Bittersweet

CHAPTER 2

THE NEXT morning was chaotic, as usual, and she had to drive Jessica to school, because she'd missed her car pool. Doug never said anything to India about their conversation the night before, and he was gone before she could even say good-bye to him. As she cleaned up the kitchen, after she got back from dropping Jessica off, she wondered if he was sorry. She was sure he would say something that night. It was unlike him not to. Maybe he'd had a bad day at the office the day before, or was just feeling feisty and wanted to provoke her. But he had seemed very calm when he'd spoken to her. It upset her to think he had so little regard for everything she'd done before they were married. He had never been quite that insensitive about it, or quite as blatantly outspoken. The phone rang just as she put the last of the dishes in the dishwasher, and she was going to go to her darkroom to develop the pictures she'd taken the day before at soccer. She had promised the captain of the team that she would get them to him quickly.
She answered on the fourth ring, and wondered if it would be Doug, calling to tell her he was sorry. They were planning to go out to dinner that night, at a fancy little French restaurant, and it would be a much nicer evening if he would at least acknowledge that he had been wrong to make her career sound so unimportant and make her feel so lousy.
“Hello?” She was smiling when she answered, sure now that it was he, but the voice on the other end was not Doug's. It was her agent. Raoul Lopez. He was very well known in photojournalism and photography, and at the top of his field. The agency, though not Raoul, had previously represented her father.
“How's the Mother of the Year? Still taking pictures of kids on Santa's lap to give to their mommies?” She had volunteered at a children's shelter the previous year to do just that, and Raoul had not been overly amused by it. For years now, he had been telling her she was wasting her talents. And once every couple of years, she did something for him that gave him hope she might one day come back to the real world. She had done a fabulous story three years before, on abused children in Harlem. She had done it in the daytime while her own kids were in school, and managed not to miss a single car pool. Doug hadn't been pleased but he had let her do it, after India had spent weeks discussing it with him. And, as in the past, she had won an award for it.
“I'm fine. How are you, Raoul?”
“Overworked, as usual. And a little tired of getting the ‘artists’ I represent to be reasonable. Why is it so impossible for creative people to make intelligent decisions?” It sounded like he had already had a bad morning, and listening to him, India was hoping he wasn't going to ask her to do something totally insane. Sometimes, despite the limitations she had set on him for years, he still did that. He was also upset because he had lost one of his star clients, a hell of a nice guy and good friend, in a brief holy war in Iran in early April. “So what are you up to?” he asked, trying to sound a little more cordial. He was a nervous, irascible man, but India was fond of him. He was brilliant at pairing up the right photographer with the right assignment, when they let him.
“I'm loading the dishwasher, actually,” she said with a smile. “Does that fit your image of me?” She laughed and he groaned.
“Only too well, I'm afraid. When are those kids of yours ever going to grow up, India? The world can't wait forever.”
“It'll have to.” Even after they were grown, she wasn't sure Doug would want her to take assignments, and she knew it. But this was what she wanted for now. And she had told Raoul that often enough for him to almost believe her. But he never gave up entirely. He was still hoping that one day she might come to her senses, and run screaming out of Westport. He certainly hoped so. “Are you calling to send me on a mission on muleback somewhere in northern China?” It was the kind of thing he called her with from time to time, although occasionally he called with something reason-able, like the work she had done in Harlem. And she had loved that, which was why she kept her name on his roster.
“Not exactly, but you're getting close,” he said tentatively, wondering how to phrase his question. He knew how impossible she was, and just how devoted to her children and husband. Raoul had neither a spouse nor a family, and could never quite understand why she was so determined to flush her career down the toilet for them. She had a talent like few he had known, and in her case he thought it was a sacrilege to have given up what she had been doing.
