I had especially enjoyed seeing Indigo from a distance, as if she were a sunset in the rearview mirror after a long day’s drive. I admired the beauty of her life, the bold colors of the sky that surrounded her. She always seemed rested and refreshed. There was a husband, a new husband who loved her. And she had such big windows in her apartment yet you could barely hear any noise from the street below. I liked knowing it existed, that life, even if it didn’t exist for me.
Tea arrives, and neither of us touches it.
They’d been married only a short time, two years. From the start Todd hadn’t been there. His work hours hadn’t slowed. Perhaps they had even increased. He worked on Wall Street, within walking distance of their Tribeca loft, and yet he always seemed to arrive home in a taxi. Where was he coming from? What had he been doing with his time? Before the baby she’d met him for dinner, they’d gone out on the town. Post-baby, she stayed home by herself. How had they slid into this separation? Didn’t he love the child? Didn’t he want to see the child? Did he even like the child? This was his child, look at this child, she had made this child for him, a representation of her love for him, a gift, a child, a gift. Ceaselessly offering the baby to him.
“Don’t you like your baby?” she’d said.
“I like him fine,” he’d said.
“It’s me, then,” she’d said.
“It’s not you,” he’d said. “But it’s not not you either.”
“Did you strike him where he stood?” I ask. “Did you stab him with a kitchen knife? I think you could have gotten away with it. I really think a jury would have been on your side.”
“No, I was terrible, he was right,” she says. “And I’ve never been this way before. Only I couldn’t stand him ignoring Effy, because he is precious and small and a tiny jewel from the heavens and he needs love.” She starts to unravel the glittering silk scarf from her neck. “I am comfortable in my own space, you know? Here I am, you’re here, we’re all here on this planet, sharing the same space.” She has her hands on either end of the scarf and she’s doing this thing where she is wrapping the edges around her wrists and it looks like she’s binding herself, there’s something ritualistic going on, but it feels unfamiliar, invented just in the moment.
“Have you been doing your meditation?”
“That’s what Todd always asks,” she snaps. “Of course I’m meditating. I meditate like a motherfucker.” She stops wrapping herself up, lets the scarf fall in her lap. “I thought if I lost the baby weight it would help. Todd has always admired my physical self.” Indigo’s hot yoga-teacher body. We had all admired it.
“You know that’s not right,” I say. “That’s not what it is. It’s never that, and anyway, even when you were pregnant you were still astonishing.” It’s true, she glowed, and she had seemed thin forever until just before the baby was due, she popped a delicious bump. It wasn’t her body, it wasn’t her form, it wasn’t her concern for her child.
It was Todd. It was his fault. He was having an affair. “How did he have the time?” says Indigo. “It doesn’t take that long to stick your dick in someone,” I say. “Sometimes it’s only a few seconds if you really want to get into it.” She chokes on air. “Sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t talk about your husband’s dick like that.” Indigo says it doesn’t matter. His dick was his dick; talking about it wasn’t going to change the fact that he was now putting it inside a marketing director in the cosmetics industry who abused lip liner and had graduated from Smith. “How hard did you Google her?” I say. “So hard,” she says. “They met in Tunisia on one of his trips for his microfinancing project. She was there on vacation. I saw pictures of the two of them together. Holding cocktails.” I gasp. “With fruit wedges,” she says. “Disgusting,” I say.
“I am trying to rise above.” She looks toward the sky for guidance.
I had thought I would never have Indigo in my life again. I had seen her once since she had her baby and that was all I ever expected. And now I could take pleasure in her downfall but I do not. Because here she was: bitter and edgy, and more like me. “Whatever you need from me,” I say. “Just ask.” I had been this way forever, or for at least as long as I could remember. I would welcome her to the fold if that was what she needed to hear. “Your husband is a terrible man,” I say. My Indigo who taught me nasal breathing exercises to cool the mind and insisted I was beautiful every time I saw her, her hands on my wrists, rubbing up my arms to my shoulders and neck. “Look at you,” she would say. “Look at beautiful you.”
I am always merely in the state of just knowing her, I realize now. I bear witness to her life while I am in the thick of my own misery and joy and wastefulness and excess. Her life is architected, elegant and angular, a beauty to behold, and mine is a stew, a juicy, sloppy mess of ingredients and feelings and emotions, too much salt and spice, too much anxiety, always a little dribbling down the front of my shirt. But have you tasted it? Have you tasted it. It’s delicious.
Indigo’s phone rings. “I have to take this; it’s my lawyer.” Before she leaves the courtyard, she hands me the baby without asking if I want him. This is, frankly, rude. So unlike my old Indigo. Here, hold this creature you don’t even really know that well. But I take him, I allow him to play with my hair, I, uncontrollably, make kissy noises at him. I think of my niece in New Hampshire, the one who is dying, who has never been fully awake. I choke back a sob. Effy is scrumptious and adorable. Poor Sigrid never had a chance to show us her tricks. I bet she would have had some really good tricks. “Who couldn’t love you, Effy? Who wouldn’t want to spend every minute of their time with you?” He touches my face, my cheeks, my lips, my chin, and coos and laughs. “What kind of bastard would walk away from you, Effy?” He cocks his head. I hug Effy gently to me. I cannot resist.
Indigo appears at the table; her clothes, her breath awhirl, aglitter. “How rich are you going to be?” I ask. “I was already rich once I married him,” she replies. “Now it’s just a question of staying rich.” And then she returns to herself, appalled by her own words. She pulls a breath from inside her depths, seeks and finds that elusive creature, her center. “The money is for Effy, not me. If he can walk away from Effy so easily now, who knows if he’ll take care of him down the road.” She takes Effy back from me. Bye, Effy, I hardly knew ye. “I don’t care about the money. You know I have never cared about the money, right?” I nod. “I loved him. He was smart and successful and so handsome, wickedly handsome, and he spoiled me rotten, and held my hand, and he made me come. All the things you want a man to do, he did. He wasn’t funny, though. I was the funny one, can you believe it? I’m not even that funny,” she says. “You’re not,” I agree. “I’m really not at all,” she says. “So think about how dull he is.”
“You didn’t want to spend the rest of your life with dull,” I say. “But I did,” she says. “I honestly did.”