“Alison lectured me the other day about my choice of employment, and she’s under the delusion that her harangue was worth sharing with you, darling,” I said to Tom, looking daggers at my sister. “It wasn’t, obviously. I tell you everything important,” I added, loudly, for her benefit.
Alison shrugged and looked Tom searchingly in the face. “I told Q that I don’t think she’s fulfilled by what she does. She used to love her work at school and at Oxford, now she barely seems to think about it. She disagreed with me, but I wonder what you think. You know her better than anyone these days,” she said, with a faint but discernable emphasis on the last two words, as if to say, she’s a mystery to the rest of us.
Tom stared at her, then at me. “Honestly, I don’t know if she’s ‘fulfilled’ or not,” he said at last, slowly. “I think she might be happy in a different, less high-stress job, certainly.”
Alison nodded energetically. She clearly thought she was on to something. “That’s very interesting, Tom; I’m very interested that you said that,” she said, looking over at me meaningfully. She ran her fingertip around the rim of her glass speculatively, producing a low ringing hum. “And what about you?”
Tom was taken aback. “I’m sorry?” he said, politely. His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere on the other side of the city.
“Well, as I said to Q, it’s obvious you really love your job, but you work ungodly hours. Frankly, I don’t know how Q will manage when the baby comes, I think it’ll be a real strain on her. So would you be happy in a less high-stress job, as you put it?”
I gasped, horrified; now he’d think I’d put her up to this, that I was complaining about him to my interfering, superior little sister, that I had asked her to intervene for me…
There was a silence. The wind was getting up; outside I heard the clatter of a newspaper vending machine crashing along the sidewalk, a faint indignant cry as someone lost a hat, the rush of last year’s leaves swirling up the street, around the corner, into dust. Tom rose to his feet, putting down his espresso cup very gently on its tiny thin saucer. He smoothed down his trousers, glanced over at me with a look of—what was it? Reproach? Anger? Sadness?—then ostentatiously examined his watch. When he finally looked up, his face was expressionless.
“Ungodly hours or not, I have to finish writing something up in the office tonight, so I’m afraid you’ll have to continue this little conversation without me,” he said, with a hint of bite, a nip that drew the blood to the surface of my face. “Help Q to bed, and make sure she has plenty of water, would you? I’ll see you in the morning,” he added as he dropped a light cold kiss on my forehead. Ten seconds later the apartment door banged shut, and he was gone, out into the equinoctial gale.
Alison looked over at me, expectantly. I said nothing. There was nothing I could say without revealing to her the full extent of our problem, which seemed suddenly—huge, an anvil-shaped wedge formed from the aggregated tensions of the last few months. (Or was it years? Have they always been there, since the first day, the first night, collecting and dividing and growing like cancerous cells?) For an awful moment I thought she was going to ask me what was going on between us, but she seemed to think better of it, because she carefully put down her wineglass and came over to hoist me up off the sofa. “I’ll fill your water jug,” was all she said as she helped me shuffle across the floor to the bedroom.
40
Thursday Noon
Tom left for Tucson in the early hours of the morning; he’s going to stop off in Baltimore on the way back to see his parents. “Alison’ll be here to look after you,” he said to me quickly, too quickly, when he first heard of her impending visit, “so there’s no reason I can’t go now, is there?” I shook my head slowly. “I suppose not,” I said evenly, thinking, if you can’t imagine a reason I’m damn well not going to give you one. (Somewhere in my mind’s ear I heard the dull “ting” of the wedge, dulled steel against dulled steel, two unyielding objects striking each other.)
Not that Alison is doing much to look after me; in fact, she’s out shopping. She read about a one-day sale at Bendel’s in the New York Times this morning, and I’ve never seen the woman move so fast. She bumped into Mrs. G in the hallway on her way out. “Q, here’s your friend to sit with you,” she announced grandly, as if she had personally called Mrs. G and arranged for her to keep me company. “I’ll be home in plenty of time for the trip to the doctor’s this afternoon,” she called, “and to make you lunch,” she added extra-loudly, clearly hoping that Mrs. G would see what an exemplary sister I have.
