In the morning, something has changed.
Rocky is whining to go out, as usual, and the air conditioner is groaning away in the window. Early light is trickling in through the closed shutters. When I take Rocky outside, it’s still as sultry as ever.
Then I realize what’s different. For the first time since my trip to Fairway in July, I’m hungry. I consult the fridge: nothing but salami. But the loaf of bread is in my freezer; I take it out and spend ten minutes chipping off chunks with a serrated knife. I eat four frozen slices’ worth before moving on, though it’s only seven in the morning, to the salami. My stomach doesn’t hurt at all.
After breakfast I find myself wanting to go out and do something. It’s no good hiding in the apartment, trying to avoid the summer. If the heat has moved in for a while, I should make peace with it. More important, I realize it would be a shame to leave New York without ever having taken advantage of what it has to offer.
I shower and change, set out food and plenty of water for Rocky, leave the bathroom door open so he can sprawl on the tile, and step out into the sweltering city. I walk up the street to the Museum of Natural History and spend three hours in its cool, cavernous halls, admiring dinosaur bones and meteorites. In the planetarium I lose myself in the nebulae and galaxies whirling across the dark dome overhead. I marvel at the life-size whale model in the oceans exhibit and spend a long time standing before the three-million-year-old Lucy skeleton. A sign says those of her species, Australopithecus afarensis, were among the first human ancestors who walked on two feet instead of four, allowing them to come down from the trees and venture into uncharted territory. I picture Lucy, alive and whole, a fragile creature so close to human, leaving the safety of her treetop for the wild, windswept savannah.
My walk home takes me past the bench where Kevin and I sat months ago debating Steve’s innocence, and I feel a stab of something sharp and painful, but it passes quickly. Back in my apartment I order three dishes from Szechuan Palace and eat most of it, slipping Rocky chicken and water chestnuts. As I’m taking the cartons out to the trash, I think, I’m going home.
I spend the next afternoon exploring the Met, its upstairs rooms of Rembrandts and Cézannes and downstairs labyrinths of Greek vases and medieval suits of armor. In the Egyptian hall I find a monolithic black granite sarcophagus and an unscrolled Book of the Dead; a mummy lies flat on its back behind a thick wall of glass, yellowed wrapping bound tightly around its small body. Beside me a freckled girl in braces, maybe eleven, whispers to a woman who must be her mother that it was wrong to have dug up the mummy. “Now he’ll never get to the afterlife.”
Her mother puts her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Sweetie,” she says. “Maybe this is the afterlife.”
In the days that follow I go to the Guggenheim, the J. P. Morgan Library, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney. I visit the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, with the lion statues crouching at its entrance, and feel transported back to another era. I ride the ferry to Staten Island to see what it’s like. As it chugs back toward Manhattan, I take in the jagged skyline, the silent enormity of this place, when approached from the outside in. For a moment staying in New York almost seems worth it. Then I think about my friends, the bougainvillea on the chimney of my house, Teddy’s peanut-butter sandwiches. If I try hard, really hard, to be the kind of wife Teddy wants—more supportive, more easygoing—maybe we can make our marriage work.
When I get home I call Teddy to say hello but get only a computer recording that says, “The customer you are trying to reach is out of range.”
I begin taking Rocky for longer walks into the park, letting him lead me where he wants to go. One drizzly morning he makes his way over to the reservoir and across to the bottom of the staircase. He starts up the stairs, but I hold tightly to his leash. He strains harder, trembling with the effort.
I drop anchor with my umbrella, planting its point in the earth. “Rocky, no.”
He digs in his feet and pulls harder. It takes several more borderline-inhumane yanks on his leash before he lets me lead him away.
We end up back there the next day and the day after that. By the third try the relentless little nuisance has worn me down. I follow him halfway up the stone staircase, and when he stops on the landing, I sit and let him flop onto my feet. The oaks and maples make a canopy over us both. It’s peaceful here, as long as I don’t think about . . .
“Come on, Rocky. Time to go.” I pull his leash, and we walk back toward home.
