All You Could Ask For: A Novel (13 page)

And so, tonight, I have new photos to show my husband. But they are certainly not going to be displayed where anyone, least of all our children, will ever see them.

The pictures are spectacular. When Pamela brought the contact sheets to my house the day after we took them, I was more nervous than on the day of my wedding. She had the most mischievous look on her face when she came around the side of the house, as though she’d been hiding in the bushes, waiting for the school bus to pull away so she could sneak inside.

“You are going to loooooove these,” she said, and pulled a manila envelope out of her ridiculously large handbag. “Are you ready?”

I nodded, and she dropped them on the table. At first I was confused. Pamela has taken pictures for me on at least a half-dozen occasions, and usually she brings over a hundred images to choose from. Here there were only eight. I looked at her and frowned.

“Were the rest so awful you couldn’t bear to show me?”

Her smile was filled with reassurance. “Quite the opposite. These, my dear, are perfect. I don’t want you going through shot after shot comparing how your naked ass looks in this one versus that. You are so beautiful in these eight pictures it makes me cry.”

I picked up the one on top, handling it gingerly, as though it might tear into pieces if it grazed my fingernail. I was in front of a giant window, facing out, and the sun was streaming over me. My face was turned upward into the light. The arch of my back looked sexy and sleek and my breasts were like shadows. It was stunning. My eyes filled with tears as I gently placed the sheet back on the table and lifted the next, in which I was turned away from the camera, standing amid the overflowing collection of potted plants in Pamela’s den. My butt looked full and round but not soft. My right hand was reaching out, my fingers caressing the leaves of an orchid, something very sensual in the touching.

“That one is my favorite,” Pamela said.

I smiled. “I’ve always had a great ass,” I said.

The rest of the pictures were just as perfect as the first two. Pamela had chosen exactly right. She had known exactly what I wanted them to be and she had nailed it. The photos were sexy, sophisticated, daring, tasteful. They were beautiful.

When I was finished looking at them, I leaned back on the couch. “Pamela, these are precisely as I imagined them. How did you capture exactly what was in my mind?”

“That’s what art is, my dear,” she said. “It is your imagination come to life.”

“But this was
my
imagination,” I said. “It’s
your
work.”

“Is it, Brooke?” she asked. “Look at them again. Who do you see in these images?”

I picked one up, held it close to my face.

“This is your work,” she said to me. “It’s
your
art. I just pressed the buttons.”

KATHERINE

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER YEAR older, same greeting for the break of dawn.

Fuck him.

Today, the words have a particularly pungent taste in my mouth, because today I need to talk to Phil. I am always especially aggravated when my day begins in his office, which usually happens two or three times a month and never of my own choosing. In all the years I have been working beneath him, which is well more than ten, today is the first time I’ve ever called
him
for a meeting.

After the breathing and the protein shake and the heavy sweating on the treadmill, I am at my mirror, contemplating Buddhism and my blind hatred for Phillip. They do not really go together, and yet I believe in them both to the deepest place in my soul. Thich Nhat Hanh writes that one of our biggest faults is to fail to celebrate not having a toothache. The idea goes something like this: We all know how painful and irritating it can be to have a toothache, and we all suffer when we do, but why is it we never take time to think how nice it is not to have a toothache?

That’s brilliant, I think, and insightful, and it applies to absolutely everything, but it does not answer one fundamental question: What do you do when your toothache never goes away?

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. Phillip isn’t a toothache. He may have begun that way, but when we have a toothache we visit the dentist and alleviate the pain. For nearly twenty years now I have been putting off that visit. I could go any time I choose, I could forget about our time together, move past it, work anywhere else for anyone else and never see Phillip again, and yet I do not, and that is no one’s fault but my own. In that way, I guess it is less like having a toothache than it is like driving a sharp stick into your own mouth and leaving it there for twenty years, which is a pretty stupid thing to do and I know that, and still I hold on to my stick. And every time I feel the pain, I repeat the same words.

Fuck him.

In the car, Maurice is his usual jovial self. “Come on, boss, you have to tell me what happened last night.”

“Didn’t you see how I was limping on the way to the car? Shouldn’t that be some indication? I doubt I’ll walk normally again for a week.”

“Boss, I’m not buying that and I don’t like the way you joke about it.”

“Well, I’m not faking the limp,” I said. “My back is absolutely killing me.” It really is. Has been for two months, and it’s getting worse. Another reminder of my advancing age, as though being fixed up with somebody’s grandfather isn’t excruciating enough.

“Katherine, I know I have no right to demand anything, considering I work for you and not the other way around, but I have overstepped my bounds before and I’m going to do it again: I
demand
to know what happened last night.”

“Actually, Maurice, if you must know, it was very disappointing, and I went home feeling sad and alone.”

That stopped him cold.

“Boss, I’m sorry.”

“Forget it,” I said, “that’s over. I have big news.”

“Good news, I hope?”

“I think so. I’m going on vacation.”

I was still watching him in the rearview. A look of confusion replaced his embarrassment, which was a welcome change.

“Really?” he said. “I can’t recall you ever going on vacation.”

“Neither can I, and that seems like a bad thing,” I said. “I’m leaving this afternoon.”

“Where are you going, boss?”

“Out West, my friend,” I said. “Colorado.”

