It's About Your Husband

by Lauren Lipton

  “Have some, Iris. Management refuses to take no for an answer.”

  That voice doesn’t belong to Clare. It belongs to Steve, who follows behind her, also holding a glass. Finally, from behind Steve, steps Jessica, with a sippy cup of juice. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at me with guileless, curious eyes.

  My heart is pounding as hard as if I were running the Central Park Reservoir.

  “This is management.” Steve puts one arm over Clare’s shoulder. “My little sister Clare, manager of Rubicon and Rubicon Annex.”

  “Welcome to our humble shop,” Clare says, and smiles.

  Steve reaches down and touches Jessica on the head. “Miss Jessica, Rubicon mascot.”

  Jessica hides behind Steve’s legs.

  “And I’m kind of—”

  “The money man,” Clare interrupts. “Former Wall Street banking whiz turned Rubicon principal investor and fashion arbiter. You probably recognize him from the party pictures in the Times.”

  Steve looks embarrassed. “That was years ago, Clare. I don’t go out anymore.”

  Ilona says, “These days he keeps to himself, comes in here, or to Rubicon Downtown, to handle all the billing and bookkeeping, and then goes straight home to be with Jessica. She’s the only woman in his life.”

  “You two are the ones . . .” I look at Ilona. “Of course. Steve and Clare are the ones you were telling me about, your bosses, going through the custody trial. But why was Clare involved?”

  Steve says, “It was just me going through the trial. Clare was there for support. And she must have done something right, because the trial’s finally over, and I won.” He picks up Jessica and hugs her. “You’re all mine, now and forever, little one.”

  “Dada.” Jessica snuggles into his neck.

  “He’s absolutely devoted to that little girl,” Ilona tells me. “He’s raised her from birth.”

  “We’re all so relieved,” Clare says. She lowers her voice. “Stephanie, she walked out on them, you know. Now she’s shacked up in Palm Beach with an eighty-year-old hotel mogul. She finally just gave up and signed away her daughter.”

  “The witch,” whispers Ilona.

  “It’s the only decent thing she’s ever done in her life,” whispers Clare.

  “Not now, you two,” Steve says, indicating Jessica.

  Clare says, “He won’t let us say one bad thing about S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-E in front of the baby.”

  Jessica says, “Bops?”

  Ilona laughs. “Somebody was back there playing with a big cardboard box.” She kisses the top of Jessica’s head. “Would you like me to take you back to the box?”

  Jessica holds out her hands. Ilona reaches out to take her from Steve. “Go ahead, everyone. Keep talking. I’ll watch her. Steve, did you bring the photos of her in the little pink dress?”

  “They’re in back, in the Photo/Copy Express bag.”

  Ilona winks at him as she carries the little girl into the back room, leaving me, Steve, and Clare.

  “Look, that’s Deeda Mendenhoffer over there. Isn’t the Eastside Children’s Home Autumn Gala this weekend? She looks as if she’d like some help.” Clare glides over toward the shoes.

  And then there were two.

  Steve hands me the glass of champagne. He steps around from behind the register, joining me on the customer side of the counter. He looks into my eyes and smiles, sweet and hopeful, and though I fight it, when he touches my arm my anger and resolve start to crumble.

  “I’m doing fine without you,” I tell him.

  “But Iris . . .” He sets down his glass and reaches for my hand. His skin feels cool against mine. “I’m not fine at all without you.” And before I can answer, I’m in his arms again, our faces inches away, breathing each other in, wanting to make the connection complete. “Come outside for a minute,” he says. “Will you, please?”

  Outside, the sky has grown darker and the wind stronger. The sidewalks are nearly deserted, as people scurry back to their warm apartments.

  Steve doesn’t seem to notice. “I’ve been wanting to tell you a few things.” He raises his voice against the wind. “The first is that I’m sincerely sorry for what I did. I wanted to ask you out on a real date every time we bumped into each other, but I never could work up the nerve. I should have done it that day by the Daniel Webster statue, when I realized you weren’t working for my ex and had me confused with someone else. I was trying to get up the nerve when you came up with the idea to keep meeting. That speech you made! It hit home for me. Part of me really believed that I could do this good deed, help save someone from divorce, and be with you at the same time. In my insane state I thought I’d see you once or twice more, pass along some generic advice, and finally tell you the truth and ask you out.”

  I can’t help but be touched. “You were too scared to ask me out? Why?”

  “I don’t know. What I felt for you, I hadn’t felt for any woman since Stephanie. It was overwhelming. I wasn’t ready for that again. Then, just as I was getting comfortable with the feeling, I realized if I did confess, you would be gone from my life. Do you remember that day in front of Rubicon? You said the only reason you had anything to do with me was because I was Vickie’s husband. After that I consciously decided to keep playing along, just to have you in my life. I can’t believe I even put my old wedding ring back on.” He shakes his head. “What an idiot.”

