We had no choice but to throw a party for Jackson, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. We invited Jackson; Troy Bachman, his agent; and Kasey, his editor, a rising star at Paradigm in her twenties, the one who wore the practically invisible skirts. I often wondered why she bothered to wear a skirt at all when the slightest shift of her thighs offered the entire room a glimpse of her labia. There was also a reporter from the New York Review of Books who was working on a three-part essay on Welch’s triumphant return to the literary scene, and Hoda Kotb, who was going to interview Jackson over the weekend (even though she didn’t seem pleased by it).
I originally planned to invite some of Karl’s other authors, but Troy sent a curt e-mail saying his client couldn’t stand spending time around other writers. “Who should I invite?” I e-mailed in response. His reply was curt and straightforward: “Invite anyone who loved his last book . . . and some fuckable single women.”
I ignored the entreaty for single women. I wasn’t Jackson’s pimp. I should have filled the room exclusively with drag queens.
Two last-minute additions were Edward, Karl’s corporate accountant and roommate from Yale, and his wife, Penelope. Edward was small and squirrelly and I got the feeling he’d attached himself like a burr to Karl on their first day of freshman year and never let go. He loved reminding people that he and Karl went to Yale, even though they had graduated more than twenty-five years earlier. He also never failed to ask me, “Where’d you go to school again, Kate?”
I always flashed a warm smile and reminded him that I got an MFA at Columbia as I inwardly rolled my eyes and called him a condescending motherfucker in my head. I didn’t bother to mention my undergrad degree from the University of Wisconsin. The middle of the country confused people who’d always lived in New York. It was rare that I ever mentioned my life before New York in the company of Karl’s friends and coworkers, all of whom had a vague recollection that I was from a “flyover state,” but if you asked them which one they were just as likely to say Iowa as Wisconsin.
On the uncommon occasion someone asked me what it was like growing up in Wisconsin, I was honest. “It was totally normal.” That was true. Everything about my childhood was normal—two reasonably happy parents, an older sister, piano lessons, cheerleading. For some reason my answer made people laugh and then change the subject because normal was just so boring.
Edward had given both of his children, girls close in age to mine, absurdly literary names: Atwood and Updike. I always thought he did it in a bid to impress Karl.
His wife, Penelope, didn’t feign an interest in books, but she adored proximity to anyone with a slight patina of fame. After spending eight years out of the workforce as a stay-at-home mom (with two nannies), Penelope was constantly reinventing herself. She was the kind of woman who believed all of her hobbies should be a career, and she had the rich husband to finance those fantasies. After brief stints as an interior designer, a yoga instructor, and a life coach, she had recently refashioned herself as an Instagram influencer.
As far as I could tell most of her feed was well-filtered duck-face selfies. The most significant consequence of Penelope’s foray into the world of social media was that she inserted the word hashtag into sentences where it definitely didn’t belong.
“Do you ever feel like this room is . . . hashtag . . . too bright, Kate?” Penelope had remarked after handing me her coat when she arrived for Jackson’s party. “I just found an amazing light fixture made out of upcycled votives handcrafted by former Guatemalan prostitutes that got more than a thousand likes. You need it.”
“I don’t know if I do.” I shrugged noncommittally.
As an Instagram influencer, Penelope took both lighting and social justice very seriously.
Across the room Karl leaned elegantly against the fireplace, watching Welch’s agent make wild gesticulations. A bemused smile played on my husband’s lips. Even though he had the propensities of an introvert, Karl was the rare man completely at ease in any situation. I’d seen him wear the same confident expression as he talked his way out of a nasty misunderstanding with some Chilean cowboys in a bar on our honeymoon trek through Patagonia that he wore when he accepted praise from a National Book Award winner in a grand awards ceremony. Lately I’d begun to wonder if his comfort in his own skin was a consequence of his extreme privilege, and, if so, whether that trait would naturally surface in our own daughters, who would never know what it was like to want for anything.
Most of the guests at these kinds of things usually looked right through me. It wasn’t just that I was Karl’s wife, but more that I wasn’t at all interesting to them in my own right. Even Penelope was more interesting than I was. In moments like this, I thought I should have started a blog so at least I could tell people I was a blogger. I think I missed the whole mommy blog moment, though. I’d only recently even started an Instagram account. My twenty-three followers included Marley, our dog walker, and my bikini waxer. She’d peer pressured me into following her account @AllAboutThatBush and then followed me back out of pity.
Jackson was the last to arrive. He stumbled and fumbled in so drunk that Karl asked me to grab him a glass of water and an espresso the second he walked through the door. To his credit, Jackson followed me like an obedient Labrador. When I turned to hand him the tumbler of water in our kitchen he leaned over and placed his palm flat against my breast, a gesture so blatant it was clear that he hoped I might scream and cause a scene. Instead I stared straight into his rheumy eyes. His doughy face was still boyish, but the whites of his eyes were yellow, the skin around them papery and sallow. He wore jeans and a rumpled blazer over a blue button-down that had seen better days. A smear of pink lipstick stained his collar.
“You have nice tits for a middle-aged mom,” he slurred. “I’ll bet they’re new.”
