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Authors: Maureen Sherry

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BOOK: Opening Belle
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So here I sit beside the same pool I sat beside when my life was carefree. When Henry was a guy I was deeply in love with, when children seemed loud, messy, and not for me and the trajectory of my career seemed due north. That day was so very long ago.

I can see the entrance, and promptly at 12:30 p.m. Tim enters, cloaked in the presence of the self-made. He has an aura that causes people surrounding him to stand taller, to want to be nearer, to rub up against a piece of his magic. He stops at another table to shake hands with someone he knows. When he bends forward I catch sight of his new second-in-command, the guy who gave up mortgage trading at Goldman Sachs to manage large portfolios of rich people's money at a hedge fund. The guy Tim is so excited to bring into the firm to analyze investment ideas with people like me, and to take on the burden of the daily decision making.

That guy is none other than Henry.

CHAPTER 11
How Not to Meet Your Husband, Part I

H
IS FIRST WORDS
to me in 1990 were: “Are these people your friends? No wonder you came looking for me.”

I was standing in line to register for freshman anthropology and was surrounded by some earnest, nerdy souls I didn't know. Henry Wilkins had come from behind, lobbing lines at me directly from
Pretty Woman
, a Julia Roberts movie out that past summer. I didn't miss a beat.

“You're late,” I said, taking in all six feet four inches of him and the thick, dark hair he constantly adjusted. He was wearing a real alligator belt holding up khaki shorts on his slim, articulated frame. Guys like him didn't exist in my Bronx neighborhood. No boy I grew up with would quote Richard Gere without making a gagging noise.

“You're stunning,” he continued.

“You're forgiven.” I smiled before turning my back. I was relieved it was my turn to step up to the registration table because I didn't know how to keep my witty lines going. Quoting the one movie I had seen six times over the summer was not maintainable. What if he switched movies? He didn't.

“When you're not fidgeting, you're very tall,” he continued.

Had this guy memorized the entire film? “You forgot the best part,” I countered.

He paused, making me look right at him, right into his intense, dark eyes, and making me understand how I had gotten to be eighteen years old without ever having a boyfriend before. Maybe I'd been waiting.

“—and very beautiful,” he finished.

Bingo. He did remember that part.

“Excuse me. It's my turn to register,” I said, hating the fact that I was the first to break character.

He didn't back down. “You don't really want to take this class,” Henry said, nodding his head toward the anthropology sign.

“I don't think that was in the movie.” I laughed as I stepped to the desk. “But I do want this class. I need to learn what drives baboon behavior.”

“And that's important why?”

I was not about to tell some stranger about my love for the Bronx Zoo or my crazy theories about the human race. “So I can understand people better.”

“Then come with me,” he said, like he knew I would obey.

We weren't in some dark alley where something bad could happen. I followed him.

“And who is going to hire you because you studied primate behavior?” he continued as we walked across the giant armory where Cornell University holds registration.

“Lots of places—the New York City DA's office, the corporate office of IBM, or maybe some dot-com thingy.”

“You didn't really just say ‘thingy,' did you?”

“I did but I didn't mean to. I was at a loss for words.” I searched the room in hopes one of my new roommates would spot me with such a cute guy.

He laughed; not that polite-response laugh, but a deep, real one, and that laugh got my heart pounding.

“Okay,” he said, “this is the class that'll get you somewhere.” He stopped at the front of a line filled with good-looking freshmen waiting to register for Wine Tasting 101.

“Everyone,” he yelled out as if he already knew them, “this is Isabelle from the Bronx.” I had given him exactly zero personal information.

It turned out that wine tasting was offered as an elective in the School of Hotel Administration. According to Henry, knowing about wine was the most useful class the university offered. He, a first-week freshman, had handpicked the students he felt would eventually run the campus and included me, as he told me later, because my face looked so earnest. He had studied our Freshman Faces, a hardcopy book for every new student, showing their picture and listing their studies, interests, and hometown, and then deduced who should, as he said, “hang out together.” He had walked through freshman registration finding those very people and amassing them together for wine tasting. Registering for a class as directed by a stranger seemed like the wildest thing I'd ever done.

