All You Could Ask For: A Novel (15 page)

He pushed himself forward out of the chair so that he was on his knees before me.

“I love you with all my heart, Samantha. I know you have no reason to believe that, and I know there is almost no chance you would ever consider being with me again. I’d just ask you to think about it, even for a minute, and if it’s out of the question I will understand. But please know that whatever you decide, I love you and I will spend the rest of my life regretting what I did.”

Then he was on his feet.

“I’ll be waiting downstairs,” he said. “Take as much time as you need.”

I looked down at the spot where he’d been on his knees. I’d never really noticed the carpeting before. It was orange with black zig-zagging lines and would have looked ridiculous anywhere else but somehow seemed perfectly in place here. And while my head was down, I heard the door shut softly and I looked up and he was gone. I closed my eyes and pictured him as he’d looked just before he walked out the door, with his hand on the knob. Was he wearing his wedding ring? I think he was. I had taken mine off down by the pool the day I arrived here, the day I met Eduardo, the day I ran away from my marriage. But Robert was wearing his today. Had he worn it all this time? Or had he just put it on to come see me? It would be interesting to know.

Then I sprang off the couch and ran to the door, raced down the hall. I caught up to Robert as he stood waiting for the elevator.

“Wait,” I said, “come back. I don’t need any time. I know what I want right now.”

BROOKE

I LOVE DAYS WHEN everything feels different.

I guess I shouldn’t say it that way. I don’t love
all
the days when it feels different, like when someone dies and everything feels different. I don’t love that. I recall the day Grammy died, my mom’s mom, Brooke, for whom I was named and whom my mother and I look just like. Sometimes I’ll see an old photo and it always takes a moment to say whether it’s her or me, I usually have to look at the clothes. She had wonderful style, furs for every occasion, sensational hats, but
that’s
how alike we look—I have to see what she is wearing before I know it’s not me.

The day she died was unlike any other. She had cancer and no one told me. When she lost weight, they told me she was dieting. When she lost her hair and needed a wig, they told me she was just experimenting with a new look. I wanted to wear a wig, too, because she did. My mother bought me one, a long blonde one. I was thirteen. When she died, it was a complete shock. I hadn’t seen her in over a month, she’d been in the hospital but I was told she was in Europe visiting friends. Then one night Mother pulled me away from the television.

“I have something important we need to discuss,” she said.

And she told me, quite matter-of-factly, that Grammy was gone. And it was like I was standing between a wrecking ball and a decrepit building: first the ball hit me, which hurt, then it scooped me off the ground and crashed me into the building at full force. I was crushed. All the air went out of me.

“When?” I asked. “How?”

“She’d been ill for some time,” Mother said stoically. “She died the day before yesterday. There is a new dress upstairs for you to wear to the funeral.”

“What do you mean she’d been ill? I didn’t know she’d been ill.”

“Darling,” my mother said, her voice going to that place it always does when she explains something she thinks I’m not capable of understanding, “I just couldn’t bear to tell you.”

The next day at the funeral, what I remember most was wondering how anyone else could be having a regular day. I remember seeing construction workers at a job site, lunchboxes at their sides, eating sandwiches and drinking from thermoses, and all I could think was: How in the world are they just going about their business as though everything is normal? Don’t they know Grammy is dead? Don’t they know I’ll never feel those long nails scratching my back again? Don’t they know how chewy her oatmeal cookies were? Don’t they remember when she took me to see
Annie
on Broadway and then bought me the soundtrack and how we would sing the song “Maybe” together at the top of our lungs? How can they just be going about their business as though this is just any regular day? Don’t they know everything is different?

That’s the kind of different day I hate.

But today is the kind I love. Because tonight is the night. Today is Scott’s birthday. Tonight he gets his gift. I felt the tingle in my stomach the moment I woke up. Driving the kids to school, stopping at Whole Foods, stopping at Soleil Toile for something special to wear under my robe, arranging the bedroom, readying the fireplace, placing the candles, choosing the music. Then placing the book of photos Pamela made into a velvet box, tying the ribbon, attaching the birthday card the kids designed. (“I signed it
for
you,” Megan told her brother. Twins are so funny.) Then dropping off the two of them at Mother’s for the night. When Scott comes home, it will be just the two of us. And it will be different from any other night. In the good way. I’m not even going to make him lock the door.

SAMANTHA

BACK IN THE HOTEL room, I reversed the seating arrangements.