And then he decided to take the plunge. All she could do was say no, although he desperately hoped she wouldn't. “It's Korea, actually. It's a story for the Sunday Times Magazine, and they're willing to put it out to someone freelance, instead of a staffer. There's an adoption racket in Seoul that's going sour. The word is they're killing the kids no one will adopt. It's relatively safe, for you at least, unless you ruffle too many feathers. But it's a fantastic story, India. Babies are being murdered over there, and once it runs in the magazine, you can syndicate the story. Someone really has to do it, and they need your pictures to validate the story and I'd rather it be you than anyone else. I know how you love kids, and I just thought …it's perfect for you.” She felt an undeniable rush of adrenaline as she listened. It tugged at her heart in a way that nothing had since the story in Harlem. But Korea? What would she tell Doug and the kids? Who would drive her car pools and make dinner for them? All they had was a cleaning lady twice a week, she had done it all herself for years, and there was no way that they could manage without India to do it all for them.
“How long are we talking about?” A week maybe …maybe Gail would agree to cover for her.
There was a pause, and she could hear him suck in his breath. It was a habit he had whenever he knew she wouldn't like his answer. “Three weeks …maybe four,” he said finally, as she sat down on a stool and closed her eyes. There was no way on earth that she could do it, and she hated to miss the story. But she had her own children to think of.
“You know I can't do that, Raoul. Why did you call me? Just to make me feel bad?”
“Maybe. Maybe one of these days you'll get the fact that the world needs what you do, not just to show them pretty pictures, India, but to make a difference. Maybe you could be the one who stops those babies from getting murdered.”
“That's not fair,” she said heatedly. “You have no right to make me feel guilty about this. There's no way I can take a four-week assignment, and you know it. I have four kids, no help, and a husband.”
“Then hire an au pair, for chrissake, or get divorced. You can't just sit there on your dead ass forever. You've already wasted fourteen years. It's a wonder anyone's still willing to give you work. You're a fool to waste your talent.” For once, he sounded angry with her, and she didn't like what he was saying.
“I haven't ‘wasted’ fourteen years, Raoul. I have happy, healthy kids who are that way because I'm around to take them to school every day, and pick them up, and go to their Little League games, and cook them dinner. And if I'd gotten myself killed sometime in those fourteen years, you wouldn't be here to step into my shoes for me.”
“No, that's a point,” he said, sounding calmer. “But they're old enough now. You could go back to work again, at least on something like this. They're not babies, for chrissake. I'm sure your husband would understand that.” Not after what he'd said the night before. She couldn't even imagine telling him she was going to Korea for a month. It was inconceivable in the context of their marriage.
“I can't do it, Raoul, and you know it. All you're doing now is making me unhappy.” She sounded wistful as she said it.
“Good. Then maybe you'll get going again one of these days. I'd be performing a service for the world if that was all I accomplished by calling.”
“For the world maybe, although you flatter me. I was never that great. But you wouldn't be performing a service for my children.”
“Lots of mothers work. They'd survive it.”
“And if I didn't?” She had the example of her own father dying when she was fifteen. And no one could tell her that couldn't happen, particularly with the kind of stories she was known for doing. The one in Korea would have been tame in comparison to the work she'd done before she was married.
“They'd survive it too,” he said sadly. “I won't send you on the really hot ones. This one in Korea is a little dicey, but it's not like sending you to Bosnia or something.”
“I still can't do it, Raoul. I'm sorry.”
“I know. I was crazy to call you, but I had to try. I'll find someone else. Don't worry about it.” He sounded discouraged.
“Don't forget me completely,” she said sadly, feeling something she hadn't in years, over the assignment she had just turned down. She really wished she could do the story in Korea, and felt deprived that she had to turn it down. Not resentful, just bitterly disappointed. This was the kind of sacrifice she had been talking to Doug about the night before, and that he had discounted so completely. As though what she had done with her camera for all those years, and giving it up for him and the kids, meant nothing.
“I will forget about you one of these days if you don't do something important again soon. You can't take pictures of Santa Claus forever.”
“I might have to. Get me something closer to home, like the piece in Harlem.”
“Stuff like that doesn't come around very often, and you know it. They let the staffers do it. They just wanted something more important out of that piece, and you got lucky.” And then, with a sigh, “I'll see what I can come up with. Just tell your kids to grow up a little faster.”
And what about Doug? How fast was he going to “grow up,” if ever? From the sound of it the night before, he didn't really understand that her career had been important to her. “Thanks for thinking of me anyway. I hope you get someone terrific to do it.” She was worried now about the Korean babies.
