After the Reunion (13 page)

“And what brings
you
to this opening?” Bill Wood asked, by way of conversation, since she looked like his idea of a sophisticated New York woman who went everywhere.

Annabel smiled sweetly. “I live with Dean Henry,” she said.

Bill Wood’s mouth dropped open. His wife looked at Annabel with something approaching awe. Twenty-five years later, women like her were no longer The Harvard Whore.

Thank you, Bill
, Annabel thought.
You always gave me a great exit line
.

Chapter Nine

Chris, taking a bath, cursed the day she had put a mirrored wall into the bathroom to make it look large and luxurious. Her image—distorted, soft, with obscene rolls and lumps of dimpled fat—mocked her in those mirrors now, and she avoided looking at her ugly naked body. She had filled the tub with bubble bath so she would not have to look at herself through the water either. She was not simply stout, which might have been all right, but she was like someone who had been force-fed, some diseased Strasbourg goose, and she had been the one who had force-fed herself. The food looked as if it had not even been digested yet but was simply hiding under her skin, bite upon bite, like a monstrous impressionist sculpture of a fat woman. She hated herself for having done this, but she could not stop.

Her scale had been relegated to the back of her closet because she never weighed herself anymore. Her Thin Clothes, the ones from her other life, were in another closet, and the closet in her bedroom held her Fat Clothes, the shapeless tents she had bought to cover this new body. They were always black, for she was in mourning for the person she used to be, and because black was said to make you look thinner. She bought a great many handbags lately—in fact, she might be said to be obsessed with handbags—because handbags didn’t have to fit. Everything else did, even shoes.

She also bought lovely things for her handbags: wallets and makeup cases and pens and appointment books. She was neat and organized. She was also clean. Her house was clean, her face and body and hair and clothes were clean. Her stomach was always distended, and she thought whatever was inside it (and there always was a great deal inside it; she felt as though she never digested fully before she was stuffing herself again) was filthy. She often thought of stopping this madness, of going on a diet, but the resolution never lasted even for a day.

Tonight Alexander was playing squash after work, which he did twice a week lately. His physical fitness made her inactivity and appearance seem even worse. He would come home at eight, and then they would have dinner. He played squash and she took a bath. To each his own form of relaxation.

Out of the tub she dried herself quickly, avoiding the mirrors. Body lotion, scented powder, a touch of perfume, some makeup. Her at-home muumuu, one of a large new collection. She wanted everything to be nice, even though it wasn’t.

“Hello! Where are you?” Alexander called out the same thing he always did. He wanted everything to be nice too, even though it wasn’t.

“I’m here.” A glass of wine in the den, and then dinner, a normal dinner with normal food and conversation, Chris eating little, making sure she ate less than he did, as if she were fooling anybody.

Nicholas emerged from his room in time for dinner. He had changed from his school clothes to jeans and a sweatshirt, and Chris noticed that although she had bought them for him only a few months ago, he was already growing too tall for them. He looked like a combination of her and Alexander; the best of both of them. Alexander’s intense, dark eyes and Heathcliff face, her own warmth and humor. Alexander’s handsomeness had always been unique, so spectacular that it seemed almost a tragic beauty; with always something withheld, mysterious; but Nicholas’s teen-aged good looks were more accessible, friendlier; he smiled easily and had ready laughter in him. The laughter she used to have.… Naturally he was very popular.

They had decided to spend Thanksgiving weekend in the country. Nicholas was not going to be there; he was going to Disney World in Florida with a friend from school and the friend’s parents. It was the first time he was not spending Thanksgiving with her and Alexander, and Chris wondered if it was the normal process of growing up or if he was anxious to be away from the sight of her. She did not intend to mention this.

“I must tell you, Nicholas,” Alexander said, “that your mother and I are a little offended to be rejected this Thanksgiving for Mickey Mouse and Goofy.”

“
And
Minnie Mouse,” Nicholas said, grinning.

