FOUR
I spent almost an hour in a pilled-up haze, styling my hair, applying my makeup, squeezing myself into a dress with a built-in belt that made it seem like I still had a shape. Even the five minutes it took me to wrestle myself into my Spanx weren’t so terrible.
“Oh, you look beautiful!” our sitter, Katrina, said as I came down the stairs, while Eloise narrowed her eyes. I was carrying my pair of Jimmy Choos, one of the few surviving relics from my single-lady days, in one hand.
“When will you be BACK?”
“Not too late. It’s a school night.”
“Why aren’t you taking me?” Her lower lip quivered. “I want to go out to dinner!”
“No, you don’t. This place only has fish,” I lied. Ellie’s face crumpled. “I’ll bring you a dessert,” I promised . . . and then, before her pique could swell into a full-blown tantrum, I brushed a kiss on her forehead and trotted out to the car, feeling a pang of guilt at my broken promise about not driving. Dave would drive us home, I told myself . . . and, at this point, sad to say, I had enough of a tolerance that even the new medication didn’t seem to be hitting me too hard. It was just making me feel unguardedly wonderful, like life was a delicious lark, full of possibilities, all of them good. So what if a few online meanies had jerky things to say about me? Tonight was my husband’s birthday. We would celebrate with our friends, share a delicious meal, fall asleep in each other’s arms, and wake up in the morning once more, one hundred percent, a couple.
Cochon was a tiny BYOB in our old neighborhood, one of our longtime favorites. With its black-and-white-checked floors, café tables, and framed Art Deco posters on pumpkin-colored walls, it looked Parisian . . . or as Parisian as you could get in Philadelphia. As I pulled my Prius to the curb, I saw David waiting inside by the hostess stand with his phone pressed to his ear. My heart started hammering. I wondered if he was chatting with L. McIntyre, and made myself promise that I wouldn’t bring anything up until we were alone and, preferably, after I’d spoken to Janet. No dropping the bomb, and no drinking, I told myself sternly as I struggled to parallel park, a skill I’d lost almost entirely since our move to the burbs.
As I backed into the curb for the second time, I watched Dave through the window. He turned his back to end his call and put the phone back in his pocket. While he walked outside, I extricated myself from the driver’s seat. It took a little while, given that my undergarments made it hard for me to breathe and my gorgeous shoes were half a size smaller than what I usually wore now. Damn clogs, I thought.
“Happy birthday,” I said once I reached him, and handed off the bag containing six bottles of wine to the hostess.
Dave’s hands were in his pockets, his stylish canvas messenger bag—the one I’d had made for his last birthday—was slung over his shoulder, and his jaw was already bluish, even though he’d shaved that morning. In his best blue suit, he was so handsome, I thought, feeling a wave of nostalgia, and sadness. I knew all of his quirks and failings, his hairy hands and short, stubby fingers, his toes oddly shaped, the nails so thick he needed special clippers to cut them. I knew the sound he made when he ground his teeth, deep in sleep; how he’d sometimes skim the first paragraphs of a story or chapters of a book and then claim he’d read it; the name of the boy at his high school who’d stolen his backpack and thrown it into the girls’ locker room; and how he cried every time he read The World According to Garp. I knew him so well, and I loved him so much. Why had I pushed him away that last time in bed, and the time before that, and the time before that? What woman wouldn’t want him? What was wrong with me?
Dave, meanwhile, was looking me over carefully. “Did you get the party started early?” he asked. He took one hand out of his pocket and rubbed it against his cheek, checking to see if he was due for a shave. “You look a little loopy.”
“I’m fine,” I said, and did my best not to teeter in my heels. A little loopy, I thought, was better than looking like my heart was breaking. I grabbed his arm, which he hadn’t offered, and let him walk me the few steps to the empty table, trying to act casual as I brought my head close to his shoulder and inhaled, hoping I wouldn’t smell unfamiliar perfume. The new pills made my body feel loose and springy, warmed from the inside, but I didn’t think there was a chemical yet invented that could have quelled my insecurity, or convinced me, in that moment, that my husband loved me still.
A waiter, touchingly young, in a crisp white shirt, black pants, and an apron that looped behind his neck and fell to his ankles, pulled out my chair. “Something to drink?”
