nothing here surprised me. I had no intention of letting Henry hear me be impressed. The bathroom was finished with Waterworks fixtures and glass tile in a muted sea-grass tone. Back when I was single, I tore photos from magazines depicting rooms I liked, and always, my bathroom choices had tile just like that. There was the smell of gardenia from somewhere, white gardenia, my favorite flower, and I could smell it but couldn’t see it.

  My head was pounding as I opened the medicine cabinet to find it full of all unopened women’s toiletries, nice stuff from La Mer, La Prairie, the type of cosmetics I used in my old life, before my bathroom got taken over by Power Rangers. I wondered if this place was Henry’s second home. Maybe this is where his wife freshens up after a day of being driven around in her Escalade or maybe it’s where Henry gets to satisfy his insatiable appetite for women. It was so wrong for me to be here, and I closed the cabinet, letting the magnificent magnets suck it shut.

  I brushed my hair and put on the makeup that had made it into my bag this morning but never onto my face. I brushed my teeth and felt the surge of confidence that comes with a nicely tailored suit and a decent haircut and a clear mind. It was time to leave.

  When I came out, Henry was on the phone with a glass of champagne in his hand. I walked by him and waved good-bye to whatever the point of this visit was. Something about my being here now seemed a little dangerous. Was this a Henry love shack? Would he be capable of having such a thing? I thought of him dating his wife while engaged to me and answered my own question. He raised his finger in that “wait a minute” signal and I pushed the elevator button just as he got off the phone.

  “So you have a pied-à-terre in Midtown to get away from the demands of your Upper East Side life?” I asked.

  “It’s not that.”

  “Is it the secret girlfriend Batcave?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You see, Henry? I knew this about you. I knew it the whole time and it’s the only thing that kept me sane after you left me.”

  “Knew what?”

  “Knew that you were capable of something like this. A trysting apartment? Please.”

  “What the hell?”

  “I just knew you’d always fool around. You’re too funny. You’re too handsome. You’re far too good in the sack. Women do absurd things for you. I couldn’t have been married to you.”

  Henry looked genuinely hurt, which was oddly appealing in a man wearing a $3,000 suit. We were both quiet for a moment.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said.

  “Stop it,” I answer with a catch to my voice. It was unsettling to feel someone be sweet to me when everything else in my life felt mean. I felt too vulnerable. “You’re about a hundred years late.”

  “I never stopped loving you.”

  “You need to cut it out,” I said, drawing my hand across my neck like I meant it, because I meant it. “Really. We’re better than this.”

  I imagined that conversation more times than I have brain pathways. I rehearsed what I would say, how clever I would be with my pithy one-liners about my life being better without him. But when that moment finally arrived, and that did appear to be that moment, it was just no good. We stared at each other, like we were stuck on the same packed subway with no comfortable place to rest our eyes.

  “Too much has happened. We don’t even really know one another. Maybe we never did,” I said.

  “I know you,” Henry said. “I’ve never stopped knowing you.”

  We then had a staring contest. I blinked first.

  “So what is this place, and why did I have to come here?”

  “Don’t you like it?” He looked hurt. “It’s everything that screams your name to me. It’s for your birthday next week.”

  Henry remembered my birthday was next week when even I didn’t. Nobody thinks of my birthday. I looked around to see what he meant. What was for my birthday?

  “The art, the fixtures, and the stuff from magazines you used to collect back when you cared about things like your clothes and how many threads were in your sheets. I just thought maybe you’d like to meet yourself again, the real you who takes charge and runs things, the woman who dresses like a hottie and is quirky and funny and completely sex-crazed.”

  I waited thirty seconds before answering him. I wanted to get this right, and wanted to say all the rational things I had rehearsed when my mind was clear and not full of the smell of champagne and gardenia. “There are other things to care about now, Henry.” I swallowed hard. “I grew up, you know. I tossed the shit that didn’t matter, like the thread count of my sheets, back into the proverbial bin.”

  “You didn’t have to grow up.” He took my hand in his giant, lovely hand.

  I dutifully pulled it back, exactly like I should have. “What, like your wife? Staying a child her whole life because some sugar daddy takes care of her?” I knew I should stop. I was being mean and I’m not mean or maybe I’m becoming mean, but anyway, I had to stop.

  “It gives me so much pleasure to take care of her,” he said. “I can take care of you too. You could become you again if you’d let me help.”

  There was just enough daddy-ism in his tone to make me find him, for the first time ever, the tiniest bit creepy.

  “What happens in this place anyway?” I asked again.

  Henry looked crestfallen. “I told you. It’s for you and I thought you’d just love it,” he said softly. “Why don’t you go see the closet?”

  I knew I shouldn’t, that I really had to get in that elevator, which by then had arrived. In the next awkward silence, the sound of an elevator leaving without me could be heard, swooshing with that noise of descent.

