“—you’ll have it by the end of August. I’ll leave a check at Rubicon by Labor Day. You can pick it up when you get back.”
“Iris . . .” If I didn’t know better, I’d say he sounded despondent.
“Go back to your wife,” I tell him before hanging up for the last time.
TWENTY-TWO
Just in case, for the next several days I go out of my way not to cross paths with Steve. I avoid the park in the early mornings (not difficult, really). There’s not a chance I’m going near the East Side. On Friday I decide to take a walk uptown, and choose Broadway instead of Columbus so I won’t pass Rubicon. While I walk I try Val at the office, and she actually answers the phone.
“How have I been for the past month? Busy busy busy!” she reports. “I’ve been out every night, and Michelle is being a slave driver. I’m flying out to do more groups tomorrow and then going back for more groups right after those are over and am trying to crash out a report this afternoon. I haven’t slept in weeks!”
She doesn’t ask how I’m doing. She doesn’t recognize that while she complains about being overworked, I can’t get a job anywhere. Not anywhere. Last week I stooped to answering a help-wanted ad from a telemarketing firm. When I called the contact to follow up she said she was working through the 312 résumés she’d received. I turn to walk back home.
“Has it ever occurred to you that my life isn’t exactly conducive to spiritual renewal?” Val continues.
I realize, suddenly, that the only time Val is ever interested in my life is when she’s telling me what to do. Otherwise, she talks about herself. In some ways, Vickie was the better friend. She was a spoiled princess, yes, but she did have a self-awareness her sister doesn’t seem to possess. Back in March I would have described Val as a fun-loving free spirit, but now I might as easily call her selfish and unfeeling. As if my ability to judge character weren’t already at a lifetime low, I may have gotten the Benjamin twins wrong, too.
“I’ve got to go back to work. Namaste, Iris,” Val says before hanging up. Why is she talking like my mother?
I find myself in front of Fairway, the gourmet grocery store, and wonder if it might cheer me up to eat something other than stale cereal. I go inside, promising myself to spend no more than twenty dollars, but before I know it I’m tossing into my basket every last luxury food I haven’t allowed myself for months. I buy estate-grown tea, fresh-baked sourdough bread, imported olives, smoked cheeses, two pounds of organic plums, three boxes of blueberries, baby asparagus, Italian salami, a cheesecake. I ask the cashier to have it delivered. Back out on Broadway I smile at a family passing me in the crosswalk, stop to listen to a saxophone melody drifting down from a brownstone window.
The feeling fades as soon as I get back to my apartment, so empty and small. I’ve spent days trying not to think about Steve, what the two of us have done. He was using you, Iris, chides my little voice. He was capitalizing on a romantic moment to distract you from the fact that you’d caught him with Jessica, his lover. Above all, he was making sure you won’t mention a word of this to Vickie. You must admit, Iris, it’s a brilliant strategy.
“Too bad, kitten, but your little voice is right.” Simon’s mouth is full of olives, but other than that he is utterly serious. “This guy’s a classic married weasel. Believe me, I’m familiar with the type. Don’t feel guilty. You were used.”
The Fairway deliveryman brought over no fewer than six bags, all at once, three in each hand, without breaking a sweat. Good thing I thought to call Simon, and not just because it kept me from phoning Steve; as it happens, I no longer have much of an appetite.
“Blueberry season. Love it! I’m going to eat a ton of these on Fire Island. Have some, doll face.” Simon pulls a few blueberries out of their old-fashioned green cardboard carton. “They’re nature’s little antioxidants.”
“You go ahead.”
Simon munches appreciatively. Then he looks up, stops, and waits.
“It’s just that he didn’t seem to be trying to deceive me,” I say, because he seems to want me to say something.
Simon helps himself to more blueberries. “I know, kitten. That’s what he wants you to think.”
Two days later I’m lying on my bed, searching for hidden messages in the plaster swirls on the ceiling, when the phone rings and, to my surprise, it’s Vickie. My heart starts to pound and my stomach starts to hurt, until she tells me she’s called to bury the hatchet—which really only makes me feel more awful than I already do.