“Let’s open the white,” said Dave, before I could announce, virtuously, that I would just have water. Before I knew it, there was a glass in my hand. “Mmm,” I hummed, taking a sip, enjoying the wine’s tart bite. Show him you love him, I thought, and tried to give the birthday boy a seductive look, lowering my eyebrows and pouting my lips.
Dave frowned at me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Why?”
“Because you look like you’re half asleep.”
So much for seduction. Dave got to his feet as Janet and Barry came through the door, followed by Dan and Marie. I adored Janet’s husband, who was round and bearded, a professor in Penn’s history department, smart about pop culture and FDR’s legacy, and madly in love with his wife. He and Dave weren’t really friends—they tolerated each other because Janet and I and the kids spent so much time together, but they didn’t have much in common. Still, they gave each other a manly hug and back slap, and Barry’s “Happy birthday, buddy” sounded perfectly sincere.
“My man,” said Dan, thumping Dave between his shoulders hard enough to dislocate something. “How’d this happen? How’d we get so goddamned old?” As much as I liked Barry, I disliked Dan. Dan managed a consortium of parking garages that stretched from Center City to the Northeast and did what I thought was extortionate business, charging someone (me, for example) eighteen dollars for half an hour’s worth of time spent at Twentieth and Chestnut so she (I) could run into the Shake Shack for a cheeseburger and a milkshake. He and Dave had been fraternity brothers at Rutgers, and Dan was the kind of guy I could picture sitting on his frat house’s balcony, watching girls as they walked along the quad and holding up cards rating them from one to ten; the kind of guy who took it as a personal affront when a woman larger than his all-but-anorexic wife had the nerve to show herself in public.
Said wife, Marie, gave Dave a peck on the cheek and mustered a weak smile for me. Marie was the kind of lady the Dans of the world ended up with: eight years younger than her husband, slim of hip and large of bosom. The hair that fell halfway down her back was thickened by extensions, human hair glued to her own locks, then double-processed until it was a streaky blonde. “Two thousand dollars,” she’d once told me, raking her bony fingers through her tresses, “but it’s worth it, don’t you think?” Marie worked as an interior designer, although in my head, the word “work” came with air quotes. She had a degree in theater and had built sets for student and community-theater productions before she’d landed Dan. Now she spent her time redecorating her girlfriends’ beach houses. She’d drive down the Atlantic City Expressway to Ventnor or Margate or Avalon with her Mercedes SUV stuffed full of swatch books, fabrics and trims and fringes, squares of wallpaper and samples of paint. Marie had offered to give me a consultation about our place after we’d bought it, and I’d been putting her off as gracefully as I could, knowing that eventually, for the sake of Dave and Dan’s friendship, Marie and her swatches would be a regular fixture in my life, and that I, too, would end up with shelves full of objets d’art, at least one statement mirror, one red-painted wall, and prints that had been chosen because they matched the furniture.
“Should we open up the Beaujolais?” asked Barry, who’d helped me choose the wine. Dan had another glass of white. Marie pulled a Skinnygirl margarita packet out of her purse and gave it to the waiter. “Did you get a lot of feedback from the story?” asked Janet, after our waitress distributed menus and ran down the specials.
I eased my feet out of my shoes, wondering where to start as I recalled some of the choicest comments—Fat load and Feminazzi and This is why alpha men marry women from other countries. “I need another drink,” I announced. I said it without thinking about it, and certainly without thinking about the quiz I’d taken in the doctor’s office, or the pills I’d been downing all day. Nobody looked shocked. In fact, nobody seemed to hear me.
“I thought the story came out great,” said Barry. I glanced to my left, where Dave was sitting, and wondered if he’d heard. If he knew about the story, he hadn’t said anything to me yet.
“The comments were a real treat.” As if by magic, my wineglass was full again. I lifted it and sipped.
“Oh, God, do not tell me you actually read the comments!” Janet cried. “Please. How many times have I told you? You lose brain cells every time you read one.”
“I know,” I said, nibbling at an olive. Certainly I did know how bad online comments were—I’d read enough of them, in stories about celebrities and politicians. But why me? Who was I hurting? Why even bother going after me?