Even so, we keep returning to the reservoir, and as the days go on, I dwell less and less on what happened. On the staircase early on the last Thursday in August, I linger on a step with a cup of coffee and a collapsible bowl of water for Rocky—bought at Gracious Home and to be bequeathed to Simon once I leave. I’m surprised to discover that the thought of Steve has become a faded bruise, only painful if I press down on it deliberately. Someday soon this all will be in the past. I’ll be back home, with a job and another chance at my marriage, and I won’t focus on my failures.
Teddy will never change, my little voice insists. He is who he is. You’ll end up in exactly the same relationship, with exactly the same problems.
I think back to the sounds of my old street: the eucalyptus trees rustling, cars rushing past on the freeway above, my neighbors having a pool party, bursts of laughter and soft splashes drifting up from their side of the fence into the ozone-scented Valley air.
That life you’re so homesick for—it isn’t your life anymore, the voice says.
“Woowoowoowoowoo! Woowoowoowoowoo!” Rocky leaps up from his spot at my feet. “Woowoowoowoowoo!”
“Shush!” I give his leash a quick jerk. Dogs aren’t allowed at the reservoir, I remember, and though it’s not against the rules to have Rocky down here on the staircase, I still get harsh looks from the disciples who run the track even in this weather.
Rocky can’t get his mind off the squirrel, or the butterfly, or the leaf, or whatever it is that’s bugging him. He barks and howls frantically.
On the path below us, a dog barks back with equal frenzy. So that’s what it is. Perhaps its owner will have the sense to avoid confrontation, to lead his or her scrappy mutt off in the opposite direction.
It’s too late. The dog, an energetic, tan-and-white dog, bouncing and straining at the end of its leash, comes rushing up to us. The dog is followed by a brown-haired, brown-eyed man about six feet tall, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, about to go for a run.
I freeze. Rocky howls. Jack—because it is Jack—leaps vertically into the air.
Steve strides toward me. “Hey!”
I’m already up and running.
“Wait!”
I don’t wait. I pick up the pace instead. Heat or no, I’m in far better shape now than I was in May—all that walking and Rollerblading and mad-dashing—and feel almost no pain racing back toward my side of the park. The only thing slowing me down is Rocky, so I stop to pick him up and continue my sprint, at the same pace, with his fifteen-pound deadweight in my arms. Behind me Steve is still calling after me, and Jack is still barking. That, too, eventually fades away, until the last sounds left are my feet against the ground, and the clink of Rocky’s heart-shaped name tag as I bounce him along.
I run until I reach the west wall of the park, and only then allow myself a peek behind me. Steve is nowhere to be found. Just in case, I continue jogging until I reach the steps of my brownstone, and set Rocky down on the sidewalk. The minute I stop, I’m overcome with dizziness and nausea. Feeling about to faint, or throw up, or worse, I hunch helplessly against the banister, hoping the sensation will pass.
It does, after a minute or two of deep breathing. When it seems possible, I straighten halfway up and start up the stairs. I’m soaked in sweat, exhausted, and desperate for water. So focused am I on my goal of getting into my apartment, so intent, that I nearly trip over someone sitting at the top of the staircase.
“Oh! Sorry! Pardon me!” I
manage to eke out before remembering my vow to stop apologizing automatically.
“Only you can pardon you.”
The voice is all too familiar. I jerk my head up. When I do, I’m sick and dizzy all over again.
This time it’s got nothing to do with the heat.
My mother rises from her spot on my stoop. She dusts off her skirt and spreads her arms open in welcome.
“Look who’s here!” she says.
TWENTY-THREE
Is it possible to die of shock? I jump about a foot into the air and shriek. Three passing construction workers stop. One calls, “Need help?”
I wave at him. No, everything’s peachy, thanks.
Only it’s not. It’s not because here is Joy, in full goddess mode, teleported somehow from the Arizona desert, standing on my stoop. She’s blonder than I remember, and tanner, too. She’s wearing an ankle-length broomstick skirt, a watermelon-colored short-sleeved cotton sweater and espadrilles, and sunglasses attached to a beaded chain around her neck. As she steps toward me, her chime ankle bracelet gives a delicate ping, and a crystal prism around her neck sends a piercing shaft of light into my eyes.
