“Anyway,” I echo.
Then, just as I hear the sound of the garage door opening and Andy returning from wherever he was, I cave to what I’ve wanted to do all along. “So,” I say. “Tell me about this assignment.”
“You’re coming?” Leo asks, his voice brightening.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m coming.”
twenty-seven
Over the next few minutes, I listen as Leo gives me a rundown of the assignment—a feature on Coney Island—praying that Andy doesn’t burst in the room and catch me, breathless, cheeks ablaze. At some point, I will have to tell him that I’m going to New York—but I can’t make this assignment about our fight. It’s
not
about the fight.
“I’ll just need a few general shots of the beach … the boardwalk … the rides …” he says.
“Oh, sure,” I say distractedly. I am not ready to hang up—not by a long shot—but don’t want to press my luck.
“Not quite as glamorous as the last shoot, huh?” Leo says, as if I’m doing this shoot for the glam factor.
“That’s okay,” I say, flustered as I scramble for a few more details. “What publication is it for?”
“Time Out.”
I nod and say, “When do you need the shots?”
“In the next couple weeks. That doable?”
“Should be,” I say, trying to play it cool, pretend that I’m not reeling from my discovery that he came back. “I want to hear more about it … but—”
“You gotta go?” Leo asks, sounding satisfyingly disappointed.
“Yeah,” I say—and then spell it out for him. “Andy’s home …”
“Gotcha,” Leo says in a way that seems to solidify our status as co-conspirators. Unlike the Drake shoot we are in this one together. From start to finish.
“So I’ll get back to you …” My voice trails off.
“When?” he says, and although his tone isn’t eager, the question certainly is.
I smile in spite of myself, remembering how I used to try to pin him down in this same vein, always wanting to know when we’d next talk, next see each other. So I shoot back with one of his old-school, tongue-in-cheek answers. “As soon as humanly possible,” I say, wondering whether he remembers his line—and if he uses it with what’s-her-name.
Leo laughs, sounding
so
good. He remembers, all right. He remembers everything, just as I do.
“Great,” he says. “I’ll be waiting.”
“Okay,” I say, a shiver running down my spine as I think of how long I waited for him, how long it took for me to finally give up.
“So … ‘Bye, Ellen,” Leo says, the smile back in his voice. ” ‘Bye for now.”
” ‘Bye, Leo,” I say, snapping my phone shut and taking a few deep breaths to compose myself. Then I erase the call log and head into the bathroom.
This is about work,
I think, as I look in the mirror.
This is about finding my own happiness
.
I brush my teeth, throw cold water on my face, and change into a fresh T-shirt and a pair of white shorts. Then I head downstairs, bracing myself to see Andy and realizing that although I’m still holding on to residual anger from this morning, my conversation with Leo has dampened my rage, replacing it with measured excitement and guilt-induced tolerance. Andy could be in the backyard playing croquet with Ginny, and I honestly think I’d be unfazed. I might even serve them up mint juleps.
But instead of Ginny, I discover Stella with Andy; instead of croquet, I spot a row of glossy Neiman Marcus shopping bags perched on the kitchen counter. As Andy unravels white tissue paper from a large sterling-silver frame, he shoots me a look that is either apologetic or simply imploring me to keep our marital tension under wraps—perhaps both. I give him an appeasing, borderline patronizing, smile, and then launch into good-daughter-in-law auto-pilot.
“Hi, Stella,” I say brightly, standing a bit straighter to emulate her perfect posture—just as I often find myself enunciating and speaking more slowly around her, too.
“Hi, sweetheart!” she says, hugging me hello.
I inhale her signature summer fragrance—a mix of orange blossom and sandalwood—as she continues, “I hope you don’t mind … I did a little frame shopping for you.”
I glance down at the counter and see at least a dozen more sterling-silver frames of varying sizes, all embellished, all formal, and undoubtedly, all very expensive.
“They’re beautiful … But you shouldn’t have,” I say, wishing she hadn’t. Because although these
are
beautiful, they are also so
not
my style. Our plain black, wooden frames are my style.
