The CD seller wipes sweat off her face. “I’m from Cincinnati.”
Eventually I find the statue, half-hidden behind an overgrown shrub. Daniel Webster stands cast in bronze, hand-over-heart, on a pedestal inscribed “Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable.” Though it may put me at odds with 99 percent of the people in this country, I prefer this memorial, with this slogan, to “Imagine,” which sounds like something Joy might say. (“Joy, I lost my job, my four kids are sick, and there’s nothing to eat. What should I do?” “Imagine.”)
He isn’t here. By my watch it’s now two on the dot; could it possibly be slow? Did Steve decide to skip the meeting and take his grievances straight to his lawyer? I pace around Daniel Webster and his enveloping shrub. There’s no sympathy on the statue’s unsmiling nineteenth-century face.
At four minutes past, Steve walks up wearing a tan poplin suit over a pressed shirt and an expensive-looking tie. I don’t know why I thought he’d be in workout clothes. I feel slovenly in my usual sweatpants and tee.
“Sorry to be late,” he says. “Let’s walk.”
He doesn’t sound furious. Thrown off, I follow him up a small incline and then down a grassy slope that ends at the edge of Central Park Lake. It’s the one you always see in movies, the lake in which swans float by in pairs and lovers row each other around in boats—and where hapless joggers discover bloated corpses in the reeds. In starts the voice in my head: He’s going to cut off your arms and legs and throw you in!
Steve motions toward a shaded bench. “It’ll be cooler here.”
I take one end. He takes the other. We survey the lake. Ducks drift watchfully, waiting for someone to toss in picnic leftovers or a piece of soft pretzel. It won’t be long before someone comes and sits between us, thinking we don’t know each other.
Finally he speaks. “As you might imagine, I’ve been under a great deal of pressure lately. I was extremely angry on Friday, and I probably overreacted.”
“That’s an understatement.” Bad, Iris. Not very neutral of you. “But I do apologize.”
“You mean you’re sorry you got caught.”
“That, too.” I’m still fretting that he may have told Vickie, though I suspect that if he had, I would have heard from her by now.
He lets escape another one of those cackling laughs. “I take it you’re new at detective work? You don’t seem to have been doing it long.”
“It’s a more complicated job than you’d think.” Is this a trick? Why isn’t he shouting? He’s again observing me so intently I want to cover my face with my hands. I also really, really wish I’d worn anything but these sweatpants. And what I wouldn’t give for dignified, respectable hair I didn’t have to stuff under a Yankees hat.
“Why are you doing it?”
“I told you before. I’m between jobs. I need the money.”
“You’d have to be desperate to want to work for an insane woman. Have you known her long?”
“Just a few weeks. And for what it’s worth, I do agree that Vickie can be demanding.” Something registers on Steve’s face. An emotion I can’t decipher. Recognition? Irritation? Surprise? Offense? What might have triggered it? “I shouldn’t have said that,” I add hastily. There’s no sense upsetting Steve further when he’s considering a lawsuit. “It’s not my place to judge her behavior. A better way to put it would be that Vickie knows what she wants. In a way I admire that about her. Don’t you?”
Steve stares at me.
“Well, don’t you?”
After a long pause, Steve says, “Iris, where is my dear wife Vickie at this very moment?”
“I assume, home in Yorkville. Sorry—Upper East Side. Why, did she tell you she was going to her parents’ house? Somewhere else?” Is this a crucial piece of information I’m supposed to have known?
Steve is somehow frowning and smiling simultaneously. It’s eerie. “No,” he says. “No, Vickie didn’t tell me anything.”
A child comes near. A little boy, about three, with luminous, long-lashed brown eyes and close-cut hair shining gold in the sun. He’s carrying a bag to the edge of the lake, turning back every few steps to locate a thin woman wearing a huge, floppy-brim hat on a bench a length or two from ours. The woman waves to the boy.
“Do you have any kids, Iris?”
“Oh, no.”
Steve’s expression turns definitively to a frown. “Don’t you like them?”
“Very much.” I’d planned to have children with Teddy. The new plan is that on my thirty-fifth birthday, I’m heading for the sperm bank. Too bad life isn’t a soap opera, so I could seduce Kevin, get pregnant, and have his baby without ever telling him.
“Are you married?”
I don’t answer, because I have no intention of losing control of this conversation, and the way to maintain control is to keep the talk about Steve, not about me. That’s Hayes Heeley Market Research moderator training 101.
“No boyfriend?”
“That’s none of your business.”
To my surprise, he moves across the bench to sit closer to me. “You’re right. It was out of line.” He stays like that, his left leg millimeters from my right leg, for a split second, until something like This woman works for my wife must register in his mind and he moves away.
I can still feel the closeness of his body.
“You said Friday Vickie doesn’t trust me. Doesn’t trust me about what?”
Could this man be more audacious? “Why don’t you ask her?” To illustrate my point I slide farther away from him on the bench. “I resigned. I can’t keep spying on you now.”