She envelops me in a patchouli-scented embrace. “It’s been too long!” I pry myself free. It’s far too hot for a hug, even if I wanted one. She stands back to take me in—my red face, wet hair, and bedraggled clothing. “I was looking for a sacred space in which to rebalance my energy, and I thought, if there’s a sacred space anywhere in this city, it will be in the park. I stopped over to see if you’d like to accompany me.”
It’s like the nightmare where you’re rooted to the spot and can’t run, fight, or call for help. “What are you doing here?”
“Darling, I came for the New Age Expo.” Joy makes a clucking noise with her tongue. “You didn’t open your heart to the communication, Iris. I suspected as much. That’s why I assumed it would be better to drop by. It’s a good thing I did. You look very, very unbalanced.”
Naturally I’m unbalanced. It’s six hundred degrees out here; I’ve just finished a quarter-mile sprint wearing sandals and carrying a dog, to escape from the cheating husband of an identical twin; only to find my estranged mother on my doorstep.
“I don’t want to rebalance my energy. I want to go inside and lie down.”
“I understand. We each seek our own peace. Here.” She takes from her tooled leather tote bag a card that says “Guest Pass.” “For you. The Expo is at the Javits Center, and I’ve written my booth number on the back. You can always stop by my hotel, too. I’m on Central Park South at the Intercontinental, Room Ten-twenty, though I may be changing. The feng shui is a little”—she lowers her voice—“off.”
I take the pass numbly.
“Namaste.” Joy goes twinkling down the stairs.
I rouse Rocky and, zombielike, unlock my building’s outer and inner doors and then the door to my own apartment. I unhook Rocky’s leash from his collar and drop it onto the floor. Then, though it’s barely eight in the morning, I do the only thing I can think of to do. I find the last bottle of alcohol in the apartment, the 1998 Cheval Blanc Bordeaux that was a wedding present from my coworkers. “To celebrate a milestone,” someone wrote on the card.
If this were a movie the audience would be shouting, “No, Iris, no! Not the 1998 Cheval Blanc! You and Teddy will want that for your tenth anniversary! Go to the wine store on Columbus and buy some of that cheap Spanish red with the charging bull on the label!” Sorry, this is an emergency. I am simply incapable of processing the idea of my mother in Manhattan without an attitude-adjusting beverage.
I run down to Simon’s for a corkscrew, then come back upstairs and uncork the Bordeaux. I am about to guzzle recklessly from the bottle when my conscience gets the better of me. I set the bottle on my fireplace mantel. Then I get my one wineglass, pour a bit of wine into it, swirl it around, inhale, and take a delicate sip.
Delicious. Sublime. Nectar of the gods, with a flawlessly balanced concupiscence that . . . oh, enough with the wine review. Three healthy gulps, and the muscles in my neck and shoulders relax. One glass, and I’m feeling much more myself again. Two, and the room is starting to spin. I stand shakily and pour myself a third glass.
BZZZZZ!
The front door buzzer sends me through the roof. This time I shriek even louder than I did at Joy, lurch backward, and fall against my armchair. This is it; I’m having a nervous breakdown, for real.
BZZZZZZZZ! the buzzer sounds again. BZZZZZZZ! BZZZZZZ! BZZZZZZ!
I fling myself at my intercom, intending to hit the Talk button—to scream at whoever it is to get me an ambulance. Instead of “Talk,” though, I accidentally push “Enter,” and before I can stop it the front doors are opening and slamming shut and someone is knocking insistently on my door. That sets Rocky barking again. By now my nerves are so shot and I’m so drunk that without thinking, I yank open the door. Without even putting on the chain.
In runs Jack.
Steve storms in behind him.
“Iris . . .” Steve begins just as Jack rushes at Rocky, and the two dogs start jumping excitedly all over each other and us, and I lose my balance completely, tumbling backward, this time over my footstool, which overturns, sending my wineglass shattering into a thousand pieces, wine splattering everywhere, and me crashing to the floor hard, 1998 Cheval Blanc Bordeaux, arguably one of the greatest vintages of recent memory, streaming down my face.
Steve lunges toward me, his mouth contorted with what looks like fear. He drops to his knees and puts his arms around me. “Iris!”
I burst into tears.