“Oh, it was nothing,” Stella says as she slides open a heavily beaded frame and inserts a family portrait from her childhood, everyone dressed in fine white linen, grinning broadly from aboard a dinghy in Charleston. The ultimate casually elegant, WASPy, summer snapshot. She blows a speck of dust from the glass and removes a smudge from one corner with her thumb. “Just a little housewarming gift.”
“You’ve given us so much already,” I say, thinking of the grandfather clock, the linen hand towels for our powder room, the hand-me-down yet still pristine Italian porch furniture, the oil painting of Andy as a child—all purported housewarming gifts, all things I couldn’t refuse, and all in keeping with Stella’s benevolent passive aggression. She is so kind, so thoughtful, so generous, that you feel you must do things her way. So you do.
She waves me off and says, “It’s really nothing.”
“Well then, thank you,” I say tersely, thinking that it was Margot who taught me, by example, the rule of protesting once or twice, but ultimately never refusing gifts or compliments.
“You’re very welcome, darling,” Stella says, obliviously patting my hand. Her fingernails are red-lacquered perfection, matching her pleated skirt and Ferragamo clutch, and giving the hulking sapphire bauble on her right ring finger a patriotic flair.
“So. Ell,” Andy says, looking anxious. “What do you say we use these frames for our wedding and honeymoon photos? The ones in the foyer?”
Stella beams, looking at me for my lady-of-the-house stamp of approval.
“Sure,” I say, smiling and thinking that would be a very fitting choice—given that the wedding was done Stella’s way, too.
Andy gathers up several frames and motions toward the front of the house. “C’mon … Let’s check ‘em out.”
Wink, wink
.
Nudge, nudge
.
While Stella hums and begins to neatly fold the shopping bags, I roll my eyes and follow Andy to the foyer on our purported frame-reconnaissance mission.
“I’m so sorry,” he starts in a whisper, leaning on the high-gloss mahogany table (yet another “gift” from his parents), where our wedding photos are displayed. His expression and body language are sincere, even earnest, but I can’t help wondering how much of his readiness to repent is tied into his mother’s presence in our home. How the Grahams seem to do
everything
with one another in mind. “I’m
really
sorry,” he says.
“Me, too,” I say, feeling at war with myself as I avoid his gaze. Part of me desperately wants to make up with Andy and feel close to him again, but another part almost
wants
to keep things broken so I can justify what I’m doing.
Whatever
it is that I’m doing.
I cross my arms tightly across my chest as he continues, “I should have said something last night … about the wine comment …”
I finally look into his eyes, feeling slightly defeated that he
actually
seems to believe that our fight was about a lackluster vineyard near Pittsburgh. Surely he can tell there is more happening here—issues much larger than last night. Like whether I’m happy in Atlanta, if we’re as compatible as we once thought, and why our fledgling marriage feels so strained.
“It’s okay,” I say, wondering if I’d be so conciliatory if I hadn’t just spoken to Leo. “I probably overreacted.”
Andy nods, as if in agreement, which bolsters my dwindling indignation enough for me to add a petty footnote. “But I really,
really
can’t stand Ginny and Craig.”
Andy sighs. “I know … But they’re going to be pretty hard to avoid …”
“Can we at least try?” I say, nearly smiling for real this time, as I drop my arms to my sides.
Andy laughs quietly. “Sure,” he says. “We’ll try.”
I smile back at him as he says, “And the next fight—let’s make up before we go to sleep. My folks have never gone to bed mad at each other—probably why they’ve lasted so long …”
Another smug notch for the perfect Grahams,
I think, as I say, “Well, technically, I went to the
couch
mad.”
He smiles. “Right. Let’s not do that either.”
“Okay,” I say with a shrug.
“So we’re good?” Andy says, the worry lines gone from his forehead.
I feel a stab of resentment at how easily he thinks we can move on, gloss over our troubles, my feelings. “Yeah,” I say reluctantly. “We’re fine.”
“Just fine?” Andy presses.
I look into his eyes, and briefly consider spelling everything out for him. Telling him that we’re in the midst of a small crisis. Telling him
everything
. In my heart, I know that is the only way to fix everything, make us whole again. But because I’m not quite ready to be whole again, I halfheartedly smile and say, “Somewhere between fine and good.”
“Well, I guess that’s a start,” Andy says, leaning down to give me a hug. “I love you so much,” he breathes into my neck.