“I just got turned down by someone terrific. I'll call you again one of these days. And you owe me on the next one.”
“Then make sure it doesn't require my presence at the top of a tree in Bali.”
“I'll see what I can do, India. Take care of yourself.”
“Thanks. You too,” and then as an afterthought, “I just remembered, I'll be in Cape Cod all summer. July and August. I think you have that number.”
“I do. If you get any great sailboat pictures, call me. We'll sell them to Hallmark.” She had actually done that a couple of times, when the kids were really small. She'd been happy with it, and Raoul had been furious. As far as he was concerned, she was a serious photojournalist and shouldn't be taking pictures of anything or anyone unless they were bleeding, dead, or dying.
“Don't knock it. They covered my kindergarten costs for two years, that's something.”
“You're hopeless.”
They hung up after that, and she was upset about the call all day. For the first time in a long time, she felt as though she was missing something. And she was still looking glum when she ran into Gail that afternoon at the market. Gail was looking happier than usual, wearing a skirt and high heels, and as India approached her, she noticed that Gail was wearing perfume.
“Where have you been? Shopping in the city?”
Gail shook her head with a wicked grin, and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Lunch with Dan Lewison in Greenwich. He's not quite as devastated as I expected. We had a very nice time, and a couple of glasses of wine. He's a sweet guy, and after you look at him for a while, he's actually pretty attractive.”
“You must have had more than a couple of glasses of wine,” India said, looking at her unhappily. Even hearing about it depressed her. What point was there in having lunch with him? India just couldn't see it.
“What are you looking so down about?” It was rare for India to be in such poor spirits. She was usually pretty “up” about everything. She was always the one telling Gail to cheer up, and assuring her that their life was just “peachy.” Now she looked anything but, as she chatted with Gail, standing next to the produce.
“I had a fight with Doug last night, and my agent just called me with an assignment in Korea. Apparently there's some adoption racket where they're murdering the babies that don't get adopted.”
“Christ, how awful. Be grateful you didn't have to cover that one,” Gail said, looking revolted. “How morbid.”
“I'd have loved doing it. It sounds like a terrific piece, but it would have taken three to four weeks to hang around and get the story. I told him I couldn't do it.”
“Nothing new there. So why are you looking like someone died?” She had gotten to India the day before, in a way she never had in earlier discussions, and Doug's comments, and the call from Raoul, hadn't helped any.
“Doug made a lot of dumb comments last night about my career being sort of a plaything, a toy, and it was no big deal that I gave it up. There's something about earning your living with a camera that makes everyone think they could do it if they wanted to be bothered.” Gail smiled at what she said, and didn't deny it.
“What got into Doug?” Gail knew they didn't fight very often, and India looked particularly upset as she told her.
“I don't know. He's not usually that insensitive. Maybe he had a bad day at the office.”
“Maybe he really doesn't get what you gave up for him and the kids.” That was what India was afraid of, and she was surprised herself to find that it really mattered to her. “Maybe you should make your point by doing the story in Korea.” Gail tried to provoke her into doing it, but India knew better. She knew that would be driving the point home a little too firmly.
“Why should the kids have to suffer because he hurt my feelings? Besides, there's no way I could leave for a month. And we're leaving for the Cape in three weeks … I can't do it.”
“Well, maybe you should do the next one.”
“If there is one. I'm sure Raoul is getting tired of calling me and having me tell him I can't do it.” He hardly ever called anymore anyway. There just weren't many stories that suited her particular limitations.
“Doug will probably come home with an armload of flowers for you tonight, and you'll forget all about it,” Gail said, trying to look reassuring. She felt sorry for her. India was bright and beautiful and talented, and like many of them, she was wasting her life cleaning out the barbecue and driving car pools. It was a waste of an extraordinary talent.
“We're having dinner at Ma Petite Amie. I was looking forward to it, until he got me all riled up.”
“Drink enough wine, and you'll forget all about it. Which reminds me, I'm having lunch with Dan again on Tuesday.”
