Who Do You Love (29 page)

“Since we're confessing our secrets,” Jay began. I sat up straight. So far, Jay had been wonderfully transparent, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get guy. Had that been a lie, or too good to last? He tugged at his sleeves and finally said, “I don't know how you feel about fur, if you're one of those anti-fur people, but I figure that if this”—and here he gestured with one of his hands at the beer, the burgers, the table, and me—“is going to turn into a thing, I should tell you that there's a fur in the family. My bubbe gave it to my mom, and my mom gave it to me, to give to the girl that I marry.”

A flush spread across my face. I wanted to sit for a minute, to cherish the possibility of actually marrying this guy, of someone liking me enough to want to be with me forever. I examined myself, looking for trepidation or anxiety, but all I felt was calm and happy. I was glad I'd found Jay, and thrilled that the hunt would be over, that I could relax into a relationship and stop trying so hard, keeping up with my manicures and my highlights and my leg waxing, making sure my date dresses were dry-cleaned, gobbling Altoids so that my breath would always be sweet, skipping desserts even when I wanted them. “Why wouldn't your sister get it?”

“Robin's a vegan. Hasn't eaten food with a face since she was eight. And she's not one of the quiet, don't-rock-the-boat kind, either. Her ring tone is ‘Meat Is Murder.' ” Jay leaned back in his chair. Unlike Andy, who was always jigging and tapping, Jay could sit in a chair or lie on my couch as still as a lizard sunning itself on a rock. “I don't know. I think it'd be different if it was a mink, but it's not. Sheared beaver. Doesn't that sound pornographic? My bubbe used to wear it on High Holidays.”

“Of course she did,” I said. You rarely saw furs in Florida, but the handful of times I'd been to synagogue when the temperature had dipped below sixty degrees, out they came. The ladies would fan themselves with their announcement brochures, with their coats draped over their tennis-tanned shoulders and their handbags hanging from their golf-muscled forearms.

“So you're fur-tolerant?” He looked so funny and so hopeful that I laughed.

“When I was six I had a rabbit fur coat. In Florida. With a matching muff. Which also sounds pornographic.”

“Matching muff,” Jay repeated. Underneath the table, his knee bumped mine. It retreated, then returned, pressing firmly, and I could feel myself getting flushed and wobbly.

He leaned across the table and kissed my cheek, then nuzzled the spot just below my earlobe. I shivered, letting my eyes slip shut. “You're a cutie,” he whispered in my ear.

“You're a sweetheart,” I whispered back.

“Are you busy tomorrow?”

I didn't even try to be coy, to make up some excuse or tell him something about needing to check my calendar. “Busy with you.”

Over the spring and the summer, we went to restaurants and movies and plays. We spent afternoons in parks and museums. We strolled across the Brooklyn Bridge—from Brooklyn to Manhattan, so it didn't bring up memories of that terrible, wonderful day—and had falafel at the flea market. We ventured to Jamaica Plain in Boston because Jay had read that a restaurant there had the best samosas in the world; we sampled bulgogi in Queens and arepas in the Bronx and poured liquefied chicken fat on our potatoes at Sammy's Roumanian on the Lower East Side.

Jay was sweet and funny and endlessly solicitous, always offering to carry whatever packages or bags I had, always holding doors. At restaurants, he'd pull out my chair and stand when I left the table; in bars and clubs, he'd stake out someplace comfortable for me to sit.
I could get used to this,
I thought again, on a bench at Rockefeller Center, with Jay kneeling in front of me, lacing up my rented skates. Out on the ice, he held my elbow as I giggled and slid into the wall. My cheeks glowed underneath my wool hat, he looked handsome in his blue plaid scarf, and every time a voice spoke up in my head, whispering
Not Andy,
informing me that while this guy might be a perfect match on paper, he didn't make me feel the way Andy had, I would tell the voice to shut up. Andy had left me, not the other way around. I'd loved him, and he'd left me, and now I had to mov
e
on.

Before long, Jay had essentially moved into my apartment. I'd been worried about everything my friends and various magazines had told me that living with a guy entailed—socks on the floor, wet towels on the bed, dishes in the sink. It turned out that Jay was neater than I was, though he never criticized when I dumped my bag by the front door or left my sweater on the couch.

