Skipping a Beat (4 page)

Four

KATE HAD DONE IT again. Just as the elevator doors opened and I stepped into the hospital’s lobby, I received her text message telling me she’d arranged to have my Jaguar brought to the hospital’s parking lot and the keys left at the admissions desk. Whatever Michael paid her, it wasn’t enough.

For just an instant, I imagined turning the wrong way out of the parking lot and speeding toward the highway. Any highway, it didn’t matter which one. I had a few hundred dollars in my wallet, enough to see me through a week or two’s worth of driving if I wanted to stay anonymous and not leave a credit card trail. I could roll down the windows and blare the radio and keep the ball of my foot pressed hard to the gas pedal. There wouldn’t be room for anything else in the cocoon of my car, not even the icy sensation that something was coming, something I wouldn’t be able to outrun.

I sighed and turned the key in the ignition, feeling my sedan leap to life with a gentle purr. Bad enough that I’d almost forgotten to answer Michael when he told me he loved me. If I went on the lam now, I’d never be named Wife of the Year.

Traffic was light, which was unheard of for D.C., even in the middle of the day, and soon I was heading down our driveway, which was flanked by tall pine trees for privacy. I used my remote control to open our security gate, then left my car parked by our outdoor fountain and hurried to unlock our front door. It took me two tries; my hands were trembling again, even though my sugar buzz from the cupcakes had worn off long ago.

I stepped inside and turned off the alarm as my eyes drank in the bright, abstract artwork on the walls of our entranceway, and I felt the tension in my neck and shoulders ease just a bit. Every time I entered this house, I felt like a guest at the most outrageous hotel imaginable. Maybe that was because I
was
a sort of guest: Michael had paid for it, and a team of decorators had picked out everything from the colors on the walls to the throw pillows on the couches. The decorators had driven us nuts—I’m still awed by their level of excitement about the merits of ivory versus buff-colored swatches—but in the end, they’d delivered exactly what they’d promised. It wasn’t a house; it was a showplace, filled with air and light and enormous walls of glass. Massive art deco-inspired chandeliers hung from two-story-high ceilings, and our gleaming main dining room table stretched out far enough to seat twenty-four. Both of our kitchens—the large caterers’ one on the main level, and a smaller private one upstairs—were awash in rich granites and copper, and our six bathrooms shone with details like hand-painted tiles and detached glass bowl sinks. “Suitable for embassy-style entertaining,” our real estate agent had murmured, gesturing toward the grand rooms, as if we might suddenly decide to stage a violent coup against the ambassador to Sweden.

Michael had kept his vow to succeed, and then some: The little company he’d started in our cramped old apartment’s galley kitchen—all-natural, low-sugar, flavored bottles of water—had netted him more than $70 million after its stock went public, just before competitors like Vitaminwater and Smartwater burst onto the scene.

Seventy million dollars
. It was impossible to wrap my mind around it—kind of like the reaction I had to black holes in space, or the principles of aerodynamics, or tenth-grade geometry.

But success hadn’t slowed Michael down even for a moment. He was branching into new products, like organic energy bars and prepackaged, food-pyramid-friendly kids’ lunches, and now it looked like they might someday become as valuable as his DrinkUp Water.

WILL DUNHILL’S THIRST FOR SUCCESS EVER BE QUENCHED
? read the headline on the two-page spread in
Fortune
, which was framed and prominently hung above Michael’s desk (my unspoken answer: Nope. Even if he swigged down Niagara Falls, he’d still be parched).

I bypassed our elevator and climbed the grand split spiral staircase that led to our master bedroom suite. I hurried into Michael’s bathroom and began searching his medicine cabinets and linen closets before finally finding his toiletries bag in a vanity drawer. Let’s see, he’d need deodorant, a razor, maybe some face lotion … I scooped up a black glass bottle with an indecipherable French name, then noticed two other brands. Which one did he use? I shrugged and decided to put all three into the bag. Now, where was his toothbrush? I searched his medicine cabinet twice before finally spotting an electric one perched by the side of the sink. But Michael hated electric toothbrushes, I thought, feeling strangely off-center. He said the noise made him feel like he was at the dentist’s office. When had that changed?

