After the Reunion (18 page)

On the card she wrote: “Just another way of tying you to me.” It was the kind of thing she would never have dared to write a few months ago, but now she knew he would like it, would be flattered, not feel she was moving too fast or assuming too much. He
wanted
to be tied to her. She found herself thinking of famous couples who had lived together happily despite a great age difference, and at last allowed herself to believe.

Back in their apartment that night Dean took his birthday scarf and wrapped it around the two of them, drawing her tight against him. “This was the best birthday of my whole life,” he said. “I love you so much.”

How could she not allow herself to believe it would last?

Once in a while on Sundays they drove up to Chris and Alexander’s house in the country. Dean got along with all of Annabel’s friends and she with his. Chris was going to a diet doctor now, and had lost some weight. The puffy look was gone from her face, and she looked much better. She was resigned to the fact that her diet was going to be a long haul, but she was enthusiastic about Dr. Fields; so enthusiastic that she reminded Annabel of those women who got a crush on their gynecologist when they were pregnant because it seemed as if the two of them were working together to create a new person.

“I love Dr. Fields,” Chris kept saying. “He’s so kind. He really understands me.”

“My rival,” Alexander said, chuckling.

Alexander hadn’t meant anything cruel, but it was the first time Annabel was really angry at him. Her eyes met Chris’s across the table, and then they both looked away. Annabel knew about Alexander’s big love affair with James, although Alexander never invited him to the country anymore now that Chris had found out. Still, the romance was going on, and Chris was bravely trying to cover it up and pull her life together. Annabel wished there
were
a rival. Cameron, or even Dr. Fields … anybody.

Dean was very pleased about Chris’s diet and loss of weight. He couldn’t understand why she wanted to stay with Alexander; such loyalty to someone who seemed, in his opinion, a hopeless case. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said once to Annabel, when they were discussing it.

“No. But I’m not like Chris.”

“You would never let any man walk all over you.”

“I hope not,” she said.

“But of course, you could get any man you wanted,” Dean said.

“Well, thank you.”

Perhaps instead of taking it as a compliment she should have looked at it as a warning. Didn’t men tell you that you could have any man you wanted when they were thinking you might have to look for a replacement? But how could she think that? She was lulled with her happiness and contentment.

Sometimes now Dean was moody, even seemed sad, but when Annabel asked him what was the matter and he said it was just his nature, she believed him. Most of the time he was happy. Whenever he seemed restless she thought of things they could do together that would amuse him. She was busy with the boutique and her business responsibilities. He was working on a new series of pictures in his studio downtown. They talked about the possibilities of a short summer vacation. She had left the shop with the girls before, when she went on business trips. The fact that she and Dean couldn’t seem to set a suitable time didn’t worry her.…

On Annabel’s birthday Emma phoned from location and sent flowers to the shop. Chris took her to lunch, ate very spartanly, wrote down everything she had eaten on a little list she carried in a plastic holder in her handbag, and presented Annabel with a needlepoint pillow she had made herself. She had embroidered on it:
Redheads have more fun
.

“I’m doing a lot of needlepoint these days,” Chris said. “It keeps my hands busy doing something besides putting food in my mouth.”

That night Dean took her for her birthday dinner to the same place she had taken him for his: The Four Seasons. For an instant it occurred to Annabel that this was unlike him. The Four Seasons was her world, not his. His world was cute little bistros, SoHo, TriBeCa. Part of the charm of their relationship was that each brought the other into a different life, adding variety. But then she dismissed the thought as being ungracious and ungrateful. He had been so impressed by his birthday dinner that he simply wanted to do the same for her. The present he gave her was much more typical of Dean—a very modern black plastic necklace with clear lucite stars that looked like crystal hanging from it. He said one of his friends in SoHo who made jewelry had made it specially for her, and Annabel was very touched. It looked beautiful with her coloring. It was perfect.

“This was my best birthday,” Annabel told him happily. “My best ever.”

“I’m glad,” Dean said.

