Marisa de los Santos - Belong to Me (13 page)

“Oh, thank God.” Piper’s eyes were stinging.

“I met him at yoga,” said Elizabeth. “And we had coffee a couple times a week. First at this little funky, awful coffee place for art kids, and then at his house. He was divorced.”

“You went to his house? When you were supposed to be at yoga?”
Yoga,
thought Piper.
What kind of man goes to yoga?

“We kissed exactly four times,” said Elizabeth, and in spite of all the blushing, the happiness in her voice was unmistakable. “He had this little wrought-iron table in his kitchen, and we held hands across it all the time.”

Then she laughed. “But it was
hot
hand-holding.”

“Elizabeth!” But Piper found that she was laughing, too. Four kisses and hand-holding. Piper wanted with her whole soul to hang on to Elizabeth until time ran out. She could laugh about four kisses and hand-holding.

When their laughter ended, Piper said, “So you were going to leave Tom for hand-holding man?”

“Mike,” corrected Elizabeth.

“Mike?” The name was all wrong. Once Elizabeth had shown Piper some yoga poses. What business did a guy named Mike have doing downward dog in those loose black pants and, what? A tank top? Piper gave an involuntary shudder.

“I wasn’t in love with Mike,” sighed Elizabeth, “but Mike reminded me to want to be in love. He reminded me that passion is one of the necessities of life.”

With difficulty, Piper repressed a snort of disgust. Passion. A word from a romance novel. Swarthy men. Corseted women with rivers of blond hair and high, heaving breasts, round and white like softballs. No one had breasts like that.

“I disagree,” said Piper. “Of course, you’re entitled to your opinion, but passion is sloppy and over the top and immature, and, anyway, it doesn’t last. You don’t build a life on it. Passion makes people lose their heads.” Piper’s own mother, for example, had lost her head and left her sweet, hardworking husband alone in his big house with his kids.

“But everyone deserves that! I wanted to lose my head at least a little every day.” Elizabeth closed her eyes and hugged herself with her own arms. “I don’t regret wanting that. But I regret how I did it. I didn’t tell Tom about Mike. I blamed him for everything. I told him he was selfish and a workaholic. I accused him of neglect. I remember screaming that word at him, and that’s the worst thing anyone can say to Tom.”

“What happened after that?”

“He got mad. Then he got sad. He begged me to go to counseling with him, but I said it was way too late for that. Maybe it wasn’t, but it’s like once I decided to divorce Tom, I got so energized by the idea of a new life that I forgot everything else.”

“I can’t imagine being divorced,” said Piper, keeping her voice as nonjudgmental as possible. In truth, she wasn’t feeling judgmental, not at that particular moment. It was a simple statement of fact. “Think about Jilly Keyes.”

Three years ago, Jilly’s husband, Chad, had taken her to Melt, the upscale fondue restaurant in town, in order to break the news that he’d been transferred to Switzerland, and that it was nothing personal, but he believed the transfer was a sign that their marriage was over. It was an opportunity, he’d reportedly told her, a challenge to start fresh in a new country, and he had to rise to that challenge. He owed it to himself.

Although Piper had received the story third- or fourth-hand, she knew precisely what his voice had sounded like when he’d dropped this bombshell: pompous, exuberant.
A challenge,
as though leaving his marriage made him Christopher Columbus or that rich guy who kept trying to circle the globe in a goddamn balloon. Chad Keyes was a grade-A ass. A fondue restaurant? A restaurant, any restaurant, was a hideous breakup venue. But
fondue
? Imagine life as you know it ending over a pot of liquid cheese.

Outraged, Piper and Elizabeth and their whole set had rallied around Jilly and her three truculent children. They’d helped with carpooling, babysitting. Kate invited her to her annual holiday party; Piper treated her to a day at Paradise Found, the whole package minus the seaweed wrap, which they all agreed was a waste of money. But after the first few months, the flow of invitations began to dwindle and, in time, stopped altogether. Jilly became a kindergarten teacher at one of the local private schools (not, thank God, Tallyrand), a shocking decision of which no one approved. How awkward, to attend parent/teacher conferences with a woman you used to have dinner with, sitting across the low classroom table from Jilly, who’d begun wearing ethnic jewelry and purple wool-felt clogs.