“I think that's a dumb thing to do,” India said bluntly, putting a box of tomatoes into her basket. “What's that going to do for you?”
“Amuse me. Why not? We're not hurting anyone. Rosalie is in love with Harold, and Jeff will never know, and he'll have my undivided attention for six weeks in Europe.” To Gail it seemed like perfect justification, but to India it didn't.
“It seems so pointless. And what if you fall in love with him?” That was a whole other issue. If what Gail wanted was to be madly in love again, one of these days it might happen. And then what would she do? Dump Jeff? Get divorced? To India, the risks just didn't seem worth it. But on that score anyway, she and Gail were very different.
“I'm not going to fall in love with him. We're just having some fun. Don't be such a spoilsport.”
“What if Jeff were doing the same thing, wouldn't you mind?”
“I'd be bowled over,” Gail said with a look of amusement. “The only thing Jeff ever does at lunch is go to his podiatrist, or get his hair cut.”
But what if he wasn't? What if they were both cheating? To India, particularly in her current mood, it seemed pathetic.
“You need to get a haircut, or a manicure, or a massage or something. Do something to cheer yourself up. I'm not sure giving up a story about dead babies in Korea is something to get so depressed about. Get depressed about something that would be a shame to miss, something fun …like an affair….” She was teasing her then, and India shook her head and grinned ruefully at her.
“How can I love you, when you are the most immoral person I know?” India said, looking at her with affectionate disapproval. “If you were a stranger, and someone told me about you, I'd think you were disgust-Lag.”
“No, you wouldn't. I'm just honest about what I do, and what I think. Most people aren't, and you know that.” There was certainly some truth to that, but Gail went a little overboard both with her point of view and her honesty about it.
“I love you anyway, but one of these days you're going to get yourself in one hell of a mess, and Jeff is going to find out about it.”
“I'm not even sure he'd care. Unless I forgot to pick up his dry cleaning.”
“Don't be so sure about that,” India assured her.
“Dan says Rosalie has been sleeping with Harold for two years, and he had no idea until she told him. Most guys are like that.” It made India wonder suddenly if Doug would suspect if she were having lunch with another man. She liked to think so. It was one of the many things she believed about him. “Anyway, I've got to run. I have to take the kids to the doctor for checkups before we leave for Europe. They're going to camp as soon as we get home, and I haven't even filled out their health forms.”
“Maybe if you stayed home for a change, you could do it at lunchtime,” India teased her, as Gail waved and hurried off to the checkout counter, and India finished buying what she needed for the weekend. It was certainly not an exciting life, but maybe Gail was right. The assignment in Korea would have been a very depressing story. She would have wanted to come home with an armful of Korean babies to save them from getting murdered when no one else would adopt them.
She was still in a somber mood later that afternoon when she picked up the kids and drove home. Jason and Aimee had friends with them, and they all made so much noise that no one noticed that she wasn't talking.
She fixed a snack for all of them, and left it on the kitchen table when she went to take a bath. She had called a sitter that afternoon, and she was going to put dinner together and rent videos for them. For once, India had some free time on her hands, and she luxuriated in the bath, thinking about her husband. She was still upset about what he'd said the night before, but she was just as sure he must have had a bad day at the office.
India was wearing a short black dress and high heels, and her long blond hair was looped into an elegant bun when Doug came home from work. He fixed himself a drink, which he did sometimes on Friday nights, and when he came upstairs, he looked happy to see her.
“Wow, India! You look terrific!” he said, taking a sip of his Bloody Mary. “You look like you spent all day getting ready.”
“Not quite. Just the last hour of it. How was your day?”
“Not bad. The new client meeting went pretty well. I'm almost sure we got the account. It's going to be a very busy summer.” It was the third new account he was in charge of, and he had commented to his secretary that afternoon that he'd be lucky if he got to the Cape by August, but he didn't say anything about it to India as she walked toward him.
“I'm glad we're going out tonight,” she said, looking at him with the same wistful look she'd had in the market when she ran into Gail, but unlike Gail, Doug didn't see it. “I think we need a break, or some fun, or something.”