Not, it should be said, that Mrs. G was in much of a state to notice anything. She was in a terrible condition when she arrived. I’ve never seen her so distraught, never heard her accent so thickened with distress. I could barely understand a word of what she was saying. I had to get her to drink two glasses of Tom’s scotch before she was calm enough to communicate with me.
The letter I drafted must have freaked out Randalls, because they’ve resorted to the most bizarre, not to say unethical, behavior to deal with their tenants. It seems that, within twenty-four hours of receiving the letter, they’d hired someone to look into the tenants’ personal and financial histories; this person (according to Mrs. G, he’s short, fat, and looks like a porpoise) has been interviewing relatives, checking police files, and quite literally poking his nose into the garbage in an effort to find out how to “persuade” the tenants to leave. Those with so much as a parking ticket unpaid have been threatened with dire sanctions; residents talk of dark meetings in underground parking garages, of a terrifying voice husking warnings of deportation and fines. It seems porpoise man told the tenants that if they breathed a word of his meetings to Mrs. G, he’d get the FBI on them. And the CIA. And the Department of Homeland Security. Poor Mrs. G couldn’t figure out why her friends started tumbling from the action group like lemmings from a cliff, claiming they’d accept the terms of the original agreement from Randalls after all, and would she mind dropping the matter, please?
Hooray for Mrs. G, who said that as a matter of fact she did mind, and what in the world was going on? Porpoise man may be scary, but I think Mrs. G is scarier, and yesterday evening she frightened one poor old couple into ponying up the story. The couple’s daughter-in-law worked illegally for three months as a waitress five years ago, and porpoise face persuaded them that he’d have her green card application denied, thereby separating her eternally from her little boy, who was born at Mount Sinai last year and is a bona fide American citizen. The couple folded like a tent in a hurricane. According to Mrs. G, yesterday they were on the verge of signing a lease to an apartment that’s a quarter the size of their current place and fifty blocks to the north.
This cannot be right, she told me, heatedly; it cannot be right. And I had to agree. It cannot be right.
As I listened to her talk, I stared before me, out the window, thinking deeply. Crimpson represents Randalls—not their eviction proceedings, true, but their development interests. If I support Mrs. G in this, if I work with her to expose Randalls, I’m going to be working actively against Tom—against his company, against his client, against (if you think about it) his whole view of the world.
“Mrs. G,” I said to her abruptly, before I could change my mind, “I’m going to help you out, okay? You’re not in this alone, I promise. I’m going to do some research, I’ll figure out the details of your legal position. We’re going to beat these bastards. I can’t promise you your friends will keep their homes, but I’ll make damn sure Randalls get their comeuppance and your friends get everything—all the money, all the legal protection—they’re entitled to.”
Mrs. G nodded slowly, relief smoothing away the harshest, darkest lines around her mouth. “You sweet girl,” she said. “You very nice girl.” I reached out my hand and lightly touched her shoulder, filled with the pleasing sense of working in tandem with someone, the two of us pulling together. She needs me, and I can help her.
But as
the door closed behind her a cold feeling of panic swept through me. I’ve just pledged myself to help a group opposed to my husband’s client—when my husband and I are hardly talking, when I’m heavily pregnant with our child, when I’m confined to bed to safeguard the baby’s health. What have I done? What on earth have I done?
41
3 P.M.
At least the baby responded well to the nonstress test and ultrasound today. Dr. Weinberg was noticeably cheerful at the end of my appointment. “I’m giving him a ten-out-of-ten this time,” she told me, heartily. “Before you know it he’ll be graduating summa cum laude from Yale, or is it Harvard your husband attended? Harvard—that’s right, I remember now, Harvard. Oy oy oy, he’s a chip off the old block, this little one, if I’m any judge,” she added, a warm twinkle in her eye.