“Well, we’ll miss you,” Alexander said. “Not that I want you to be overwhelmed with guilt and have a miserable time, but I just thought I’d say so.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“And you know you can invite your friends to the country,” Alexander said. “Remember when you were young and always had kids up?”

Nicholas nodded. “It was great then, but … I’m too old to run through leaves.”

Alexander laughed. “When you’re older and less jaded you’ll like it again.” He turned to Chris. “The house won’t be too empty though. I’ve invited the banker I play squash with to come to the country for Thanksgiving and bring a date. You’ll like him, I think.”

“What’s his name?”

“James Riss the Third. But he’s not as stuffy as that sounds. Although he insists on being called James, not Jim.”

“You insist on being called Alexander, not Alex,” Chris said. “And you’re not stuffy.”

Alexander smiled. “Well, thank you. Although sometimes I think I am.”

“What about his date; separate rooms or together?”

“I don’t know how well he knows her. How about separate rooms and let them sneak across the hall.”

“Fine,” Chris said.

Nicholas looked amused, obviously storing away the antics of grownups for future blackmail when
he
was old enough to bring home a date.

It was an ordinary family dinner. But no, it was not an ordinary family dinner, because as always lately, there was the thing that totally possessed her: the food.

Dessert was a plain cake. Alexander did not eat it, saying he was full. Chris, therefore, did not eat any either. Nicholas had one piece, as always. He was slim and active, and had never been obsessed with sweets. As soon as dinner was over he went to his room to do his homework, and Alexander and Chris went to the den to do some work from their offices before going to bed. Mrs. Gormley cleaned up the kitchen and went home.

It was a normal evening. But no, it was not a normal evening. Chris thought about the cake that was left over, she thought about nothing else. Not Alexander and how much she loved him; that was too painful. Not the work from the office, although she tried. Not even the pleasant Thanksgiving weekend and what she should serve with the turkey; that was too far away. The cake was right in the next room, and she could taste it and feel it against her tongue.

She and Alexander watched the eleven o’clock news in bed, and he was asleep before it was over. He had forgotten even to kiss her goodnight. He always came home from the Athletic Club exhausted, freshly showered and virtuous from his hour of frantic physical activity. She suspected that it was his sublimation, just as she had hers, but his was constructive and hers was bad.

Bad …

She turned off the television set and lay there in the dark sleeplessly, thinking about that cake. She wanted to roll over and lie against Alexander’s back, put her arms around him for comfort, smell his skin, coordinate her breathing to his until she, too, fell asleep. But he had taken to wearing pajamas now, as she had begun to cover herself with nightgowns, and she felt if she pressed her body to his it would be an intrusion. He was as kind and sweet as ever, but no longer physical at all. He patted her and kissed her, but as if she were a beloved relative or best friend, not his wife. And she had to be careful about the way she touched or kissed him, to be sure it didn’t seem like a sexual invitation and therefore a reproach. Besides, if she put her arms around him now she might disturb him and wake him up.

She got out of bed quietly and went into the kitchen.

The cake was put away in its white box, tied with white string. Chris cut a large slice and ate it out of her hands, standing up over the sink to catch the crumbs. Then she washed her hands and rinsed the crumbs down the drain, closed the cake box, and tied it again neatly as if no one had touched it at all. As soon as she had, she opened it again. Her hands were shaking with impatience and desire.
No
, she thought. She closed it, and threw the whole box of cake into the garbage, there with the crumpled damp paper towels, the empty soda cans, the remains of Nicholas’s bedtime snack. She went back to bed.

She couldn’t sleep. She watched the green numbers leap and change on the digital clock beside her and wondered what Cameron was doing. Sleeping beside his young, pretty wife, of course, as he probably always would. That was never the issue. But he had desired
her
once, and she had wanted him. Chris wondered what would be happening now if she had said yes. Then she got up again and went into the kitchen to get at the cake.

She took it out of the garbage and she ate it all, the whole thing, sitting at the kitchen table, methodically slicing off hunks and jamming them into her mouth. She didn’t even bother to put it on a plate, just devoured it right out of the food-stained box on the theory that she would stop before it was gone. But then it
was
gone, and she went out into the service hall and threw the empty box into the incinerator so no one would know.