“That's why I suggested dinner.” He smiled, and took his Bloody Mary into the bathroom with him to shower and change for dinner. He was back half an hour later, wearing gray slacks and a blazer, and a navy tie she had given him for Christmas. He looked very handsome, and they made a striking couple as they stopped on their way out, to say good-night to the children. And ten minutes later, they were at the restaurant, and on their way to a corner table.
It was a pretty little restaurant, and they did a lot of business on the weekends. The food was good, and the atmosphere was cozy and romantic. It was just what they needed to repair the rift of the night before, and India smiled at him as the waiter poured a bottle of French wine, and Doug carefully sipped it and approved it.
“So what did you do today?” Doug asked as he set down his glass. He knew before she said anything that her day would have revolved around the children.
“I got a call from Raoul Lopez.” He looked momentarily surprised, and not particularly curious. The calls from her agent were rare these days, and usually unproductive. “He offered me a very interesting story in Korea.
“That sounds like Raoul.” Doug looked amused, and in no way threatened by the information. “Where was the last place he tried to send you? Zimbabwe? You wonder why he bothers.”
“He thought I might agree to do the story. It was for the Sunday Times Magazine, about an adoption racket that's murdering babies in Korea. But he thought it would take three or four weeks, and I told him I couldn't do it.”
“Obviously. There's no way you could go to Korea, not even for three or four minutes.”
“That's what I told him.” But she realized as she looked at Doug that she wanted him to thank her for not going. She wanted him to understand what she'd given up, and that she would have liked to do it. “He said he'd try again with something closer to home, like the piece in Harlem.”
“Why don't you just take your name off their roster? That really makes more sense. There's no point leaving your name on and having him call you for stories you're not going to do anyway. I'm really surprised he still bothers to call you. Why does he?”
“Because I'm good at what I do,” she said quietly, “and editors still ask for me, apparently. It's flattering, at least.” She was groping for something, asking him for something, and he wasn't getting the message from her. In this area at least, he never did. He missed it completely.
“You never should have done that story in Harlem. It probably gave them the idea that you're still open to offers.” It was obvious to her as she listened to him that he wanted the door to her career closed even more firmly than it had been. And suddenly she was intrigued by the idea of opening it, just a crack, if she could find another assignment near home like the one she'd done in Harlem.
“It was a great story. I'm glad I did it,” she said, as the waiter handed them the menus, but suddenly she wasn't hungry. She was upset again. He didn't seem to understand what she was feeling. But maybe she couldn't blame him. She wasn't even sure she understood it. Suddenly she was missing something she had given up, for all intents and purposes, fourteen years before, and she expected him to know that, without having explained it to him. “I wouldn't mind working again, just a little bit, if I could fit it into everything else I'm doing. I've never really thought about it for all these years. But I'm beginning to think I miss working.”
“What brought that on?”
“I'm not sure,” she said honestly. “I was talking to Gail yesterday and she was harping on me about wasted talent, and then Raoul called today, and that story sounded so enticing.” And their conversation the night before had added fuel to the fire, when he dismissed her career and her father's like just so much playtime. All of a sudden she felt as though she needed to validate her existence. Maybe Gail was right and all she had become was a maid, a short-order cook, and a chauffeur. Maybe it was time to drag out her old career and dust it off a little.
“Gail always is a troublemaker, isn't she? …What about the sweetbreads?” As he had the night before, Doug was dismissing what she was saying, and it made India feel lonely as she looked at him over her menu.
“I think she's still sorry she gave up her career. She probably shouldn't have,” India added, ignoring his question about their dinner, and thinking that Gail probably wouldn't be having lunch with Dan Lewison if she had something else to do, but she said nothing to Doug about it. “I'm lucky. If I go back at some point, I can pick and choose what I do. I don't have to work full-time, or go all the way to Korea to do it.”
“What are you saying to me?” He had ordered for both of them, and faced her squarely across the table, but he did not look pleased by what she was saying. “Are you telling me you want to go back to work, India? That's not possible and you know it.” He didn't even give her a chance to answer his question.
“There's no reason why I couldn't do an occasional story, if it was local, is there?”