  “It’s true, though. I wouldn’t have ever seen you again.”

  “I suppose that’s a small consolation.” The wind blows my fur scarf up against my cheek and rumples Steve’s hair. “It was when you said Vickie was pregnant that I finally realized things had gone too far, and that’s when I left that message saying I wouldn’t meet anymore. Still, every time I visit Clare I want to knock on Vickie’s door to apologize for what I’ve done. Do you think it would do any good? Is she all right?”

  “She’s doing quite well. She wants to thank you. She says your advice changed her life.”

  A momentary look of relief crosses Steve’s face. “And you, Iris. I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive me.”

  An empty paper coffee cup rattles across our path. Steve raises his voice against the wind. “The other thing is, in case I’ve left you with this impression, that I don’t believe wives should bow down to their husbands. No more than I believe husbands should bow down to their wives. When I gave you those pointers, I was just trying to think of what a woman might do to improve her own behavior. I picked behaviors a lot of men seem to complain about, but that isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of things men do that women deserve to complain about. In no way did I mean to imply that women are the only ones responsible in a marriage.”

  “You didn’t?” I shout back.

  Steve takes my arm and leads me into the doorway of ACME Cleaning Supply, a lotion and bubble bath shop a few doors away. It’s shielded from the elements and a bit warmer. I glance across and down the street at the storefront church whose doorway I stood in to spy on him six months ago. The steel doors are now painted green instead of orange, and there’s a freshly lettered sign over the door with a picture of a dove holding an olive branch in its mouth.

  In a more normal voice, Steve continues, “I wanted to do what I could for this unfortunate woman I didn’t know. I knew she had no control over how her husband chose to behave—I learned from my own marriage that none of us has control over anyone else. In my own backward way, I thought maybe I could help her be the best person she could be, so that if the marriage failed, she’d know she’d done all she could. That’s what I wish I could say about my marriage.”

  “You said your wife was crazy.”

  “She’s a very troubled person. Still, I can’t blame her for everything that went wrong. Nothing is ever that simple.”

  I take his hand. He’s not wearing a coat, and his fingers are freezing. I lace my fingers with his and try to transfer any remaining warmth to him. “No, Steve. It never is.”

  He�
��s going to kiss me.

  He’s really going to kiss me.

  “I’m not ready to get serious with someone, Steve. Not yet.”

  “Then let’s go slowly,” he says.

  He leans in and kisses me softly. All it takes is that one kiss, and nothing that’s gone wrong between us matters anymore. He presses his lips to mine harder, his hands on either side of my face, clutching me to him as if he never wants to let me go. I let him hold me, let myself imagine a life with him in it, let myself admit I want that more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time. When he finally does pull away, he brings his lips to my ear and whispers, “I love you, Iris Hedge.”

  “I love you, too, Steve . . .” I stop then and pull back.

  “What is it?”

  “What’s your last name, anyway?”

  He laughs. “Turner.”

  “Steve Turner.” I try it out, testing the feel of it. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive,” he murmurs. “Any other questions?”

  I have hundreds of them. I want to know if he feels Jessica is ready to accept me in his life, even as just a friend of her father’s. I want to ask him what I can do to help her feel more comfortable with me. I want to know if he puts his socks in the hamper. I want to know what exactly went bad between him and his ex, why she walked out, what he feels he did wrong, whether he’s over her. I want to know where he grew up, what books he reads, what he eats for breakfast, whether he prefers white wine or red.

  Before I can think of where to begin, a woman comes up to us. She’s about my age, wearing sweatpants and sneakers and a bewildered expression. I wonder if maybe she isn’t from around here, and wait for her to approach Steve for directions.

  She turns to me instead. “I’m lost. Can you help?”

  I tell her I’ll do my best.

  “I’m trying to get to the Museum of the City of New York and have no idea which way to go.”

  “You’re on the wrong side of town, but don’t worry. Just walk over a block to Central Park West and then four blocks up to the subway stop at Eighty-sixth Street. Take the train uptown—make sure you’re going uptown—one stop to Ninety-sixth. Then you transfer to the M106 bus, take it across the park, and get off as close as you can to One-hundred-and-third Street. You’ll be on Madison, so you’ll walk back one block . . .”

  It’s clear this woman won’t remember a thing as soon as she walks away. It’s too much.

  “You know what? It’s cold and late. You might want to go to the New-York Historical Society instead. It’s a block over and two blocks down, and they have a great exhibit of photos of New York immigrants. That is, unless you have to get to the other museum today.”