I smiled tightly at her and said nothing. After the appointment I waited downstairs in the lobby of Dr. Weinberg’s building while Alison hailed a cab, then I slowly heaved myself into the early spring sunshine. As I stumbled toward the taxi, blinking in the clear hard light, I caught sight of myself in the windshield. Six weeks without exercise does little for your body. My neck and throat have filled out, my face is rounded, my chest and belly seem to have merged into one vast protuberance. I felt the tears prickling at my eyelashes, the blood heating my cheeks. I barely recognize myself.
I used to be the kind of person people call “slim.” Slim is one of those words you use to describe other people; it sounds very odd if you apply it to yourself, unless you’re composing an ad for match.com. Attractive is another such word. I am also, as it happens, the sort of person people call “attractive.”
My friends at university often wondered why someone like me—tall, slim, attractive—was usually single. It never seemed that odd to me. I’m perfectly pretty, but I lack that certain something—what is it? Sex appeal? Maybe. As the old expression goes, I don’t know what it is, but I know it when I see it. My friend Lynn at school had it; true, she had braces wired across her teeth and acne troubling her chin, but you only had to watch her dance. She had total confidence in her body, as if she was utterly in charge of it, as if it held no secrets for her. Whereas I’ve always regarded mine with some bewilderment, its mysterious activities, its dark places where the blood flows close to the surface.
Still, while I was never the kind of girl men swoon over, Tom was not the first to fall for me. I am, after all, tall and slim; realizing the value of the latter, especially when combined with the former, I worked hard to keep my passionate love of all things sweet firmly under control. And so most people called me “attractive.” Not beautiful—only Tom has ever thought that—but definitely, comfortably, attractive.
But now…well. I’m no longer slim, and I’m not just talking about my huge belly. I’m not even talking about the jowls of the last few weeks. As soon as I got pregnant my need for food became insatiable. All my life I’ve been able to keep my appetite at bay, but as soon as my body registered the new life, it began to demand cookies, cakes, fries, and all things blubber-inducing with an extraordinary intensity. And so the pounds piled on; at my monthly visits to Dr. Weinberg’s I’d avert my gaze from the weighing machine, stop my ears as the nurse muttered “155,” “162,” “170.” Then, of course, came bed rest, which put an end to my walks at lunch, my weekend perambulations in the park, not to mention my once-in-a-blue-moon trips to the gym with Patty. I’m now fifty pounds heavier than when I began, and I’m no longer “attractive.” I don’t need a glance in a taxicab window to tell me that. Slack-skinned around the arms and chin, my flesh is a grubby winter-white, and my frizzy hair is pressed flat on the left side of my head from all these endless days in bed. I’m huge, and an embarrassingly small proportion of my girth is child. At this rate I’ll hit thirty with an SUV-size spare tire.
Is it any wonder my husband spends his nights at work these days?
6:30 P.M.
I’ve just had an extraordinary visit from Mark. I was lying on the sofa, typing this, fingers peeping out of our scratchy blue-and-gray wool blanket, when someone knocked on the door.
Alison had changed her mind about a frock from Bendel’s and rushed back to exchange it (“I think I need the four, darling, just look at these folds of extra fabric”), so I was all alone.
“Q, I, er, hope this is an okay time,” Mark said uncomfortably as he shook off his black leather jacket, peeled off a yellow cashmere scarf, and lowered himself into the leather armchair.
“It’s a fine time,” I said, dragging my thoughts to the present moment. Mark comes here to visit Tom, never me. “What can I do for you?”
“I was just passing, actually, and I thought I’d stop in…,” he began, then stopped, and took a deep breath. “No, that’s not true. I’m here for a reason. I guess I’ve just got to come out and say it.”
“Come out and say—what?” I prompted, thinking, get it over with and get out of here. I quite dislike you.
I waited, expectantly. The moments passed; he said nothing. He stared at me like a discombobulated rabbit, his mouth slightly agape. I noticed that one of his two front teeth is slightly discolored.
“The thing is. The thing is—this,” he said hesitantly, then all in a rush, “Q, I’ve been having an affair.”
I sighed and resisted the urge to say, yes I know. It seemed like a time to play my cards close to my chest. “Really?” I said, summoning up tones of surprise.