As I stood there, frowning down at the toothbrush, a memory flashed through my mind. Back in our old apartment, the one Michael and I had rented when we’d first moved to town, we’d shared what had to be the world’s tiniest bathroom. Michael always showered first, since he sprang out of bed like he’d been awakened by the live end of a cattle prod, and by the time the alarm sounded and I stumbled in, rubbing my eyes and yawning hugely, he’d be shaving.

“Good morning, sunshine,” he’d singsong in the voice of a chipper preschool teacher.

“Go to hell,” I’d mumble, elbowing him out of the way so I could reach past the plastic curtain decorated with pictures of palm trees and turn on the shower. I’d come alive as the alternating hot and cold water hit me (our water temperature was inconsistent, but I’d decided to pick my battles with our landlord and focus on the broken freezer), then Michael and I would chat through mouthfuls of minty toothpaste and over the roar of my hair dryer. We’d compare our schedules for the day and bump hips like backup dancers as we jockeyed for position in front of the mirror. Michael would hand me my flat hairbrush without being asked, and I’d towel off the bit of shaving foam he’d missed behind one of his ears.

When Michael and I had first toured this house, I’d swooned when I saw my bathroom with the sun streaming in through the skylights and the balcony overlooking our sprawling green backyard. The steam shower was big enough for a dozen people if you were so inclined (just for the record, I wasn’t), and the fixtures on the double limestone sinks were as delicately crafted as works of art. The nights when I’d sit down on an exposed toilet bowl at 3:00
A.M.
and kick Michael awake in retaliation for leaving the seat up were happily behind us.

On our first morning in the house, I’d stepped onto the sea green porcelain tiles, then curled my toes in delight. “They’re heated! Michael, you’ve got to come feel this!” But across the expanse of our bedroom and sitting area, Michael’s bathroom door remained shut; he hadn’t heard me. I’d shrugged, then stepped into my oversize Jacuzzi.

Why was I even thinking about this? I wondered, blinking away the old images. I needed to get back to the hospital. I tossed a travel toothbrush into the kit, then tucked a long cashmere robe into an overnight bag. I added jeans and a casual shirt, too, so Michael wouldn’t have to put back on his suit and torn shirt. Once he got out of the hospital, he probably wouldn’t want any reminders of what had happened today. On the way out, I hesitated, then grabbed Michael’s laptop off his office desk. He’d probably be demanding it within a few hours.

I put the bag on the passenger’s seat of my car and was pulling out of the driveway when my cell phone rang. I recognized the incoming number and pressed speakerphone.

“Hey, Raj,” I said, relieved to hear a friendly voice. Raj was one of Michael’s former business school professors, and since he’d joined the company, he’d become close to both of us.

“Julia,” he greeted me in his lovely Indian accent. “Quite an afternoon.”

“We’ve all had better ones,” I agreed as I programmed the name of George Washington University Hospital into my GPS. I was too shaken to trust myself to find it without help. “But the main thing is, Michael’s fine.”

“Thank God for that,” Raj said. He paused. “I hate to bother you.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m on my way to the hospital now.”

“Oh.” A strange tone crept into Raj’s voice. “You haven’t seen Michael yet?”

There it was again: that glimmer of—anxiety? confusion?—that everyone who’d come into contact with Michael since his cardiac arrest seemed to experience.

“No, no, I saw him,” I said. “I just ran home to get him a change of clothes.”

“How …” Raj cleared his throat and began again. “How was he feeling?”

“I think he was looped up on something,” I said. “He was definitely calmer than usual.” I gave a little half laugh, but Raj didn’t join me.

“I was there, you know,” he said. “When it happened. I was at the other end of the table, and I’d just turned my back to fill up my coffee cup. I didn’t see him fall, but I heard him hit the floor.”

Raj didn’t say anything else, and I wondered why he’d called. It was almost as if he was waiting for me to volunteer something.

“I’ll tell Michael you phoned,” I finally said.

“Please do,” Raj said. “I’m here for whatever either of you need. Anything at all.”

“Thanks,” I said. I was about to hang up when Raj’s voice stopped me.

“Julia?” he asked. “Did Michael … say anything at the hospital?”

