Love in Mid Air (23 page)

She is probably referring to the soup course, which the Honduran women are carrying in. It’s quite elaborate, a swirl of two
kinds of soup in a yin/yang pattern, a combination of Kelly’s roasted squash bisque and white corn chowder. It’s so lovely
that everyone murmurs as it is placed before them and I sit back in my chair and begin to relax. This will be a successful
party. The tables look good and the tree looks great. I may not be the über-homemaker of the group but I always do have the
best tree and I know how to buy the best wines, and I am seated at the best table, even if I am clinking glasses with my marriage
counselor. I laugh, more out of relief than anything else, but it’s perfectly timed with the climax of Jeff’s joke and he
smiles at me. Smiles hugely, as if making me laugh was the best thing that happened to him all day.

“The thing is,” Jeff says, obviously warmed up by his appreciative audience, “men and women cheat for different reasons. Men
cheat because they want the variety. But women only cheat if something is fundamentally wrong with the marriage.”

“Who told you that?” asks Lynn.

“… and that explains why two-thirds of cheating men stay and two-thirds of cheating women end up filing for divorce…” Jeff
is like this. He likes statistics. He’s always working them into sermons and he gets so enthralled by his numbers that he
never seems to realize the effect he’s having on other people.

“So what you’re saying,” says Michael, shocking everyone by speaking at all, “is that if a man fools around his wife shouldn’t
take it personally. It’s not that he doesn’t love her, he’s just looking for a little strange.”

Jesus. Everyone’s drunk.

“You guys have gotten awfully quiet in there,” Nancy calls out. “Whatcha talking about?”

“What I wonder is how I managed to end up on the wrong side of that equation,” Lynn says. “If two-thirds of cheating men stay,
how come Andy walked out on me?”

“As fast as possible on the salad,” I mutter to the Honduran woman who is clearing the soup bowls away.

“It depends on how you look at it,” says Jeff, who seems hell-bent on making a bad situation worse. “That same stat could
indicate that one-third of cheating men end up falling in love with the other woman.”

“Well lucky me,” drawls Lynn. “Married to one of the cheaters who actually fell in love.” She has drained the glass of sauvignon
blanc I’d chosen for the soup and salad courses and she’s clearly enjoying the chance to make Jeff uncomfortable. She tosses
her head and strikes an elaborate pose, both elbows on the table and her chin rested in the nest of her hands, as wide-eyed
and rapt as Audrey Hepburn in a black-and-white still. Yes, she’s definitely enjoying this—enjoying the chance to be the dinner
partner, and thus the equal, of the man who signs her paychecks, the man who has done her so many public favors. Jeff and
Nancy will be giving Lynn a ride home tonight. He made sure everyone knew that during the champagne hour, that he would never
think of letting any woman in his employ drive these treacherous suburban streets alone.

“I like these plates,” Michael says, saving the day. “How did I end up at the special table with the pretty Christmas plates?”

I beam at him.

The salad is coming around—my signature pear and blue cheese with walnuts. “It’s fantastic, Elyse,” Kelly calls in. “Did you
find this recipe on the Food Channel?” She knows full well I didn’t but her question sets off a smattering of distant laughter
around the china table. Evidently they’ve got some sort of running joke going on about the Food Channel.

“She watches it goddamn 24/7,” says Mark. “I came in the other day and she was sitting on the toilet with her pants down around
her ankles watching the bathroom TV. Some show about how to make three different kinds of clotted cream. Is there any wonder
why this country’s going to hell?”

“So what’re y’all talking about in there?” Nancy calls out again.

“Nancy just said ‘y’all,’ ” Jeff calls back. “That’s the official signal to cut her off.”

Lynn’s Salmon in Parchment will be the next course, followed by a collection of cheeses that Nancy brought—since she’s directing
the Christmas pageant she also got off the hook for heavy cooking—and we’ll wind up with Belinda’s Mocha Panna Cotta. In anticipation
of the salmon, Phil comes into the living room with the pinot noir. It’s our splurge wine, and Jeff gives a whistle when Phil
shows him the label.

“Wow,” Jeff says. “You two know how to do things right.”

“I thought I’d start with the expatriates,” Phil says, pouring into the big-bowled glasses. Jeff makes a big show of twirling
the glass and sniffing.

“You know, when I look at you two,” says Lynn, “I always wonder to myself why you’re friends.” It’s something I’ve thought
about too but never said aloud.

“Me and Phil are like two soups in one bowl,” says Jeff. “The contrast makes us each better. In fact, you should see us on
the basketball court…” he adds, changing metaphors and really getting into it. “We have total Vulcan mind meld. The minute
he goes up for the rebound, I turn and start down the court because I know exactly where he’s going to—”

“Just a splash,” I say quietly as Phil moves to my glass, and he nods. He knows that this is the expensive one and there’s
a single bottle to go around both tables. Besides, we have two more wines coming.

“You can fill me right up,” says Lynn.

“It’s okay,” says Jeff. “She’s not driving.”

“The reason Jeff and I are such great friends,” says Phil, ignoring them and giving Lynn the same small taste he’s pouring
for everyone, “is that we have all the same virtues and none of the same faults.”

“Well said,” says Jeff. “We’re both loyal…”

“True blue,” agrees Phil. “We’re the men who would never…”

“Lynn, this salmon is amazing,” Nancy calls from the china room. “You’ve outdone yourself.”