  I walked back toward the one and only bedroom I could see, with its massive bed and eight pillows on the most delicate white duvet. The trim on the duvet was a pale blue gray that looked like—

  “Sky before it snows,” said Henry, coming up behind me.

  I used to say that was my favorite sleep color, the color of the sky right before snow fell. To me it is the color of calm and happiness and being somewhere safe.

  “Yes,” I said. “Sky before the snow is what that color looks like when you’re in love. Now I would call it blue-gray.”

  I walked over to the closet, full of cute dresses and sweaters and jeans too large for Henry’s matchstick of a wife. There were two pairs of Louboutin shoes that looked like works of art. They still had their price tags on them.

  “So who lives here, Henry?” I asked, letting a delicate cashmere wrap come close to my nose so I could feel what perfect feels like. “Because it doesn’t look like a real human does.”

  It was then that I saw a ring on the dresser. Not just any ring but a small diamond engagement ring I’d worn ten years ago, back when Henry had no money. I had loved it so but returned it to him via the U.S. Postal Service, dropping it in the mail as casually as a postcard, mailed to his parents’ home. I was never certain Henry had gotten the ring back. Now I knew.

  “We do. We live here,” he said softly.

  “This”—I waved my hand, my throat catching—“makes no sense.”

  Henry whipped his hand through his thick hair and began. “Baby, I need you to sit down to tell you this. I promise, no funny business.”

  I sank into that perfect bed while he pulled up a delicate desk chair across from where I sat. I found myself looking into his eyes without blinking so I forced myself to instead look down, to not notice his giant forearms. I determinedly hung on to my friend named Control.

  He sighed. “A few years ago, before you called me about that nursery school application for your son, I was in some mad depression. I worked seventy hours a week, had these fabulous sons and a wife who really loved me. I had everything, and yet I was so sad. I hated myself for giving in to depression, like it was a character flaw I couldn’t toss. In my head I constantly lectured myself about the auda
city of letting myself get to that state.”

  I didn’t say a word.

  “When I met my wife . . .”

  “You mean when you were screwing a woman while you were engaged to me? You mean that time?”

  He sighed. “Yes. When I did that, I was distracted by something temporary, which in retrospect was a terrible human weakness of mine that I believe I’ve fixed. I never cheated again.”

  I chose to not point out the bed we shared in Florida. It seemed we both decided to not label that as cheating. “We were so immature,” I said. “We had bad timing but that was a long time ago and we’ve both moved on with our happy lives.” I searched his face, trying to see if he knew I was being ironic, but he didn’t seem to.

  He continued, “Danielle was already pregnant then.”

  “No kidding. I’m still pretty good with math, you know. We date for almost eight years; you suddenly have a new girlfriend and have a baby four months later.” My voice sounded like someone on one of those angry-person talk shows so I told myself to stop talking.

  “So I did the right thing, became totally focused on being a great dad and nailing my job instead of women.”

  “How poetic you are.”

  “Anyway, I read a lot, tried to consider what was the gaping hole in my life, and the hole was my unfinished business with you. I imagined going back, building a life with you, and just started doing that. Being with you was the happiest time in my life. I wanted to feel that again.”

  “So you feel that again how?”

  “By buying this place, imagining us being together here.”

  There it is. “Oh, you mean you bought an apartment for us to screw in because we were really good at that and by taking it up again, like an old sport, we would both revisit the dewy glow of our youth?” I said this in a flat monotone. “Like we could really go back to . . .”

  “Australia.” We said this at the same time.

  The pause in the room was long, filled only with a siren noise from the street and a curtain catching the breeze of the forced air heating system. We were both thinking.

  Henry spoke first. “I bought this place a few years ago and fixed it up with a designer I knew you’d like. I thought we could have our life together again without ruining our other lives. We could have those intense times again . . . so funny, so carefree.”

  “Henry, I want to tell you I know exactly what you mean but it wouldn’t work the way you think. We are different people now. We are . . . married people.”

  He ignored me. “When I started this project I felt excited again, felt closer to being me again and the cloud in my head cleared up. When I’m in this place that connects us it feels like we live together again, like you are about to walk in. I send you emails from here. I buy you things that I leave here. I got everything ready.”

  “Ready for what?” I asked softly.

  “Just ready.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I’ve just been thinking about how to, you know, respectfully ask you to start meeting here.”

  “Meeting here to start everything up again? You did notice that I ignored your non-work emails? That they went unanswered? You noticed that, right?” I whispered.

  “Yes, it was perfect. We both had a piece of each other again without destroying the lives we have with our families. I knew you wouldn’t answer those emails because I knew you’d be great at being married. That’s one of the reasons I asked you to marry me. You’re so loyal.”

  “Henry, your reasoning is like nothing I can even follow. And that insane performance of yours at the Four Seasons? Where you pretended we never met? That was to make me want you again? ’Cause if that’s true, it didn’t work.”

