“Three years is a long time to look the other way.”
“I have this image in my mind when I do it,” said Victoria. She leaned back and rested her head against the red leather at the top of their booth. “I think of a dignified, beautiful French woman. She lives in Avignon with her husband and her two adolescent children. And every time her husband goes to Paris, she knows in some part of the back of her mind that he visits his mistress. Just the way his father did and the way her father did. I’m not saying it doesn’t upset her, but she accepts it as the way of the world. And she doesn’t find it humiliating like an American woman would, because all the women in her circle are in the same boat. Or realize that they probably will be soon.”
“You’ve really developed a philosophy about all this,” said Lucy.
“Keep in mind, today is a good day. Not every day is a good one in my head, not by a long shot. And I do realize that after all of our high-minded plans, our ‘new paradigm’ and my feminist ideals, I’ve been reduced to a stereotype.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m economically dependent on a man and I’m too old to start over.”
“You’re not too old to start over,” said Lucy. “Plenty of women do.”
“I want to have Christmas with my son and my grandkids and not have to share them with Thom and his new wife. And I know this sounds bad, but I’m not interested in reducing my standard of living by sixty-five percent at this point in my life. I don’t want to move into a condo next to a shopping center in Weehawken and go on Internet dates with seventy-year-old men. I just don’t.”
“Did you, um, did you ever…” Lucy made a hand gesture to indicate sex.
“Yes. A couple of times. All disasters. Not worth talking about.”
“Where’d you find them?”
“The Internet. Plus one old boyfriend I tracked down on Facebook. None of it really worked for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say, the earth did not shake,” said Victoria. She took a big sip of wine. “Who knows, maybe I’m just not that into sex. That’s another thing I’ve had to deal with in all this. I don’t think I’m really that sexual of a person. It just doesn’t matter that much to me. And those years of fighting with Thom over what he called my low sex drive—well, turns out he was right.”
“Maybe you’re a lesbian,” Lucy said.
“I’ve thought about it. I just don’t think I am. And if I am, what difference does it make? Even in nature, any females, let’s say female dogs—dogs my age, dogs who can barely still reproduce—are those dogs having sex all the time? Are they spending their energy trying to get laid, feeling bad about not getting laid, feeling jealous of the younger dogs who are getting laid instead of them? I don’t think so. I think that would be considered extremely abnormal in the animal world.”
“Couldn’t he still leave you for her?”
“Sure he could. He almost did, twice, but both times he came back in less than a week.”
“How come?” Lucy asked.
“I’m not sure. She’s married and has three kids, and I get the sense she doesn’t want to blow up her life any more than I do. But who knows? There’s nothing I can do about it if that’s what they want.”
“But if he really, truly loves her—”
“It’s not love, Lucy,” said Victoria, cutting her off. “He’s in a fog. He’s temporarily lost his mind, and I refuse to sit back and let him ruin six innocent people’s lives because of it. The fact that my life happens to be one of them is almost beside the point.”
This is not a fog, thought Lucy. What I’m feeling is not a fog. It’s the opposite of a fog. It’s the clearest I’ve been in a long, long time. Ben is with his girls. And I am in love with Ben.
“Men and their pricks,” Victoria said, signaling the bartender for another round. “Honestly, I don’t think we can begin to understand them. I think if we really knew what went on with them, the strongest emotion we’d feel is pity.”
It was getting dark by the time Lucy walked back to Ben’s building. Her mind was spinning, and she was a little drunk. She and Victoria had spent the afternoon drinking, and through it all, the voice in Lucy’s head wouldn’t stop. I am in love with Ben. Ben is with his girls, and I am in love with Ben.
I’m here. Downstairs. Can you come down for one minute?
I’ve got my girls up here.
I know. I’m sorry. But please. I need to see you.
Be down in five.
When Ben came out, they stepped around the corner. He kissed her, and for a moment she forgot her plan, she forgot why she was there other than to kiss and be kissed, other than to spend five minutes with Ben.
“I just need to know if this is real,” Lucy finally said.
“What do you mean?”
“Us. This,” said Lucy. “I need to know if there is an us.”
“There is an us,” said Ben.
“Okay,” said Lucy. “Tell me more.”
“I want us to be together.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” said Lucy. “I need specifics.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Specifics aren’t going to freak you out?”
“I need to know what your intentions are. What you want, I mean. With me.”
Ben looked her in the eyes and said, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Lucy stopped breathing.
The world stopped turning.
“I want to wake up with you every morning and go to bed with you every night,” he said. “I want to figure out a way to blend our families. I want to get to know Wyatt and be the best stepdad any kid has ever had. And, yes, that means I want to marry you, Lucy, but I am not going to propose to a woman who is married to somebody else. That’s just not something I’m prepared to do.”
“Okay,” said Lucy. “Go back up to your girls,” she said. “I’ll text you later.”
Twenty-Two
There is such a thing as human limitation, whether by nature or by fate.
—Constance Waverly
The Eros Manifesto
Kelly was sitting at the midpoint of a long cherrywood conference table, flanked by her lawyers. She looked good, Gordon thought as he walked into the room and took his seat at the table, directly across from her. She was wearing huge Gucci sunglasses and a tight dress with a plunging neckline. She still looked pretty goddamn succulent, he thought, like the cocktail waitress he’d gone berserk for nearly seven years earlier. This was a first for Gordon, divorcing a wife who still looked young, and he remembered his other divorces, and how it had always seemed to him that he was still in the season of the rising sap while across from him sat some angry, bony old shrew who thought it was his moral duty to have sex with nobody but her for the rest of his time on this planet. Back when Gordon was forty-two, his thirty-seven-year-old wife looked old, and when he was fifty, his forty-year-old wife looked old, and when he was sixty-three, Elaine looked like a stringy plastic handbag, but now he was seventy. He finally felt old, and Kelly, well, Kelly was still young.