The truth was that there was no room in Piper’s world for a divorced mother. Parties, cookouts, dinner dates, trips to people’s vacation homes in Stone Harbor or Rehoboth: to participate, you had to be married, preferably with children. One or two married couples without children hung on to the edge of the social circle by the skin of their teeth. But a divorced woman? Piper could imagine becoming a divorced woman about as much as she could imagine becoming a tightrope walker for Barnum & Bailey.

“That’s just it,” said Elizabeth. “I didn’t think about Jilly. I only thought, ‘I want out.’”

“And then?”

“And then I finally went in to have those symptoms checked out, and then I got diagnosed. It didn’t seem like the time to divorce my husband.” Elizabeth gave a bitter little laugh. “I thought I’d get better and then we’d do it later. But if I was going to be sick for a while, Emma and Peter needed a stable home with their dad in it.”

A Christmas cactus sat in the center of Elizabeth’s kitchen table, and Piper began to fiddle with it, pinching off spent blossoms, moving the cactus fronds around.
This Christmas cactus is blooming too early,
Piper thought, scornfully,
and a Christmas cactus is not a centerpiece plant.
Paperwhites, yes. Amaryllis, yes. Christmas cactus, no.

“I think Ginny put this plant here. It’s the wrong place for it.”

Elizabeth took one of Piper’s hands, lifted it off the plant, and held it. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you would try to talk me out of it,” she said gently. “I’m sorry.”

Piper didn’t meet Elizabeth’s eyes, but she nodded and squeezed her hand.

“But I’m telling you now because I’m afraid for Tom, and I’m afraid for the kids.”

“Why?”

“He hasn’t been doing well; you’ve probably noticed that. And today he broke down, just—broke. Fell apart. He said he couldn’t stand it that he’d ruined my life by being such a terrible husband. He even said that maybe if he’d been better and I’d been happier, I would not have gotten sick.”

“That’s ridiculous,” scoffed Piper. “Unhappiness doesn’t cause cancer.”

“No. And I don’t think he really believes that. What’s killing him is the idea that I will die unhappy, in a miserable marriage. He hates that my life isn’t ending on a good note.” Until Elizabeth covered her face with her hands, Piper had not noticed that she’d started to cry. “So I told him that he’s a good man and was the love of my life, both of which are true. I tried to tell him all the things I hadn’t told him before. How it was both our faults, how I’d taken over with the kids and not let the two of us be in that together. Mostly, I wanted him to understand the real reason I’d thought our marriage was over. It was over because we forgot to stay in love. Both of us.”

Elizabeth leaned back, exhausted. When she spoke again, her voice was hollow and sad.

“I told him all that, but when I’m gone, I’m so afraid he’s going to let guilt eat him up. It’s bad enough now, but when I die…A man drowning in guilt and hating himself is not going to be a good father for Emma and Peter. They need to feel like they’re allowed to be happy. I want him to set that example for them.”

Elizabeth looked hard at Piper. “So keep it. That information about Mike. I didn’t tell him that. But you keep it. And if you need to use it, even if you need to…embellish it, do it. Add sex. Add orgies. Whatever it takes to make him understand it was my fault, too. Promise.”

“I promise,” said Piper, so adamant she was almost severe, “I’ll help him. You stop worrying about that, now, okay? I’ll take care of everything.”

No one said anything. Then Elizabeth smiled a smile that was like a plant opening in the sun. “Good.” She snapped her fingers in the air. “Now, put on my James Taylor and get those children over here.”

“I’ll be right back.”

“Wait,” said Elizabeth, her eyes full of mischief. “Call Cornelia and Teo. Ask if they’ll walk the kids over themselves.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I want to meet the new neighbors.” She grinned. “And I want them to meet me. I don’t want to be the mystery cancer victim down the road.”

“Ha!” Piper eyed Elizabeth. “I know you, lady, and you want to flirt with that Dr. Sandoval.”

“While I still can,” sang out Elizabeth, and she laughed. “While I still have breath in my body!”

Ten minutes later, as she sat in Elizabeth’s kitchen with her neighbors, hearing the children play in the sunroom and James Taylor sing a lullaby to himself, Piper discovered that she did not dislike Cornelia Brown. She knew that the feeling, or lack of feeling, might not last and half hoped that it wouldn’t, but for the moment, there it was, a smoothness across her forehead, a loosening in the place where her lower jaw met her ear.