Ten years ago I would have told him to fuck off and laughed in his face. Now I had no choice but to politely diffuse the situation so we could carry on with the evening. In a few minutes I’d smile and clap politely as my husband extolled this man’s unique genius.
“They’re old, actually . . . I like to call them vintage.” I peeled his slimy fingers off my body and gently turned him back into the direction of the dining room. It wasn’t the first time one of Karl’s authors had hit on me or insulted me and I knew it wouldn’t be the last, but this time it was particularly grating. I don’t even like your books, I thought. I could write circles around you. Why aren’t I writing circles around you? You had twenty years and a two-million-dollar advance and wrote utter crap.
I didn’t want to go back into the party. I reached into the pantry for a bottle of whiskey. We hid the cheaper stuff when we had guests. Karl actually preferred Jameson to Macallan, a holdover from his teenaged years spent being a lifeguard with the Irish boys on Martha’s Vineyard. I downed an entire tumbler in a surprising gulp.
I wanted to escape then, to run from the town house and sit on a barstool in a nondescript bar and order another whiskey. But, the only way out was the front door, past Jackson and Karl and a dozen people who’d want to know when we would be having the first course. Instead I sank down onto the kitchen floor, not caring if the caterers walked in and found the hostess slumped against the wall with her eyes closed. I just needed a minute. When I opened my eyes, I was staring at the wall-length calendar we kept next to the fridge. It was a complex grid of dates and times, meetings, pickups, drop-offs, and reminders. There was a box for each day, and each contained a name, or several, followed by an activity: Isabel—Japanese, Matilda—knitting class, Isabel—chess, Matilda—guitar, Isabel—meditation, Karl—cocktails Rushdie. My name was nowhere. I created and kept this calendar and yet I didn’t exist in it. I kept all the pieces in motion like a silent puppeteer, forever behind the curtain.
I heard steps just outside the door and forced myself to my feet. I pressed my nails into my wrist and admonished myself through gritted teeth. Pull it together, Kate. Then I donned a well-practic
ed smile and returned to finish my hosting duties.
That night in bed, after the guests went home, I needed to talk to Karl about how I was feeling. It wasn’t just the humiliating encounter with Jackson but also everything lately. It was the constant anxiety of making everyone else’s life run smoothly while ignoring my own needs. I felt hollowed out and empty and I desperately needed to find a way to fulfill my own passions again. I felt dead inside and I wanted to feel alive again, but I didn’t know how.
I rolled over and pressed myself into my husband’s back.
“Karl,” I whispered.
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
“I need to tell you something.”
“Can it wait until morning?”
“Can we talk now?”
“Kate. Please. I’m so tired. First thing in the morning. I promise.”
I should have said no. It couldn’t wait. I should have rolled him to face me and told him I felt lost. I was sleepwalking through a life that looked perfect and I needed his help to find myself again.
But, I didn’t say those things.
“We can talk in the morning.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
He was already on his way to the office when I woke up. He texted me a few hours later:
I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk, baby. But we’ll have plenty of time in Big Sur this weekend. I love you.
It took a creative mixture of yoga and fortitude to extract my bag with my notebook, pens, and paper from beneath the seat in front of me without disturbing my seatmates, now sleeping on either side of me. I was too wired to sleep and the soft sounds of the engine and the liminal lighting were like a cocoon, the perfect place to write. I was hoping to write at least a few solid stories and maybe get started on a novel while I was away. But as I put the pen down on the paper, it wasn’t a story that came out. It was something else entirely.
Dear Karl,
I am writing you from thirty thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean, on a plane to Thailand. It’s surreal to write that: I’m on a plane to Thailand. I’m sure you’re wondering how the hell this happened. I’m actually wondering it myself to be honest. It’s not like me to go halfway around the world on some impulsive adventure. But actually, Karl, it’s exactly like me. At least, the me I used to be. You loved this about me, you loved that I was always up for a good time and for any adventure. I loved that about me too. Maybe it was seeing my grad school friends again this weekend and having some time to myself, but I realize I don’t—we don’t—have as much fun anymore. I know, I know, that’s the price of being a grown-up, we have kids and responsibilities and bills, etc. But, Karl, I feel like we’ve come so far from the people we used to be. I feel like I’ve lost myself a little but . . . I also feel like I’ve lost you too. I can’t quite figure out when this happened. It’s a slippery slope. Maybe it’s impossible to pinpoint that exact moment when your life shifts into something you never expected or wanted. I’ve been trying to trace the thread back from the beginning.
When I left for Paris after grad school I was every bit a writer. Sure I tutored wealthy Parisian offspring in English to pay the rent, but only because that gig freed up my afternoons and most evenings to sit in my small attic apartment and work on my novel. It feels strange to write that now. My novel! Remember when I was working on a novel? It seems like a different life, or a memory that happened to someone else.
