It might seem odd or dangerous telling Yvonne I’m Mark’s wife. That she’d report back to him, that he’d tell her—if he hadn’t already—that I’d accused him of having an affair with her. But I know Mark. Mark keeps things separate. When I picture Mark’s mind it’s like a series of little boxes, rooms without doors. Like accordion files lined up in a file cabinet. Mark doesn’t mix. He doesn’t mix drinks. He doesn’t mix styles. He doesn’t mix friends. If he’s playing Coltrane he gets—uneasy is the only word for it—if, when it’s over, I put on an opera or the soundtrack from The Sound of Music, even the Beatles. I mean it’s not necessarily the music he objects to, just the combination.
Just like he refused to talk to me about Yvonne, I know he would not have mentioned me to her. I mean beyond the fact that he was married. He would never have told her of our argument about her, I know that much. We were married two years before I found out he’d been to the emergency room with his old girlfriend, Isabelle—on the same night we saw Casablanca at Theater 80—and never mentioned it. I don’t even remember now why it was he finally told me. If she knew Mark, Yvonne would probably never mention meeting me. She’d already know which room was hers, which file. Even if she brought it up Mark wouldn’t say anything. To me or to her. And I don’t particularly care if he does find out I spoke to her.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she preferred me to Mark. I’m much more passionate and emotional. Yvonne would like that.
Yvonne. Yvonne. Yvonne. I can’t stop thinking about her. When I’m not thinking about Yvonne I’m thinking about Brian. It occurs to me I’m becoming obsessive. Eric says I have to learn to separate, to see myself apart from everyone else. Which is funny because the other night I dreamt that our accountant showed me Xeroxes of Lisa and Carla and asked which twin was the original. Which had the soul. I said Lisa was born first, so Carla must be the replica. “Yvonne,” he said. And then Yvonne was there. I told Mark about the dream—leaving out the part about Yvonne.
“You should write it down,” he said. “Maybe you could make a poem out of it.”
I think he’s annoyed that I still haven’t shown him my poems. He said I was probably just worried about the Christmas party and all the different people who would be there.
“That’s your thing,” I said. “That’s about you. Lucky a lot of people have already left town, huh?”
But I was glad Yvonne would be out of town for the party. I was reading our horoscopes. Hers—I read Virgo for her—said she’d be at her most radiant in the coming days and would be a smashing success in matters of love. I was glad she was in St. Croix and hoped she’d meet someone. I did a visualization in which I imagined her in passionate embrace with two native men in long dreadlocks. I surrounded them with a beautiful pink bubble and sent it floating up into the universe, as far away from New York as possible. Even if she didn’t meet anyone, I didn’t want her radiating up here.
Then I checked mine. I’m a sucker for horoscopes—the idea that there’s some large system to rely on, an order and reason for what happens. Even though Sarah once got me a freelance job in which I revised them. Rewrote them actually. I remember thinking how many lives I affected by deleting a line about not making a job switch. Just because the copy was too long. Or changing Libra because it sounded too much like Pisces. Mark had said not to worry, it didn’t matter. Mark doesn’t believe in horoscopes. Neither do I, really, but you learn to cover your bases.
The entry for Sagittarius said to be clear on what you want and you would get it. I wrote what I wanted in the most precise language possible: To get rid of Yvonne. To get Mark back.
I met Sarah at Dean & DeLuca.
“Honey, I think you’re going a little overboard with this,” she said. She shook cinnamon into her cappuccino.
Overboard. I flashed on myself in Yvonne’s clothes, in Yvonne’s apartment. For a minute I couldn’t believe what I’ve been doing. It scared me. It’s like I have two lives. I wanted to tell her about Yvonne’s. Now that she was away I’d been there every day. She has a tiny cactus I was taking care of. I knew I should tell Sarah. It always makes me feel better to talk to her, gets some of the anxiety outside of me. Sarah’s different. When she feels bad she holes up in her apartment, watches videos, and won’t talk at all.
“I mean, you used to be a lot more fun, you know.” She took a forkful of the gingerbread we were sharing and pushed the plate over to me. She said, anyway, the best way to get rid of something is to put it out of your mind. That’s what’s she did with Karen. I reminded her that she’d been the one to put it in my mind.