Then she brushed and flossed her teeth carefully, as she always did, and went to sleep. Alexander had never noticed she had left.

As Thanksgiving approached it seemed pointless to start a diet, because the Thanksgiving feast in the middle of a diet would be so demoralizing. Perhaps afterward … She was always making these good resolutions, and she realized now that she had no intention of doing anything about them. She hoped James Riss the Third, and his no doubt slender date, would not wonder what in the world Alexander saw in her.

She and Alexander went up to the country the night before, to be sure everything was ready for guests. Chris was going to do the cooking herself. That morning, in the crisp autumn air, she and Alexander went to buy firewood together, and flowers, and then the food, comfortable and happy in each other’s company as they hadn’t been for a long time. It was doing things, she realized, that saved them. Activities, plans; the fabric of their marriage. They were loving companions, but that was not enough and never would be, for her at least. Yet it was better than some other marriages. She would try not to think about it.

Their guests arrived on Thanksgiving morning. There was a fire in the fireplace, and Alexander had mixed a pitcher of Bloody Marys. Chris had put fresh flowers in their bedrooms and all over the house, piles of new books and magazines lay beside comfortable chairs, and the delicious smells of holiday food emanated from the kitchen. The young woman was named Kimberly, Kim for short, and she was one of those Muffy Buffy whitebread girls. She was even wearing penny loafers. She had that accent Chris remembered from Daphne the Golden Girl at college, but she wasn’t nearly as attractive as Daphne had been. James, the squash partner, was cute, and just saved from being whitebread by something Chris couldn’t put her finger on. She decided she liked him.

As soon as the couple had deposited their overnight bags in their respective rooms, they came down and everyone had drinks together. Then Alexander showed them around the grounds while Chris attended to the dinner. James came into the kitchen after a while to ask if he could help with anything.

“No,” Chris said, “but you can sit there and talk to me.”

He seemed quite pleased to do that. He seemed anxious that she like him, and she found it appealing. He was only thirty-one, but he said Alexander was a good squash player and the age difference didn’t matter. He was relatively new at the firm, having been there nearly a year, and he told her how hard it had been to find his Sutton Place apartment, which was a sublet in a co-op and cost a great deal more than he had wanted to spend. Alexander came in after a while and opened a bottle of champagne.

“Where’s Kim?” James said.

“Running.”

“Oh God,” Chris said.

James cast her an innocent, curious look. “Is there something wrong?”

“No,” Chris said. “It’s just the thought of all that energy.”

“I know,” he said, and smiled at her. Alexander handed him a glass of champagne and they looked at each other, James and Alexander, and James smiled his thanks, and suddenly she knew. Her heart felt like an icy stone and she stood there staring at them for what seemed like a long time but she knew it was just an instant, just as the look that had passed between the two men had been only an instant—but she knew.

James and Alexander.

It was a look of love, on the face of the man she loved who claimed he loved only her, and he was bestowing it and everything it meant on someone else. Alexander and James. She wondered if they even played squash at all.

The rest of the day passed in a mist of shock. Chris managed to get the dinner on the table, not burned, and made conversation. She drank more champagne than usual but did not get drunk. She ate almost nothing, not because she was pretending but because she thought if she ate she would gag. She remembered that other November, so long ago now, in Paris, when she had finally found out that Alexander was gay, and she wondered if the Thanksgiving season was destined to be for her a time of horrible revelations. All she knew was that she would manage to get through this weekend somehow, and on Monday, which was “squash night,” she would go to James’s apartment building and hide outside and wait to see.

Perhaps it was bizarre to spy on them. Another woman might simply have confronted her husband and asked. But Chris knew Alexander too well to do that. He had said he was no longer interested in sex with anyone. He had not said he was in love. She knew she could have weathered the discovery that he was cheating, because she was used to it and had accepted it, but love was different. It had never occurred to her that he could fall in love with someone else … with a man. She could survive anything, but she didn’t know if she could survive his being in love.