“I wanted to apologize before I left. We’re leaving for the beach in the morning.”
Try not to think about it, Iris. “I remember. Have a wonderful time.”
“Thank you. We will.”
There’s nothing left to say. Part of me wants to insist that Vickie confront Steve immediately and demand that he come clean. Another part is pushing to admit my own moment of weakness with her husband. Those parts are being trumped by the part that can’t bring itself to say a word.
“You should know something.” That’s Vickie speaking. “When I first hired you, I was sure I was wasting my money. You so clearly had no idea what you were doing. Every time you came back insisting Steve was innocent, I wanted to fire you. Actually I wanted to scream at you and then fire you.”
“You did scream at me.”
“I feel terrible about it, too. You were so helpful, giving me all those tips. I can’t believe how much I’ve learned. Maybe he was cheating before. Who knows. But now I’m becoming the kind of wife he’s always wanted. I’d been such a witch.”
I stay still and concentrate on my breathing.
“Before you helped open my eyes, I would have just excused my behavior—‘Oh, it’s hormones,’ or whatever—when what it also was, was me being so upset at Steve, wanting him to do everything my way. I’m turning into a better person, though. It’s hard to change, but worth it, don’t you think?”
How far Vickie seems to have come from the self-absorbed woman I met that first day in Grand Central. I’m more disgusted with Steve than ever, knowing he’s now got her right where he wants her. It’s The Taming of the Shrew, except that in this version Petruchio gets not simply a docile, well-behaved wife, but one he can cheat on with impunity. I hate him. I really do. I look back up at the ceiling and then follow the crown molding around the room, noticing the beauty of the woodwork, carved into oak leaves and acorns.
“Are you all right, Iris? I know you don’t have a lot of friends here yet. Will you be okay in the city with everyone gone?”
“I’ll be fine.” I am not going to cry. I won’t.
“Have a good rest of the summer, then. Thanks for being there for me. I’ll call you after Labor Day, and we’ll go to Bergdorf’s again. I have a plan to get you free samples at Bobbi Brown.”
“You have a good rest of the summer, too.”
“We will. He’s promised we’ll do a lot of talking and walking on the beach. On the days he has to be in the city, I’ve got girlfriends I haven’t seen all year to catch up with.”
Stop! Stop! Danger! “Did you say he’s going to be in the city?”
Vickie laughs. “Ever heard of a Hamptons widow? He can’t quit working, because somebody has to pay for the beach house. It’s fine. He promises he’ll be with me a lot more this year than last. There are simply some meetings he can’t get out of.”
I try to keep the shake out of my voice. “Are you sure it’s really business? It seems awfully suspicious.”
“I used to think the same way. You said it yourself, though. The more I act as if I don’t trust him, the more it’ll drive him away.”
“Steve said that. I only passed it along.”
“I’m glad you did. It’s time I put my faith in him.”
What would another woman do? Would she break down and confess? Would she insist that Vickie not go on the vacation she sees as a second honeymoon? Would she rob a pregnant woman of the fantasy that her husband will be there for her child?
“There’s another thing,” Vickie adds quietly. “Promise me if someday you two bump into each other, you’ll never tell him the true story.”
This is too much to take. “I promise.”
“It’s a shame, really. He’s never, ever mentioned you, but I think you were his first woman friend.” She sighs. “I bet he misses you.”
“Just please make sure he treats you well.”
“Everything will work out for the best. You’ll see, Iris.”
Memo to all eight million residents of New York City: I apologize. I was wrong to call you a bunch of whining liars.
New York in August really is hell on earth. Compared to now, the Fourth of July heat wave was a gentle breath of spring. This heat, the real heat, begins near the end of the month, after both Vickie and Simon have left town, when I awake early one morning so uncomfortable, I’m convinced my air conditioner has died in the night. On further review I find it’s still groaning in my window—it’s just no match for the stagnant mass of swampy air that has descended over the city. I find Rocky lying listlessly on the floor of my bathroom, tongue lolling out, head pressed against the base of the toilet, as if recovering from a wild party.