“For what? Just to show off your photographs? Why would you want to do that?” He made it sound so vain, and so futile, that she was almost embarrassed by the suggestion. But something about the way he resisted it suddenly made her feel stubborn.
“It's not a matter of showing off. It's about using a gift I have.” Gail had started it all the day before, with her pointed questions, and ever since, the ball had just kept rolling. And his resistance to it made it all seem that much more important.
“If you're so anxious to use your ‘gift,’ “ he said in a mildly contemptuous tone, “use it on the children. You've always taken great pictures of them. Why can't that satisfy you, or is this one of Gail's crusades? Somehow I feel her hand in this, or is Raoul getting you all stirred up? He's just out to make a buck anyway. Let him do it using someone else. There are plenty of other photographers he can send to Korea.”
“I'm sure he'll find one,” India said quietly as the pate they had ordered was put on the table. “I'm not saying I'm irreplaceable, I'm just saying the kids are getting older, and maybe once in a while I could do an assignment.” She was beginning to feel dogged about it.
“We don't need the money, and Sam is only nine, for heaven's sake. India, the kids need you.”
“I wasn't suggesting I leave them, Doug. I'm just saying it might be important to me.” And she wanted him to understand that. Only the day before she had told Gail how little she cared about having given up her career, and now, after listening to her and Raoul, and Doug belittling her the night before, suddenly it all mattered. But he refused to hear it.
Why would it be important to you? That's what I don't understand. What's so important about taking pictures?” She felt as though she were trying to crawl up a glass mountain, and she was getting nowhere.
“It's how I express myself. I'm good at it. I love it, that's all.”
“I told you, then take pictures of the kids. Or do portraits of their friends, and give them to their parents. There's plenty you can do with a camera, without taking assignments.”
“Maybe I'd like to do something important. Did that ever occur to you? Maybe I want to be sure my life has some meaning.”
“Oh, for God's sake.” He put down his fork and looked at her with annoyance. “What on earth has gotten into you? It's Gail. I know it.”
“It's not Gail,” she tried to defend herself, but was feeling hopeless, “it's about me. There has to be more meaning in life than cleaning up apple juice off the floor when the kids spill it.”
“You sound just like Gail now,” he said, looking disgusted.
“What if she's right, though? She's doing a lot of stupid things with her life, because she feels useless, and her life has no purpose. Maybe if she were doing something intelligent with herself, she wouldn't need to do other things that are pointless.”
“If you're trying to tell me she cheats on Jeff, I figured that out years ago. And if he's too blind to see it, it's his own fault. She runs after everything in pants in Westport. Is that what you're threatening me with? Is that what this is really about?” He looked furious with her as the waiter brought their main course. Their romantic night out was being wasted.
“Of course not.” India was quick to reassure him. “I don't know what she does,” she lied to protect her friend, but Gail's indiscretions were irrelevant to them, and none of Doug's business. “I'm talking about me. I'm just saying that maybe I need more in my life than just you and the children. I had a great career before I gave it up, no matter how unimportant you seem to think it was, and maybe I can retrieve some small part of it now to broaden my horizons.”
“You don't have time to broaden your horizons,” he said sensibly. “You're too busy with the children. Unless you want to start hiring baby-sitters constantly, or leaving them in day care. Is that what you have in mind, India? Because there's no other way for you to do it, and frankly I won't let you. You're their mother, and they need you.”
“I understand that, but I managed the story in Harlem without shortchanging them. I could do others like it.”
“I doubt that. And I just don't see the sense in it. You did all that, you had some fun, and you grew up. You can't go back to all that now. You're not a kid in your twenties with no responsibilities. You're a grown woman with a family and a husband.”
“I don't see why one has to preclude the other, as long as I keep my priorities straight. You and the kids come first, the rest would have to work around you.”
“You know, sitting here listening to you, I'm beginning to wonder about your priorities. What you're saying to me sounds incredibly selfish. All you want to do is have a good time, like your little friend, who's running around cheating on her husband because her kids bore her. Is that it? Do we bore you?” He looked highly insulted, and very angry. She had disrupted his whole evening. But he was threatening her self-esteem, and her future.
“Of course you don't bore me. And I'm not Gail.”