I close my eyes, relax, and hug him back, trying to forget about our fight, and all my complaints about our life, and most of all, how Margot might have doctored my past, with good intentions or otherwise.
“I love you, too,” I tell my husband, feeling a wave of both affection and attraction—and then relief that I still feel this way about him.
But in the instant before we separate, right there by our wedding photos and with my eyes still closed, all I see is Leo, standing in my lobby all those years ago. And now, sitting in his apartment in Queens, listening to Bob Dylan, and waiting for me to call him back.
twenty-eight
Despite the near-constant urge to do so, I manage to go the rest of the weekend without calling or e-mailing or texting Leo. Instead I do all the right things—all the things I’m
supposed
to do. I reframe our wedding photos. I write Stella a cheerful, almost-completely-sincere thank-you note. I go to church and brunch with the entire Graham clan. I take nearly one hundred quality black-and-white photos of Webb and Margot and her belly. All the while, I squelch any uprising of anger, reassuring myself that I’m not taking the assignment out of spite or revenge or to revisit the past. Rather, I’m going to New York for the work—and to spend a little time with Leo. I have a perfect
right
to work—and to be friends with Leo. And neither of these things should, in any way, detract from my marriage or my friendship with Margot or my life in Atlanta.
So, by Sunday evening, as I hunker down at the computer to buy a nonrefundable airline ticket to New York, I am fully convinced that my intentions, if not entirely pure, are pure
enough
. Yet when I find Andy in the family room watching golf on television and casually mention that I have a shoot on Coney Island for
Time Out,
my heart fills with familiar guilt.
“That’s great,” Andy says, his eyes glued to Tiger Woods.
“Yeah … So I think I’ll fly up the week after next … do the shoot … then stay for a night … maybe catch up with a few friends,” I say as if I’m thinking aloud. My heart pounds with worried anticipation. I cross my fingers, hoping that Andy won’t ask too many questions, and that I won’t have to lie about how I got the assignment.
But when he only says, “Cool,” rather than inquiring about any specifics, I can’t help feeling somewhat slighted, if not downright neglected. After all, we
constantly
discuss his cases, as well as the interpersonal dynamic in his office—interactions with his father, the secretaries, and the other junior associates. He routinely practices his opening and closing arguments in front of me. And, last week, I went to watch the climax of testimony in an insurance-recovery case, getting gussied up and sitting in the front of the courtroom to silently cheer him on as he led the purportedly very injured plaintiff, sporting a full-body cast, down a path of lies before showing video footage of the guy playing Frisbee in Piedmont Park. Afterward, we laughed in the car, high-fiving each other and gleefully repeating, “You can’t handle the truth!”—our favorite line from
A Few Good Men
.
And yet—
this
is the best I can get when my work is involved? One word of generic praise.
Cool?
“Yeah,” I say, picturing working alongside Leo. “It should be good.”
“Sounds good,” Andy says, frowning as Tiger attempts a long putt. The ball heads straight for the hole, drops in, but then pops back out. Andy slams his fist on the coffee table and shouts, “Dammit! How does that not go in?”
“So, what, he’s like
one
shot behind now?” I say.
“Yeah. And he
really
needed that one.” Andy shakes his head and bends the rim down on his green Masters cap, which he superstitiously wears to bring good luck to his idol.
“Tiger always wins,” I say as the camera zooms in on his doting, gorgeous wife.
I find myself wondering just how solid
their
marriage is as Andy says, “Not
always
.”
“Sure seems like it. Give someone else a chance,” I say, and although I’m somewhat annoyed with Andy, I’m also disgusted with myself for trying to drum up a debate about something as uncontroversial as the universally adored Tiger.
“Yeah,” Andy says, as if barely hearing me. “I guess so.”
I turn my head to look at him, studying the faint, sexy hair growth along his jaw, his ears that seem to jut out a bit when he wears a cap, and the soothing blue of his eyes—a dead match for the azure stripes in his polo. I sidle closer to him on the couch, so there is no space between us and our thighs are touching. I rest my head on his chest and intertwine our arms. Then I close my eyes and tell myself to stop being so irritable. It’s not fair to put Andy on trial—particularly when he has no clue he’s being judged. Several minutes pass and we stay in that cozy position, as I listen to the lulling sound of the commentators and the occasional ripple of applause from the otherwise respectfully silent crowd and tell myself, over and over, that I am happy.
