The spread is not only above the fold, but spans two full pages in the Living section. Cash managed to hunt down and interview the board president of CARE, and true to his word the piece is entirely devoted to the charity. The event itself, a small subset of the entire article, was brilliantly tacked on at the beginning and the end to keep it in both the Living and Entertainment pages. He highlighted the organization’s purpose, our triumphs, where we’re lacking, what we specifically need funding for—our scholarship program, propelled by Amanda Natese—and some of the other success stories. I’ve been working on developing a program to improve book distribution in the city’s public schools, but I haven’t given it much thought in the past few days. Admittedly, the whole Caroline thing has taken up residence in my brain, edging out all else.
I smooth the crease of the page flat with my index finger and wipe the ink on a dish towel. I’m perched at the kitchen island, waiting for Henry. The apartment is restored, the break-in erased with a deft hand, the fingerprint powder scrubbed clean. The slashed sofa has been replaced—it’s not an exact replica, but a shade darker, a bit rounder and puffier. I wonder if there were surreptitious conversations about the sofa: I’d like it to be just the exact same size. Can it be slightly larger? It’s only slightly. Does she beg? Does she plead for Henry to accept her suggestions? Who holds the power between them? I can’t figure it out. Does Henry keep these conversations away from me purposefully? If I asked him, he’d say no. That he just has them at work. They’re minutiae, he’d say. Pat my hand.
Penny has left a tapas plate of Brie and olives to rest on the counter, and the apartment is heavy with the aroma of braised lamb. I pinch an olive and pop it in my mouth. Because it is Wednesday, Henry will have had a light lunch, takeout from the catered delivery service at the office. Wednesdays are beef and lamb days. My stomach rumbles and I lick my thumb and turn the page.
There is one photograph of me. The camera is behind me and I am talking to Sophia Restan, a B-list celebrity who was famous in the nineties for her antics as a spoiled heiress but who has become active in and supportive of the city’s charities. She attends almost all the CARE benefits with a different guest, someone with a large checkbook and the desire to impress his date. Our heads are bent together and we’re both smiling, but my features are barely distinguishable in profile. I nod slowly and exhale. It’s a good piece, focusing on the influence of the cause and how it has helped thousands of “system kids” graduate from high school, trade school, and sometimes college. The college graduates always come back.
I hear the elevator doors swoosh open in the hallway. Henry comes through the front door, dusting off the sleeves of his suit, his mouth tipped in a half-grimace.
“Hi!” I stand in his path, raised on my toes to kiss him, and he blinks twice like he’s forgotten who I am. He then leans forward and kisses me, distracted. Perfunctory.
“This goddamn city drives me crazy. I can’t go two blocks without walking under scaffolding and getting covered in sawdust.”
I study his suit and see nothing. I shake my head with a little smile, just to see how easy it will be to break his mood. He stops and smiles back at me. “I’m a grump. I’m sorry. I’ve spent most of the day arguing.”
I tug on his hand. “Come. Look at this.” In the kitchen, we pick at cheese and I fan the paper out in front of him. He reads it, nodding thoughtfully, his fingers tapping gently against the countertop. The bottom half of the second page is devoted to the event, and as his eyes travel down the page, his fingers stop tapping and he frowns.
“What?”
“I don’t know, Zoe, this guy, whatshisname?”
“Cash.” I square my shoulders.
“He seems very interested in you.”
I snatch the paper from his hand. “What are you talking about? This was my event. Of course I’m featured heavily.”
“A lot of quotes from you, that’s all. I have a feeling you were a big influence in the entire write-up. Maybe he talked to other people, but all of this about the scholarships and the schoolbooks? These are things I’ve heard you mention.”
“Well, he did talk to me. That should be fine. The story is what’s important.” I can feel my hackles rising, my chin jutting out.
“And this picture? It’s practically a seventies smoking ad. You’re all curves and seduction.”
“You can’t even see my face.”
“Exactly. Just your bare back, a glimmer of shoulder, long sexy hair, and a hint of a smile in profile.”
I can feel my mood plummeting. “It’s not like that, Henry. This is what I wanted.” I shake the paper at him. “This is a good thing. Why is it always like this with you? You’re so afraid to be happy, you automatically jump to the negative. Just be happy for me.”
“I’m happy for you. It’s a decent article, as far as newspapers these days go. Reporting isn’t what it used to be.” He shrugs. The oven timer goes off and I toss the newspaper back onto the countertop and stalk to the kitchen. I hear him snap the pages back open.
In the kitchen, I remove the lamb, prep the plates, the china clattering off marble, the silverware tinny, making as big a racket as I can. Henry hates plate clanging.
We’ll sit in the dining room with our lamb and salad and pesto orzo, prepared by Penny but served by me. I’ve complained a few times that I can’t handle being served dinner, Penny hovering like a skitzy bird over our chairs, ostensibly to see if we need anything but, to my mind, just plain old-fashioned eavesdropping. I can’t handle her light feather touches to Henry’s shoulder, and yet her eyes dart around when I speak to her, as though she’s channeling an apparition. She squints in my direction, though not so much at me. Though she is never outright rude, I need to feel comfortable dining in my own home.
