All You Could Ask For: A Novel (12 page)

And just as quickly as it had settled, my breath froze in my chest. And my smile disappeared, and all of the warmth and softness and vibrancy and light drained from my body. I felt my eyes well up and I had to tighten my throat to keep the tears from overflowing, and I had no idea what I should do or what I should say or how I should feel. For the man I found in the hallway was the last man in the world I had expected. It wasn’t Eduardo Marquez at all.

It was Robert.

KATHERINE

“I MUST SAY, I have never been quite so surprised in my life.”

About half of my blind date with the senior citizen had passed before I began to pay any real attention to what he was saying. I was so taken aback by his age, and so devastated by what it implied, that appetizers and cocktails were merely a blur. Ken Walker was having a conversation with me, and at the same time I was having a conversation with me, and if at any time two people are talking to you and one of them is yourself, then that discussion is always going to win out. As a consequence, I couldn’t tell you nearly anything about the man or about what he had been telling me until around the time my second martini began to soak in.

I love martinis. I take vodka, always, extra dry, straight up with olives. I love olives. Hell, I love
everything
about a martini. I love the feel of the glass. I love when the icy coating on the stem begins to melt and leaves condensation on your fingers. A martini is like a naughty girl, all dressed up and clean but filled with secrets to tell when the moment is right.

For me, a martini can solve almost any problem, and whatever problem one cannot overcome can always be slain by a second one. The second martini of the night usually comes near the end for me, as I can hardly handle a third. But on this night, with Ken Walker blathering on about god knows what across the table, I was finishing my second drink before the entrées had been served.

“. . .  And I’ve never been so surprised,” he was saying as I tuned back in, and I realized this was probably as interesting a moment to jump back in as I was going to get.

“I’m sorry, you’ve never been so surprised by what?” I asked.

“By his gayness, I suppose,” he said.

Well, that was quite a surprise. That’s also a tough one to dance around. I couldn’t think of any way to avoid asking whom he was talking about, so I did the next best thing.

“I’m sorry,” I said, folding my napkin, “would you excuse me a moment? I’m just going to run to the ladies’ room.”

He stood up as I did, which I must confess I liked. Those sorts of manners appeal to me, especially because I am usually so vigilant in guarding against them. Ninety percent of my interaction with men is professional, and like all professional women I am always protective of my equal footing. I don’t
want
a man to hold the door for me walking into a conference room, I don’t
want
him standing up if I do during a meeting, or greeting me with a kiss on the cheek if he’s going to shake hands with everybody else. I don’t want to be different when I’m working.

But out to dinner, I don’t mind if I am.

Anyway, I didn’t really have any need to be in the ladies’ room but I needed to kill a minute or two, so I checked my face, and as I did only one thought was in my head.

What the
fuck
is it Marie sees that makes her think I’m so much older?

My skin looks fabulous, even around my eyes. I don’t see wrinkles, bags, crow’s-feet, dark circles, lines, frames, spots, or blemishes, and I haven’t even had anything done yet. I haven’t had my eyes done, lips done, nose done, ears pinned, or jowls pulled back. I haven’t used Restylane, Botox, Juvederm, Latisse, or even a chemical peel. I’m sure someday I’ll start getting all that help, and that will be fabulous. But for now I’m looking damn good, no matter what Marie seems to think.

So I was feeling better about myself when I returned to the table, and when Ken again rose from his seat I found myself in a much better mood.

“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “Now, let’s start that story over again. I don’t want to miss any of it.”

He smiled. “I hadn’t seen Chet in twenty years. We grew up together, went to law school together, lived across the street from each other in Scarsdale when I was first married. He moved to Colorado for a professional opportunity in the early nineties, I got divorced shortly after that, and we just sort of lost touch. So, about a month ago, he calls me at the office out of the blue, tells me he’s in town, wants to catch up, talk about old times, let’s get together for a drink. Sounds like a great idea to me, so we meet at a place down in the Village about two weeks ago. I could tell he looked a little different the moment he walked in. My first impression was that he was wearing makeup, but I put that aside and we started to chat, talking about law school and all that. So then I asked how Barbara was doing, and he gave me this funny look and said, ‘You know we haven’t been married for fifteen years, don’t you?’ So I said I didn’t know that, and then he got the strangest look in his eye, this glimmer, like a mischievous smile, and he said: ‘Also I finally came out of the closet and am currently living with a twenty-nine-year-old man named Evan.’”

Ken paused a moment, took a sip of his martini, and then went on.

“Well, I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never been quite so surprised in my life.”

“What part of it surprised you?” I asked.

“Well, first, just that he was gay, I never suspected that at all. Not that it makes any difference to me.”

“Yeah, not that there’s anything wrong with that,” I said, and laughed.

He didn’t seem to get it.