But, a few minutes later, when something else goes awry for Tiger, and Andy is up like a shot, waving his arms and talking to the television, offering more support than he has given me in weeks—“C’mon, buddy. You
never
miss these when they matter!”—I can’t help feeling a fresh wave of indignation.
No wonder we’re having trouble,
I think, now putting an official label on what seemed to be only a one-sided undercurrent before. My husband shows more passion for golf—even golf on
television
—than he does for our relationship.
I watch him for a few more minutes, stoically observing the domestic scene that single-handedly assuages any guilt I have for going to New York. Then I stand, head upstairs, find my cell phone, and call Leo.
He answers on the fourth ring, sounding slightly out of breath, as if he ran to get the phone.
“Don’t tell me you changed your mind,” he says before I can say hello.
I smile and say, “No way.”
“So you’re coming?”
“I’m coming.”
“For sure?”
“Yes,” I say. “For sure.”
“When?”
“Next Monday.”
“Cool,” Leo says—the exact same way Andy ended our conversation downstairs.
I stare up at the ceiling, wondering how the very same word can sound so different coming from Leo. How different
everything
feels with Leo.
The next morning, I catch Suzanne on her morning commute to the airport, and fill her in on the latest chapter in the seemingly never-ending Leo saga. When I come to the part about Margot, she is predictably outraged.
“Who does she think she is?” Suzanne demands.
I knew my sister’s focus would be on Margot, and I feel simultaneously riled and defensive as I say, “I know. She should have told me … But I really do believe she had my best interest at heart.”
“She had her
brother’s
best interest at heart,” Suzanne says, sounding disgusted. “Not yours.”
“They’re one and the same,” I say, thinking that in the best relationships, both interests are perfectly, inextricably aligned. And, despite our problems, I like to think that Andy and I still have such a bond.
“They’re
never
one and the same,” Suzanne says adamantly.
As I reheat my coffee for the second time, I consider this statement, wondering who is right. Am I being too idealistic—or is Suzanne just bitter?
“Besides,” Suzanne says, “who is she to play God like that?”
“I would hardly call it ‘playing God,’” I say. “This isn’t euthanasia … She simply spared me—”
Suzanne cuts me off and says, “Spared you? From what?”
“Spared me from Leo,” I say. “From myself.”
“So you would have picked Leo?” she asks with a note of jubilance.
I feel a pang of frustration, wishing she could be more unbiased in moments like these. Wishing she could be more like our mother, whose first instinct was always to see the good in people, look on the bright side. Then again, maybe our mother’s death has made Suzanne the way she is—why she always seems to look for the worst and never really believes that things will turn out well. I push these thoughts aside, realizing how often my mother’s death complicates things that really have very little to do with her. How much she colors everything, even in her absence.
Especially
in her absence.
“I like to think I would have told him the same thing,” I say, struggling to be honest with my sister—and myself. “But I don’t know … I also might have … revisited my feelings enough to screw things up with Andy. I could have made a horrible mistake.”
“Are you sure it would have been a mistake?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say, as I think of an ancient journal entry I recently read—an entry that I had logged around the time Andy and I started to date, right when Leo came back. I hesitate and then tell Suzanne about it. “I was so happy to be in a healthy, stable,
even
relationship.”
“You wrote that?” she asks. “You used those words?”
“More or less,” I say.
“Healthy and stable, huh? … That sounds …
pleasant,
” Suzanne says, clearly implying that pleasant isn’t something to strive for in the hierarchy of relationships. That passionate is better than pleasant, every time.
“Pleasant is underrated,” I say, thinking that half of America would kill for pleasant. These days, I’d take pleasant.
“If you say so,” Suzanne says.
I sigh, and say, “It’s better than what I had with Leo.”
“And what was that?” Suzanne says.
“Turmoil,” I say. “Worry … Insecurity … Everything felt so different with Leo.”
“Different how?” she asks automatically, relentlessly.
