Bridget strutted into the oncology department Monday morning in teal satin pajamas trimmed with silver sequins that were great for staving off hot flashes. The Haynes family had spent Sunday afternoon at Victoria’s Secret, where Aimée selected and Bridget modeled and Randall sat in the “gentleman’s chair” and laughed at his two jeunes filles. Before heading home they stopped at the nutrition store and loaded up on immune-boosting wheatgrass and ginseng that Randall announced he would use to create a new cocktail for Bridget, a temporary (she hoped) substitute for wine.
Today she’d downed the drink, then jumped into the teal, which she now wore with dangling sequin earrings and silver satin mules. Randall said she never looked more ravishing. She warned him he might regret those words if she threw up on the ensemble.
He marched up to the reception desk beside her, having canceled golf with Jack Meacham, the epitome of New Falls sacrifice.
“If anyone’s going to poison my wife,” he kidded the woman behind the desk, “I want to be here as a witness.” But as he said it his voice quivered and his eyebrows knitted together and a touch of moisture filled his eyes.
Bridget smiled at her corny husband and his ill-fitting toupee and took him by the arm. It was nice now that her cancer was out in the open. It was nice that Luc was back in France, four thousand miles away by land and sea, a million miles and a lifetime away from her heart.
“No golf today?” Caroline asked her husband as she strolled past his bedroom and realized he was still under the covers and his draperies were still drawn though it was after ten.
He didn’t answer right away, then said, “Caroline, come here.”
“Are you ill?” Yesterday she’d gone with Chloe to the Cloisters for the day. She’d greatly needed to get away from New Falls and her husband and the bitter aftertaste of the gala.
“Come here,” he said again.
Aside from announcing he was bringing someone or other home for dinner, or expecting her to keep their social calendar arranged with all the have-tos and the RSVPs RSVP-ed, Jack rarely asked Caroline for anything.
“Please,” he said.
She moved into the room with tentative steps.
“I’m sorry about the gala,” he said. “I’m sorry it wasn’t everything you’d hoped.”
“We raised four hundred and sixty thousand dollars. It wasn’t a total waste.” One of his hands was under his head, under his pillow. The other was still under the comforter, perhaps holding his penis.
“Please,” he said, “sit down.”
“I’d rather stand.”
He didn’t push the issue. Instead he asked, “Do you love her, Caroline?”
She waited for the longing to crush her chest. When it did not, she asked, “What is love, Jack? Was it what we had?” It certainly wasn’t being cruel, as Elise had been cruel to Caroline at the gala, almost mocking it, mocking her, using the gala as a soapbox for Yolanda’s shock-news.
“I don’t know what love is, Caroline. I can’t remember. We’ve spent so many years being the Meachams, I’ve forgotten who Jack and Caroline really are.”
Her eyes adjusted to the light; she saw the questions in his. “Jack was a young man out of business school who wanted to take on the world,” she said. “Caroline was her father’s perfect hostess who wanted a husband.”
“I’m not sure, but I think you’ve sold us short.”
“No I haven’t, Jack. The problems started when we took ourselves too seriously. The rest of the world did, too.”
He seemed to think about that. Then he said, “I once loved having sex together.”
She blanched. “You did?”
He rolled onto his side. “I always thought no matter what the next deal would net or what the market did or didn’t do or what my golf score was, well, I always thought of you as the one thing I could count on.”
“It wasn’t always about you, Jack.”
“You made me think it was.”
“I did?”
“Well. Yes. You were the doting, dutiful wife. And when you weren’t doting on me or on Chloe, you were doting on New Falls. Why would I have ever thought that wasn’t what you wanted?”
She sat down on the bed because she had grown weak.
“I’m sorry if I didn’t measure up to your expectations,” he continued. “If you’d rather be with Elise, I’ll go quietly. Or let you go quietly. Don’t worry about money. I’ll take care of everything.”
He slid his arm from beneath the pillow. He started to reach for her, then was content to rest his hand on the straight pleat of her pants. How long had it been since he’d touched her like that? Since he’d touched her at all?
“I thought about asking you to stay,” he continued. “But that sounded stupid. I couldn’t come up with a way for the three of us to live here. Especially since it would be four now that Chloe is back home.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted that, Jack.” Despite the lust, the craziness she’d felt for Elise, she’d never entertained the idea of having her live here, in the house that Jack built. Just as she’d never really imagined not being a New Falls wife.
“What do you want?” he asked.
And suddenly she knew. “I think I really only want what I’ve always wanted. I want you to love me. To touch me, really touch me. To make love to me and have the feeling linger. To stop being such a driven, self-centered man and think about me as a woman. Who likes to be held. Who sometimes needs tenderness.”
He could have laughed at that, at Caroline Meacham wanting tenderness. He could have laughed, but he did not.
“I want us to try again. I want to forget about Elise. I want you to forget about her, too.” She hadn’t realized until then that was indeed what she wanted.
He looked at her a moment with bemused eyes. “You think it will be easy for this man to forget his wife has been with a woman?”
She smiled quietly. It was all she could do.
He smiled slowly back. Then he slid his other hand from beneath the comforter. She thought that he was going to pull her close, maybe make love to her. She thought she might like it. She was so busy thinking that she was surprised to hear such a thundering noise followed by a blast that ripped right through her head.