“You know,” I said, “from
Seinfeld
.”

“Oh,” he said. “I’ve never seen a single episode of that show.”

Wait a minute. Who the hell has never seen a single episode of
Seinfeld
? Was Ken Walker too old to have watched
Seinfeld
? Should I be making Dick Van Dyke references?

“At any rate,” he went on, “I couldn’t just sit there speechless so I asked him what his boyfriend was like. And he said: ‘Well, the sex is fantastic but the age difference can be quite challenging.’”

What I wanted to say was “I know exactly what he means.” But I did not. Instead, I said, “So, what did you say to that?”

“I said, ‘I understand. It must be difficult to spend time with someone who doesn’t remember when Kennedy was shot.’”

That was the last straw. Was Ken Walker now suggesting that I remember Kennedy being shot? I don’t remember
either
Kennedy being shot. To me JFK has always been just an airport and a set of initials.

“You know,” I said, containing myself, “I don’t remember when Kennedy was shot either.”

He laughed. “Of course you don’t,” he said.

Then the food came and we ate, and I ordered a third martini the moment my entrée arrived and finished it before I finished the filet mignon.

In the taxi headed home, after coffee and crème brûlée and his asking for my phone number and me offering a quick kiss on the cheek instead, I called Marie. She answered on the first ring.

“So,” she said, “how did it go?”

“Went great,” I said, “I may marry him.”

“Oh no.” She sighed. “What went wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just can’t imagine being with someone who has never seen an episode of
Seinfeld
.”

“What?”

“Forget it,” I said. I had to move past this. “Pack a suitcase, we’re going away. I’m taking a vacation and you’re coming with me.”

“Katherine,” Marie said, “you’ve never taken a vacation in all the time I’ve worked for you.”

“I haven’t taken a vacation in a lot longer than that. Pack a bag, sweetheart, we’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “We’ll figure out the details later.”

BROOKE

I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHS.

I always have, from the time I was a little girl. I remember my father taking me one time to the Museum of Modern Art to a photography exhibit. I don’t recall the artist—I was only six years old—but I do remember the photos were black-and-white, shot in New Mexico or Arizona, of Native Americans in their daily lives working on farms, pumping water, tending to animals, driving tractors, and I still remember how vivid the faces were. That’s what I love about photography, as obvious as it sounds: it’s
real
. My mother loves surreal painting, impressionism, Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, all the “out there” artists. That stuff mostly just makes me nervous. A nose is meant to be on a face, not disconnected and hovering overhead, adjoined to a bird’s wings. I prefer photos because they tell a story.

That’s why I love to look at the pictures I have on the wall that separates my children’s bedrooms. They are all black-and-white, and when viewed in sequence they tell the story of my life. Of
our
lives, really, Scott’s and the kids’ and mine. They begin with Scott and me in college, him with his hair so long and wavy. He loved wearing his hair that way, and he tells me all the time that the day he leaves Wall Street will be the last time he visits a barber for the rest of his life. He’s kept his hair so neatly parted and short for so long almost no one we know remembers that flowing mane he used to have, but I do. And I can still see it, on my walls, any time I want. When I do, I can go back to those days when he was wooing me, and he was so sweet and uncertain, wearing thick glasses and denim jackets and black boots. That’s the way I remember him.

If you follow the wall, left to right, top to bottom, you follow our journey. Scott and me in Hawaii, when he was afraid to go scuba diving for fear of being eaten by a shark. He kept saying, over and over, before we went down, “All I can hear in my head is the theme from
Jaws
.” Then we went down and it wasn’t at all scary, at least I didn’t think so, even after a tiny fish the size of my thumb took a nibble out of my leg, but Scott saw the blood and was convinced every Great White in the Pacific Ocean was going to smell it and he panicked and almost went too fast back to the surface. The photo I have on the wall is of the two of us after that dive, our hair dripping, wearing wetsuits, Scott drinking his third beer, trying to relax. You can still see the fear in his face. I love that picture.

Then there is the picture of me and a very old man atop the Arc de Triomphe, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. That was our first trip together, Paris in the spring, the year we got married. And Scott asked this old fellow to take our picture but his elementary-school French was so rusty that the old man thought Scott wanted a picture of
him
with me, and it was so funny, the man was really serious about it as he posed with his arm around my waist and his hand directly on my butt. I’ve never seen a picture where I am laughing as hard as I am in that one.

Then there are the standard photos: the wedding, the baby shower, me holding the twins when they were an hour old, and Scott holding them both over his head, one in each hand, when they were two. There is Scott the day his team rang the opening bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the four of us fishing on our boat, the two kids simultaneously falling off water skis, and every Halloween costume the kids have ever worn, including the one great year when I talked Scott into dressing up and we went as Batman and Cat Woman and Robin and Bat Girl. We all look awesome in that one.