This time I took the chair in the center of the room and put him on the couch. He looked a good deal less comfortable on the couch. Men like Robert know how to sit erect in hard-backed chairs, they know how to maintain the crease in their pants, how to keep their suit coat from rising up in the back. I guess that comes from years of experience in classrooms and boardrooms, or, in Robert’s case, courtrooms. They’re a lot less comfortable on couches. No matter how distinguished the man, no matter how well-dressed, if you look at him seated on a couch he still looks like he’s asking your father for permission to take you to the prom.

Now Robert was on the couch in my hotel room, fidgeting with his clothes, trying to get his pants and shirt and sport jacket straight. His legs were crossed and he had a look of cautious optimism on his face. I remember that look. He would use it in debates when his opponent was attacking him. It was a look that indicated that no matter what was said, Robert was ready to respond. I could see it in his face; he
knew
I was going to take him back.

“Robert, I just want you to know that it did help a lot that you came here. More than I would have guessed. If you’d asked me yesterday if it would make any difference for you to come, I’d have said ‘no,’ but I’d have been wrong, for a couple of reasons. The first is that it makes me feel less stupid. All this time I’ve wondered how I could have fallen in love with such a complete asshole. And now I see that, at the very least, you aren’t a
complete
asshole. There is
something
redeemable in your character, and that’s good news for me. It means I can trust myself again. So that helps.”

I don’t know why, but I stood up and started pacing as I spoke. I wasn’t looking at Robert. I was staring down at the floor, carefully considering every word.

“In fact, in some strange way I have more respect for you now than I did before everything happened. I don’t know how many men would have done this the way you did. I think a lot of men would have stayed away because it was easier.”

“Let’s not make me out to be a hero,” Robert said.

“Don’t talk,” I said. “You said everything just right. I want to remember it that way.”

He smiled and did that thing where you twist your finger in front of your lips, like locking your mouth and throwing away the key.

“You are most certainly not a hero,” I continued, “but you may actually be a decent human being, or at least one with a shred of decency. If you hadn’t come here I would never have known that. So I’m happy for that as well.”

A sense of calm was washing over me as I spoke, an unclenching. And I realized that, as focused as I have been this month on relaxing, in actual fact I haven’t relaxed at all. But I was relaxing now.

“I’ll also tell you that it really seems to me you came here with no ulterior motive, no self-serving motivation, for your career or otherwise. I didn’t believe that when you started talking but I do now, and I am impressed by that as well. You really did do this for me, and that matters to me. And the things you said and the way you said them were perfect. You apologized for exactly the right things in exactly the right way, which leads me to believe you really understand what you did and you really are sorry. And
that’s
the best part of it all. So, thank you, as strange as that seems. Because you made the effort and it helped, and it is going to keep helping. This makes everything that happened a whole lot less awful, and under the circumstances I really couldn’t ask for more than that.”

And with that I was finished. Those were all my thoughts. I was suddenly tired, maybe for the first time since the day I arrived at this hotel and started training.

Robert was off the couch and walking toward me. I recognized his expression again: he was in serious seduction mode now. He walked right up to me and looked soulfully into my eyes. He raised his hand and brushed it softly against my cheek as though he was wiping away tears. But I wasn’t crying.

“So,” he said, “I guess the question is, where does that leave
us
?”

I stared right into his eyes. “It leaves us in a much better place than we otherwise would have been,” I said. “And that’s all.”

He flinched a little. Our eyes were locked, and I could tell he was trying to see if there was any crack, any room at all for negotiation. I stared at him for all I was worth. There was no room for anything.

“Can we at least be friends?” he asked.

“There really isn’t any point in that,” I said. “This is not a time in my life I’m going to want to remain in touch with. I will learn from it, I will always remember it, but I will not treasure it. And while I don’t hate you or wish ill upon you, I don’t have any real interest in talking to you ever again.”

We were still staring, but now that was a formality. It was him who was obliged to look away first, and after a moment or two he did. He lowered his eyes and nodded, and then he turned slowly and started walking toward the door.

“What are your plans?” he asked over his shoulder.

“My triathlon is next week, then I’m going back to New York.”

His hand was on the knob now. “Be well,” he said.

“I wish you good luck,” I said. “And, if you ever do run for president, I’ll say nice things about you.”

He turned to face me, his hand still on the door. His eyes looked cloudy, like maybe he would cry. Not here, in front of me, but later.

“Will you mean them?” he asked.

I just smiled. I didn’t need to say it. We both knew the answer.

KATHERINE