The little boy has arrived at the water’s edge. He takes a handful of bread from his bag and casts the pieces every which way into the water. Ducks swim over, singly, then in pairs, then in threes and fours, until there are two dozen at the boy’s feet, paddling, quacking, and gobbling. The child seems overwhelmed and looks about to run back to his mother. Instead, he calls toward the park bench, “Mama! I’m the boss of these ducks!”
Steve smiles at me. He has just-full-enough lips and the smallest chip in his left front tooth. I wonder how he got it and—the thought pops out before I can squelch it—whether I could feel it if we were to kiss. Of course I hate myself for thinking it.
“If you’ve resigned, that must mean you’re a free agent,” he says.
BZZZZT! Zap!
What is happening to me? I slide all the way over to the end of the bench. The armrest digs into my side. “Whatever it is you’re assuming, Steve, you’re dead wrong. You’re lucky I’m not working for Vickie anymore, or I’d have to tell her you’re not as angelic as you claim to be.” My leg slips off the edge. I recover my balance and stand up to leave.
Steve goes back to watching the little boy.
“Are we done here?”
“Not quite,” he answers. “Do you have any experience with divorce, Iris?”
I watch him suspiciously. “Some.”
“You must have noticed, then, that newly divorced people are off-center. Their judgment goes awry. One minute they’re full of hope about the future, and the next they’re wishing they could go back to being married, if only to avoid the pain of change. Their emotions lie in ruins. Worst of all, they can’t help but spread that feeling to anyone around them. Especially their children. Have you noticed that, Iris?”
It’s uncanny how well he’s just summed up my own feelings. “What’s your point?”
He turns to face me. “Just thinking out loud.”
I feel bad for speaking rudely, and silly standing up. I sit back down on the bench at the maximum distance from Steve and play with the end of my khaki ponytail. Among the thoughts now keeping me up at night is whether I can recolor my hair one more time without it falling out. I can only imagine what Simon would have to say about that.
I drop the ponytail; Steve is watching me as if he wants me to say something. He’s going to set his lawyer on me. I just know it. “Not so long ago I worked
for a woman just looking for a reason to split from her husband.” It’s a bald appeal to his humane side. “She wanted proof he was a bad guy. I could have told her he was, and it wouldn’t have been entirely untrue. And despite that, all I could think about was saving their marriage.”
“So what did you do?”
“Shamed both of them into being nicer to each other.”
Steve chuckles. Then he says, seriously, “I’m sorry she is so unhappy.” It’s not clear whether he means Linda or Vickie.
It dawns on me that all Vickie truly wants is for Steve to be nicer to her. Unlike Linda, she’s desperate for proof that he isn’t the cheating kind. She wants him to feel closer to her, to tell her about his day without her having to drag it out of him. She wants him to pay as much attention to her as he pays his clients. She wants him to talk to her, well, the way he talks to me.
The tiny seed of an idea begins to germinate.
I recall Kevin’s words: The most effective solution is generally the simplest.
The more I think about it, the better the idea seems.
You can’t do this, my little voice warns. You can’t save anyone’s marriage. It’s none of your business and not your place. And it’s dishonest. And you’re repeating slogans to yourself in business jargon.
I could use the money, I tell it.
That’s disgusting, it retorts.
I’m unemployed. We’re unemployed. Don’t be so judgmental. I’m not trying to take advantage of anyone. I can help these people.
No, you can’t.
Steve stands up. “I’ve got an appointment. I need to get going.”
I feel a sudden chill. “You’re not going to your lawyer’s office, are you? You’re not going to tell Vickie? She doesn’t know, not unless you told her. I didn’t say anything. You told me not to, and I didn’t.”
He brushes a leaf off the shoulder of his jacket. “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t tell her. You’re off the hook. Sorry again for yelling at you the other day.”
Then it’s now or never. “I have a proposition for you.”
Steve stops walking.
“A business proposition. I want to make your marriage better.”
He laughs. At me.
“I’m serious. I can teach you how to be a better husband.”
“Oh, really?” The laugh lines deepen at the corners of his eyes. “Is that so?”
“Hear me out. You just said yourself you’re afraid of getting divorced.”
“That’s not quite how I put it.”
“That’s what you meant, though. You’re afraid of getting divorced, and you know Vickie doesn’t want a divorce—not now, especially. You refuse to see a therapist, and you clearly have something to hide.”
Mirth and disbelief dance a pas de deux in Steve’s gold-flecked eyes. “What happened to being innocent until proven guilty?”
“Quit the coy act, Steve. This will be good for Vickie, and you, too. I can tell you exactly what she wants from you. What I’d do is get her to tell me all the ways she wishes you would change. Then you and I could set up times to talk on the phone, let’s say, once a week. I’d pass her pointers along to you, you behave better, and voilà, your relationship is saved. All for one hundred dollars a session. In cash.”
Steve shakes his head, disbelieving. “You’re saying you want to deceive Vickie, basically by working as a double agent.”
“I wouldn’t phrase it like that, but I suppose so.”
“And how would you get her to tell you all of these personal secrets? Are you two friends?”
“Not really, no.” His attitude, his insufferable arrogance, are again beginning to get to me. “But that’s what I’m trained to do. In my real career, that is. I know how to get people to share their innermost thoughts.”