“Come on, Rock.” I peel him up off the tile and half-drag him out for his walk. “At least we’re wretched together.”
He whimpers.
Wretched we are—he because he’s stuck wearing a black fur coat, and I because I’m lonely and confused and too lethargic to do much else except take serial cold showers, which still steam up my apartment and further burden my air conditioner. It’s even worse when it’s time to take Rocky outside; there’s no breeze to cool us down or to blow away the stench of three centuries’ worth of garbage and urine soaked into the ground. It feels as if I were breathing through a mildewed sponge.
As the days pass with no change, I can do little beyond take Rocky to the curb in front of my brownstone and shuffle to the deli for the daily iced coffees that are now the only thing I’m able to get down. It seems there is an eating plan even more drastic than the divorce diet: the desperately-trying-to-forget-you-kissed-a-married-man diet. By early August I’ve dropped another five pounds. I look malnourished and skeletal.
One morning when Rocky and I arrive at the deli, a man I’ve never seen is operating the coffee machine. Where’s the other guy? I ask.
The strange man puts a plastic lid on my cup and hands me a straw. “Jersey Shore.”
I’ve been abandoned completely. Art, my mail carrier, has gone back to his home country for a month; Simon calls every few days but is absorbed in the new boyfriend he’s met on Fire Island. Val is away, too, though even if she were here, I doubt I’d call her.
And Steve. I try not to imagine him with Vickie, strolling along the shore, the tide soaking the hems of his linen trousers, as they discuss their lives together; or sharing appetizers at a calculatedly quaint outdoor café. I try not to torture myself with thoughts of him gazing into her eyes and kissing her the way he kissed me.
Rocky, stretched out asleep on the worn kitchen linoleum, whines fitfully.
Another day, the phone rings. The lights are off and the shades drawn; the apartment is dark and oppressive. I’ve long since stopped thinking it might be an offer of work, and let the answering machine pick up. “Checking on you,” Vickie says. “If you’re not okay, call me.” I erase the message as soon as she hangs up.
By the second week of August, week four of my self-imposed exile, I feel so physically and mentally unwell, I make myself go for a walk. It can’t be good for Rocky, lying in my apartment day after day. I coax him up and manage to comb my hair. When that wall of sodden, stinking air hits me, I try to disregard it and set out for Central Park, thinking it might not smell as bad there. As we walk over to Central Park West, the wind picks up, blowing a discarded copy of the New York Observer into the street. It’s a hot wind, but it’s movement.
Too late, I realize the sky has also turned an unearthly shade of green. A streak of lightning tears over the park, accompanied by a cinematic clap of thunder and a drenching hot shower. Rocky and I stumble back across Central Park West, but we’re soaked through by the time we get to the other side. There’s no use hurrying anymore, so we trudge slowly home through the storm, the rain plastering my hair and clothes to my skin.
It figures—the phone is ringing when I arrive, dripping, at my apartment. I don’t pick up, peeling off my sodden clothes and leaving them in a puddle inside the door. “Rocky, stay,” I command, and step into the bathroom to find an appropriate dog-rag hidden among the wedding linens. There isn’t one. What does it matter? I step back into the living room to dry off Rocky with a towel that cost more than a whole day’s worth of unemployment money.
By this time the caller is speaking into the machine. “Iris, please pick up. It’s your husband.”
“Husband” gets my attention.
“You need to pick up. It’s important. Please.”
Teddy isn’t speaking in an accent. Despite the heat, an icicle of fear pricks my heart. I pick up. “What’s wrong?”
Teddy’s voice is shaking. “I have news.”
I start to sweat. Beads of it roll off with the raindrops. Then I start to shiver. What has happened? His roommate borrowed his car and used it to rob a bank. The house has burned down. There’s been an earthquake, a flood, a plague of locusts. A meteorite is headed for Studio City. Teddy’s been arrested. Teddy has leukemia.
“I got work.”