“Yes, but Terry, I just mentioned it. I didn’t say I had proof. I didn’t say it was a fact. Listen,” she said, chewing, “what woman goes to St. Thomas in the middle of a torrid affair?”
“St. Croix,” I said.
But it was something I hadn’t thought of. I sliced off a sliver of gingerbread and put it on my napkin. A man at the next table stuck his cigarette in a giant potted palm that was between us. I gave him a dirty look but he didn’t notice.
“Honey, what proof do you have?”
“You told me,” I said.
“I said she gave him her keys. You just took it and ran.”
She had no idea how far I’d run. Tell her, I kept thinking. Give her Yvonne’s keys. I had the keys in my bag.
“Why would he have her keys?”
Sarah broke off another piece of gingerbread and stuck it in her mouth. She stirred her cappuccino.
“You have my keys,” she said.
I ate the gingerbread. It’s true. We’ve had her keys ever since she locked herself out one night and had to sleep at the loft. We have Glenda’s keys, too. Glenda’s always losing her keys and she likes to keep a set at the gallery. Glenda says Mark’s a good person to give your keys to. He’s the most responsible person she knows.
“Maybe she doesn’t know a lot of people,” Sarah said. “Maybe it’s some kind of business thing. Ask Mark.”
I thought about it. The keys are in the gallery, not in his wallet where he used to keep mine. I used to love watching him slip my keys into his wallet after he let himself in. I’d never know when he was about to show up. Maybe there was an explanation. Maybe it was a business thing.
But I wasn’t convinced. I thought about Mark saying he’d learned from Proust how to tell if your lover was having an affair. I considered starting the books. But it’s seven volumes. And I don’t have time.
“Terry, let it go. Let Yvonne go for now. She’s out of town anyway. Try to just be in the moment.”
Sarah’s starting to sound a little too Buddhist for me, but I decided to try. I got rid of Yvonne. I just stopped thinking about her. I made a vow not to go back to Yvonne’s. I think I was drowning that cactus, anyway.
I wrote my objective: Get Mark back. I figured I could start at the party.
The worst moment of the party was when Glenda and David wheeled out a surprise birthday cake for me. Glenda was wearing a belted plastic garbage bag and these huge earrings made out of bunches of grapes, the kind my mother keeps in a bowl on the kitchen table. Women with big earrings like that scare me. Anyway, Glenda had this sneery grin and was leaning into David who was wheeling what looked like a gurney with a big cake on top. The deejay was playing a jazz samba. Imitation art masterpieces hung throughout the gallery. That afternoon, David had recounted the plots of about fifty movies while we all painted. I did a Klee, Mark did a Picasso, and Glenda did a Magritte—a couple kissing with sheets wrapped around their faces. David just slapped down a rectangle of black paint, called it a Reinhardt, and kept talking.
It was 11:15. I was looking for Mark. I was trying not to think about Yvonne, but the gallery was filled with all the same people who’d been there the first time I’d seen her. Moiling crowds of black clothes consuming what seemed like an endless supply of liquor and hors d’oeuvres. Now and then I’d see my father’s red Christmas shirt. My mother had on her red-and-green Christmas suit and huge earrings made out of green glass ornaments. The thing is, hers were for real. Hers were not worn with attitude, as a comment—the way Glenda’s were. She wore them sincerely. Mark had insisted on inviting my parents. He said that as long as it was going to be a weird mix we might as well go all the way. Besides, he really likes them. Lisa and Carla were there too, and both of them were wandering the crowd trying to pick up a man like Mark. Sarah had given up on the Buddhist stuff and was in the bathroom crying, and I’d promised to scout the room for a gorgeous, unpretentious, sexually aggressive, and available woman. And she had to be gay, or at least willing.
That’s when I saw Glenda and David advancing upon me with the gurney. As if that weren’t bad enough, the deejay, who was, it turns out, David’s friend, put on a record of “Happy Birthday Baby Jesus” that came with the little red record player my parents bought me when I was eight. I’d been drinking red wine, then white, then anything that was handed to me, which is not a good thing for me to do, my tolerance for alcohol being what it is. Anyway, I was thinking what a coincidence it was the deejay had that record, when my parents appeared by my side singing “Happy Birthday Baby Jesus,” my father in his forced baritone that gets more operatic after he’s had a drink, my mother tilting her head, smiling and flirting up the crowd. Glenda was tossing those grapes this way and that as if to say “isn’t that cute,” and David—who sported a black Mylar suit and an aluminum foil tie and looked like the guy grinning over the drugstore counter in the Kotex ads they used to run in Seventeen—was leaning toward me asking if I’d seen the cake.