I HATE PHILLIP’S ASSISTANT. Her name is Danielle LaPierre, which, as I am fond of saying, is French for “the Peter.” And, as I am also fond of saying, the name suits her, because if any woman can be referred to as a dick, it would be Danielle. Any time I am waiting to meet with Phillip, she inevitably buddies up to me and chats my ear off, always on the same topic.

Men.

Danielle is a forty-ish divorcée, attractive enough, no kids, and she is obsessed with finding a husband before, as she charmingly puts it, “it’s too late.” And the way she speaks with me always leaves the distinct impression that she views us as in the same boat. That is annoying, but it is not what
really
bothers me about her.

What really bothers me is I do not know if Danielle knows of my past with Phillip. I suspect she does, if only because Danielle is the sort of woman who knows everything you might hope she did not. And if she
does
know, then there is no doubt she subtly rubs it in my face all the time. She loves to tell me stories of the extravagant vacations Phillip takes with his family, or the sweet little gifts he surprises his wife with “just because.” If she does know of our past, I hope you’d agree that Danielle is a cold-blooded bitch, but because I am not certain that she knows and probably never will be, I am always left to wonder, and that makes the time I have to spend with her almost too much to bear.

In recent months, I have taken to amusing myself when I talk to Danielle by inventing boyfriends, and then bringing each of them to a sudden and stunning demise. “Alex” was transferred to Juneau, Alaska. “Henry” was decapitated when his car was broadsided by a freight train. “Stanley” accidentally stumbled upon a mafia killing and was placed in the federal witness protection program.

On this day after my birthday, I was telling Danielle the stunning news about “Milton,” who was found dead in his bathroom after accidentally allowing a shortwave radio to slip into the tub while he was taking a bath.

“He hated showers,” I sniffled.

That was when Phillip arrived.

“Come on in, Kat,” he said.

He never calls me Katherine anymore, and I never call him Phillip. I suppose those are our respective nods to our past together, we’ll always have those names in the way Bogey and Bergman will always have Paris. Now we are “Kat and Phil,” which sounds more like a pair of Army buddies than it does old sweethearts.

“What’s shakin’?” he asked, sliding out of his suit jacket and hanging it over the back of his chair.

“Not much, I’m well,” I said.

He stopped, looked at me, and turned his head sideways, the way a dog might if it hears a sound it doesn’t trust.

“Somethin’ up?” he asked. “You don’t seem right.”

“No, I’m good,” I said. Phil looked at me for a minute without saying anything, and to fill the silence I said, “It was my birthday yesterday,” and then wished I hadn’t.

“That’s right, of course. I’m sorry I didn’t send anything, been so damn crazy with everything here.” He came around the desk and gave me a quick hug. “Happy and healthy and many more.”

“Thanks,” I said. I knew damn well he didn’t know it was my birthday. “I’m forty.”

“How about that,” he said, back on his side of the desk, his hands clasped behind his head. “We’re getting up there, aren’t we? I’ll be forty-seven soon enough.”

“Next Thursday.”

“That’s right. Listen, happy birthday. You do anything special for it?”

“I’m going to, that’s what I’m here to tell you. I’m going to take a month off.”

“Really,” he said. The look on his face was priceless. “When are you thinking of going?”

“This afternoon. I’m taking my assistant for the whole time, at full pay. And I’d like to take the Gulfstream. You’re not using it until Friday.”

If there is any benefit to working for a man who once broke your heart and knows it, it is this. When it comes to anything personal, I tell him what I want and he never equivocates. I’m not exactly sure why; it is not as though if he told me I couldn’t take the company jet I would cry and say: “It’s bad enough you married that bitch you cheated on me with, now you’re going to make me fly Delta?” But there is still a little bit of that in there, somewhere, and whenever I can use it to my advantage, I do.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Aspen,” I said. “I haven’t been there since I was a girl. I’m going to climb a few mountains, ride a few horses.”

“I can’t remember the last time you took any time off.”

“It’s been a while,” I said, and stood up. “I’m going to get a few things in order and I’ll be out of here around noon. Please have them ready for wheels-up at three. I’ll be at Teterboro a little before that.”

He gave me a nice smile, one I almost never see anymore. “Have a good time,” he said. “Be safe.”

Then I was back in the anteroom, nodding to Danielle.

“I’m taking some time off,” I said to her as I passed. “Milton would have wanted me to.”

WHEN I TOLD PHIL I needed a few hours before I could take off for Colorado, I was telling the truth, but not the whole truth. The implication was that I needed to tidy up a few affairs and pack, while the truth was I had been up most of the night doing both of those. But there was one important meeting I needed to attend before I could go to the airport, one I would never tell Phil about, even though he is my boss. In fact, I wouldn’t tell anyone about it, not even Maurice.

Dr. Gray is my own little secret.

You don’t have to say it, I already know: there is no reason to be ashamed of therapy. And, really, I am not ashamed. Maybe it’s more “embarrassed.” Or “protective.” However you choose to characterize it, I do not acknowledge to anyone that I have been in intense psychoanalysis pretty much my entire adult life. You see, I exist in such a competitive world that to admit to needing help would be tantamount to admitting weakness. I know all the men I work with, and who work for me, are looking for my flaws, looking to find a soft spot, and so fuck them, I refuse to show one. And while I know there are no similarities between the two, the reason I keep my therapy secret is the same reason I don’t walk into a board meeting and complain about menstrual cramps, because anything that puts me on even less of a level playing field than I already am seems like it is best left out of the discussion.