“What the hell is she after anyway?” He was cutting his steak viciously as he asked her. “She can't be that oversexed. What is she trying to do, just embarrass her husband?”
“I don't think so. I think she's lonely and dissatisfied, and I feel sorry for her. I'm not telling you what she does is right, Doug. I think she's panicked. She's forty-eight years old, she gave up a terrific career, and she can't see anything in her future except car pools. You don't know what that's like. You have a career. You never gave up anything. You just added to it.”
“Is that how you feel? The way Gail does?” He actually looked worried.
“Not really. I'm a lot happier than she is. But I think about my future too. What happens when the kids are gone? What do I do then? Run around taking pictures of kids I don't know in the playground?”
“You can figure that one out later. You'll have kids at home for the next nine years. That's plenty of time to figure out a game plan. Maybe we'll move back to the city, and you can go to museums.” That was it? All of it? Museums? The thought of it made her shiver. She wanted a lot more than that in her future. From that standpoint, Gail was absolutely right. And in nine years, India wanted to be doing a lot more than killing time. But in nine years it would be that much harder to get back into a career, if Doug would even let her. And it didn't sound like it from what he was saying. “The kids are much too young for you to be thinking about this now. Maybe you could get a job in a gallery or something, once they grow up. Why worry about it?”
“And do what? Look at the photographs other people took, when I could have done it better? You're right, I'm busy now. But what about later?” In the past twenty-four hours, the whole question had come into sharper focus for her.
“Don't borrow problems. And stop listening to that woman. I told you, she's a troublemaker. She's unhappy, and angry, and she's just looking to cause trouble.”
“She doesn't know what she's looking for,” India said sadly. “She's looking for love, because Jeff doesn't excite her.” It was probably too much to admit to him, she realized, but since he seemed to know about her wandering anyway, it didn't seem to make much difference.
“It's ridiculous to be looking for love at our age,” Doug said sternly, taking a sip of his wine, and glaring at his wife across the table. “What the hell is she thinking?”
“I don't think she's really wrong, I just think she's going about it the wrong way,” India said calmly. “She says she's depressed about never being in love again. I guess she and Jeff aren't crazy about each other.”
“Who is, after twenty years of marriage?” he said, looking annoyed again. What India had just said sounded ridiculous to him. “You can't expect to feel at forty-five or fifty the way you did at twenty.”
“No, but you can feel other things. If you're lucky, maybe even more than you felt in the beginning.”
“That's a lot of romantic nonsense, India, and you know it,” he said firmly, as she listened to him with a growing sense of panic.
“Do you think it's nonsense to still be in love with your spouse after fifteen or twenty years?” India couldn't believe what she was hearing.
“I don't think anyone is ‘in love’ anymore by then. And no one with any sense expects to be either.”
“What can you expect?” India asked in a strangled voice, as she set her glass down on the table and looked at her husband.
“Companionship, decency, respect, someone to take care of the kids. Someone you can rely on. That's about all anyone should expect from marriage.”
“You can get a maid, or a dog, to provide the same things for you.”
“What do you think one should expect? Hearts and flowers and valentines? You know better than that, India. Don't tell me you believe in all that. If you do, I'll know you've been spending a lot more time talking to Gail than you ever told me.”
“I'm not expecting miracles, Doug. But I sure want more than just ‘someone to rely on,’ and you should want a lot more than just ‘someone to take care of the children.’ Is that all our marriage means to you?” They were rapidly getting down to specifics.
“We have something that's worked damn well for seventeen years, and it'll continue working, if you don't start rocking the boat too hard, with careers, and assignments and trips to Korea, and a lot of crap about ‘being in love’ after seventeen years. I don't think anyone is capable of that, and I don't think anyone has a right to expect it.” She felt as though she had been slapped as she looked at him, and was horrified by what he was saying.
“As a matter of fact, Doug, I do expect it. I always have, and I had no idea you didn't. I expect you to be ‘in love’ with me till the day you die, or there's no point in our marriage. Just as I'm in love with you, and always have been. Why do you think I stick around? Because our life is so exciting? It isn't. It's about as mundane as it gets, as boring as it can be at times, but I stick around because I love you.”
