It's About Your Husband

by Lauren Lipton

“That first morning at the reservoir. You were there with Jack. You were running, and you looked right at me and then took off down the embankment and vanished. If you’re so innocent, why were you trying to lose me?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You do so. I know you do.”

  “No,” he insists. “I don’t.”

  “Well, then,” I say, “it’s a good thing we’ve walked this far.”

  It feels strange to be climbing the reservoir staircase not in sweatpants and sneakers. Dust settles between my exposed toes; the seams of my skirt strain as I take the steps two at a time. Being here with Steve makes me wistful, too, for the anticipation I felt before our meetings, back when he was still Vickie’s husband and I was looking forward to learning another new thing about him, even if it was only to report back to Vickie. How odd to think of that as a more innocent time.

  “Now,” I say once I’ve marched him to the upper track. “The first day, this is what you did. You ran up here. I was following behind you. You and Jack took off full bore, and then when you rounded that bend up there—see it?—you glanced back at me and then ran down the embankment. Don’t tell me you didn’t know I was following you.”

  He’s grinning again.

  “It’s not funny.”

  Steve allows the smallest chuckle.

  “It’s not funny!”

  “It is funny,” he says. “When was that? Must have been May or June, right?”

  “It was in May.”

  “I do remember that day. Glorious weather, I recall. I don’t remember anyone following me, though. You’re a better detective than you think, Iris. What color hair did you have back then?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “It was the first day I’d brought Jack to the reservoir. I’d run there alone a lot, but not with him. Come with me.”

  He leads me toward the curve where he disappeared. My heels sink into the track as I walk. It’s a good quarter mile to the spot in question.

  When we get there, he points to the fence. “Read.”

  There’s a green Parks Department sign attached to the fence: “No Dogs, Carriages, Skates, Skateboards, Tricycles, Bicycles.”

  “I ran past the sign, looked back when the ‘No Dogs’ caught my attention, and realized why so many people had been giving me dirty looks.”

  “You sprinted down a . . .” I glance over the edge of the track. “. . . a forty-five-degree slope that’s probably covered in poison ivy because you didn’t like people giving you dirty looks?”

  He grins. “You know how these runners are.”

  I’m holding my breath, pressing my lips together, the way I used to do to keep myself from yelling at Teddy.

  Teddy!

  How on earth will I explain all this to him?

  Steve continues, “That’s the last time I brought Jack up here. After that, we stayed down there.” He points to the lower track.

  I push the worry to the back of my mind for now.

  “It’s entirely true. You know it is, too.”

  All right, maybe he didn’t deliberately set out to deceive me. He is not part of a conspiracy among the residents of Manhattan to humiliate the new girl from the San Fernando Valley. That doesn’t change the fact that he kept up this charade for an entire summer. And for what? So he could put another notch on his bedpost? As a distraction during his ugly divorce?

  “You could have told me.” I speak carefully because otherwise I really will start screaming. “Four little words. One simple sentence: ‘I’m the wrong man.’ Just once this entire summer. You could have found the right moment. You could have made me listen. Four words, and this whole mess would have been over. Why didn’t you?”

  “I did say that. I kept telling you I wasn’t the person you thought I was.”

  He’s right, you know, my little voice chimes in. No. He’s not right. “You wore a wedding ring, Steve! If you weren’t trying to trick me, why would you do that?”

  Steve drags his shoe against the gravel of the track. I can at least have the satisfaction of knowing he’s nervous. “All I can say is, I haven’t been myself since Stephanie left me. The divorce has made me a little crazy. This isn’t the kind of thing I would ever have done under normal circumstances. And I’m slowly getting my sanity back. I want you to know that.”

  “Goody for you.”

  He holds up his hand. “I was trying to trick you with the ring. By then I did want you to believe I was Vickie’s husband. But I took it off again weeks ago, and you didn’t even notice. I wasn’t wearing it when we made love.”

  Still, the zap buzzes through me. It’s not fair. “Well, then. I guess that gets you off the hook.”