The cake: It was a portrait—a replica—of Yeats. All done in this grayish and pinkish icing. What I remember most are the glasses and the tufts of gray hair. With those continuous burn candles glowing in a kind of halo around him. Yeats looked awful as a cake. I couldn’t think of a more stupid thing to put on a birthday cake. Yeats. Jesus.
“Oh, isn’t that cute,” my mother said. “Who is that? He looks like Lionel Barrymore.”
“Did you meet them? They’re great,” someone behind me said. “They’re Terry’s parents.”
“Yeah,” someone else said. “Can you believe her sisters? Classic. Straight out of Scorsese.”
Others because you did not keep. I tried to smile. I wanted Sarah. I wished Brian had come. I’d invited him but he said he didn’t think it was proper. Well, it’s not proper to have Yeats made into a birthday cake either.
“Yeats,” I said. “It’s Yeats.” I tried to laugh.
“Why don’t you recite one of his poems,” Glenda said, and I could feel the entire room hoping I wouldn’t. Everyone was clapping. Mark appeared by my side and kissed me. I was thinking that if I started to cry I’d have mascara under my eyes for the rest of the night. And a salt blur on my lenses. I was thinking how this is the first year I mind getting older. I mean I guess I look pretty young. People my age always ask why I don’t have any wrinkles. I’ve never even thought about wrinkles. But at the gym the other day I’d noticed a tiny crease under my left eye, the way the mascara had caught under there.
“Do you like it?” Mark asked. I wondered if he’d gotten the idea from Yvonne.
“It’s great,” I said. “Yeats. What made you think of it?”
“It was him or Curly,” Mark said. He put his arm around me.
“Yeah,” I said, “or Medea.”
I took an asparagus tip dipped in balsamic vinegar from a passing tray and bit into it. The woman holding the tray was dressed as Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc. I don’t know if it was the costume or the vinegar but I started to choke. The candles were still glowing around Yeats’s head. Burning down. The broken wall, the burning roof and tower. And Agamemnon dead.
“It’s Brian’s birthday, too,” I said between coughs.
Mark had just shoved a sundried tomato topped with mozzarella and basil into his mouth. He gave me a funny look.
“Honey, how much wine have you had?”
That was it. I started choking really hard. Mark pounded me on the back. Glenda thrust a plastic cup of wine at me. My parents’ red-and-green outfits seemed to be poking through various textures of black cloth. Crowds of it. Everything began to blur and I didn’t care about anything except getting to Sarah in the bathroom. Somehow I managed to blow out the candles. It did occur to me that nobody had sung “Happy Birthday” to me. Glenda was slicing and everyone was getting a piece of Yeats’s face.
“Excuse me,” I said, and pushed through the crowd.
“. . . then George Segal—he’s King Rat—and James Fox become buddies, even though Fox is this upper-class British officer.” David was leaning toward my sister Carla, looking down her blouse.The two brothers cut out of the same cloth. I made a note to warn Carla. For a minute I even felt bad for Glenda.
On the way to the bathroom I maneuvered to avoid this pretentious performance artist whose name I can never remember, and came face-to-face with a small dark-haired woman who had a desperate, hunted look about her. It took a few seconds to realize I was looking in the mirror. I stood there staring. Another woman appeared beside me.
“Hi,” she said. She seemed surprised. Even pleased.
“Hi,” I muttered. I walked away.
“Yvonne, right?” An English accent.
I’m never good at recognizing people out of context but I knew that voice. She was from Al-Anon. Elly. She also goes to OA, AA, NA, and CODA, but she’s got a great sense of humor and she’s one of the few people who can make fun of the meetings. Once, during a particularly demonstrative “share,” she leaned over, raised her eyebrows, and, in that clipped British voice said, “Some people shouldn’t lose their inhibitions. There’s a reason we have them.” I liked her immediately.
“Elly,” I said. “Hi.” She looked so composed. Her black wool suit fit perfectly and she had on these tiny gold earrings. Tasteful. I grabbed her arm. It might have been the wine. Maybe the cake. “Elly,” I said, “don’t say anything. Don’t say my name. And don’t, please don’t, ask me any questions. Now help me get to the bathroom.”