From the moment that Elizabeth had become more or less homebound, Piper had kept a mental list of all of Elizabeth’s visitors, and before long, the mental list had grown into a kind of detailed catalog, an internal spreadsheet documenting the behavior of each visitor: what they brought, how frequently they came, how long they stayed, and, above all, how they behaved toward Elizabeth. Some of the information in the spreadsheet came from Elizabeth herself because Elizabeth had not morphed into a sugary, pure-souled cancer patient like the ones on television. She wasn’t above dissecting and dishing about her visitors with Piper, a fact that made Piper want to fall down on her knees with gratitude.

For Elizabeth’s part, the laughing, imitating, and eye rolling that accompanied this dishing was good natured. But Piper was on the job. She was eagle-eyed and keeping watch, and there was nothing amusing about the information she was storing up. There would be a day of reckoning. Piper had no sense of when the day would be or what would happen on it, and the phrase “day of reckoning” almost certainly did not exist in her personal lexicon, but she knew that there would be one, and you could see the knowledge enter her gaze and her posture whenever someone crossed the threshold of Elizabeth’s house. The day of reckoning would come, and when it did, Piper would be ready.

There were many wrong and unforgivable ways to approach Elizabeth. Tentatively, as though she had a bomb strapped to her body. Loudly, with a pasted-on, cheek-splitting smile. Tearfully. Patronizingly. Megan had failed to make eye contact and had addressed all of her remarks to Piper. Liddy, who hardly knew Elizabeth, had immediately taken her hand and held it for the duration of the visit. Allie had stayed, literally, two minutes, shifting her weight from foot to foot, like a kid in the principal’s office. Parvee had wept out loud. Tom’s work colleague Roland had spent ten minutes recalling how good looking Elizabeth used to be, what a “slammin’ bod” she’d had, and smiling a sharky smile that made Piper want to knee him in the groin.

A few visitors had been fine, relaxed and blessedly ordinary. And Kate, ditzy, dismissible Kate, was perfect every time. She’d waft in on a cloud of breezy goofiness, bearing wonderful gifts: the latest
Us
and
People,
a box of Hostess Twinkies, a manicure kit with the season’s new OPI colors, or a rumor that the Hollanders and the Tifts had engaged in wife swapping the previous weekend (“Digital videos! They say there are digital videos! How hysterical is that?
Digital?
”). If it were up to Piper, and Piper believed it might be, Kate’s place in heaven was a done deal.

So when Cornelia walked through Elizabeth’s kitchen door, Piper sat serenely in her powder blue sweater and jeans, one toffee-colored loafer crossed over the other, but inside, she was all watchdog, ears pricked, nose in the air, a ridge of hair rising along her back.

Cornelia had Peter in her arms.

She walked over to Elizabeth, smiled an undeniably true smile at her, and said, “Emma laid down the law, I promise you that. She told me in no uncertain terms that never, under any circumstances, is Peter to be carried. Absolutely, positively not.”

Elizabeth smiled back and said, “And yet.”

“He climbed me like a tree frog and gave me this sweet, hopeful look.”

“Oh, yes. I know that look.”

“So you know my hands were tied.”

Elizabeth laughed. Then she reached out and gave one of Peter’s sneakers a tug. “Okay, tree frog of mine, give this poor, manipulated woman a break.”

“First things first,” said Cornelia to Peter, and she placed a kiss on his temple, then set him down.
That’s a woman who wants a baby,
thought Piper. Cornelia turned to face Elizabeth again and held out her hand.

“Cornelia Brown.”

“Elizabeth Donahue.” Piper watched Elizabeth squeeze Cornelia’s hand, then glance over Cornelia’s shoulder. “And where is that famous husband of yours?”

Cornelia groaned. “The story of my life. The most camera-shy man on the planet and
he
gets to be the celebrity.” She turned and squinted out the window. “Teo appears to have gotten no farther than your yard, where he is right this second turning Emma, Carter, and Meredith into wild beasts, I’m sorry to report. He has that effect on children.” She walked to the window, rapped on it, then shook her finger at Teo.

“He seems to have had that effect on some of our female friends as well,” said Elizabeth archly.

Piper eyed Cornelia. She knew Elizabeth was watching, too. They both made emphatic fun of the jealous wives they knew, so they were a little disappointed when Cornelia turned back to Elizabeth with twinkling eyes.

“Ooh, be sure to tell him that,” she said, evilly. “He’ll turn eleven shades of red and then die of embarrassment.” Piper noted with grudging approval that Cornelia didn’t flinch, the way some people did after saying the word “die” in front of Elizabeth. On her last (and, if Piper had her way, final) visit, Connie Abernathy had actually apologized for the phrase “drop-dead gorgeous.”