“Like what?” I asked. I pulled to a stop at a red light and looked down at the phone, feeling icy fingertips tickling my spine.

“Just checking. It’s nothing.” His voice changed; grew more forceful. “He seemed a little disoriented, that’s all. Call me anytime,” Raj said again. “I’ll have my cell phone on all night.”

I pushed Disconnect, and as I crossed the border from Virginia into D.C., I turned up the volume on my Puccini CD, trying to drown out the troublesome thoughts buzzing in my head.

Five

SO HOW DID MICHAEL and I get from there to here, from being inseparable to becoming near strangers? There isn’t a single moment I can hold up and turn around, like one of those prehistoric insects suspended in a chunk of amber, and say,
Do you see it? That’s it; that’s the precise second when everything changed for Michael and me
. No, our marriage was more like spending an afternoon at the beach while the tide receded. You could be lying right there on the soft sand and not even notice the microscopic changes—the waves pulling back, inexorably pulling back—while the sun warmed your back and the happy shouts of children filled your ears. Then you’d look up from the last page in your novel and blink, feeling disoriented, wondering how the ocean had moved so far away and when everything around you had changed.

By the time my husband collapsed at work, he and I hadn’t talked—I mean really talked, one of our all-night heart-to-hearts—in years, which is crazy, because talking was all we used to do. Well, maybe not all. We
were
teenagers, which meant we were so overflowing with hormones that we practically trailed them behind us like bread crumbs, but every day, when the final school bell sounded, we’d race to the banks of the river on the outskirts of our town. We’d spread out a blanket and ignore our homework while we drank each other in. No detail was too obscure or minor to revel in: He hated pickles, I couldn’t stand ketchup. “We’ll never be able to have a proper barbecue,” Michael moaned. “They’ll ban us from ever living in the suburbs.” We both secretly, humiliatingly, loved the game show
Family Feud
. I told Michael about how I tried to keep my lips tightly clenched for an entire year after some bitches in training on the third-grade playground told me my dimples looked like ugly holes in my face (“I’ll put itching powder in their bras,” Michael vowed, tracing my dimples with a gentle fingertip. “I’ll slip so much vitamin C into their Diet Cokes that they’ll turn orange. We’ll create an army of itchy-boobed Oompa Loompas, and force them to do our bidding.”)

Our conversations were like Russian nesting dolls: With each layer of thoughts and fears and memories we uncovered, we only grew more eager to delve deeper, to tease apart the outer façades, until we finally uncovered each other’s hidden, secret parts. We stretched out those delicious afternoons as long as possible, folding up our blanket and shrugging into our backpacks only when mosquitoes began nibbling on us and I imagined my mother’s anxious face peering through the living room window.

Though it took him a while to open up, I slowly came to understand how horrible it was for Michael at home. Before they moved out, his older brothers had teased him relentlessly, calling him a nerd and a geek, landing charley horses on his skinny biceps or sticking out a foot to trip him as Michael walked by, engrossed in a book. Worst of all, his dad didn’t try to stop the torment. Once when his oldest brother punched him in the stomach, Michael doubled over, then looked at his father for help and caught him smirking.

“I think my dad’s jealous that I’m smarter than he is,” Michael said, his lighthearted tone contradicting the way his mouth twisted around the words. “And I look more like my … my, ah, mother. That’s part of it, too, I guess.”

Eventually I told Michael about my father, too. He was the first person I ever talked to about it.

Sometimes we just lay silently for hours, our legs, arms, and even fingers entwined, as though we couldn’t bear for a single part of us not to be touching. I honestly believe Michael and I saved each other that year, the final one we spent in our hometown.

Now, when I mentally trace the trajectory of our relationship—and I’ve had plenty of time to do it, lots of silent evenings alone in our home—I realize there wasn’t a sharp breaking point or single furious argument that set us on our current path. And yet, a particular evening always comes back to me when I wonder how and why everything changed for us. It was the night I listened to an opera and fell in love for the second time in my life.

I’d heard opera music before, of course, but I’d always flicked past it to a different radio station or talked over it at dinner parties. Go to an opera? I mean, if you were looking for that kind of a thrill, why not just volunteer to referee a shuffleboard tournament on a seniors’ cruise?