A woman walked by and shoved a plate in front of me. “Chicken saté?” she asked, pointing to the skewered blobs of meat. I almost pushed her.
“Sorry,” Elly said. She steered me to the bathroom. “Ssh,” she was saying, “ssh, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
“Terry?” Sarah sat on a papier-mâche wastebasket that was shaped like an erect penis.
“Sarah, Elly. Elly, Sarah,” I said.
“Terry, what happened?” Sarah asked. She was looking at Elly, trying, I think, to figure out if I’d procured her as a potential partner.
“You mean Yvonne, don’t you?” Elly said.
“What?” Sarah asked.
“I said no questions,” I shouted.
“Okay, okay,” Elly said.
“Lock the door,” I said to Sarah. I looked at my reflection in a metallic electrical strip that ran along the wall. I found a Q-tip to wipe the mascara from under my eyes. In the stark fluorescent light I saw exactly how bad Yvonne’s Scarlet Memory looked on me. It had looked fine at the loft. I rubbed it off and washed my face. I put my head under the faucet and doused my hair. Then I think we all just sat there quietly, me scrunching my hair dry, Elly leaning against the door, Sarah propped on the penis trying to transition from her misery to mine.
Elly and Sarah took to each other instantly. Sarah’s a sucker for an accent.
“My name’s not Yvonne,” I said to Elly.
“Well, no need to break your anonymity,” she said, smiling.
It was that easy.
Sarah caught on pretty quickly.
And then we were all laughing. Someone banged on the door but that only made us laugh harder. Sarah realized what she was balanced on and laughed so hard she rolled off the penis onto the floor. I picked it up, dumped the contents onto the floor, and shoved it head first into the toilet. Elly leaned against the door laughing. I realize now she was the only one of us not over their alcohol limit. She hadn’t drunk anything. She was just laughing.
“This dress is Yvonne’s,” I said, but neither of them heard.
Maybe it was saying Yvonne’s name. Maybe it was David leaning over Carla, or that stupid cake, but I remembered the first time Sarah had pointed her out. The opening. The same crowd. How nervous Sarah had been. Tentative and conflicted. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, she had said. Yvonne holding Mark’s arm, smiling up into his face. Mark bopping her with those rolled announcements.
She gave him her keys. I saw them. At the gallery.
“Terry?” Sarah was standing beside me.
“Why did you tell me?” I moaned.
Sometime around midnight whoever was left ended up on the dance floor. I’d gotten the deejay to play some old Stones and we were dancing hard. Me and Sarah and Elly. I knew they were with me but could sense Sarah investigating Elly, Elly flirting back, and even in my misery I wanted to leave them a little time alone.
I danced with anyone who asked. Anyone who just happened to be jerking along next to me. Men, women. I danced with my father, who got a little winded during “Satisfaction.” I danced with my mother, who was having the time of her life, laughing and flirting and generally playing up to the crowd. And I danced with Richard.
Richard is pure sex and moves like he’s part of you. Maybe I’m imagining it was even better than it was because I know Mark was off to the side, watching. I’ve always loved to dance with Mark watching. And I know he’s always wondered about me and Richard.
I leaned into Richard, held to him, pushed and knocked into his body. Richard dances expressively. Doesn’t hold to moves the way people who don’t really dance do. Richard knows dancing is whatever you do. What Mark taught me about sex. We leaned and twisted and knocked to the music. We flew. The way you can fly only with someone you’ve never actually slept with. All that pent-up desire spilling into the small radius your bodies make. When “Out of Time” came on we were fused. A slow and snaky two-step with entwined legs and crotch kissing. I sang with the lyrics. “Baby, baby, baby,” I sang and caught Mark’s eye. “You are left out.” I sang. “My poor unfaithful baby.” Richard’s arm caught around my waist, my arms hung down, and we swayed and sunk pelvis to pelvis down toward the floor and up, the pressure holding us together. I love Mark’s eyes on me when I’m with someone else. I love watching the territorial come up in him. I knew then that if I were to have an affair with Brian he would not abide it. No. Not at all. He would not.
And I was going to do it. I was going to have an affair with Brian. I was going to get Mark back.
After everyone was gone Mark and I fucked on the gallery floor—harder than we’ve fucked in the two months since I’ve known about Yvonne.