Best Intentions (22 page)

“Maybe you should have talked to Deirdre first,” I suggest.

“You don't think she's going to like it? Is it too hard-edged, too modern?”

“That's not what I mean. She could very well love it, I don't know. All I'm saying is she might want to feel she has more of a say in it.”

It has occurred to me that Deirdre will see the apartment as a
trap rather than a gift, view Jack's grand gesture as an ultimatum rather than an offering. I cannot help but remember how she resented his unyielding insistence all those years ago that she move with him to Cambridge, how she ran from it.

Jack shakes his head. “I'm not a fool. I know Deirdre isn't going to just up and move in right away. She can take as long as she wants. But Lisa, we are going to have a life together. We are going to start a family. She wants that, too. I know it. In the meantime, I need a place to live.”

I can't really blame Jack for his impatience. So few of us get the chance to rewrite our own romantic history, to go back and play it differently, get it right this time, to replace the regrets that haunt for a lifetime with the future you were always meant to have.

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. It's a wonderful apartment.”

“It is, isn't it?” He glances around the empty room, then looks at me, smiling. “Come, my little wet blanket, I'll take you to lunch and listen to your cynicism for as long as you'd like.”

“I am not a cynic,” I protest.

“In that case, you can give me decorating advice.”

“I'm even less of a decorator. Jack, I'd love to have lunch but I really have to get back to work,” I tell him. “We'll celebrate next time you're in town.”

He grins, he is already living here, he has already furnished the days and nights to come in his mind. “Deal.”

I leave Jack walking jauntily up Park Avenue South and grab the first cab that comes along, pulling out my cell phone as I climb in. There are two messages from David. I call him back as the car lurches forward.

He picks up right away. “Lisa, I've been trying to reach you. Are you all right?”

“No. David, I lost them. Or someone took them. I don't know what happened.” The words rush frantically out, I do not even try to hide my panic.

“I'm not following. What did you lose?”

“The hospital records. Everything you sent me.”

He takes a deep breath. “Calm down.”

“How can I calm down? I'm terrified. What if Favata has them?”

“Can you meet me after work today?”

“Yes, anything. It's going to be okay, right?” I ask.

Our connection is broken before he can answer.

D
avid is seated in the back of the dark and clubby bar we went to after the Merdale cocktail party, drinking a scotch. We haven't seen each other since the Japanese restaurant and there is a decided awkwardness as we embrace, unsure what the tenor, the boundaries are.

As I slide in beside him on the velvet couch I notice the manila envelope by his side and am relieved that he has brought along a copy of the records.

“Thank God you have them,” I exclaim, feeling calmer already.

David glances at the envelope and nods distractedly. “It's so good to see you, Lisa. I've missed you.”

I nod, pleased, flattered, but unable to admit I feel quite the same, to him or to myself. “It's good to see you, too.”

“What can I get you to drink?” he asks.

“Just a glass of wine. I don't have that much time. I have to get home to the babysitter.”

He motions to the waitress. The blue-eyed lovestruck waiter from our last visit is nowhere to be found.

“When you said you might have dirt on Favata I never thought it would turn out to be something like this,” I tell him after I have ordered. “Maybe I'm naïve, but it's shocking to me. I knew he was a
skank, but what kind of man beats a woman up so badly she ends up in the hospital?”

“Not the kind of man you should be working with.”

“Not the kind of man anyone should be working with. How could Robert Merdale not have known this?”

“It was two years ago. In England. Favata did a pretty good job of covering his tracks.”

“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but how did you get ahold of all this?” I ask. “Aren't hospital records confidential?”

“Many things are confidential, until they're not.”

“You are an evil genius,” I tease.

David plays with the ice in his drink. “Sometimes, even if you are looking for something, it's disappointing when you find it.”

I look at him quizzically. “You sound like you are having second thoughts. You can't feel protective of a man who hits women.”