“Let me guess, you own a vineyard,” I joked.

“Not currently.”

“And you're from L.A.?” I continued giving his clothing the once-over.

“Close. Rochester, New York, home of Eastman Kodak, generous tax credits, and more than our share of companies in bankruptcy protection.”

“So what's with the outfit?” I asked.

“I haven't yet gone to the place where I'll be from but the native outfit there is this. You may wish to revisit your wardrobe too,” he said, nodding at my overalls.

Why did this guy who knew what he wanted seem so sexy? The beer-chugging pot smokers bored me, the intellectuals were too intense, the jocks too single-minded, but a funny, social, smart guy who was ambitious without being nerdy got my heart fluttering, and I was not alone. Henry was surrounded by girls who seemed perfect.

I joined the crew team and eventually found a boyfriend, a lightweight rower named Ansel who stood five eight to my five eleven. Rowing brought the intense work ethic out in me. There was something about forgoing pleasure, skipping parties, going for double workouts, and the higher grades, rocking body, and being a part of our often medaled varsity team that felt great to me. Everyone in my life had a place and Henry's place was in the distance. We'd meet for the occasional lunch where my erratic heartbeat would sometimes betray me to myself, but as predicted, Henry switched girlfriends fast.

In the middle of our junior year I began treating Ansel like a previously loved blankie that I still thoughtlessly carried around. One evening I dragged him to a party and ran into Henry, who proceeded to introduce us to yet another girl whose name I instantly deleted. Their names always ended with the “ee” sound—Joanie, Stacy, Tracy, Francie, Annie—and when he introduced me to this one I stopped listening.

Ansel asked me to dance and Henry didn't even wait for me to say no.

“Well, kids, it's time to cut the charade,” he said, grinning away.

“Charade?” his girlfriend and I asked together.

The three of us stood expectantly, waiting for Henry to entertain us in the usual way that Henry did.

“Belle and I have been in love since the first week of school,” Henry announced.

“We have?” I asked.

“You are?” both Ansel and the dark-haired girl said simultaneously.

The three of us waited expectantly for the punch line. But this time there was none.

Dark-haired Girl turned toward him. “This time it's not funny, Henry.”

Ansel just looked hurt.

“I'm serious,” Henry said. “I just don't want to have these thoughts and not share them with the three of you. I mean, I'm not an asshole, or I am an asshole but I don't speak behind people's backs and I don't cheat. I speak in front of people and I speak the truth. Am I right, Belle?”

All three of them turned toward me. Was he right? Were we in love? I mean, I thought about him all the time, melted a little when we ate together or took classes together, and had even gotten to know his whole family when they made their frequent trips to campus, but I had resigned myself to a constant state of agitation. “What do you mean by right?” I asked, buying myself time.

“I'm out of here,” his girlfriend said just before weakly smacking his face. The three of us watched her go but Henry turned away first. I never forgot how he could move on like that without looking back.

“So what do you think, Amstel?”

“It's Ansel.”

“Yes, sorry. What do you think?”

“About my girlfriend cheating on me?” he asked.

“I've been cheating on you?” I asked. The conversation grew weirder by the second. “Ansel, it's not like you and I are even sleeping together—”

“Wait, you haven't had sex yet?” Henry interrupted, making both Ansel and me feel like losers. “Haven't you been together for, like, a year?” he asked.

“Well, we've talked about it,” I said weakly.

“I mean, we're going to,” Ansel said pathetically.

“Oh my God, you waited for me,” he said softly, taking my hand.

“I didn't wait for you.” Had I waited for him? I was so confused.

“Look, can we talk, Henry?” I asked.

“No, can
we
talk?” Ansel asked me.