“Well, that's good to hear. I was beginning to wonder. But I don't think anyone should have a lot of crazy illusions about romance at this point. Being married to someone just isn't romantic.”
“Why not?” She decided to go for broke. He had already shattered most of her dreams in one night, why not push it all the way? What difference did it make now? “It could be, couldn't it? Maybe people don't try hard enough, or spend enough time realizing how lucky they are to have each other. Maybe if Jeff spent more time doing that, maybe then Gail wouldn't be running all over the state having lunch and God knows what else with other people's husbands.”
“I'm sure that has to do with her integrity and morality more than any failure on his part.”
“Don't be so sure. Maybe he's just plain stupid,” India snapped at him.
“No, she is, to have a lot of girlish illusions about romance and ? love you's' at this point. India, that's bullshit, and you know it.”
She was silent for a long moment and then nodded. She was afraid that if she spoke at all, she would burst into tears, or just get up and walk out, but she didn't. She sat there until they finished the meal, making small talk with him. She had heard enough that night to last her for a lifetime. In a single evening, he had challenged everything she believed, and smashed all her dreams about what marriage meant to him, and more importantly, what she did. She was someone he could rely on, who took care of his children. And all she could think of on the way home was that maybe she should call Raoul and take the assignment in Korea. But no matter how angry she was at him, or how disappointed she was by what he'd said, she wouldn't do that to her children.
“I had a nice time tonight,” he said as they drove into their driveway, and she tried not to think of the knot in her stomach. “I'm glad we got the career issue behind us. I think you understand now how I feel about it. I think you should call Raoul next week and take your name off their roster.” It was as though, having expressed himself, he now expected her to simply carry out his orders. The oracle had spoken. She had never known him to be like this before, but she had never challenged him on it in fourteen years either.
“I know how you feel about a lot of things,” she said softly, as they sat in the car for a minute, and he turned the lights off.
“Don't be silly about that nonsense Gail filled your head with, India. It's a lot of garbage she throws around to excuse her own behavior, and if she can get you riled up about it too, all the better. Stay away from her. She just upsets you.” But Gail hadn't. He had. He had said things she knew would trouble her for years, and she would never forget them. He wasn't in love with her, if he ever had been. In his opinion, love was something for fools and children. “We all have to grow up sooner or later,” he said, opening the car door and looking over his shoulder at her. “The trouble is, Gail didn't.”
“No, but you did,” India said miserably, and just as he hadn't the night before, or that night in the restaurant, he didn't get it. In a single night, he had put their marriage on the line, tossed her career out the window like so much fluff, and essentially told her he didn't love her, or at least wasn't in love with her. And in light of that, she didn't know what to think or feel now, or how to go on as they were before, unaffected by it.
“I like the restaurant, don't you?” he asked as they walked into the house. It was quiet, and India suspected that only Jessica would still be awake. The others would be sleeping. They had spent a long time over dinner. It had taken him several hours to destroy the last, and most cherished, of her illusions. “I thought the food was better than usual,” he went on, oblivious to the damage he'd done. He was like the iceberg that had hit the Titanic. But knowing what he'd done, she couldn't help wondering if the ship would sink now. It was hard to believe it wouldn't. Or was she simply to go on, being reliable and steadfast and a good “companion.” That was what he wanted, and what he expected her to give him. It didn't leave much room for her heart, her soul, and nothing with which to feed them.
“I thought it was fine. Thank you, Doug,” she said, and went upstairs to check on their children. She spent a few minutes with Jessica, who was watching TV, and as she had suspected, the others were all asleep, and after she looked into their rooms, she walked quietly into her own bedroom. Doug was getting undressed, and he glanced over at her with a curious look. There was something very strange about the way she stood there.
“You're not still upset, are you, about all that crap Gail told you?” She hesitated for a moment and then shook her head. He was so deaf, so blind, so dumb, that he had no idea what he had just done to her, or their marriage. She knew there was no point now saying more, or trying to explain it. And she knew, just as certainly, as she looked at him, that for an entire lifetime, she would never forget this moment.