He smiled, his teeth blindingly white, and gave her a slow, raffish wink. “Not as long as you promise not to tell my father I’d rather die than take over the helm of Walsh Shipping. Right now they’re so grateful I’m not pushing up poppies in Flanders Fields, they’re letting it lie, as long as I do little services like this and keep the family name clean. But eventually they’ll ask, Margie. Eventually they’ll demand it.” He was growing sadder and more morose as he talked. “We’re doomed, you know. Doomed to turn into our parents.”
“No!” Margie stood up, throwing off the coverlet and stamping her foot. “I won’t do it. I’m going to be different, you’ll see. I’m going to be a writer, and I’m going to live in Europe, and I’m never going to get married—I’m going to fall in love again and again, and no one can stop me.”
Robert looked up at her as though he were deciding something, and then he drained his own drink, stood up, and, to Margie’s complete surprise, slipped his arms around her as though they were going to begin a waltz. “Of course you are,” he said, and the sadness in his face was gone again, so far gone Margie wondered if she had only imagined his gloomy prophecies. “You’re going to live in Paris and drink champagne from a shoe and write books like no one has ever read before,” he said, and he swept her around the room as though they were back on the ballroom floor, guiding her expertly between the furniture without even seeming to look at it. Margie laughed, tilting her head back and watching the ceiling spin above her as they danced in the quiet room, the crackle of the fire and the pale thumps of the party outside their only music. “And I’m going to go to Italy and live as a marquis, and never, ever think about cargo or shipping or tariffs or any kind of freight at all.” Margie laughed again, and then he abruptly spun to a stop.
“Whoops!” She was still laughing, her eyes closed. When she opened them, Robert was looking at her intently, searching her face for something.
“Margie,” he said, low and quiet.
“Yes?”
He didn’t say anything; he simply pulled his hand from hers where their arms had been extended and slipped it around her waist, pulling her close, far closer than they had been on the dance floor, as close as the dancers had been in the living room of the suite, the roses of her gown crushed against his stiff white vest, and then, as though she had been doing it all her life and knew what was coming, her eyes fluttered closed as he kissed her.
It seemed impossible someone else’s lips could be so soft, and she wondered at so many sensations at once, at the smell of him, the warmth of his body against hers, his hands firm and strong against her back, the quiet movements of his mouth and then his tongue, at first shocking and then, when she opened her lips, both natural and incredibly arousing. Her body rose to meet his, and when he moved his mouth from hers and trailed a line of kisses down her neck, breathing in the scent of her perfume and her skin, one hand moving up, his fingers playing dangerously at the edge of her neckline, she didn’t stop him, didn’t want to stop him, because the voice inside her telling her she shouldn’t, this wasn’t something a lady, a proper girl, did, that voice belonged to her mother and this night was hers and hers alone, to do with as she wished.
They kissed until her lips were swollen and the dizziness of the champagne had been exchanged for the dizziness of desire, and they lay down on the bed together and they didn’t stop kissing, and her hands were as bold on him as his were on her. They fell asleep together, their mouths close, hands claiming a confident intimacy, his body warming hers, her mind whirling with the fulfillment of all her romantic fantasies.
In the morning when she woke, the dream was over. He was gone, and she didn’t see Robert Walsh again for almost five years.
three
MADELEINE
1999
Phillip hadn’t stuck around to see how his threat had affected me. He had taken his drink and stalked off to the study. I stood in the kitchen, stunned, and then stumbled into the bedroom, grabbing for some antacids to calm my stomach.
His side of the bed had stayed empty while I tossed and turned, unable to get warm despite the extra blankets I had wrapped myself in.
Finally, I had drifted off to sleep in the gray gruel of morning, woke up groggy and disoriented. Padding across the condo, I quietly opened the door to the study, but Phillip was gone. His keys and wallet weren’t by the front door. It was a weekend, but maybe he had gone to the office. Maybe he had left just to avoid me.
I had to talk to him, had to apologize, had to make it right again. No matter how much I complained, when it came down to it, I couldn’t actually get divorced. I couldn’t. It would be an admission that I was a failure, unlovable, that I hadn’t been good enough for him after all. I would be buried by the shame. My mother would be humiliated. I couldn’t.
I dialed Phillip’s mobile number again and again. His office phone. Nothing.