•  •  •

Henry walked me away that night, away from Ansel and the party and everything safe. For the next seven years we were rarely apart, and when he left me, it was in that same way he left the others. Never once looking over his shoulder.

CHAPTER 12
The Day the Market Moved on Me

D
URING OUR
Four Seasons lunch, Henry acted as though we had never met, like I was some fresh-faced colleague brimming over with investment ideas for him and he was there to listen.

I stood to shake hands, an automatic business response of mine, and felt my knees weaken from the adrenaline overload. Hadn't he been told whom he was meeting? I searched his face for some shrug of irony but Henry wouldn't break character. Why didn't he give me a heads-up phone call? This was much worse than the forced “Hi” we mutter on the preschool steps. This meant I would be calling Henry daily. He would be my largest client and I was going to be subservient to him. I couldn't breathe.

I didn't touch my food as Tim rambled on about the new investment strategy Cheetah would be adopting under Henry's leadership. I could barely keep my water glass steady when I held it in my shaking hand. I usually hit my stride at such moments, but not that time. Henry snapped open his napkin and proceeded to enjoy three courses with a ravenous appetite.

Everyone has someone they will never get over, where closure is not a possibility. Closure is made-up psychobabble. It's not real. You just have to stay away from that person, because no amount of talking will ever resolve a thing. It's not possible to actually work with that person and Henry was my person.

Henry's boss didn't seem to notice. He was enjoying himself so much he ordered a chocolate soufflé for desert. Soufflé. As in an extra-twenty-minute-waiting-time dessert. And wait we did, trading niceties. My hair began to flop into my face, my earring weirdly fell onto the table, I looked down to see an ugly run in my hose; I was melting.

Boylan said things like, “Henry went to Cornell and Columbia Business School.”

And I would nod my head with disbelief and answer with things like, “Really? I went to Cornell too.”

“I'd ask what year you graduated,” he said, “but I can tell it was well after me.”

Polite titter from me.

Henry kept the questions rolling. “Where did you go to business school?”

Henry knew I didn't go to business school, first because I couldn't afford it and then for fear I'd never get another job at my level. I happened to work in the place that cared more about performance than degrees. Our chairman wanted employees he called “poor, smart, and determined to get rich,” and when I was hired, that described me. Was he trying to embarrass me in front of his boss? Was this retribution for the thong episode? If he was looking for some white flag of surrender, he picked the wrong victim.

“I didn't go to business school,” I said with artificial sweetener raising my voice. “I loved my job too much, and knew real life had already taught me more than anything that could be taught in B school.”

“Really?” said Henry, seemingly more engaged now that I was finally lobbing back. “I have to say, I'm a fan of formal training, though I do see your point. By the way, I can't believe you've had three kids
and
are the primary breadwinner. How can you possibly juggle it all?”

That did it. If there's one cliché statement that working mothers everywhere despise, it's that one: the “I don't know how you do it” thing. I never thought I could hate Henry Wilkins but I sure was coming close.

“Did I say I was the primary breadwinner? I don't think I did. Also I think I've seen you at Fifth Avenue Preschool.”

Just then the man sitting behind Tim took that particular moment to put a hand out and say hello to him, so I added, “Or maybe it's because we've screwed sixteen different ways to Sunday. Yes, maybe that's why we seem to have met.” I lifted my linen napkin, dabbed at my lips, and smiled.

“Oh,” Henry said, clearing his throat and reddening. I had shut down the “her husband has no job” conversation. “Well, you'd be hard to miss in a crowd,” Henry said in some feeble attempt to regain his footing and because Tim had turned back to our table, “but when I'm at that school I'm so focused on my kids, I never notice the adults.”

Gag me. Men have no problem impressing their bosses with their family-man rap, while women never dare mention their families at work. “Yes, I'm sure you were just too focused,” I said.

Tim continued to look admiringly at his younger protégé, oblivious to the invisible conversation also going on at the table.

BOOK: Opening Belle
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