  “I don’t.” She pulls her denim jacket more tightly around her. “I’ve got time. I just moved here.”

  “For what it’s worth, it gets easier.”

  She heads off into the wind, in the direction I’ve pointed her. Steve and I watch to make sure she doesn’t make a wrong turn.

  When she’s out of sight, he looks at me with love and admiration shining in his eyes. “How do you know so much about New York?”

  “I live here,” I say, and pull him in for a kiss.

  About the Author

  I wrote this novel because I was tired of being constrained by the facts.

  For almost half my life I’ve been a journalist, for the most part a newspaper reporter. And, a few bad apples aside, newspaper reporters take facts very seriously. Facts are not things to be invented, distorted, ignored, or otherwise messed with.

  After college I went to journalism school at the University of Southern California. One of my very first assignments was to sit for a day in a courtroom, any courtroom, and report on whatever happened to transpire. Out of sheer indolence, and because it was such an ordeal to find parking downtown near the really exciting courts, I chose to observe traffic court—where people fight speeding tickets. For hours I sat, reporter’s notebook in hand, glazing over as people came before the judge with their petty, unnewsworthy complaints. One man successfully contested a ticket he’d gotten for rolling through a stop sign by arguing that an untrimmed city shrub had blocked the sign from view. This was about as good as it got. My assignment was due the next day.

  Back at my apartment I called my parents, dismayed. “I have nothing to write about,” I told them. “Nothing happened. I’m going to flunk out.”

  “So make something up,” joked my dad. “Who would know?”

  By then it had been drilled into my head that this was the absolute worst, number-one no-no of my chosen profession: You Can’t Write About Something Unless It Really Happened. “Would you go to a doctor who’d cheated her way through medical school?” I answered in a minor self-righteous huff.

  Still, I can’t say Dad’s idea hasn’t whispered itself in my ear at many frustrating moments in the years since. When an editor, looking over my article about people with shoe-free homes, would say, “Cute story. You know what would make it a cover story? Go find some guest who went to somebody’s shoe-free house and ended up breaking a toe,” I’d for a moment wish it were okay to make things up. Do you know what it takes to track down an anecdote that specific? Well, now I do: You have to cold-call the entire United States of America, one home at a time.

  But if, halfway through writing a novel, you find yourself wishing your main character’s name were Iris instead of Ivy or wishing daffodils were still in bloom in May, thinking, It would be so much more interesting if she were in the middle of a divorce, rather than already divorced, or wanting to change any other aspect of the who, what, when, where, or why, you may do so. In novel-writing, this sort of thing is encouraged. I have to say, the vacation from reality has been a joy.

  As for that journalism-school assignment, let the record reflect that in the end, I turned in a brilliant—and entirely accurate—retelling of the stop-sign story.

  Visit my Web site at www.laurenlipton.com.

  5 SPOT SEND OFF

  Five more New York City-girl remedies for Iris’s little crises:

  1. Blisters. There’s no such product as Ultra Placid. But the antiperspirant trick really does work—and any brand will do—especially with sandals. Under closed shoes Iris could have used a second line of defense: toe covers. These weird little protective triangles, which look like the toe ends snipped off a pair of pantyhose, are available at drugstores and department stores, and probably two out of three Manhattan socialites are secretly wearing them inside their Manolo pumps.

  2. Home hair-dye disaster. If she could tell her hair color was too intense after she rinsed it out, Iris could have gotten right back into that shower while her hair was still wet and washed it again. (Ideally she’d have a clarifying shampoo, like Neutrogena Anti-Residue Shampoo, just kind of lying around the house.) She’d have gotten a bit more of the dye out, and in desperate times we take help in whatever increments we can get.

  3. Humidity hair. Iris would need to forgo groceries for six months to afford one, but the Japanese straightening treatment at Salon Ishi is genius for keeping blown-out hair from going awry during New York summers.

  4. Makeup phobia. Benetint, by BeneFit, is a liquid lip stain that’s scary-pink in the bottle but goes on to look like your lips, only rosier. Had Iris worn some under her ChapStick, she would have looked not like a woman wearing no makeup, but like a naturally perfect woman wearing no makeup. (Oh—and, because I know you’re wondering, Bobbi Brown Number Four is a real lipstick shade, also known as Bobbi Brown “Brown.”)

  5. Olive oil on her pantsuit. Someone who’d lived in New York longer would have heard of the Professional Stain Remover Kit from Upper East Side dry cleaner Madame Paulette. Each travel-sized kit contains three separate chemical formulas. You choose which to use depending on the stain (oil = solution number three) then play mad scientist, dabbing on the top-secret ingredients in sequence. Ten minutes later you’re stain-free and feeling inordinately pleased with yourself.

 

 

  Lauren Lipton, It's About Your Husband