“Seems like it’s been good for business,” Barry offered. “Your post today got a ton of hits.”
I managed a faint smile. I’d written a new version of my apology—sorry for offending you, sorry for the nerve of showing up unairbrushed, unretouched, looking like your mom or your sister or maybe even you.
“You read it?” I was touched.
“I read everything Janet tells me to read.” He leaned across the table to brush a kiss on Janet’s cheek.
“As if,” she said, coloring prettily. Janet had confided once that Barry believed she was seriously out of his league, all because the guy she’d dated before him had been a professional athlete. “Never mind that he was a benchwarmer for the Eagles who got cut after three games, and that we only went out once,” Janet said. That single date had been enough to convince Barry that Janet was a prize above rubies. He treated her with a kind of reverence that might have been funny, if he hadn’t taken it so seriously. Janet never drove the car when they were together, never pumped gas, never lifted anything heavier than a five-pound bag of flour, and Barry never questioned her spending—on pricy shoes, on designer handbags, on a cleaning lady who came five days a week, meaning that the only housework Janet was responsible for was hand-washing her own bras, a task she refused to entrust to anyone else.
“He loves me more than I love him,” she’d told me one morning while our kids splashed in her parents’ pool and we ate the bagels we’d bought, still warm, on South Street.
“Really?” I’d asked.
“I think, in every couple, there’s one who loves the other one more. In our case it’s Barry.” She looked at me from behind her fashionably gigantic sunglasses. “How about Allison and Dave? What’s the history?”
I hadn’t answered right away. Dave and I had met when we were both in our late twenties. He’d been newly hired at the Examiner, where I’d worked since I’d graduated from Franklin & Marshall with a degree in graphic design. I’d always loved drawing and painting. When I was a teenager, every artist I discovered became my favorite for a few days or weeks or months. I fell in love with Monet’s dreamy pastel gardens, Modigliani’s attenuated lines, the muscular swirls of van Gogh’s stars, the way a Kandinsky or a Klimt could echo inside me like a piece of music or the taste of something delicious.
I loved looking at art. I loved painting. But I’d been realistic about the world and my own talents, and susceptible to my father’s influence. “It’s good to have a skill you can depend on,” he’d told me during one drive into the city, where I was taking a figure study class at Moore College. My parents supported my dreams, but only up to a point. They’d paid for classes, for paints and canvas; they’d attended all my student shows and even sent me to art camp for two summers, where I had a chance to blow glass and try printmaking and animation, but they let me know, explicitly and in more subtle ways, that most artists couldn’t make a living at art, and that they had no intention of supporting me once I was an adult.
Graphic design was a way to indulge my love of color and proportion, my desire to make something beautiful, or at least functional, to see a project through from start to finish, and still have a more or less guaranteed paycheck.
So I’d gone to Franklin & Marshall and studied art and art history, supplementing my courses in drawing and sculpture with summer courses in video and layout and graphic design. The Examiner had come to a recruiting session on campus; I’d dropped off my résumé, then gone to the city for an interview, then gotten hired, at a salary that was higher than anything I had the right to expect. At twenty-two, with an apartment in Old City, I’d been the pretty young thing, with a wardrobe from H&M and the French Connection and a few good pieces from Saks, a gym membership, a freezer full of Lean Cuisine, and a panini press that I used to make eggs in the morning and sandwiches at night.
After almost six years on the job, I’d met Dave. He had graduated summa from Rutgers and started his career at a small paper in a New York City suburb in New Jersey, where he’d covered five local school districts. After his second year there, he’d exposed how a school superintendent and the head of the school board were colluding to raise the superintendent’s salary. By his third year, he’d won a statewide prize for his stories about how the Democratic Party was paying homeless men and women to fill out absentee ballots. Then, at the Examiner, I’d been tapped to design graphics for his series about the mayor’s race, fitting together the text elements with pictures and, online, with video.