Sunday, which they always looked forward to because it was their one day together, Dean wanted to go to the zoo. When they got to the zoo he wanted to sit on the terrace outside the cafeteria and have coffee. That was all right with her, although a bit strange because they’d just finished an enormous breakfast. But it was a pretty day, and she was happy to be with him, even though sitting in the midst of a throng of strangers, mostly families with noisy children, was not very romantic.

“I have something to tell you,” he said. He looked down at the paper cup of coffee, which he had not even tasted, and then he looked at his hands. Anywhere, except at her. Annabel felt a sharp, remembered fear.

“What?” she said.

“I’m going back to Monica.”

She felt as though his hands were squeezing her throat. The pain was so great that she shut it out, tried not to gasp, although she could hardly breathe. “Why?” she asked stupidly.
You said you didn’t love her
, she thought.
You said you loved me
.

“I realize I should marry her.”

“What do you mean?” Annabel said. “This isn’t nineteen hundred.
Why
should you marry her?”

“Because … I love her. And I want to settle down and have kids. I’ve thought about it a lot. You’ve helped me a great deal. This was a very important period in my life, the time you and I spent together. I want you to know I really loved you. But I want to go back to Monica.”

Bill Wood, she thought. And all those other men, all through college, who decided they didn’t love her anymore. Her rotten marriage to Rusty … Mistakes, mistakes through the years, until finally she’d settled not for love, but only for wary convenience. And now, just when she’d thought she was safe and smart and had allowed herself to fall in love again, here he was, calmly tearing her heart out. Men always took you to a public place to wreck your life because they were afraid you would make a scene. Except, of course, for the worst cowards, who just disappeared.

“Say something,” he said.

What was there to say? That it was convenient that Monica had never managed to find her own apartment? That she was sure he’d had plenty of chances to see Monica when he was supposedly so madly in love with
her
? That maybe he never really loved her, but he damn sure didn’t love Monica either, and probably couldn’t love anybody? That soon he’d have his marriage and his kids, and his nice, settled family life, and then he’d be cheating? She remembered all those times when she’d wondered how a man could love you one day and then suddenly decide he didn’t love you anymore, and the times she’d even asked them why this was, but never got any kind of an answer at all.

Oh, Dean, she thought, you loved me. You loved me. I was so happy. I was so sure you loved me. I love you so much that I can’t even hate you for using me as a vacation.

“It was nice of you to wait until after my birthday,” she said.

“If you’re going to be clever you’re much better at it than I am,” he said.

“I know,” Annabel murmured sweetly.

He was packed and gone by that night. He didn’t even say he hoped they could remain friends, and Annabel didn’t suggest it. He was going back to his friend, with whom he had spent a fifth of his life and now hoped to spend the rest of it. Annabel felt so filled with tears that she was raw inside, but she could not cry. A few tears filled her eyes, and her voice was unsteady, but the sobs and the anguish had been buried so deeply inside her for so long that she couldn’t get them out. Her apartment was unnaturally quiet. Where Dean had been there was empty space. She had been used to the sound and feel of his presence, and now the home where once she had so enjoyed her independence and freedom was only a place where she felt lonely and bereft.

She put on music, but could hardly hear it. She sat staring at the wall, a glass of wine in her hand, Sweet Pea cuddled in her lap. She dialed Chris’s number, but there was no answer; they were probably on their way back from the country. There was no Max to call. Even though she had known from the beginning that Dean would not be hers forever, she hadn’t been prepared for the shock and pain of his leaving her.

Young men wanted different things for their lives than she did. A young man wanted a wife and a child; she had been a wife and she had a child—she didn’t want that anymore. She probably couldn’t even have a baby now if she tried. But why was it that the only men she was ever attracted to were so young, so impossible, so impermanent? She never even glanced at a man her age; it was as if they were all invisible.

Younger men were so sexy, so beautiful, so hypnotized by the joy of lovemaking. Their bodies were firm, their minds were leaping every which way, easily bored, impatient to find what was ahead of them.