I carry the plates to the dining room, where Henry has brought the paper with him. He jangles ice in a whiskey glass as he studies the print over the top of his reading glasses. I can’t help but think that he looks sexy, even when I’m exasperated with him.
“Who did you argue with today?” I set his plate in front of him, lightly scratching his neck, expecting him to do what he usually does when he’s unreasonable or childish, which is offer me an impish smile and some vague overreaching flattery, but he does none of those things.
“How many times did you meet with this man, Zoe?”
I sit carefully, in the chair to Henry’s right, concentrating on unfolding the napkin in my lap. Half of me flares up: how dare he ask, how dare he care? I’m free to talk to whomever I’d like, this is hardly the fifties.
“Three.” I spear a piece of lamb, the tender meat falls apart, a perfect doneness. Sometimes I’d like her to, just once, burn a meal. Overestimate the cooking time. It hasn’t happened yet.
“Yet, you’ve said nothing. I ask you about your daily activities. You’ve remained vague. Why?”
I tip my wineglass and swallow it all down at once, like a nervous freshman at a fraternity party. “Not purposefully. They’ve all been brief. I’m sure whatever else I did that day was more interesting.”
“Your entire day is interesting to me, Zoe. You know that. Why would you lie? Why would you cover it up?”
“I’m not covering it up, Henry. This whole conversation is ridiculous. We met three times in public places, discussed the charity, my involvement, that’s it. Enough of this.”
I stand, planning to get another glass of wine.
“Sit,” he commands in his boardroom voice, the one no one dares defy. I ease myself back down in my chair.
As you are woman, so be lovely. And obedient?
“I can’t tolerate the lying. Even by omission. If it was no big deal, then why not tell me?” He scans the paper, pointing one buffed, manicured nail to a sentence. Zoe Whittaker is personally attached to the cause of helping orphans and those left to fend for themselves, because she relates to the isolation. “You’ve been personal with this man. This is an intimate conversation.” Stab at the paper again, this time at the picture. “This is an intimate photograph.”
I see the picture through Henry’s eyes, the long curve of my spine, a sly, sexy smile, one delicately arched eyebrow, my hand floats near my ear, where I have just tucked a lock of hair. I sigh heavily. Stupid is what it is. “Henry, I will not have this conversation—”
“This man has feelings for you. If you were not aware of it, you wouldn’t have lied to me.”
“I never lied to you!” I protest sharply. “I just wasn’t willing to be monitored.”
“Bullshit.” His voice is loud now and he stands up, his palms bracing against the table. “You have feelings for him, too? That lowlife barely reporter, who makes $30,000 a year and lives in a one-room apartment in the East Village? Where all the hippies and the druggies hang out?”
I gape up at him. I never told Henry where Cash lived.
“I know everything about him, Zoe. He’s involved in my life now. I need to know these things, do you think I’m haphazard? Do you think I can afford to just let people in? I will not let my life, my wife, be compromised in that way.” He’s practically yelling, even his hair has taken on an unusually disheveled appearance.
“Henry, are you insane?” I spit.
He leans close to me, his eyes flashing, small dots of white spittle have foamed the corners of his mouth. “Zoe, do not question me about this. I will know what you are doing. I will know who you are spending time with. I will know—”
My heart races. I’ve never seen Henry angry, not like this. Cold, calculating, yes. Not this wild rage. My hands shake and I mentally swing between wanting to fire back at him and calming him down. “Henry, I can’t live like this! Under your rules, your roof, your thumb, your—”
He’s so quick, I hear the glass shatter before I realize what he’s done. The smell of whiskey stings my nostrils and pierces the back of my throat. The wall behind me drips brown amber liquid.
His voice is low, hard and barely controlled. “Then get out.” He spins around, and is gone.
• • •
I don’t get out. Where would I go? Lydia’s? I could hear the I told you so out the side of her mouth, lips twisted in a smirk. Or worse, if she reacted with pity, like I was seeking refuge at some kind of abused women’s shelter. No. In the end, I stay in the apartment. Henry’s office door is closed and I wonder if that’s where he’ll sleep. The room has a long, black leather sofa and once or twice when he’s been working late, he has slept in there. Never out of anger, that would be a first. Isn’t sleeping on the couch a sitcom staple? Pillows flying down the stairs and a hapless, balding, middle-aged man scrambling to catch them: Linda, please, I’ll take out the garbage. These are normal, married people things. Truthfully, I have no idea what normal, married couples are like, outside of movies and television. I’ve never witnessed it.
I think of Evelyn, precancer, with her thick, dark hair, red string bikini, and cutoff jean shorts in the driver’s seat of a borrowed black convertible, blasting Bruce Springsteen all the way down the Pacific Coast Highway to Capitola Beach. She’d spread blankets, twist and heave a heavy umbrella into the ground, and sit, smoking cigarettes and humming softly under her breath while I dug holes in the sand.