Then I agreed to take on the D. C. Opera Company as a client on a pro bono basis. It was a win-win: My company could use the tax write-off, and the opera company desperately needed the infusion of cash that my fund-raisers would attract. As a thank-you, the company sent me two tickets to opening night of
Madama Butterfly
.

“Do you want to go?” Michael asked as he looked in a hallway mirror to straighten his tie. He was heading out even earlier than usual that morning; he’d just bought a minority interest in the Blazes, and he was meeting with the D.C. mayor about building a new basketball stadium.

“Sure.” I shrugged, yawning sleepily and glancing down at the tickets in my hand. “I should probably learn something about my new client.”

“It’s Friday night? What else do I have on Friday?” he asked.

I narrowed my eyes. “You better not have forgotten.”

Michael smiled and held up his briefcase like a shield against my death glare. “Kidding. I have to go to New York that day,” he said, opening our front door and stepping outside, then quickly ducking back in to kiss me. “I’ll meet you there.”

As the evening approached, I began to look forward to it more and more. At least Michael and I could laugh at the opera snobs—they didn’t actually use those silly little glasses, did they?—then, afterward, we could have a late dinner together. I’d surprise my husband, I decided, impulsively reaching for the phone to make reservations at a fancy Italian restaurant where every booth was sealed off with thick velvet curtains.

At five o’clock, I stopped working and took a long, steaming bath in my Jacuzzi. I spent extra time on my makeup, blending a peach blush high on my cheekbones and smoking my eyes; then I put on my new emerald-colored silk underwear. Michael had once told me he liked the way the color brought out the green in my hazel eyes. If my push-up bra lifted and plumped with the enthusiasm it promised, I doubted Michael would be noticing my eyes tonight.

By the time I began to climb the majestic marble steps leading to the opera company’s front doors, I felt almost giddy. Michael and I needed to do this more often, I realized, inhaling the crisp air that made me think of bonfires and hot apple cider and the crunch of orange and gold leaves under my feet. How long had it been since we’d had a quiet dinner, just the two of us?

I looked off into the distance at the Washington Monument and nearly laughed out loud, remembering the first time I’d seen it, more than a decade earlier. Michael and I had been teenagers then, freshly graduated from high school and driving toward our new life together in an ancient station wagon with a piece of paneling missing from the side and garbage bags stuffed full of our belongings in the trunk. Every fifty miles or so we’d had to stop and fill the radiator with cold water and check the patched tire to make sure it wasn’t leaking.

Then we crossed from Virginia into D.C. and the huge, pencil-shaped monument loomed into view. Michael pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car while we gaped at it. We’d really done it; we’d escaped our town and our families, and we were crossing the threshold into a brand-new life together.

“I can’t believe it,” Michael breathed.

I blinked back tears, too overcome to talk.

“I mean, I can’t believe they built that thing just to honor me,” he said, guiding my hand to his lap. “Isn’t it a perfect replica?”

I batted his hand away. “Freud was right about you men,” I said. “Do you really think everything is about your anatomy?”

“Absolutely not! Gherkin pickles and Vienna sausages couldn’t be more different.” Michael leered, and I hit him again, then kissed him long and hard while cars flew past us, honking and weaving in and out of lanes.

But five minutes before
Madama Butterfly
was scheduled to start, the smile dropped away from my face. I’d gotten used to sending our regrets when Michael begged off from dinner parties, and I’d canceled our trip to Paris—the first real vacation we’d ever planned to take. But would he really do this to me tonight, when he knew I’d be standing outside, waiting for him?

As if on cue, my BlackBerry buzzed with a new message: M
EETING RUNNING LATE
. F
LYING HOME IN THE MORNING
. S
ORRY
.

I stood there uncertainly, watching a few stragglers hurry inside.

You don’t have any right to be upset
, I told myself, trying to push back the anger and hurt that instantly flooded me.
You wanted Michael to be successful. So he has to work late; it comes with the territory. You can’t change the rules now
.

Michael’s unstoppable drive was one of the things that had attracted me to him, back when we’d stood on another set of front steps so long ago. He’d given me the kind of life any woman would dream of; he’d accomplished everything he’d promised to, and then some. How could I complain now?