My knees buckle, and I sag onto my bed. A job? That’s the news? Teddy is always getting a job. He’s had twenty since I’ve known him. “That’s good, Teddy. Are the hours okay? I hope no graveyard shift this time.” At least now he can start paying off my share of our tax refund, one minimum-wage paycheck at a time.
“No, Iris, I got work. A commercial. A national commercial, actually. Listen to this: ‘Go after it, girl.’” When he speaks the line his voice is silky-smooth as a lounge singer’s. “My agent just called. I wanted you to be the first to know. It’s a really, really big deal.” He takes a breath. “Forty thousand dollars.”
Agent? Teddy has an agent?
“That’s not all. Shug’s friend is making a student film in Death Valley. It’s called Death Valley, and I’m in it. I’m the crazy drifter who kidnaps the innocent teen hooker at the truck stop. It’s like the third biggest part. There’s no pay, and it’s going to be about a hundred and twenty degrees out in the desert, but he’s going to try to get it into some film festivals, and who knows where that might lead? It could be my ticket out of voice-over.”
Teddy is already looking for a ticket out of voice-over?
“Iris, listen to me. Do you want to come home? Back to L.A.? We can take it slow, you know. We can have Martin put the divorce on hold, and you could move back into the house. I could kick out Miller and Shug. You could stay in the guest room and we could talk.”
I’m stunned and rain-soaked, burning up all over again.
“Are you there?”
Forty thousand dollars?
“Iris? Do you want to come home?”
I could go back to the Valley. I could be with all my friends, in my old, familiar life. Teddy and I could talk. I squeeze in front of the air conditioner. Its breeze is none too cool and smells like wet pug. “But, Teddy, I walked out on you.”
“Yes,” he says. “Maybe we can make it work this time, though.”
I could leave this city at last and be back in my normal life. It’s what I’ve wished for all along.
“But I can’t come home. I don’t have a car, or a job, and I’ve got a dog I’m taking care of,” I hear myself say.
The air conditioner churns, and Rocky snores on my towel. I wait for Teddy to say something, and start to shiver again. Will he renege on his offer? Did I hear it right in the first place? Was there ever, anywhere, as pathetic a human being as I?
But I did hear right, and Teddy doesn’t renege. “I’m making money now. We’ll b
uy you a car. And you’ll find a job. Pat Sweeney would take you back in a heartbeat,” he adds, invoking the name of my former boss.
My eyes fill with tears at my husband’s sweet naïveté, but my little voice declares, Vintage Teddy. Yet again he hasn’t thought something through. After taxes, and once he pays off his debts, he’ll be lucky to have enough left of that forty thousand to get a car wash, let alone a car.
But even before the internal monologue is over, my answer to Teddy is perfectly formed, sparkling-crystal clear. “Teddy.” I’m smiling so hard, my cheeks hurt. “I would like to come home.”
He’s never going to change, you know, the voice says.
“Really?” Teddy sounds as if he hasn’t been expecting that answer.
“Really. I can’t leave here until after Labor Day, though. I’m taking care of my friend’s dog until then.”
“Actually, that’s even better. Work is going to keep me busy. I’ll have the commercial to do, and right after that I’m heading out to the desert for the film, and then I’m supposed to leave from there for Baja for a couple of weeks with the guys. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to use my cell phone. Why don’t we plan to talk the week after Labor Day?”
“That’s great, Teddy. And congratulations. It’s amazing.”
“Bye, Iris. I love you.”
I try not to notice that he says the “I love you” in a Russian accent.
That night I dream that Teddy, Steve, and my friend Evie’s husband, Doug, are standing with me at a scenic lookout in the Angeles Crest Mountains, on the side of a precarious, twisting road. I’m holding the square plastic container of my father’s ashes from the crematorium. Teddy and Doug are joking and laughing. Steve steps forward to help me release my father’s remains, beige-colored bits of gravel, over the edge of the cliff. They scatter into the air and become raindrops, and I hold the empty container and sob to Teddy and Doug, “He’s gone! He’s never coming back!” But Teddy and Doug have vanished. Steve has transformed into my mother, who claps her hands together and says, “Go after it, girl!”
It's About Your Husband Page 23