“Hey, thanks,” he’d said, bending over in front of my oversized screen as I’d shown him my first draft. “That’s really great.” Unlike most of the other, dressed-down reporters, he wore a crisp, ironed shirt and a tie. He smelled good, when I was close enough to notice, and I’d already appreciated his slender-hipped, broad-shouldered body and imagined myself folded against the solidity of his chest. He’d smiled at me—white teeth, beard-shadowed cheeks. “Can I buy you a snack item?” He’d walked me out into the hall to the vending machine, where I’d selected a bag of pretzels and he’d bought himself a bottled water, and we sat in the empty stairwell, exchanging first names, then work histories. The conversation flowed naturally into an invitation to meet at a bar the next night. Drinks became dinner at Percy Street Barbecue, where we sat over plates of ribs and Mason jars of spiked lemonade, talking about our parents, our schools, which bones we’d broken (his leg, my wrist), and our shared love of Dire Straits and Warren Zevon. We’d both been startled when our waiter had cruised by our table to announce that it was last call. We’d talked from six o’clock that night until two in the morning.
Within a week, we were a couple. I imagined he’d only get more successful as time went by. Neither of us believed that newspapers were going anywhere or that, eventually, my funny, dashed-off blog posts would be more valuable than his ability to wrest a great (or damning) quote out of a politician or a criminal, to write fast on deadline, to think of witty headlines and slyly funny photo captions, or to bide his time for months, filing Freedom of Information Act requests, gathering documents, hunting down sources, doing the kind of reporting the Examiner ended up not being able to afford anymore. He would be the breadwinner, I would be the homemaker . . . only now, as I looked at him, with his eyes the same shade as Ellie’s and the circles that had been underneath them since her birth, I marveled at how everything had changed, and wondered if our marriage could survive it.
? ? ?
“Ma’am?” I blinked. The waitress stared down at me, pen and pad in hand. Somehow, my wineglass was empty. I’d had an oyster—Dan had ordered two dozen of them—and a single slice of bread, but nothing else.
“Oh . . . um . . .” I fumbled for my menu, doing the quickstep between what I wanted (scalloped potatoes and slow-roasted pork shoulder) and what I should allow myself (steamed asparagus, grilled salmon). I settled on the stuffed pork chop.
“Very good,” she said, and vanished. I turned back to Janet, who was gossiping with Dave and Barry about whether the pretty twenty-four-year-old pre-K teacher with the tattoos we could sometimes glimpse under the sleeves of her vintage blouses had actually worn nipple rings to Parents’ Night.
The food arrived. I used my heavy steak knife to slice into the glistening meat. A puddle of juice pooled underneath the pork chop. I squeezed my eyes shut and made myself nibble a tiny sliver.
“Not hungry?” Janet asked. She’d ordered the pork shoulder dish with a lot of garlic—per its name, Cochon was heavy on the pig—and the smell was making me queasy.
“I think I already drank my calories,” I said. The truth was, I hadn’t been hungry much lately, a strange situation for a girl who’d always loved her food. Nothing looked good, and the effort of purchasing groceries, preparing a meal, setting the table, and washing the dishes seemed monumental. I’d heat up organic chicken nuggets for Eloise and keep the freezer stocked with Trader Joe’s heat-and-eat meals that Dave could prepare on the nights I was stuck at my computer, writing or editing or interacting with Ladiesroom’s readers. For myself, I’d grab a yogurt or a bowl of cereal. The irony of the Internet comments was that I was thinner now than I’d been in years, but I didn’t look good, and I knew it. My complexion had taken on a grayish undertone; my flesh—even if there wasn’t as much as usual—seemed to sag and hang.
Janet touched my arm. I looked up, startled. We were good friends, but neither of us was the touchy-feely type. “Are you okay?” she asked quietly.
I bent my head. “I’m scared,” I said quietly.
“Of what?” Janet asked, looking worried. “What’s wrong?”
“Hey, honey, can we get that Pinot down here?” Dan asked. I reached out and managed only to knock the bottle onto the floor. There were gasps, a flurry of fast motion, Skinny Marie thrusting herself away from the spill like it was toxic. A waiter and a waitress hurried over with rags. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. Nobody appeared to hear me. “Oh, this’ll never come out of silk,” Marie was fretting, and Janet was asking, “Could you bring us some club soda, please?” and Barry was patting Marie’s back, saying “No big deal,” and, from the other side of the table, Dave was looking at me with his eyes narrowed and his lips compressed.