So I didn’t text him back or call him. I didn’t let Michael know how much I wanted to be with him. Maybe it was because I couldn’t bear to hear what he’d say if I asked him to choose between me and work, or maybe it just seemed easier to let the moment slide by, another wave infinitesimally pulling back. It was too late now, anyway. The night was ruined.

I’d go home and watch a movie, I decided as I began to reverse my climb on the steps. Take off my new dress and put on some soft pajamas. Maybe I’d wander through our wine cellar and pick out a special bottle to savor. The chef who came by our house twice a week always left the refrigerator stocked with all my favorites—Thai peanut noodles, and shrimp quesadillas with fresh guacamole, and all kinds of salads … I’d almost done it, almost talked myself out of my mood, like I was cajoling a little kid back from the brink of a tantrum. Then the romantic meal I’d secretly planned—just Michael and me in that candlelit booth—flashed through my mind, and a powerful wave of loneliness almost knocked the wind out of me. I ducked my head and wrapped my arms around myself as I stared down at the steps.

I couldn’t go home and dull my feelings with a few extra glasses of chardonnay, like I’d done on so many other nights. But what else could I do?

“Excuse me? Are you coming inside?”

I turned around and saw an usher in a red coat preparing to close the door.

“No—” I began to say, but then my feet took charge, whirling me around and leaping back up the steps two at a time. I slipped inside the tall doors just in time for the usher to lead me to my seat as the lights dimmed.

Ninety minutes later, the lights flicked back on for intermission. All around me, people stood up and stretched and murmured to each other as they began walking toward the lobby bar and restrooms, but I didn’t move. I just sat there, blinking slowly, feeling as though I were awakening from a beautiful dream. All the empty places inside of me had been flooded with heat and color. How had I misunderstood it so completely? Opera wasn’t stuffy at all; it was messy and passionate and … and
real
.

The story told through song was that of a beautiful young Japanese woman named Cio-Cio San who was pining for her American husband, who’d returned to the States and forgotten about her. I hear you, sister, I’d thought as she sang of her pain and sorrow at her abandonment. Hot anger flooded me when the husband’s new American wife appeared on the scene, and I brushed away tears as Cio-Cio San realized her husband didn’t love her, not in the way she yearned to be loved. Not in the way she loved him.

She’s singing to
me
, I thought as she began her heartbreaking aria.

After that night, I secretly bought a subscription for one in the orchestra section, where I was so close I felt like I could practically touch the rustling, jewel-colored costumes; so close I could feel the music swelling like air in my lungs, almost lifting me up out of my seat with its power. Opera quickly became my addiction
and
my therapy, my secret escape from a life that—at least on the surface—was everything I’d ever dreamed of and more.

When I arrived home that night, still hearing echoes of Cio-Cio San’s aria, I unlocked the door and my eyes fell on a table in our grand foyer. Crimson roses overflowed prettily in a huge crystal vase. Naddy, our maid, must have arranged them there so I’d see them as soon as I came in.

At least Michael had remembered what he’d murmured in my ear right after we got engaged. He’d given me a single perfect rose—all he could afford—and promised, “I’ll buy you a dozen roses for every year we’ve been married on our anniversaries.”

“Even our fiftieth?” I’d laughed, wrapping my arms around him.

“Especially
our fiftieth,” he’d said, tickling my neck with the soft petals.

I walked over to the vase and counted. Five dozen roses, just as Michael had promised. I picked up the little white card and read the message a florist had typed: “I’ll make it up to you on our sixth. Love, M.”

Ever since that night, I’ve gone to the opera as often as possible, and I’ve never been disappointed. But I dream of going back in time to see opera the way it was meant to be. If you skipped back a century or two, you’d forget all about exorbitantly priced seats and lace-trimmed handkerchiefs dabbing at damp eyes and genteel murmurs of “Brava!” Opera, in its heyday, was a bloody, bruise-filled, raucous
sport
.

Audience members booed wildly when they hated a song, and they roared louder than rabid football fans when they approved. Opera halls were filled with shouts and fights and foot-stomping, cheering celebrations. Decorum was nowhere to be found during opera’s early, heady days; it was probably cowering under a seat, terrified someone would throw a drink down its throat and make it dance in the aisles.