“Yes, really, and the thing is, she—my…girlfriend was at your party. Last Friday. I saw her when I first walked in, but then she—she vanished. She’s got long dark hair and cute freckles, and she was wearing a red dress with these thin little straps, and her name is—her name is—”
“Bri-anna?” I finished for him, with the air of one making a momentous discovery.
“Exactly.” He gave two or three quick little nods.
There was a pause.
“I’m not sure why you’re telling me this,” I said at last, into the silence.
“Because I want you to help me get her back,” he said, the words tumbling out at speed, and as he spoke he got to his feet and began pacing the floor, rucking up the edge of the Persian kilim as he did so. “I’ve been calling her every day, three times a day, since last Friday, and she won’t return my calls. I’m going crazy. I love her, Q. I want her back. I’m going to tell Lara I want a divorce. I think I want to marry Brianna. Will you help me?” he finished, turning with a look of hopeful appeal on his face.
I have to admit, I called this relationship all wrong. As I gazed at him I suddenly realized that I was angry. Not just a little bit angry, but very, very angry indeed.
“Isn’t there something you’re forgetting?” I said, tightly. “A little matter of two kids and a pregnant wife?”
Mark ran his fingers helplessly through his thinning hair. “I know, I know, and I feel terrible about them. But, Q, I can’t live a lie,” he went on, unctuously. “I can’t pretend to love Lara anymore. These days she’s so put together, Q, you’ve no idea. Brianna is warm, and cozy, and loving. There’s nothing I can do—”
“Nothing you can do? Don’t give me that!” I said furiously—and before I knew what was happening the words were pouring out of me like lava from a long pent-up volcano. I don’t remember much of what I said, but his staggered expression is imprinted on my mind’s eye. The conversation ended with him storming out the door, swearing he had no idea why he’d confided in me, that I was the least sympathetic woman he’d ever met, and that Tom was a saint for putting up with me.
The door banged shut. I listened to the sound reverberate around the apartment. I do that a lot these days.
The phone intruded into the silence. Beeep. Pause. Beeep. Pause. That curiously American sound. It was my mother, her curiously English tones traveling across the Atlantic, through the long eely cable that connects us.
“Q, I have a surprise for you,” she said, in pregnant tones.
“Yes?” I said, wearily. I was e
motionally spent.
“Is that all you can say?” she asked, hurt. I took a deep breath, pulled myself together, and dutifully asked what the surprise was.
“I’m coming to stay with you until the birth!” she announced, and I actually dropped the phone; it literally fell out of my nerveless fingers. I stared at it, a lump of black plastic lying on the sofa’s edge, and debated whether to pick it up or simply hit the “end” button and make her go away, possibly forever.
Of course I didn’t hit the button. Instead, I briefly closed my aching eyes, then picked it up again. “Sorry about that, something wrong with the line,” I said, unconvincingly. “Go on.”
She sounded suspicious, offended, and eager all at once. “I hope you’re pleased, Q. It’s been a nightmare, finding teachers to cover at the studio, but people have rallied round and I’ve got the rota covered. I’m coming out on the nineteenth. You’ll be, let me see, thirty-four weeks pregnant by then, and I can stay for two weeks at least, so I’ll be there to see the baby!” she finished, in a voice bursting with excitement.
Coming out to visit me? In America? In New York? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And suddenly I felt something I haven’t felt in years, a yearning for her I cannot describe. My mother. Here. At last. But all I said was, great. Thanks. It’ll be nice to see you.
Alison arrived home half an hour later with a teeny-weeny dress and fingernails freshly manicured and polished with matte peach paint. Over a cup of tea, I told her about our mother’s plan to visit. She confirmed that Mum has been working to find teachers to cover her classes at the studio for the last three weeks. “She begged me not to say anything until she was sure she had everything organized. She wanted to surprise you,” Alison said, then went on with a sniff: “she only visited me for two days after Serena was born. She swore she couldn’t take time away from work, and I only live in London. But your pregnancy has been tricky, I suppose that’s why.”
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