“We need a radio, bud, don’t you think?” I loved bud. She never called me darling or sweetie. She and I were pals, united against the world. I was twelve, edging into teenage angst while reaching back to my mom, my bud, with one hand. “I’ll find us one.”
I shrugged because I was collecting baby crabs, their soft, gray bodies scuttling up the sides of the yellow bucket and sliding back into the mush at the bottom. The wind picked up, my hair whipping around like sandy cattails, slapping at my eyes. I eyed the girl on the blanket next to us, her hair pulled back taut against her head and held in place with a hair band. Evelyn never had a hair band with her in her life, I was pretty sure. She wasn’t a “Band-Aid in every pocketbook” kind of mother.
Evelyn screamed when the umbrella uprooted and skipped dangerously across the sand, toward the ocean. Beachgoers shouted, pointed, and ducked, but no one jumped up. She stood helplessly and watched our only beach umbrella pinwheel away. She flopped back onto the blanket and gave me a dazzling smile, all sparkling teeth, and shrugged, like it didn’t matter. Like we could just buy another one, which of course, I knew we couldn’t. I squinted down the beach, but the umbrella was gone. I went back to my digging, scooting down toward the wet sand, but she never called me back.
When I wandered back up to the blanket, a man sat next to Evelyn, his chest tan and shiny, his dark hair slick.
“Bud, look! This nice man here brought our umbrella back!” She rubbed his bicep.
“Hi, Hilary. Your mom was just talking about you. I’m Michael, but people call me Mick.”
“Not Mike?” There was a Michael in Mrs. Hoppit’s sixth-grade class, but everyone called him Mike.
“Nope. Mick. It’s Irish.”
He didn’t look Irish. Mick hung around all day, anchoring the umbrella deep into the sand, and I was relieved we wouldn’t have to buy another one. I hated buying stuff with Evelyn. She’d walk it to the counter, hesitate until the cashier huffed, and she’d put it back. It was embarrassing.
Back in our apartment, Evelyn made dinner and Mick stayed. When I woke up the next day, he was perched at the breakfast table while Evelyn hummed over a pan of fried eggs. When I got home from school, he was reclined on the couch, reading Evelyn’s newspaper that I was never supposed to touch because it was her only luxury. His dirty sneakers rested on the armrest. Hey bud, he said, and I said nothing because we were not buds.
He stayed for quite a while, his big hands around her shoulders as we watched baseball at night instead of our usual Golden Girls reruns. I tried to protest but Evelyn smiled and patted my knee, and kissed Mick’s cheek. He stayed through Evelyn’s birthday, which was in October, and right up to Halloween. I had wanted to be a hippie but Evelyn forgot to make me a costume so I was a scarecrow again, my outfit from the year before recycled. The jeans with the hay hems were too small, so we just left them unbuttoned.
When Evelyn and I came back from trick-or-treating, Mick wasn’t there. The next morning, he wasn’t at the breakfast table, or hogging the bathroom, filling it with steam and stink, and Evelyn’s face was red and her eyes were half-closed. I knew she’d been crying.
Then a week later, he still hadn’t come back and I was flopped in her room, watching her get ready for work after school. She stood facing her closet wearing just her bra, her hands resting delicately on her hip bones as her foot tapped impatiently. She was searching for her uniform, a starchy maroon-and-white thing. One of her jobs at the time was as a hotel maid working early mornings.
“What’s that?” I pointed to her arm, yellow speckled dots, four of them in a row, like thumbprints in icing.
She looked, casually, and ran her index finger over the smooth vanilla skin of her bicep and shrugged. “Oh I must have bumped into something.” But she turned away from me and put on her uniform real quick after that.
Only later, when I was a teenager, she’d tell me how hard it was to find a good man. I’d remember Mick and think, he was not a good man. Sometimes he’d come back, then disappear for long stretches, leaving her to cry alone in her room, long into the nights. I’d asked her once if my father was a good man. She’d laughed, always, that tinkling soft giggle. Only the best.
I swore I’d never be like her, the preening, making it all just so, promising this time would be different. I hated to see her weak, could hardly stand it.
Once I started college, I’d catalogue the boys I met: Good Men and Not Good Men. Sometimes it was easy to tell the difference, the Not Good Men would drink and paw at me, pulling on my jean shorts in dark corners of fraternity parties. If Evelyn had met Henry before she died, she would have clapped her small hands together and sighed. Oh! You found one! Evelyn was easily charmed, and Henry’s favorite pastime was being charming.
I think of Henry now and his gentle smile, his eyes crinkled in the corners as he humors me. The way only I can make him laugh. The way he checks up on me, worries about me, frets and fusses like a finicky cat. His soft, careful hands on my body, his mouth on mine. The way he gives me the last piece of lobster always. How he brings me gifts, small trinkets, flowers, a key chain, because he just can’t stop thinking about me.
He’s nearly perfect. But is he good?