Steve appears unconvinced. He checks his watch. “I have to be somewhere. I’d help you if I could, but trust me on this—I am not the one to be listening in on Vickie’s complaints.”
I seem to be channeling Val, or Michelle Heeley, because I don’t plan on letting him say no. I grab his sleeve. “That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard. You can do your best to help the person you’re supposed to love. Or you can be someone who lets a perfectly good marriage—all right, a troubled marriage, but, still, a marriage—fall apart . . .” I’m choking up. “Fall apart through sheer inertia and stupidity. . . .” The end of my speech gets swallowed up in a strangled sob that seems to belong to someone else, not me.
I let go of Steve’s sleeve. The ducks are disbanding now; the little boy has used up his bread. His mother is beckoning him back from the water’s edge. “Let’s go see Daddy!” she calls out. The boy gallops back to her.
“You win, Iris,” Steve says quietly. “Maybe I can help save Vickie’s marriage.”
“It’s your marriage, too,” I correct him, struggling to regain a shred of my authority.
“I’m willing to coach Vickie on being a better wife.”
Unbelievable. Un-be-leev-a-ble. “You think Vickie needs relationship pointers?”
“Everyone could use relationship pointers, Iris.”
That stops me for a moment. If someone had given me relationship pointers, would Teddy and I still be together?
“And you think you’re qualified to be a . . . a wife coach?”
“Provided Vickie is willing to listen. But I have parameters. I don’t want this to drag on beyond one or two sessions. I will answer no specific questions regarding my behavior—where I go, what I do, how I feel. I will not promise to act on any of Vickie’s complaints.”
“This is outrageous!”
“These are my terms. You and I meet in person, not over the phone—”
“I guess that makes sense. She might be checking your phone bills,” I think aloud, then shut myself up before he changes his mind.
“—on mornings convenient to my schedule. Wednesday works for me, over by the boathouse, same place I saw you last time, at around the same time. And should this plan backfire—”
“It won’t.”
Steve sighs. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Iris. If it does, you remember, it was your idea.”
He is right; a lot could go wrong. Even if my plan works perfectly, I’ll be fraternizing with the enemy. And I’ll be deceiving Vickie—assuming I can persuade her to be my friend. I’ll be pressuring her to change her ways without any such promise from her husband. And I’ll be doing this during time I should be spending job hunting. I should feel terrible and shameful and devious.
But you know something?
I feel better than I have in weeks.
TWELVE
At noontime on Fifth Avenue, sparkles of sunlight bounce up from the white sidewalks and ricochet off the mirror surface of the boutique windows, turning the people passing by into formless, indiscriminate blobs. So I don’t notice Vickie until she’s nearly on top of me. From the look on her face, she’s hardly thrilled to see me after my abrupt resignation. Still, she must not completely hate me. She’s here, isn’t she?
“That Yankees hat doesn’t hide your hair, you know,” she says, smoothing her pink ladybug-embroidered skirt.
I blush and pull the brim down farther anyway, remind myself that sometimes good deeds take great effort, and force a light, positive tone. “I’m glad you could make it. I don’t have a lot of friends in New York, really.”
“I had an errand to do here anyway.” She leads me up the sidewalk to Bergdorf Goodman, where a uniformed doorman whisks us through an impossibly heavy revolving door. It’s hushed and cool inside. I follow Vickie across the floor, longing for every beautiful object on display: the burnished leather bag, the glittering bracelet, the mohair scarf as feathery as cotton candy. The store is already starting to show autumn merchandise, and my throat constricts with homesickness. Two falls ago Teddy and I spent every Friday night in front of our fireplace, drinking wine and watching the flames, without needing to say anything to each other. The fireplace was one o
f the best features of our otherwise mundane bungalow in the flats north of Ventura Boulevard. With no money we’d had to spruce up the house ourselves. Teddy had stripped and repainted the mantel, and I’d tackled the bougainvillea on the chimney—hours on a ladder, taming the overgrown vines with shears and gardening tape, paying no mind to the barbed-wire thorns hidden among its orange blossoms.
We take the escalator down to the beauty level. “How are things going?” I ask, watching our reflections in the mirrored walls.
“The same. No thanks to you.”
My confidence starts to falter as she threads her way between the crowded cosmetics counters, leaving me to trail along behind. Yesterday this seemed such a good idea. I’d be better off focusing on getting the money she owes me from last week.
We arrive at a small display case. “The Elixir,” the sign reads. The saleswoman behind the counter looks up from addressing a stack of postcards. “Mrs. Sokolov, how nice to see you. What would you like today?”
Vickie returns her smile. “Et toi, Alouette. Just the usual.”
Alouette has a good thirty years on Vickie. I can’t help feeling that if the world were in its right and natural order, their roles would be reversed; Vickie would be addressing Alouette respectfully by title and last name.
“My pleasure.” Alouette sets a diminutive square box on the counter. “The Elixir.” Her pronunciation makes it obvious that both words are capitalized. “The Eye Elixir as well?”
“Oui.”
Alouette brings out another small box. “Anything else?”
Vickie removes a Bergdorf’s charge card from her Louis Vuitton wallet. “C’est tout for aujourd’hui.”
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