  “Iris, I wanted to tell you. I tried plenty of times, too, but you wouldn’t let me. You’d run away or make a big speech about how it was my duty to save Vickie’s marriage.”

  “I thought it was your marriage! I didn’t mean you should interfere in a total stranger’s marriage! Here’s a vulnerable woman, a woman you don’t even know, whose husband is cheating on her while she’s pregnant, and you’re manipulating her behavior, playing around with her life? What kind of a person does that?”

  “Isn’t it exactly what you were doing? Interfering in a stranger’s marriage?”

  Right again, Iris, says my little voice.

  “I know you had Vickie’s best interests in mind. Believe it or not, I really began to think I could help.” Steve reaches out to put his hand on my arm. I swat it away and jump out of his reach. “And I didn’t think it would go on this long. You have to believe me. I’m sick about it.”

  “Good. You should be.” I want to cry again, thinking of Vickie. I had just as much a part in this charade as Steve did. He didn’t force me to pass along his stupid pointers. I pushed him into it. “I think I’ve heard enough. You know, Steve, I’m leaving New York and I’m going back to my husband. We’re going to start over. And I’m glad I never have to see you again. You’re a liar and a cheat and a user.”

  I must get away from here. Not by mincing, dainty and ladylike, a quarter mile back to the staircase. I need to leave immediately. I slip off my shoes and, with them in one hand and my purse in the other, run down the reservoir embankment, over sharp stones and past suspicious-looking bushes, wincing with each step. To hell with you, Steve, I fume as I skid to a stop on the lower track. Without looking back, I slip my shoes back onto my filthy feet and limp out into the city. To hell with you, too, New York. I can’t wait to leave. Moving here was the worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life.

  Waiting on Fifth Avenue, hand in the air to flag down a taxi, trying to calm myself, I feel something brush the top of my head.

  I jump back and flick it away. Then I spin around to see what it was. I find it on the brick sidewalk behind me: an early autumn leaf, big as my hand, its blood-red points curled toward me as if waving good-bye.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tuesday after Labor Day. The day life starts up again in New York.

  The middle school across my street swarms with students, shouting to one another across the playground, playing basketball at recess, sweating in their too-warm new clothes. The owners of the tiny specialty stores—the olive oil boutique on Amsterdam, the sock shop on Seventy-fifth—take down their handwritten “On Vacation” signs and reopen their doors. A banner goes up on the front of the former sidewalk café with the doggie drinking trough, now reopening, without the trough, as a tapas bar. I leave a message on Teddy’s answering machine asking him to call me the minute he returns from Mexico. As I ponder how to tell him about what I’ve done, my neighbors, one by one, return home.

  One day at the deli, I find that my favorite coffee man is back. A few days after that, Rina the dog lady waves to me as she climbs the steps to my building. Later, when I go out to the mailbox to collect my unemployment check, Art is jangling his mammoth key ring.

  “You still here?” He raises his blue USPS cap in a salute. “I
thought you must move on to bigger things by this time.”

  “I am moving,” I tell him.

  I’ve never noticed how broad Art’s grin is. It lights up his whole face. “Good for you!” he shouts. “Jersey? SoHo?”

  “Studio City, the San Fernando Valley, Californa.”

  His grin fades slightly. “You give up on living here so soon?”

  “I’m not giving up. It’s just that California is my home. Everything is too hard here. Nothing makes any sense.”

  “It’s New York. Supposed to be hard. But you work hard enough, your dream comes true.” He unlocks the mailboxes and pulls out the letters waiting to be sent.

  I try to clear my throat of the small lump that seems to have materialized there. “Don’t you miss your home? Don’t you miss Guyana?”

  “I miss Guyana.” He pulls a bundle of incoming mail from a plastic bin on the floor next to him and begins to sort it into the mailboxes. “New York is my home.”

  I call Vickie and am relieved to hear she’s not angry at me for my terrible detective work.

  “How are you doing?” I ask. “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m doing well,” she says simply. “Surprisingly well.” I offer to repay, over time, the money she paid me, but she tells me it isn’t necessary. “I got a lot out of it. All that advice from Steve—the other Steve—it changed my life.”