I open the back door and settle down on the top step of our back deck with my cup of coffee, struggling to answer her question. But every time I try to put it in words, I feel as if I’m selling Andy short, somehow implying a dichotomy of passion versus platonic love. And it really isn’t that way. In fact, just last night, Andy and I had sex—
great sex
—which I initiated, not from a sense of guilt or obligation, but because he looked so irresistible in his boxer briefs, stretched out in bed next to me. I kissed him along his golfer’s tan line, admiring his ripped stomach that looks like it should belong on a teenager. Andy kissed me back as I thought of how so many women complain that their husbands skip the foreplay—and how Andy never forgets to kiss me.
“Ellen?” Suzanne rasps into the phone.
“I’m here,” I say, glaring across our hazy backyard. It is not yet nine o’clock, but already approaching one hundred degrees. Too hot for coffee. I take one sip and pour the rest of the mug into a bed of mulch.
“Different how?” Suzanne asks again—although I have a feeling she knows
exactly
how it’s different—that
all
women know the difference between the one you marry and the one that got away.
“It’s like … the mountains and the beach,” I finally say, grasping at straws for some sort of adequate analogy.
“Who’s the beach?” Suzanne asks as I hear an airport trolley beeping its way through the terminal followed by a blaring gate-change announcement.
I have a sudden pang, wishing I were at the airport about to fly somewhere.
Anywhere
. For the first time, I feel a bit envious of Suzanne’s job—her physical freedom, her constant motion. Maybe that’s the appeal to her, too—why she sticks with a job she often describes as waitressing without tips.
“Andy is,” I say, looking up at the scorched white sky. It’s almost as if the relentless heat wave has blanched it, stripping the blue away, leaving a colorless expanse of nothing. “Andy’s a sunny day with calm, turquoise waters and a glass of wine.” I smile, feeling momentarily buoyed by the thought of us lounging on a beach somewhere. Maybe a good vacation is all we need. Maybe I need to get on a plane
with
Andy—rather than flying away from him. But deep down, I know a romantic boondoggle would not fix our problem—and that I might be screwed no matter what.
“And Leo?” Suzanne says.
“Leo.” His name rolls off my tongue as my heart beats faster. “Leo’s an uphill hike in the mountains. In a cold drizzle. When you’re a little disoriented and hungry and nightfall’s approaching.”
Suzanne and I laugh together.
“No contest,” she says. “The beach wins.”
“Every time,” I say, sighing.
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is … I like it out there in the middle of the woods. I like the dark … the quiet. It’s mysterious … thrilling. And the view at the top, overlooking the evergreens, down into the valley …”
“Kicks
ass,
” Suzanne says, finishing my sentence.
“Yeah,” I say, shaking my head as I picture Leo’s strong forearms and bulky shoulders. The way he looks in a pair of worn Levi’s, walking slightly in front of me, always in control. “It
really
does.”
“Well, then,” my sister says. “Go ahead and enjoy the view …”
“You think?” I say, waiting for her to prescribe exact parameters—tell me what I can and can’t do.
Instead she only says, “Just don’t get too close to the edge.”
I let out a nervous laugh, feeling more anxious than amused.
“Or you just might jump,” she says.
And yet, in the days leading up to my trip, despite Suzanne’s advice and my vigilance to keep Leo at arm’s length, I find myself standing
way
too close to the edge and getting sucked back into his orbit. Our formal e-mail exchanges graduate to a flurry of familiar—even flirty—banter, that in turn gives way to a steady stream of longer and increasingly more intimate texts, e-mails, and even phone calls. Until I’m full-blown obsessing, just like old times, all the while trying to convince myself that I’m
not
obsessing. That it’s
not
like old times.
Then, suddenly, it’s the morning before my trip—which also happens to be the day of Margot’s baby shower, an event I was already dreading on some level, at least to the extent that Ginny had hijacked the planning, making it a formal, ostentatious affair rather than good, close friends celebrating a beloved soon-to-be-born baby. But now, more than ever, I view the party as something to endure, get over with, so that I can escape to New York, pick up where Leo and I left off on our red-eye flight, and get down to the heart of the matter—whatever that is.
I stretch out under the covers, having just kissed Andy good-bye and wished him a good golf game, when my cell phone rings on high, vibrating its way to the edge of the nightstand. I reach for it, hoping that it’s Leo, hungry for my morning fix of him. Sure enough, his name lights up my screen.