“I don't. Favata deserves everything he gets.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing.” He takes a sip of his scotch. “Tell me, how have you been, Lisa? Aside from this.”

“I don't know,” I answer quietly. “All right, I guess.”

“Did you call any of the lawyers I sent you?”

I shake my head. “Not yet. I need more time.” I smile sadly. “I keep waiting for a sudden attack of clarity, but I'm as confused as ever. Whatever I do or don't do will have such huge ramifications, not just for me, but my daughters.”

David nods.

“What made you finally decide to leave your marriage?”

“It was decided for me.”

“Maybe that's easier.”

We look at each other, then away.

David finishes his drink. While he signals for another, I pick up the manila envelope and begin to open it.

He turns sharply to me. “Lisa, don't.”

“C'mon, I'm dying to see it. I didn't really have a chance this morning.”

“Please. Not now.” He reaches for the envelope but I twist away from him and slide my thumb under the flap before he can stop me.

“I'm sorry,” he says so quietly I can barely hear him.

I can barely hear anything at all.

There are no hospital records inside.

There are three photographs.

I look at the first one. It doesn't register. I know these people but not in this configuration, they are so ingrained, so familiar and yet not. I look closer, as if they will somehow shift into a pattern, a context I can recognize.

It is a photograph of Sam and Deirdre in the café two blocks from Aperçu. Their heads are almost touching, his hand is on hers. You can feel the breath between them, their faces, their lips are that close, you can almost hear the whisper.

Nausea rockets through me.

It's not possible. They don't even like each other.

I stop breathing, flip to the second picture.

Sam and Deirdre embracing on a street corner, their arms around each other's waists. I can tell by his overcoat and navy fringed scarf that it was the afternoon Phoebe got lost in Union Square.

The last photograph was also taken outdoors. They are clearly arguing. I know both of their faces so well, I can see the vitriol in their expressions, in the tilt of their bodies.

I drop the pictures back on the table.

A cool sweat films my face, the back of my neck, blackness encroaches on my peripheral vision, leaving me dizzy and weak.

“I'm so sorry,” David says softly.

I can hardly see as I push my chair away, race to the bathroom, dashing into the first empty stall to throw up.

I sink onto the cold tile floor, my head buried in my hands.

It is not possible.

Sam and Deirdre.

All the times she assured me he would never have an affair, told me to stop asking him.

All the times he lied.

The two of them, together, against me.

What an idiot I am.

Their faces swirl dizzyingly before me, but I can't fit them into place, they fly apart and then rejoin: sitting at the café, their heads almost touching. Embracing on a street corner. I lean over the toilet and throw up again. There is nothing left but bitter acid. I heave so loudly that the woman in the next stall comes and crouches down beside me, and asks if I need help. I shake her away.

I gradually stand up and make it to the sink, where I rinse my mouth and face with cold water. I stand stock still, staring into the mirror. I don't recognize myself, I don't recognize anything. The contours of everything I thought I knew have shattered.

I have no idea what to do.

There is only one thing I know for sure, sharp and hard and clear, one absolute, and that is pure rage at David. It drives me forward, leaving no room for anything else and I grab on to it, ride it.

I cannot feel my legs moving, there is nothing but this. Before I know it, I am standing over him. “Why did you do this?” I demand furiously.

“I'm sorry, Lisa.”

“You had no right.”

“You deserve better than this. As painful as it is, you deserve to know the truth. I wish someone had done that for me when my marriage was falling apart. It would have saved me a lot of torment and guilt.”

I grab my coat. Whatever it is he has to say, I don't want to hear it. “I need to get out of here.”

He begins to rise. “Let me take you.”

I turn angrily to him. “No. You've done enough.”

“I can't let you leave like this.” He reaches over to touch me, but I push him forcefully away and race out.

As soon as I am outside, the anger that guided me, gave me purpose for those few brief moments, dissipates.

