I know exactly which night she is talking about. It was August, shortly after our first anniversary. I nod. “I’d just turned twenty-nine.” A couple of years older than Emma is now. “You brought me a bouquet of pink snapdragons.”
She’d given me a small painting, too, about the size of a hardcover book. It was of me on my wedding day. Instead of a portrait, Aunt Charlotte had captured me from behind as I began to walk toward Richard. The bell shape of my dress and my gauzy veil stood out against the vivid blue Floridian sky; it was almost as if I were walking off into infinity.
We’d invited Aunt Charlotte to Westchester for a drink followed by dinner at our club. I’d already started taking fertility pills, and I remember I couldn’t zip up the skirt I was planning to wear. The silk A-line was one of the many new items filling my enormous closet. I’d napped that afternoon—the Clomid left me woozy—and was running late. By the time I’d changed into a more forgiving dress, Richard had greeted Aunt Charlotte and poured her a glass of wine.
I’d heard their conversation as I approached the library. “They were always her favorite flowers,” Aunt Charlotte was saying.
“Really?” Richard said. “They were?”
When I entered, Aunt Charlotte set the cellophane-wrapped snapdragons down on a side table so she could hug me.
“I’ll put these in a vase.” Richard discreetly took one of our linen cocktail napkins and wiped away a drop of water from the blackwashed mango wood; the piece had been delivered just the previous month. “There’s mineral water for you, sweetheart,” he said to me.
Now I reach for the glass of water on the bar in front of me and take a long sip. Aunt Charlotte had known I was trying to get pregnant, and when she smiled at Richard’s remark, I’d realized she might have drawn the wrong impression from my thickening waistline and the nonalcoholic beverage.
I’d shaken my head slightly, not wanting to say the words to correct her. At least not then, in front of Richard.
“Beautiful place,” Aunt Charlotte says now, but I’m not tracking the conversation. Is she talking about our old house or the club?
Everything in my life looked beautiful back then: the new furnishings I’d picked out with the help of an interior decorator, the sapphire earrings Richard had presented to me earlier that day, the long driveway winding through lush golf greens and past a duck-filled pond as we approached the club, the explosion of crape myrtles and creamy dogwoods surrounding the white-columned entrance.
“The other people at the club all seemed so . . .” She hesitates. “Settled, I guess. It’s just that your friends in the city were so energetic and young.”
Aunt Charlotte’s words are gentle, but I know what she means. The men wore jackets in the dining room—a club rule—and the women seemed to have unspoken edicts of their own governing how to look and to act. Most of the couples were much older than me, too, but that wasn’t the only reason why I felt I didn’t fit in.
“We sat at a booth in the corner,” Aunt Charlotte continues. Richard and I attended lots of events at the club—the Fourth of July fireworks, the Labor Day barbecue, the December holiday dance. The corner booth was Richard’s favorite because it afforded him a view of the room and was quiet.
“I was surprised by the golf lessons,” Aunt Charlotte says.
I nod. They’d been a surprise to me, too. Richard had given them to me, of course. He wanted to play together and had mentioned a trip to Pebble Beach once I’d mastered my fairway drive. I’d talked about the way I’d learned to tell my seven from my nine iron, how I always shanked my shot when I didn’t spend enough time taking practice swings, and what fun it was to drive the golf cart. I should have known Aunt Charlotte would see through my lively chatter.
“When the waiter appeared, you asked for a glass of Chardonnay,” Aunt Charlotte says. “But I saw Richard touch your hand. Then you changed your order to water.”
“I was trying to get pregnant. I didn’t want to drink.”
“I understand that, but then something else happened.” Aunt Charlotte takes a sip of her sidecar, holding the thick glass with both hands, then sets it carefully back onto the bar. I wonder if she is reluctant to continue, but I need to know what I did.
“The server brought you a Caesar salad.” Aunt Charlotte’s voice is soft. “You told him you’d wanted the dressing on the side. It wasn’t a big deal, but you insisted you’d ordered it that way. I just thought it was strange because you’d been a waitress, honey. You know how easy it is for mistakes to happen.”
She pauses. “The thing is, you were wrong. I ordered a Caesar salad, too, and you just said you’d have the same. You didn’t say anything about the dressing.”
I feel my brow crease. “That was all? I mis-ordered?”
Aunt Charlotte shakes her head. I know she will be honest with me. I also know I may not like what I hear next.
“It was the way you said it. You sounded . . . agitated. He apologized, but you made it into a bigger deal than it needed to be. You blamed the waiter for something that wasn’t his fault.”
“What did Richard do?”
“He was finally the one to tell you not to worry, that you’d have a new salad in a minute.”
I don’t remember my exact exchange with the waiter—although I do recall other, more fraught restaurant meals during my marriage—but I’m certain of one thing: My aunt has an excellent memory; she has spent her entire life cataloging details.
I wonder how many other unpleasant moments Aunt Charlotte witnessed during those years and has held close out of love for me.
Although we were still newlyweds, my transformation had already begun.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
I always knew my life with Richard wouldn’t resemble my old one.
I imagined my changes would be external, though—additions to who I already was and what I already had. I’d become a wife. A mother. I’d create a home. I’d find new friends in our neighborhood.
But in the absence of the daily scramble that composed my existence in Manhattan, it was too easy to focus on what was missing. I should have been waking three times a night to breast-feed, and scheduling Mommy & Me classes. I should have been steaming carrots into mush and reading Goodnight Moon. I should have been washing onesies in Dreft and icing teething rings to soothe little swollen gums.
My life was on hold. I felt suspended between my past and my future.
I used to agonize over the balance in my checking account, the sound of footsteps behind me at night, and whether I would make it onto the subway car before the doors closed so I could get to Gibson’s on time. I worried about the little girl in my class who bit her nails even though she was only three, about whether the cute guy I’d given my number to would ever call, and if Sam had remembered to unplug her flatiron after straightening her hair.
I guess I thought marrying Richard would erase my concerns.
But my old anxieties simply yielded to new ones. The whirl and noise of the city were replaced by the incessant churning of my thoughts. My peaceful new surroundings didn’t soothe my interior world. If anything, the constant stillness, the empty hours, seemed to taunt me. My insomnia returned. I also found myself circling back home to make sure I’d locked the door when I went on an errand, even though I could see myself pulling it shut and turning the key. I left a dental appointment before I’d gotten my teeth cleaned, convinced I’d left on the oven. I double-checked closets to make sure the lights were off. Our weekly housekeeper left everything spotless, and Richard was incredibly tidy by nature, but I still wandered through the rooms, seeking a brown leaf to pinch off a potted plant, a book jutting out a bit farther than the others on our shelves to tuck back into alignment, towels to refold into perfect thirds in our linen closet.