“Everything’s perfect, Elyse,” Kelly adds, even more loudly.

“Let’s hear it for our hostess,” someone says, and I swear it must have been Mark. There is the clank of forks against glasses,
a couple of smacks of applause. Phil is touchingly happy that the night is a success. He smiles as he uses the white cloth
to wipe the top of the pinot bottle. Careful, careful, careful. There’s not the slightest drip.

I
worked hard to make it nice.”

“Why? You’re not the kind of woman who gets stressed out over a dinner party.”

What makes him so sure of that?

“It might be the last time I ever host a big sit-down dinner. This could be my last Christmas in this house.”

“Why?”

It’s the morning after the party and I am in the car going to pick up Tory from my mother’s condo. For a minute I think we
have a bad connection.

“I’ve told you I’m leaving. I’ve told you that a thousand times.” Doesn’t anybody take me seriously? Maybe I’m like that tree
in the forest. Nobody hears me falling so evidently I don’t make a sound. Just this morning I was still cleaning up and Phil
came in carrying the ashy bags that had held the luminarias. He said that last night had been nice. Yeah, I said, nice, and
then he said, “That’s all I want, Elyse, for things to be nice. That’s all any man wants.”

There’s some crackling on Gerry’s end of the line. He must be in the car too. “Yeah, you say you’re leaving, but you’ve never
seemed to have a concrete plan. Where are you going?”

“Not to you, so don’t worry about it.”

“Elyse…”

“Relax. You’re off the hook.”

“What about Tory?”

“She’ll come with me, of course.”

“You’re sure about that?”

Of course I am. The courts favor the mother. “I would only lose Tory if I did something really stupid, if I screwed up in
some incredibly major way.”

“And I take it you don’t plan to do something really stupid.”

“No. You’re the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

We laugh. We’re ready to laugh. This conversation has scared us both. It’s not really a fight, but it’s the first shadow we
have ever walked into. I am pulling into the complex where my mother lives, a planned community for active older adults, and
I wave at the security guard, one of the residents trying to pick up a little cash. He’s about eighty and wearing golf pants
and he pushes the button to raise the electronic gate.

“If I left,” Gerry says quietly, “my kids wouldn’t go with me.”

He’s probably right. Marriage is a game with different rules for men and women. Different penalties for losing too. Gerry’s
wife would keep his kids and he would become the weekend dad.

“If you go,” he says, his voice still quiet, “I mean if you really go, what happens to us?”

“Nothing,” I say. I’ve cut off the car and I can hear him better. I can hear the hurt.

“Not nothing. If you’re single, everything changes.”

“I won’t need you more, so don’t worry about it.”

“You might need me less.”

In front of the parking lot there are some old people decorating an outdoor tree. The man on the ladder looks very shaky.
He gets the star on but it’s crooked. The ladies on the ground below him are pointing and talking, evidently offering advice,
and I realize, with a shock, that Gerry is afraid of losing me, that I have somehow become a woman that a man could lose,
a woman who could break a man’s heart. It isn’t just hurt in his voice, it’s fear, and in some dim reptilian part of my mind
I begin to see that Phil is afraid too. That’s why he says, “Oh good, you made thirty thousand dollars,” when he knows perfectly
well I made three thousand, why he tells Kelly to take me to her manicurist, why he cuts me with so many tiny swords. I don’t
know why it’s easy to hear the underemotions in your lover’s voice and so hard to hear them in your husband’s, but Gerry is
helping me to understand Phil. To forgive him, even. The man on the ladder reaches up to straighten the star and makes it
worse. It was leaning too far to the right and now it’s leaning too far to the left but the women on the ground must have
decided not to tell him this, because he is climbing down.

“The thing is,” Gerry says, “you’re either going to need me more or need me less. If you’re single you’re going to want a
whole complete boyfriend, and if I can’t be that for you, you’ll move on to someone who can.”

“What do you expect me to say?”

“Don’t say anything. Just think about what you’re risking. Not Tory and the money and the house, because I know you’ve already
thought that part through. Think about the fact that you might be leaving your whole life.”

“Including you?” There is hesitation on the other end of the line, just long enough to show me my whole future, to show me
everything I can and cannot have. I lower my head to the steering wheel. “You want a married mistress,” I finally say. “It’s
safer that way. You and me in a hotel room—we’re the new status quo.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he says. “I’ll be here as long as you want me.”

For some reason this statement doesn’t seem to make either of us feel any better.

N
ancy intercepts me in the vestibule, her arms full of angel wings.

“You’ve got to help me,” she says. “I’m sinking.”

It is the Sunday night of the Christmas pageant. I’ve come to drop off Tory and walked into bedlam. Twenty kids, in various
stages of biblical dress and hopped up on sugar cookies sent by some well-meaning mother, are chasing each other up and down
the aisles of the sanctuary, using their shepherd crooks and wire-hanger halos as weapons. Except for a couple of fathers
rigging up the Star of Bethlehem, there aren’t any parents in sight. Apparently Nancy, overconfident as usual, didn’t ask
enough people to come early and help.

“Separate the boys from the girls,” I say. “That calms everybody down.”

“Belinda isn’t here,” Nancy says, a little wild-eyed. “Her parents are in town so I told her not to bother…”

“We can do it without Belinda,” I say, surprised that she’s the one Nancy thought of first. “Lynn will be here any minute
and I’ll call Kelly. Do you want the angels or the shepherds?”