“It was an accident,” I said. My voice came out too loud, almost a shout.
“It’s okay.” Dave sounded cool. “It happens.” Which, of course, was what we said to Ellie when she wet the bed.
Eventually, the tablecloth got changed and the worst of the damage was mopped up. Marie had returned from the ladies’ room, where she’d fled with a carafe of club soda and an offended look on her face, and I’d apologized half a dozen times, my face hot as a griddle, wilting underneath my husband’s disapproval. I’d just tried to restart the conversation, asking Janet and Barry about the twins’ hockey season, a topic guaranteed to take up at least ten minutes of their time, when I heard Marie’s high-pitched voice from the opposite side of the table.
“Did you all hear about that Everleigh Connor?” she asked. I looked up to see Dave pouring the last bit of the last bottle of red into his glass. Everleigh Connor was a reality-TV star who’d launched her career on one of those shows about the private lives of rich people—she’d been the teenage daughter of one of the face-lifted fortysomething moms who were the ostensible stars of the show. Then she’d appeared in a sex tape—she put out some statement about how the tape was a private memento she and her boyfriend had made that had been stolen from a safe in her house, but it was obvious that the tape had been made with a hired porn star, not a boyfriend, and that she, her mother, and their PR firm had managed every step of its release. From there, Everleigh had gotten and dumped a boyfriend in the NFL, landed a small role on a network drama, and had most recently become the Las Vegas bride of an eighteen-year-old pop star.
“What happened?” I asked . . . Did my voice sound the tiniest bit slurry?
Marie smiled. “You didn’t hear? OMG. It’s all over Twitter!”
“What?” There. It was impossible to slur on words of one syllable. To reward myself for sounding coherent, I had another sip of wine.
“She’s pregnant,” said Dave, directly to me.
“They’re saying that she basically forced Alex to put a ring on it,” said Barry.
Janet rolled her eyes. “My husband the twelve-year-old girl. ‘Put a ring on it,’ Bar? Really?”
I looked down the table at my husband. He looked back at me, his eyes meeting mine, one eyebrow lifted, like he was daring me to say something.
I felt as if I’d been slapped, having him give me that look, when I wasn’t the one sending dozens of chatty, flirty e-mails to someone who was not my spouse. I raised my chin, suddenly furious . . . and sober. Or at least it felt that way. “Honey, you should tell everyone about your big story. The one about the casino.” For months, Dave had been tracking down rumors about which consortium would be the next to put a casino in Philadelphia, about where they’d buy, what they’d build, which neighborhood could brace for the boom and the nuisance of dozens of buses loaded with slot-machine-playing, quarter-toting retirees and well-lubricated frat boys rolling through its streets each day.
“Seriously, Dave-O, give me a tip,” said Dan. “We build a parking lot in the right place, we’re golden.”
“Dave’s got all the best sources,” I said, my tongue loose and reckless. “Who’s that woman in the mayor’s office you’re always talking with? Lindy someone?”
From across the table I thought I saw my husband flinch, and saw hurt in his hooded eyes.
“She’s a wonderful source, isn’t she?” I asked. “What’s the word . . . ‘forthcoming’? Is that it? You’re the word guy, right?” Janet was looking worried. Barry was, too. I got myself away from the table in a series of small steps: pushing my palms against the edge, unlocking my knees, levering myself upright, making my way carefully around my chair, squinting through the dimly lit restaurant past groups of laughing, red-faced men with empty bottles lining their tables, until I found the bathroom, a spacious stall for just one, thank God. I locked the door and, without turning on the lights, sat on the toilet and rested my cheek against the cool stainless steel of the toilet-paper dispenser, feeling stunned and empty and furious.
There was a gentle tap at the door. “Allie?” Janet said, her voice a whisper. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I told her. “Just a little too much wine. I’ll be right out.” My heart was thudding; my temples were pounding. My purse was in my hands. My hands were in my purse. My new little blue friends were in their bottle. I shook one of them out into my palm, craving the comfort they would give me, the easing-toward-sleep feeling that would take away the scalding hurt, the shame of the way Dave had looked at me.
