Meanwhile my father, now living in Atlanta, had gotten very ill. I was able to work out of the Feagin Dixon Atlanta office, and sleep in his hospital room each night. One stay lasted almost two weeks, fourteen days of being surrounded by people near the end of their lives, people who didn’t take as many vacations as they could have, people who wondered about the chances they never took. I knew the universe was forcing me to look up from my spreadsheets and deal making and LCD screens. It was telling me that I needed to get married fast if I wanted my father to walk me down the aisle.
I came back to New York a day earlier than expected, calling Henry from the airport and wanting to tell him my big idea. I thought we should get married really soon, not in six months like we had planned but more like in two weeks when my dad was getting out of the hospital. I had to tell Henry we couldn’t wait any longer. I could hear the familiar click of trading room clocks in the background, the noise he was used to hearing behind me.
“Great that you’re here,” he said, all warm and friendly. “But some lawyers are taking us to see Rent on Broadway tonight. We just closed a deal. Closing parties, you know.”
“Okay,” I replied, while thinking that no closing party I had ever attended consisted of a Broadway show. “I’m picking up the underskirt for my wedding gown,” I said in untypical girlish fashion. The wedding stuff was turning me soft. “I’ll see you late tonight.”
Henry had wanted us to live together for so long. I was going to use the weekend to get the rest of my stuff out of my sublet I never used and into our new apartment. In the hours he was at the play I would put on my whole wedding show: the underskirt, the bustier, the heels, the hair, and the spectacular silk wedding gown. We could have our own pretend wedding that very night when he came home.
Hours later I was on 8th Avenue, rain pelting down outside, while my friend in the Garment District hooked me up into one spectacular bustier-with-skirt device, to boost my everything and ensure wedded bliss. I twirled in front of a mirror in a room of anorexic mannequins. I noted that the upside of stress is the loss of a tummy. Between a very sick father, a long-distance fiancé, and a job that didn’t allow for personal problems, I rarely had an appetite. Still, the gown seemed to wash everything away. The gown made me glow.
? ? ?
The Garment District borders the Theater District in Manhattan. It was nearing eight o’clock, and since I was just several blocks from the 41st Street theater where Rent was playing, I had an unstoppable urge to see Henry before the show.
There he was, but not with any lawyer. She was a beautiful blond woman, grabbing familiarly at his arm as they walked by me. Me, the wet woman, the loser with the giant shopping bag full of wedding gear. That was when I should have turned and left and never spoken to him again, but my brain was not capable of processing what I saw as fast as my body was moving. I gamely kept a “happy to see you” face frozen on, and instinctively jabbed my hand forward from my soggy wool coat, to meet the hand of an underfed, bony woman.
“I’m back!” I chirped to Henry, putting down the bag and tossing myself toward him.
He held my arms stiffly, controlling my face so that I only brushed his cheek instead of his lips.
“Belle,” he said flatly while looking at the girl.
“Oh, sorry, I’m Henry’s girlfriend,” I said to Thin Girl, thinking he thought I owed her some explanation. I grabbed the bag too quickly, which made the wet brown paper bag filled with lacy, dreamy stuff of the future tear in a slow-motion cccchhhhhttttt. I awkwardly picked assorted white clothing off the wet, dirty ground and hugged the pillowy pile to my chest. I wasn’t sure why I said “girlfriend” when I’d been using the fiancé word for weeks. This wasn’t going at all as expected.
Thin Girl laughed strangely while Henry tossed back his head, nervously running his hand through his hair. “You’re not my girlfriend,” he said.
He looked at me directly, right in the eye. Just like in college when he dumped his last girlfriend, right before he led me away for the rest of my life . . . up until now. Again, I waited for the punch line, but there wasn’t any. I stood in shaky stillness, waiting to be saved, and I watched Henry guide the woman into the theater. He went to the “Will Call” window, surrendered a credit card, and never looked back.
I stood on the curb long after the lights went down, holding the wet and white bride paraphernalia to my chest. I took hours to walk back to the sublet apartment, the one I hadn’t lived in since moving most of my stuff in with Henry, the one with the mattress on the floor, the dead plants, and the blankets in the oven. I still had the key. I flipped the lights on and threw the obscenely expensive wedding clothes on the table, where they dripped rain and tears onto a dusty floor.
The next time I ever spoke to Henry was as someone’s mother, trying to get her kid into preschool. And now my whole family would be dependent on him and me making giant trades together, from the opening to the closing bell of the stock market, every business day.
CHAPTER 13
Gentlemen Prefer Bonds