  “It didn’t stop your husband from treating you like dirt. In the end, what changed?”

  “I stopped treating everyone else like dirt,” she says. “Iris, who was that other Steve, anyway? He looked familiar, like maybe I’d seen him in the pages of Kitty. I keep meaning to ask his sister the next time I bump into her.”

  I think of Vickie and Clare chatting in the elevator. At some point, Clare must have realized who Vickie was and shared their conversations with Steve. How else would he have known how Vickie and her husband were spending their Fourth of July weekend?

  “If you do happen to see him, please thank him for me.”

  “I won’t be seeing him again.”

  “That’s too bad. He seemed like a nice person.” She sighs softly. “Iris, I miss you. I hope we can see each other soon. In a few weeks, when things settle down, let’s please have lunch.”

  “I’d like that.” I don’t tell her I won’t be here in a few weeks.

  A few afternoons later I’m on the phone to PKS Associates, leaving a message for Pat Sweeney, my former boss, when there’s a commotion in my hall.

  The outer door slams. The inner door slams. Heavy footsteps stamp into the foyer. There’s a crash, then the thud of a large object hitting the floor.

  “Damn!” someone shouts.

  “Woowoowoowooo!” Rocky leaps from his spot on the bathroom floor, rushes into the living room, stands on his hind legs and waves his front paws in the air, and then runs into the kitchen. I hear him in there pushing his food bowl around with his nose.

  “Anyway, Pat, I’ll be back in town soon. I’d love to talk with you about coming back to work as a recruiter,” I tell his voice mail in a rush, and hang up. I slide on the safety chain and open the door, peering out into the dim hall. There is Simon, suntanned, sleek—and sprawled on the threadbare rug, surrounded by luggage, trying to extricate himself from the bicycle locked to the staircase.

  “Welcome back!” I pull off the chain and rush out to meet him, just now realizing how much I’d missed him. I’d forgotten: Vickie and Steve weren’t my only friends here. I couldn’t have stuck it out as long as I did without Simon.

  “And what a welcome.” He makes a tragic face and sticks out his grease-smudged calf. “Who is responsible for this godforsaken rust heap, anyhow? Tonight let’s saw off the lock and throw the thing out onto the sidewalk.”

  “Simon, you have no idea how lonely it was around here without you.” I extend a hand to help him up, then realign his dog tags, peace sign, and cross and inspect the grease stain. “Don’t worry, it comes off with rubbing alcohol. How was your summer?”

  “I’m in love!” He dusts himself off and gives me a hug. “I’m in love! His name is Shane and he’s beautiful. Like Michelangelo’s David, except circumcised.” He holds me out at arm’s length. “Kitten, you need a haircut, stat! Give me a few minutes and meet me down in the OR. Just let me get The Elixir in the fridge before it goes bad. Where’s the little pudgeball?”

  I make a kissing sound. Rocky emerges from the kitchen, tongue lolling. Simon scoops him up and squeezes him. Rocky nibbles on Simon’s chin. “I’ll write you a check downstairs. You did a good job with him.”

  “Thank you. It was nice taking care of him. He was the only thing that kept me from throwing myself under a bus.”

  “You had a bad summer? Why didn’t you come stay with me? Rocky would have learned to deal with the beach. What are you doing, competing for the Miss Martyr crown?”

  The idea of visiting Simon on Fire Island had never occurred to me. “I assumed you wanted to be alone.”

  “Oh, brother.” Simon pretends to slap himself. “Well, you get free hair and makeup. Downstairs. Deal?”

  A half hour later I’m sitting on one of Simon’s dining chairs as he alternates between wetting down my hair with a spray bottle and interrogating me.

  “Let me get this straight. You did the Porthault tango with Vickie’s husband, but you thought he was someone else.”

  “Wrong. He wasn’t Vickie’s husband, but I thought he was.”

  “Vickie’s husband who is cheating, or is not cheating?”