Steve holds me at arms’ length, checking me for signs of injury. “Shh,” he says at last, folding me into his arms again, as I sob harder and harder. “You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re fine.” He uses his hands to wipe wine and tears from my cheeks. “Your place is a mess, but you’re fine.”
“I’m not f-f-fine!”
“You are. I’m here now,” he murmurs. I sob into his running shirt. It’s slightly damp, but mostly it’s soft and warm and more comforting than anything I can remember, and he keeps rubbing my back until I start to calm down ever so slightly. The dogs have stopped jumping and barking and are now quietly eating Jack’s leash.
“I’m drunk,” I tell Steve. “I’m a wreck. Joy is here.” Joy! I’d forgotten for a moment. I start sobbing all over again.
“Shh.” He stands up. “Why don’t you get in the shower?”
I look at him cagily.
“I’ll go. I’ll take these two outside. Would half an hour be long enough?”
“I g-g-guess.”
“Good. I’ll get you something to eat, and when I come back I’ll work on putting your apartment back together.” He hooks Rocky’s leash onto his collar and clicks his tongue. Both dogs stand obediently. “Mind the broken glass,” Steve reminds me. He opens my door and steps out into the hallway, closing it with a gentle click.
I listen until both front doors close. Then I scrape myself off the floor and totter into the bathroom. When I see myself in the mirror I almost start crying all over again. My face and clothes are streaked with wine and tears and dust and sweat. Steve must feel pretty sorry for me. I feel sorry for me. I try to put it all out of my mind and step into the shower, hoping the water will drown out my little voice warning me not to let my guard down. Don’t let Steve fool you. He’s just like everybody else.
I squeeze my eyes shut and stand under the spray.
Thirty minutes later, when the buzzer sounds again, I manage not to jump. When I open the door in a clean top and my old sweatpants, Steve looks relieved. He brings the dogs inside, where they go straight for the food bowl in the kitchen. I take him up on his invitation to sit and rest, and spend the next fifteen minutes eating the scrambled-egg-on-a-bagel he’s brought me and watching him sweep up broken glass, mop the floor, and sponge wine stains off my furniture. Then he notices my face and straightens up.
It’s embarrassing, but watching him
has me all teary. I bug my eyes out to keep them at bay, blinking a few times for good measure.
“What is it? You can tell me.”
It sounds so much more genuine than Joy’s typical “I’m here for you” that it nearly takes my breath away. “I was just thinking”—the words come out in a half-sob—“I’ve never seen a man use a sponge mop.”
He looks at me quizzically for a moment, then chuckles.
“It’s almost a miracle.” I’m crying again.
Steve rearranges his expression into something more serious. “That’s what you were thinking?”
I giggle, first a little bit, and then a little bit harder and a little bit louder, until I’m laughing helplessly. That makes him laugh again, and then I laugh harder because he’s laughing, and soon I’m nearly hysterical. How could anyone not see the humor in Steve rescuing me from yet another mess of my own making?
I start to sob. The deep, shuddery kind of sobbing where your mouth gets all twisted up and your nose starts to run uncontrollably and you gulp for air and no matter what you do, you can’t make it stop. I hide my face and hope fervently that Steve will have the decency to put down the sponge mop and leave. He doesn’t. That is, he does set aside the mop, but only so he can crouch down and gently pull my hands back from my face.
“Tell me,” he says softly as I whimper and gulp for air. “Tell me.”
I manage to eke out, “Joy just showed up. Right on my doorstep.”
“What?”
“No, who. Joy killed my father and ruined my life and now she’s h-h-here and I should have checked my e-mail and I’m still drunk and I’m making no sense! Why are you in New York? Why aren’t you in Southampton?”
“Why were you at the reservoir?”
“I was walking the d-dog,” I answer between sobs. “How do you know my address, anyway? Does no one think to c-c-call first anymore?”
Steve gets up, and in an instant I’ve gone from praying he’ll leave to fearing he’ll leave. But he’s not leaving. He’s pulling up my wine-spattered footstool alongside the armchair. He balances on it, not looking the slightest bit comfortable, and leans toward me. “Ilona gave me your address. It was forward of me to ask for it. Why don’t you tell me about this Joy person? From the beginning.”
It's About Your Husband Page 24