Young men were so safe.

Chapter Fifteen

For the first time since she was eighteen years old, or perhaps ever, Chris was the most important person in her own life. And the most important man in her life was her diet doctor. Here she was, at seven o’clock in the morning, walking briskly to Dr. Fields’s office for her weekly appointment before she went to work, trying to be first so she wouldn’t have to wait so long; glancing at her reflection in store windows for the first time in months. She was looking better, almost normal again.
Soon
, she thought,
soon …

They sat on opposite sides of his big desk, he in his white doctor’s coat, she in her new khaki dress that she’d bought for the interim period between her old black muumuus, which were much too voluminous for her now, and her Thin Clothes, which were still too tight. Her new dress was of the lightest cotton because Dr. Fields insisted on weighing his patients in their clothes. Chris didn’t think it was fair. She always took off her watch before she stepped on his scale, and of course she didn’t have breakfast until after she’d left his office.

He was looking at the list of everything she’d eaten that past week, which she had written down according to his orders, and she was looking at him. He had nice blue eyes, wavy brown hair with gray in it, and aristocratic features. She assumed he was slim because he had to be a good example to his patients, but since he always wore that loose white coat no one knew for sure.

There, on top of his desk like miniature Claes Oldenburg sculptures, were a plastic steak, a lump of plastic spinach, an empty cottage cheese container, and an empty three-ounce can of tuna fish. Dr. Fields taught portion control as well as permissible and forbidden foods, and he did not allow patients to count calories. After a while you could judge what something weighed just by looking at it on the plate. If it weighed more than you were allowed you had to leave it over. That was not difficult for Chris, since at the end of a meal she felt satisfied. The hard part began about an hour afterward, when she began to feel starved. By four o’clock in the afternoon she was famished, and the small piece of fruit she was allowed was a joke. Sometimes, around midnight, she was so hungry she couldn’t sleep, and stayed awake thinking about food and drinking numerous glasses of water until sheer exhaustion put her to sleep. She was constantly starving. It seemed particularly ironic since she had eaten herself into this obesity not out of hunger at all.

She had never needed to be taught which foods were fattening; she knew. She had always been careful what she ate, and had always been thin. Her need was moral support, psychological fortification; someone who cared as much about her weight loss as she did, even more, and who would be a kind of benevolent coach, not a policeman. She didn’t want someone to control her; she’d had that. She wanted to control herself.

Dr. Fields was looking at her nearly perfect list. “A chocolate chip pound cake?” he said, peering at her, his eyes showing more amusement at the absurdity of this item than censure for the infraction. “A whole one?”

“Well, most of one,” Chris said. She remembered sitting in the living room in the dark with the cake in her lap, digging at the center of it with a spoon. She’d finally thrown away the ragged edge. It was on one of the nights she knew Alexander was with James.

“Why?”

“I felt that my blood sugar was low,” she said.

“Your blood sugar is fine,” he said. “You just wanted it.”

“I was depressed.”

“And after you ate it, did you feel better?”

“Yes and no.”

“When you’re on maintenance you’ll be able to have desserts in moderation,” Dr. Fields said.

“I know.”

“Is there any particular time you get these cravings?”

Chris shrugged noncomittally. “When my husband is out playing squash.” She and Alexander still kept up the pretense of “Squash Night,” although now he saw James almost every night, often going out after dinner to meet him. Chris knew, and Alexander knew she knew, and they both lied to their son.

“Doesn’t the needlepoint help?” Dr. Fields asked.

“Oh, yes. My house is full of it. I make presents for everybody.”

“Except for that cake, you did very well last week,” he said. “You’re losing weight at just the rate I want you to. The Three S’s: Slowly, steadily, and sensibly; which is the best way to keep it off.”

“The Three S’s,” Chris said. “Starvation, starvation, and sublimation.”

He laughed, and handed her another blank list with the name of each day printed at the top of each column. “This week I’d like to see you be perfect. Try, okay?”