  “Is.” I turn my cheek to avoid getting water in my eyes. “Not with me, with a mousy woman he took to La Goulue.”

  “Then your Steve: He is cheating or isn’t cheating?”

  “Isn’t. And don’t call him ‘my’ Steve.”

  “I don’t get something. That day Vickie called, when you were hungover, and told you her husband had a meeting on Columbus. When you went up there you saw your Steve, not her Steve. If your Steve isn’t Vickie’s husband, what was he doing there?”

  “Don’t call him ‘my’ Steve. I don’t know. The girls at Rubicon make it sound like he’s in there all the time buying clothes for women. Or it was a coincidence. New York is one big small town. People cross each other’s paths all the time.”

  “True,” Simon agrees. “But you do realize you’re the worst detective who ever lived.”

  “So I’ve been told. But it’s over. I’ll never spy on anyone again. And I’m never going to see not-Vickie’s-Steve again.”

  “You mean your Steve.”

  “Stop calling him that! I hate him.”

  “On the positive side,” Simon says, “you never have to tell Vickie you did the deed with her husband. Since it wasn’t her husband after all.” He aims his spray bottle at the top of my head and fires. “Have you talked to her?”

  “A little.” Since our brief phone conversation we’ve exchanged e-mails, but Vickie has her hands full right now. She and Steve are in couples counseling. She’s preparing for the baby and helping organize a benefit she committed to last year. “I’m going to tell her eventually, Simon. Once her life calms down, I’ll explain my part in all this mess. Otherwise I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

  Simon stops spritzing. “Excusez-moi? No comprende.”

  “What I did was wrong. I thought I was sleeping with her husband. The fact that it wasn’t her husband is irrelevant.”

  “Honey, you are crazy. You didn’t sleep with her husband; you slept with someone she had never seen before and didn’t know from Adam. No harm, no foul. Keep it to yourself. I know of what I speak, kitten. I listen to women all day long. If Vickie is someone you care about, then spare her the weepy confession. That’s you wanting to clear your conscience. Didn’t you say she’s about to have a baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “So she’s pregnant for the first time, about to go into labor, she caught her real husband at a bistro having a real tryst with a real woman, she has to deal wit
h all of that unpleasantness, and in the middle of this you want to tell her, ‘Sweetie, by the way, I, too, stabbed you in the back’? Sorry, but you need to get past this one on your own.”

  “I owe it to her.”

  Simon combs a section of my hair between his fingers, stretches it straight, and trims off a quarter inch. “If you truly want to do the right thing, you’ll carry this one to your grave. Semper Fi. That’s the Marine Corps motto. ‘Always Faithful.’”

  I don’t say anything for a long time, concentrating instead on the snip-snip of Simon’s scissors and the drift of my hair cuttings falling onto his hardwood floor. As I listen and consider things quietly, I’m surprised to realize Simon is right. It would be self-indulgent to apologize to Vickie for anything beyond following the wrong man in the first place. It would do no good to tell her about my affair. Nor does Teddy need to know, not right away. I made a mistake I won’t ever make again. This I know for certain.

  Besides, in a few weeks none of this will matter anymore. Other things will happen, life will continue, and I’ll have the strength to keep moving forward. The worst is over, and I’ve made it through.

  “You told me you were in the Army, not the Marines,” I say.

  “I was in the Army.” Simon takes a step back. “I dated a marine.” He considers my hair and snips one final snip over my left ear. “Done.” He hands me a mirror. “We should go somewhere. You are absolutely perfect.”

  I look at my reflection.

  For once, I’m not blushing at a compliment.

  Simon was speaking the truth when he insisted New York had changed me for the better. I’m not the same person I was when I arrived. I’m stronger and more confident. I don’t know what life has in store for me, but I’m not afraid to face it. I’ve made it here. I’ve survived New York. This is who I am, I think. I’m going to be okay.

  And then I make a decision that surprises me, even as I know it’s right.

  “Thank you, Simon, and I would be honored to go somewhere with you another time. Right now I need to make a phone call.”