I find the one marked AmEx and leaf through his statements until I find the itemized one for February. What I’m searching for is right at the top: Sotheby’s Wine, $3,150 refund.
The cleaning woman has turned toward the windows to dust the blinds, but I can’t allow myself even the briefest of celebrations. I slip the piece of paper into my purse.
“All done! Thank you!”
She nods and I start to exit the office. As I round the edge of the desk, I reach out and touch Emma’s photo again. I can’t resist. I twist it so she faces the wall.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
The next morning, I awaken feeling more refreshed than I have in years. I’ve slept straight through for nine hours without the aid of alcohol or a pill. Another small victory.
I can hear Aunt Charlotte puttering in the kitchen as I approach. I walk up behind her and envelop her in a hug. Linseed and lavender; her scent is as comforting to me as Richard’s aroma is unsettling.
“I love you.”
Her hands cover mine. “I love you, too, honey.” Surprise threads through her voice; it’s as if she can sense the shift within me.
We have hugged dozens of times since I moved in. Aunt Charlotte embraced me as I sobbed after a cab left me on her building’s doorstep. When I was unable to sleep as the memories of the worst times in my marriage tormented me, I felt her slip onto the bed and wrap me up in her arms. It was as if she wanted to absorb my pain. For every page in my notebook that I filled with descriptions of Richard’s deceit, I could write an equal number recounting times throughout my life when Aunt Charlotte has buoyed me with her steady, undemanding love.
But today I’m the one reaching out to her. Sharing my strength.
When I let go, Aunt Charlotte picks up the pot of coffee she has just brewed, and I pull the cream out of the refrigerator and hand it to her. I crave calories—nourishing food to fuel my newfound fortitude. I crack eggs into a pan, scramble in cherry tomatoes and shredded cheddar cheese, and slide two pieces of whole-grain bread into the toaster.
“I’ve been doing some research.” She looks up at me and I can tell she knows exactly what I’m talking about. “You are never going to be alone in this. I’m here for you. And I’m not going anywhere.”
She stirs the cream into her coffee. “Absolutely not. You’re young. And you are not spending your life taking care of an old woman.”
“Too bad,” I say lightly. “Like it or not, you’re stuck with me. I found the best macular degeneration specialist in New York. He’s one of the top guys in the country. We’re seeing him in two weeks.” The office manager has already emailed me the forms that I’ll help Aunt Charlotte fill out.
Her wrist moves in more rapid circles, and the coffee is in danger of sloshing over the edge of her mug. I can tell she’s uncomfortable. I’m sure that as a self-employed artist, she doesn’t have a great health-care plan.
“When Richard came by, he gave me a check. I have plenty of money.” And I deserve every cent of it. Before she can protest, I reach for a mug of my own. “I can’t argue about this before I have coffee.” She laughs, and I change the subject. “So, what are you doing today?”
“I thought I’d go to the cemetery. I want to visit Beau.”
Usually my aunt makes this trip only on their wedding anniversary, which is in the fall. But I understand she is seeing everything anew now, fixing familiar images into her memory bank to revisit them when her eyesight is gone.
“If you’re up for company, I would love to join you.” I give the eggs a final stir and add salt and pepper.
“You don’t have to work?”
“Not today.” I butter the toast and slide the eggs out of the pan, dividing them between two plates. I serve Aunt Charlotte, then take a sip of coffee to buy some time. I don’t want to worry her, so I come up with a story about storewide layoffs. “I’ll explain it to you over breakfast.”
At the cemetery, we plant geraniums by his headstone—yellow, red, and white—as we trade some of our favorite Beau stories. Aunt Charlotte recounts how the first time they met, he pretended to be the blind date she was meeting at a coffee shop. He didn’t reveal the truth until a week later, on their third date. I’ve heard this story many times, but it always makes me laugh when she tells the part about how relieved he was to no longer have to answer to the name David. I share how I loved the little journalist’s notebook he kept in his back pocket with a pencil threaded through the spirals. Whenever I came to New York with my mother to visit, Uncle Beau gave me a duplicate one. We’d pretend to report on a story together. He’d take me to the local pizza parlor, and while we waited for our pie, he’d tell me to record everything I saw—the sights, the smells, what I overheard—just like a real reporter. He didn’t treat me like a little kid. He respected my observations and told me I had a sharp eye for detail.
The midday sun is high in the sky, but the trees shade us from the heat. Neither of us is in any rush; it feels so good to be sitting in the soft grass, chatting comfortably with Aunt Charlotte. In the distance I see a family approach—a mother, father, and two kids. One of the little girls is riding on her father’s shoulders, and the other is holding a bouquet of flowers.
“You were both wonderful with children. Did you ever want to have any?” I’d posed the same question to my aunt once before, when I was younger. But now I’m asking as a woman—as an equal.
“To be honest, no. My life was quite full, with my art and Beau traveling on assignment all the time and me joining him. . . . Plus, I was lucky enough to get to share you.”
“I’m the lucky one.” I lean over to briefly rest my head on her shoulder.
“I know how much you wanted children. I’m sorry it didn’t happen for you.”
“We tried for a long time.” I think of those slashing blue lines, the Clomid and resulting nausea and exhaustion, the blood tests, the doctor’s visits. . . . Every single month, I felt like a failure. “But after a while, I wasn’t sure if we were meant to have kids together.”
“Really? It was that simple?”
I think, No, of course not, it wasn’t simple at all.
It was Dr. Hoffman who finally suggested to me that Richard should have a second semen analysis. “Didn’t anyone tell him that?” she’d asked as I sat in her immaculate office during one of my annual physicals. “There can be errors in any medical test. It’s standard to repeat the sperm analysis after six months or a year. And it’s just so unusual for a healthy young woman like yourself to be having this much trouble.”
This was after my mother had died; after Richard had promised things would never get bad again. He’d made an effort to come home by seven o’clock several nights a week; we’d taken a long weekend trip to Bermuda and another to Palm Beach, where we golfed and sunbathed by a pool. I’d recommitted to our marriage, and after about six months, we’d agreed to start trying anew for a baby. The job Paul had suggested never came through, but I continued my volunteer work with the Head Start program. I’d told myself I’d been partly to blame for Richard’s violence. What husband would be happy to learn his wife was sneaking into the city and lying about it? Richard had told me that he’d thought I had a lover; I reasoned he would never have hurt me otherwise. As time passed and my sweet, attentive husband brought me flowers just because and left love notes on my pillow, it became easy to rationalize that all marriages had low points. That he would never do it again.
Just as my bruises faded, so, too, did the small, insistent voice inside me that cried out for me to leave him.
“My marriage was kind of . . . uneven,” I tell my aunt now. “I began to worry about bringing a child into such an unstable environment.”
“You seemed happy with him at first,” Aunt Charlotte says carefully. “And he clearly adored you.”
Both statements are true, so I nod. “Sometimes those things aren’t enough.”