“Oh, you’re so right. You’re the first man in history to come in here and spend a lot of money. Do you think—I mean, maybe they’ll send me home with you, right? All in a day’s work. All because some junior analyst gets paid an ungodly amount of money to pretend that his gambling addiction is an asset.”
But then he pushed further. He held out the bill. She could see that he regretted it too late, that first impulse: to spur her on, to agitate. That was, maybe, the one thing that had changed most about him, once they were married. He’d stopped second-guessing himself; he didn’t need to anymore.
But somehow, when he held out that crisp hundred, fresh from the ATM, he’d seen that she was second-guessing herself. He’d seen how terrified she was to be there, in that club, however well she understood the men streaming in and out. He’d seen that she was there because she was waiting for someone besides her father to tell her what to do with herself. He’d seen that she was skittish, in a perpetual state of both confidence and unease, like a purebred horse sent out into the unblinkered world. And he’d come after her.
The end to the story, as they always told it to the kids, was that she’d thrown the bill back in his face. In retrospect, that made for a good final flourish. But in reality, it hadn’t felt like triumph. It had been totally unsatisfying. Throwing a thin piece of paper is difficult, and it had just fluttered in the air between them. It was no slap to the cheek, no drink in his face.
For her, the story wasn’t ever about her telling him off, embarrassing him in front of his friends. For her, the important part was that he’d held out the bill and then seen that it was a mistake, seen the part of her that shivered and retreated. That he’d seen, in that moment, that their fears might combine to form some worthy weapon, the two of them together.
ISABEL TOOK HER PERFUME and applied it just as her mother had taught her, a spritz to each side of the neck, beneath the chin, and a final one to the crook of an elbow. It took an effort that was almost physical in shape and strain, as it had all year, to keep her thoughts from wandering out to the staircase, down the dark hallway to his study. To the room he’d chosen over this one, up here.
She’d considered looking for him when she came in this afternoon, knocking on his door. But whenever she tried, he wasn’t in there. And the twins had seen her knocking on Bob’s door, the last time. She’d turned and they’d been at the end of the hallway, holding hands, waiting to see.
She stood up and walked into the closet. It was just dinner in town, a restaurant they’d been to a thousand times; it hardly mattered what she wore. She knelt down, tucking her feet beneath her, and looked at all of the clothes. She reached up and let her fingers trail across the fabrics, the delicate swishing sounds bathing her ears. This was the corner where she kept skirts and suits—the materials thicker, sturdier, than, say, the evening gowns, with their supple fabrics touching one another like skin on skin.
It was funny, she thought: her parents had driven the same cars around Westport for decades at a time, the leak in Georgetown that warped the floorboard near the kitchen door had been left untouched until the day her mother died in that house. But her mother had taught Isabel never to skimp on her wardrobe. Her mother had always called her clothing “camouflage.” It was one of those things Isabel hadn’t registered as a quirk, not until she was in high school and heard other girls talking about their mothers.
She’d thought about that a few years later, after they moved to D.C. They sold the house in Westport while she was at Smith, not even mentioning it on the phone until it was in escrow. A few weeks after the move, her father took her along to New Haven for the weekend of his fortieth class reunion. Dinner at Mory’s, the genteel seediness of the coffee stains on lace tablecloths and the wood-paneled rooms and the silver chalice full of champagne and Guinness that was passed around as they each took a gulp, while the rest of the party sang the song and banged their fists on the thick, unsteady wood table. When it was her turn, when her father’s friends had already begun pawing her hand between courses, she thought of her mother, who hadn’t been invited that weekend.
Some daughters would have run to the bathroom, shuddered at the powdery softness of the men’s hands. This had not been an option for her, not a Berkeley daughter. She remained at the table, laughed when one of the men gave the silver cup a jaunty shove as she drank from it.
Her mother had always talked as if strength was a matter only of how you acted in front of other people, as if camouflage was all you needed. As if it was only self-doubt or hesitation that could leave you shaken.
But look at me, Isabel thought, her arms up above her, fingertips trailing the hems of her dresses. I never had a single doubt as to whether I belonged anywhere. That was supposed to be Bob; he was the one who had to bluff, when we first met.
She took one suit between her fingers, touched the nubbly wool to her cheek. I am an orphan, she thought. I have no sisters, I have no mother anymore. My father is gone. If this is the apocalypse, who cares how much canned food we’ve got. I have no tribe. Any freedom that comes from this, it’s come too late. I have no other options now, and there’s no fucking freedom in that.
She looked up at the suits above her, the business attire for the woman who did not have a job. She felt certain her work at MoMA required more intellectual energy than most women gave to their full-time jobs, but if she didn’t need it, then it wasn’t a job. There was a simple rubric, there.
She was expected to bring Bob with her to the next meeting with the lawyers, on Monday morning. Because it was a done deal: she was putting both houses on the market. The new apartment, too. She’d happily get rid of the old apartment, but that one was still in his name. He hadn’t transferred it over to her name, whenever it was, exactly, that he’d done the others. He kept it, maybe for himself.
Maybe his little seclusion back in the fall, his month of anguished silence, was just a performance, too. Maybe it wasn’t this house in her name that had been his lifeboat; maybe he’d wanted his own private lifeboat as well.
So this was what she had ahead of her right now: Mina, dinner, Monday’s meeting, a plan for telling Bob. And then the party at Suzanne’s next weekend. He’d already agreed to that, agreed to put on a tuxedo and leave the house to appear, with her, in public.
She knew what they wanted to hear, the lawyers and the accountants and the consultants. She knew what they wanted to know: Why didn’t she just ask him? Why was she allowing him to leave her like this, alone and waiting?