I lean up against a building and slowly sink down until I am kneeling on the ground. It is as if every word I have ever known has been stripped of its definition. I am left without language, without meaning, it is all just gone.

A moan escapes but no one stops, no one looks.

I try to sift through the past, all of our pasts, together and apart, but the threads elude me. Nothing meets up, nothing makes sense.

I have never felt so alone.

I slam my fist into my thigh over and over, the pain, the humiliation made tangible, but it doesn't help.

I cannot stay here, I cannot stay still, the pressure within boils over, demanding movement, propulsion. I rise, light-headed, and begin to walk again, fast, without direction, as if I can outpace the tumult within.

At some point I realize my cell phone is ringing. “Home” flashes on the screen.

It is Marissa. It takes me a few seconds to remember who she is.

“Yes?” I hear the misplaced anger in my voice but cannot stop it.

“It's seven o'clock,” Marissa says with a questioning tone.

“And?”

“I was supposed to leave now.”

Christ. “I'm sorry. Please, can you stay and give the girls dinner until Sam gets there? I'm tied up.”

Marissa reluctantly agrees and we hang up.

I grip the phone tightly as I keep walking. I must have gone ten or twelve blocks before the next horrific piece edges into my consciousness: Jack. Jack with his hopes and his second bedroom, Jack, equally betrayed. I dial his cell phone. I cannot stand to be alone with this much anger.

At first, all I can do is say his name.

“Lisa, what is it? Are you okay?”

I don't know where to begin. I wish he could somehow learn it all by osmosis so that I wouldn't have to put it into words, tell him, wreck it all, every last shred. But he is in this, too, he deserves to know. And so I tell him of the photos. The two of them. Behind our
backs. This was all going on behind our backs. God only knows for how long.

“I don't fucking believe they did this again,” he spits out, beyond anger.

“What do you mean, again?”

“Sam and Deirdre.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He never told you, did he?”

“Told me what?”

“The affair he had in college while you were in London…”

“Yes?”

“It was with Deirdre.”

I reel back. “That can't be.”

“I saw them,” Jack assures me.

“You saw them?” Perhaps if I repeat it enough it will begin to sink in.

“Yes. I was away at a tennis match. When I got back to campus it was after midnight, but I thought I'd surprise Deirdre. I went to her room.” He stops suddenly, the hurt, the shock still fresh after all this time, I can hear it in his voice. “They were drunk. Not that it matters. But they were. Naked. Together.”

My entire life has been a lie.

A truck drives noisily by, clanging against the pitted street.

“Why didn't you tell me?” I demand. “You knew this for all these years and you never told me.”

“I turned around and left. They never knew I saw them. I never said a word. I thought if we didn't talk about it, it would be as if it never happened. I kept watching them for evidence that something was still going on but I never saw anything again. I would have said something if I had.”

“You lived with it all this time?”

“I loved her,” he says simply. “I would have done anything to keep her.”

“That's why you were so adamant about Deirdre moving to Cambridge with you, isn't it? You didn't want her anywhere near Sam.”

“Yes. But then the two of you got married and I tried to forget it. It wasn't my place to tell you.” I lose him to a silence. When he speaks again, there is a venom in his voice that shocks me. “Fucking bitch. She's not going to get away with this again. Not this time.”

He hangs up before I can say another word.

I am left alone once more. With this.

Everything in tatters, everything gone.

There is no one left to turn to.

Sheets of fury and resentment, shame and embarrassment layer on top of each other. I don't know where to go, what to do.

And so I walk.

I walk as the night darkens to blackness and chills me deep within.

I walk as my cell phone rings and rings.

I walk, my brain a riptide of hatred and loss, confusion and revelation. Every now and then I look up to discover that I've drifted to a completely new neighborhood before succumbing to the chaos of my own psyche once more.

I'm not sure what time it is. I'm not sure how I got there.

But when I next come out of my trance I find myself outside of Deirdre's building.

No one comes or goes. There is no movement.

I dip back into the shadows and I wait.