At three twenty-five, a woman came up to Jim. They didn’t kiss or shake hands but stood facing each other. Even at a distance, Anne could see he was excited and happy to see her. His body leaned toward hers, his face alive with emotion. Anne turned from Jim to the woman and recognized her as the girl on Madison Avenue, all those years ago, less beautiful but still beautiful. She felt tears rising. Jim bought tickets and they went in. Anne crossed the street. The Story of Adele H. was playing at three forty. She waited a few minutes for Jim and the woman to settle, then followed them in. They were sitting on the first floor, in the middle section, toward the back of the theater. Anne went upstairs to the balcony and took a seat in the front row. She could see them clearly from this perch. The woman wasn’t less beautiful. She is the peonies, Anne thought, she is the tulips.
The movie, a story of hopeless, desperate, unrequited love, ending in madness, was wrenching for Anne. As she watched, she felt tricked and exposed, as if Jim and the woman, knowing she had followed them, had picked this movie with the pitiless intention of humiliating her. It was the last foreign movie she would see for years. They’re too smart, she thought. Years later, watching Fatal Attraction, a thoroughly American movie of mad passion, she found its violent ending satisfying, reassuring. She told herself it was the husband’s fault, all of it, not the crazy girlfriend’s. He was craven, guilty, egoistical. Of course, the wife would be the one to kill the girlfriend, she thought. They’re all Dimmesdale. I would have had to do it for Jim too. She caught herself. Unless, of course, I was the one to be killed. She laughed dully. Even then.
The movie let out at five thirty. On the street, Jim and his companion talked briefly, then parted. The woman walked west; Jim looked after her receding back for a good minute before turning east, toward home. Anne followed the woman, keeping thirty feet between them. They walked across Fifty-Eighth, then up Central Park West. At Sixty-Seventh, the woman went into the Hotel des Artistes. Anne followed her into the building’s lobby, as if she were going to Café des Artistes, the restaurant on the ground floor. She heard the elevator operator greet the woman. “The boys are home, Mrs. Falkes. I heard Jack playing.” Anne walked to the café door, then stopped, as if she’d thought of something. She shook her head and turned around to go. “Can I help you, ma’am,” the switchboard operator asked. “I had the time wrong,” Anne said.
Anne caught a cab to East Eightieth Street and stopped at E.A.T. to pick up takeout. She got home at seven. She showed surprise at seeing Jim. “I thought you’d be late,” she said. “I have food for me, but not for you.”
“Let’s go out,” Jim said.
“Only if the food is better than E.A.T.,” Anne said. “How about Caravelle?”
Jim looked at her. “It’s very expensive,” he said.
“On the Lehmans,” Anne said. “My father has a house account.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Jim said.
Anne didn’t say anything.
“Let’s go there,” Jim said. It was very expensive. He paid.
—
Anne stayed up late reading the Manhattan phone book. She started with “FA.” She tried “FAW” and “FAU,” before she thought of Lieutenant Columbo. “Falkes, Rupert, 1 West 67th Street.” The name sounded familiar, as if it belonged to someone she should know but didn’t. She got out the wedding list. There it was: “Mr. and Mrs. Rupert Falkes (Eleanor Phipps).” Anne thought about Jim’s movie date with Mrs. Falkes. There had been nothing in Eleanor’s behavior that gave off any scent of romance. There had been no kissing, no touching, no intimate smiles. They might have been third cousins. She’s going to break his heart again, Anne thought, what’s left of it.
Anne got up at six the next morning. She called the Y to reschedule her session with Ted until the evening. At seven, she made her way crosstown to the Hotel des Artistes. At seven fifty, Eleanor emerged with five boys. They all looked like Jim, especially the oldest, who she guessed was thirteen or fourteen. He and the next oldest took off on foot toward CPW. “We’ve got practice till five, Mom,” he called out. Eleanor hurried the other three into a waiting black car. Anne couldn’t move. Rooted to the ground, she watched the car drive away. She was unsure what to do next. She felt light-headed. She knew she couldn’t tell a cabbie to follow a car filled with children. She’d look like a stalker, a pervert.
The next morning, Anne rented a car and drove across the park to West Sixty-Seventh Street. At seven fifty, Eleanor and her sons came out of their building. As the two oldest boys walked toward CPW, Eleanor called after them, “Harry, Will, don’t forget the dentist.” “Harry, Will,” Anne said to herself. “English kings.” Anne followed the cab with the younger boys up Amsterdam to the Trinity School. Watching them walk in, she felt a rush of blood to her head. I am a pervert, she thought. I am a stalker.
Over the next week, Anne staked out Trinity at the start and end of each day, trying without success to catch the younger boys’ names. She saw that the two oldest boys carried tennis racquets. JV, she guessed. She looked up the schedule.
All fall, Anne spied. She hung around the Hotel des Artistes in the mornings; she watched Trinity JV tennis games in the afternoons; she scoped out Jim’s studio in early evenings. JV tennis was hands down her favorite. Often, she went to practices. She traveled to away games, to Riverdale and Brooklyn. There were few regular spectators, a handful of mothers, a nanny or two, one old man. At first, she felt conspicuous, but no one seemed to pay her any mind. She didn’t talk to anyone. She watched the Falkes boys closely but never cheered or clapped. After a month, she gave up on West Sixty-Seventh Street and Jim’s studio. She’d lost interest in everyone but the two boys.
When spying had begun to take over her afternoons, she took unpaid leave from her job. She said nothing to Jim and didn’t change her phone message. “Health reasons,” she said to her chairman, who thought it was female trouble and didn’t want to know more. “Of course,” he said. “But don’t forsake us.” To encourage her return, he put in a promotion for her from associate research scientist to research scientist. She was very useful to him; she had drafted his last two successful grant proposals.
At the last away game of the season, the old man, the only person she recognized, approached her.
“I’ve seen you at all the games,” he said, sitting down next to her. Anne froze. “You come to watch my grandsons, don’t you?” He nodded toward Harry and Will.
“I’d never hurt them,” Anne said quickly.
“No,” he said. “Of course not.”
They sat silently side by side for several minutes, not looking at each other, watching the game. The boys were playing doubles, against each other. Will aced Harry.
“Harry won’t like that,” Anne said, giving herself up.
“No,” the man said. They resumed their silence.
“I’m Edward Phipps,” the man said.
For a split second, Anne thought of lying.
“Anne Cardozo,” she said.
“Jim’s wife?” Mr. Phipps said, looking directly at her for the first time.
“Yes,” she said.
“You have no children of your own,” Mr. Phipps said. Anne couldn’t tell whether he was telling her or asking her.
“No,” Anne said. She sat still, not wanting to disturb the molecules between them. She felt a sense not exactly of relief, more like release in the old man’s company, in his knowing who she was and what she was doing.
“Do Harry and Will suspect anything?” she asked. Her heart seized as she waited for his answer. She had refused until now to think about what they might think.