  “It killed me to be so mean to you. But I had to be. I had gotten this apartment all ready but on that day, I freaked out. On the way to the restaurant I still hadn’t told Tim I knew you and then it seemed too awkward to mention so I just acted like we never met. I confessed to him later but that day my head was spinning. I was thinking about us doing business together, about this apartment, how you had turned into such a big shot that you had probably changed and what if you weren’t the Belle I remembered? But then you dropped your earring on your plate and your hose was torn and you seemed so clumsy and adorable and it reminded me that you’re so capable and so vulnerable all at the same time. It let me know you were still you and that this”—he swept his arm around the room—“that this was possible again.”

  “Henry, I’m not going to say I saw this coming”—I choked for a second—“but don’t you think we’re a little old to play make-believe?” I asked this gently because Henry seemed unrecognizably shaky and vulnerable. While I wondered many times about his character, I had never once considered him to be mentally ill.

  “Belle, you’re right. I’ve been having this pretend life without you. You know, you.” Henry said this with both hands outstretched.

  I was trying to follow his gorgeous mouth and the words coming out of it, but this whole thing made me woozy. “Look, I’m not exactly riding on the same train track as you. Um, if you think I’m dumping my life for this beautiful room? Henry.” I shook my head. “I’m speechless.”

  “I bought you those clothes, had a moment of Christmas with you right here for the past few years. I gave you these earrings two years ago,” Henry said as he pulled out some shiny earrings with rubies surrounding them from a nearby drawer. Casually he tossed them toward me like they were something he’d bought on the sidewalk. “Can I put them in your ears?” he asked like a little boy.

  “No,” I said, though I did take a second to really look at those beautiful stones.

  “I bought you underwear I imagined you wearing for me. I filled your bookshelves with your favorite books,” he said.

  “You should be committed,” I sighed, feeling overwhelmed that someone could care for me so much, someone I had loved so completely. “Henry, you went from being super-supportive of my career to hating that I even worked to being a cheerleader for me, all in one lifetime. You start dating your wife while I’m in Atlanta, and then there’s the Four Seasons, and interrupting me at the media conference, and how about not sticking up for me when my son yanked your wife’s underwear?” I smiled. I wanted him to smile, to see how silly this was. To prove to me that he wasn’t crazy.

  “Belle, baby, how else could I keep you at a distance? How else could I have you in my life but not destroy my own life? This apartment is the solution. What if we had an understanding? A place that always stayed in 1998, and the moment we cross that doorway we get to care for one another the way we used to, where we could be free to be twenty-seven and fully alive again?”

  I thought about this, about how I loved his body, and his brain that was always firing new ideas. I thought of how he liked to whip my milk for my morning cappuccino and put peppermint oil in my bathwater before climbing in the tub with me. I thought of how he loved to pick out my panties and brush my hair. It had all been so lovely. It had all been so long ago.

  Somewhere deep down I felt the resolve I had looked for but could never completely find when I thought about making the emails stop. It wasn’t a firm thing at that moment, but it felt just a little bit clearer. Henry was good at taking care of people and sometimes I wanted to be taken care of, but I certainly didn’t need to be saved. I just needed to become strong again, the way I was before I worked in a place that made me feel battered.

  He went on. “Do you think it was an accident I ended up working where I work? Taking a job at one of your clients? A place I knew you had to call every single day so we’d get to speak again? I had a few job offers and the only reason I chose Cheetah was because I chose you.”

  “You chose me? You didn’t choose me, Henry. You chose something else. I thought we chose each other and then you unchose what we chose.”

  “It was a horny, three-month decision. I’m not asking you to leave your family, Belle, and I’m not leaving my own family. I’m j
ust a guy who loves you, who has always and will always love you, fiercely, and wants to be able to express that again.”

  “You’ve said that to me before,” I said.

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did. That’s what you said when you proposed to me. I remember ’cause I didn’t want to get married before thirty and then you said that and I thought if someone will always love me fiercely, then nothing in my life can ever go wrong and it shouldn’t matter when I get married.”

  Henry put the defeated champagne glass onto a bureau, stopped for a second to put a piece of linen under it, and turned away from me.

  “I need you. I need us.”

  There it was again, Henry talking about Henry and what works for him. I felt a wave of calm at both the clarity and unattractiveness of this; sometimes it’s nice to know that something that is over is really over. Henry’s shoulders caved forward and he could even have been crying.

  I came behind him and hugged him tightly. I had loved this man so much and with everything I had but we had split and grown and formed new branches and we had to nurture those now, not something we gave up on long ago. I spoke into his back.

  “The problem with us, Henry, is that we never broke up. We never had the crying scene, the one where we sadly admit it isn’t going to work. Instead, we had this thing that began in college that was great. We traveled, we started careers, we moved in together, and our lives kicked in. I left New York City for three short months when my dad was in the hospital and even though I came back to see you every other weekend, and even though we were having nonstop, mind-blowing sex at that very same time, when I moved back to New York I find that not only have you been seeing someone else, you’re expecting a kid with her.