Whenever I felt blocked, like I couldn’t possibly get another word on the page, I wandered across the Pont Notre Dame to Shakespeare and Company to read the words of better writers than me in the hopes of being inspired to either write or drink the night away. In my twenties both of those options were desirable, and the drinking often led to writing, so I didn’t have a preference for which one would come first. As far as bookstores go Shakespeare and Company was absolutely perfect, with its floor-to-ceiling shelves of used books and the air thick with the musty smell of fingered pages. I loved that they hosted a writer in residence every few months who got room and board upstairs in exchange for working in the store a few hours a day. I’d applied three or four times and never even received a rejection letter. I didn’t hold it against them, but I did maintain a morbid curiosity about who they’d chosen in my place and I dreamed of running into the lucky son of a bitch as I perused the stacks.
One of these nights I was tucked in one of the stacks, breathlessly finishing The Little Friend, when the clerk informed me the shop would be closing soon for a private event, an author from the States would be giving a reading. I figure I’d keep browsing until they kicked me out. I liked to pull things off the shelf at random and read the last page of a book. You can tell everything from the last page. You could read only, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” and know everything there was to know about The Great Gatsby.
That was the first thing I said to you. Remember that?
I felt you standing behind me and I turned around quickly on purpose to scare you away. I expected a creepy old Parisian, the kind who liked to grab my ass in bars and then pretend I’d just bumped into their hands. I startled you. I thought you were admiring me, but you merely wanted me to get out of your way.
“I’m trying to grab that book,” you stammered.
I stepped aside and you plucked Black Spring from the shelf.
I said that line about the last pages of books and then regarded the one you held in your hand. “It’s his worst book,” I said next. I felt confident saying things like that back then, declaring that someone like Henry Miller had a worst book. You humored me, maybe because I was wearing a blouse unbuttoned one button revealing my flimsy black bra, or because you were surprised to be flirted with in a bookstore. After a lifetime of moaning about them, I missed American men.
“I know. I happen to like terrible books.” You glanced at The Little Friend in my hand. “I also happen to be in love with Donna Tartt.”
I was undone by your smile.
The clerk began clearing the aisles then.
“I’m Karl,” you said to me.
The clerk started asking you questions about where you wanted the chairs and the podium and the wine.
“Are you the author?” I asked.
“Far from it. I work for the publisher.” You were very modest. I didn’t learn for three more weeks that the publisher was your father.
You invited me to stay. I said I had things to do but I’d try to come back in an hour. I had nothing to do, but I knew from the start I might want to sleep with you, so I ran home to shave my legs and put on my best underwear and returned in the same outfit so it looked like I’d been running around the city being busy and doing important things. I can’t believe I never told you that until now. I still have some secrets I guess, and I bet you do too.
You paid more attention to me that night than you did to your writer, and her irritation with both of us was palpable. As soon as I could I whisked you away to Le Select, hoping to impress you, but you’d already been there.
“Hemingway’s favorite bar. I brought first dates here in my twenties to impress them with my ability to quote A Farewell to Arms,” you said as we ordered gimlets.
“Did it work?”
“Never. French girls find me too American and they think Hemingway is a misogynistic pig.”
“They aren’t wrong.”
“No, they aren’t.”
I delighted in teasing you.
My mother once told me that a man will reveal everything about himself in the first conversation he has with you. You only have to listen. You told me you wanted to work as an editor, that you wanted to travel the world searching for new writers with new voices, the kinds of people who needed to be published and were too often ignored. But you also told me you loved the Upper East Side and your parents and that you felt an obligation to make them happy. That’s the part I should have paid closer attention to.
We shut down Le Select, both a
little tipsy, but not drunk, and I thought about how I could ask you home without you thinking I was a slut. You grabbed my hand then and suggested a walk through the Tuileries. You only had six hours until you needed to get to the airport.
“Don’t you need to get to your hotel?” I asked.
You nodded to a small backpack. “I travel light.” I loved that.
I’d never seen Saint-Germain so empty. I liked the way your jawline looked in the flickering streetlamps. I wanted to touch every part of your face.
“Let’s race,” I said to you, impulsively, as we walked into the garden. “To the Louvre.” It was my nerves. It struck me that, in spite of my bravado, I was alone in the middle of the night with a near stranger. A moody gray drizzle turned the empty park into a Monet.
I removed my boots and placed them on a bench with a thud. You looked at me like I was cute, but a little insane, and made no move to take off your shoes. As soon as I straightened up something sharp—a shard of glass—drove right into the soft part of my bare heel. I screamed in pain and the look of wonder disappeared from your face. I sat on the park bench and without a word you lifted my foot into your lap and expertly removed the shard while I blinked back tears.
“You should have been a doctor,” I said.
“It’s easier to pick up women in bookstores.”
I’d been so independent for so long that something in me enjoyed being a damsel in distress. Even in the dark I could see a few drops of blood had dripped onto your pants, but you didn’t seem to mind. I pulled a scarf out of my bag and you tied it around my foot. You leaned close to me, hesitated for a moment, and then made up your mind to kiss me. I’d expected you to be shy. I was ready to be the aggressor, but you slid your palm behind my head and clasped at my hair with a brute force that felt like you were about to swallow me whole. As you moved your lips expertly down the front of my neck and unbuttoned my blouse, I reached down between your legs and felt you throbbing against the zipper of your pants. I was embarrassed by my gasp of surprise. I was, to be honest, a little caught off guard by what I found, how massive you are.
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