Nobody knew this—not Janet, not my parents, not anyone—but after Dave and I had been dating for a little over a year, my period, typically regular, had failed to arrive. I was on the pill, and I’d always remembered to take it, but I knew, from my tender breasts to the way I woke up nauseated by the smell of coffee, what had happened. I’d freaked out and gone to Dave in a panic, watching his face turn pale and his lips tighten until they were almost invisible as I’d laid out the options: I could have the baby and place it for adoption. I could have the baby and raise it myself. Or we could get married.
By then, we’d been seeing each other exclusively for months. The Pablo Neruda girl was gone—or, at least, I’d never seen evidence of another female in his apartment, or on his phone (which I had guiltily checked once). We’d been saying “I love you” and talking, casually, about which neighborhoods we liked, whether we preferred condos in the new high-rises in Washington Square West or a row house in Society Hill or Bella Vista. There had been no explicit promises, we were spending three or four nights a week at my place but not yet living together, we had not plighted our troth nor promised our future, and I would never have tried to trick Dave, or trap him by getting knocked up accidentally on purpose. Still, I’d been confident that, in light of the reality of our situation, he would do the thing he’d been planning on doing, albeit on a somewhat expedited schedule.
Instead of looking happy, though, Dave had pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb and looked everywhere but at me after I’d laid out the news.
“You wouldn’t get an abortion?” he had asked. We were in my walk-up apartment on Arch Street, Dave on my denim-covered couch, me in the armchair I’d inherited from my mother and had slipcovered in a pricy French toile I’d found on Fabric Row. My cute little living room, perfect for two, was in no way big enough for three. Even the thought of dragging a stroller up three flights of stairs left me exhausted. My eat-in kitchen would be just a kitchen if I had to add a high chair; my bathroom had a luxurious shower, with extra showerheads poking out of the walls, but no bathtub. It was all entirely unsuitable for a baby.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. I was certainly pro-choice in my beliefs—I’d gotten my well-woman checkups and my contraception at Planned Parenthood since I was an undergraduate, and I’d been supporting them with regular, if modest, donations since I’d gotten my job—but in my mind, it was a baby, Dave’s and mine, and I could no more consider aborting it than I could hurting myself, or hurting him.
The silence stretched out until I heard Dave give a slow sigh. “Well, then,” he said, “let’s get hitched.” It was not, needless to say, the proposal of my dreams . . . but Dave was the man of my dreams, and, surely, the life we would build together would be the stuff I had dreamed about, the life I had always wanted, a partnership with a man I adored and admired. I flung my arms around his neck and kissed him and said, “Yes.”
Four weeks later, with a hastily purchased one-karat princess-cut diamond ring on my finger and the memory of the Indomitable Doreen’s stiff smile and my mother’s insulting exuberance at our meet-the-parents-slash-engagement party still crisp and bright in my mind, I’d gone to my obstetrician and learned, during the ultrasound, that there was an egg sac, but no heartbeat. No baby. My body, it seemed, had ended the pregnancy before it really started. He gave me four pills; I went home and took them, then endured the worst cramps and bleeding of my life while Dave fetched me hot-water bottles and shots of brandy. Half-drunk, with my fifth industrial-strength sanitary napkin stuck into my high-waisted cotton briefs, I’d said, “We don’t have to go through with it now, if you don’t want to. I won’t hold you to anything. You’re free.”
“Don’t be crazy,” Dave had said. He’d been so tender as he helped me into the shower. He washed my hair, soaped my body with my favorite vanilla-scented body wash, and then smoothed lotion on my arms and legs before bundling me into a warm towel, putting me into my pajamas, and tucking me into bed. I’d hung my future on that night. Whenever I’d had doubts, whenever he seemed quiet, or moody, or distant, I remembered the smell of vanilla and brandy, and how gentle he’d been, how kind, how he hadn’t considered, even for a minute, the possibility that he could be rid of me.
“Allison?” Janet’s voice was worried. “Tell me you’re okay or I’m going to get a manager and have them unlock the door.”
“I’m fine. I’m okay,” I rasped. I’m fine, I told myself, even as a voice inside whispered, softly but firmly, that I was a world away from fine, that I was not okay at all.