When the Olympics began, I ignored them, willing myself to walk past any television set that was tuned to the games, tipping Jay's sports-related magazines directly into the trash. I knew that Andy had won a gold medal—as much as I tried to avoid any news, I couldn't stop myself from finding that out—but I wouldn't permit myself to try to learn where he lived, or send him a note that said
Congratulations.
If I couldn't wish him well, I could at least leave him alone, just as he was leaving me alone, to find the life I was supposed to have . . . one, it seemed, that did not involve being with a star athlete, sanding myself down so that I could fit into the crevices and corners of his life, subsisting on the scraps of his free time and attention, waiting patiently while he ran and stretched and ran and lifted and ran and soaked his touchy left calf in the whirlpool. I would never be the girl in the stands, applauding as he stood on the podium; never be the one thanked in interviews for her support, or named as an inspiration. I would have more ordinary pleasures, a life that was quieter but still fulfilling, and I would be fine.

Six months after Jay had moved his suits and wing tips and loafers into my closet, after his Scrabble board had taken up residence on my kitchen table and I'd had dinner with his entire family twice, Jay took me ice skating again. We held hands as we glided around the rink, and when we were done, he said, “Let's go get a drink,” and walked me to the bar where we'd first met. I wasn't surprised when he pulled a velvet box out of his pocket and presented me with the perfect ring—a round-cut diamond, substantial but not ostentatious, in an ornate Victorian setting. He didn't get down on his knee, didn't make a spectacle or embarrass me in front of a roomful of strangers, or do something cutesy like hide the ring in a dessert, where there was a possibility that I'd eat it. Instead, Jay held my hand, looked into my eyes, and said, “I will love you forever. Wil
l
you?”

“Of course I will,” I told him, and he slipped the ring on my finger, then kissed me, and said, “Mrs. Kravitz.”

This is what I waited for,
I thought. This is what all the pain and suffering was about. I'd thought that Andy was my destiny, but maybe he was more of a life lesson, a hurdle I had to keep clearing to show the universe that I was worthy of the life intended for me: this life, with this man.

PART III

Lost Time

Rachel

2005

R
achel!” I turned, feeling the muscles in my back tensing, as if for a blow, as I saw Kara and Kelsey and Britt coming at me, walking shoulder to shoulder, like Charlie's Angels, looking almost exactly the way they had in high school.

I'd been on the fence about coming to the reunion. I had worried about what Jay would think, meeting people who probably remembered me as a spoiled, prissy girl who cared more about her hair and her clothes than the world around her. I'd quizzed my ob-gyn about flying at eight months, hoping for an excuse to stay home, and then, when she'd given me the go-ahead, I'd hated myself for still being so shallow while I visited five different stores for a maternity dress that wouldn't make me look like a viscose-clad dirigible.

The night of the reunion, I sat on my bed, with Marissa tugging at her Hervé Léger knockoff in front of the mirror in my childhood bedroom, and made one last attempt to get out of it. “I don't feel so great.”

Marissa didn't even bother to look at me. “Rachel—you won. You've got a hot husband, gorgeous ring, a beautiful house, you're knocked up . . .”

“First of all, it's life. You don't win. And Kara and Kelsey and Britt all know about Andy, so if I go, I'll have to talk about him, and I don't want to.”

“For God's sake. He was your high school sweetheart. What's the big deal?”

“He won a gold medal. In the Olympics. That's the big deal. People are going to want to know what he's up to, and if we're still in touch.” I tugged at my bra, shifting around on the bed, trying to get comfortable, when I hadn't been anything close to comfortable in weeks. Foolishly, I'd envisioned myself sailing through my pregnancy, getting a cute basketball belly and a beautiful glow. Instead, the universe had served up acne, bloated breasts, and an enormous ass, and I'd developed all kinds of odd pains and discomforts. My back ached; my breasts throbbed. Even my vagina hurt. When I complained, my doctor just shrugged and smiled and said, “Well, you're pregnant.”
T
hanks for that,
I thought.

I was tired all the time. Tired from carrying around the extra weight, tired of the little swimmer inside me, who rolled and kicked all night long, tired just thinking about my reconstructed heart now having to pump for the baby, too. I was also increasingly tired of the conversation Jay and I kept having, one that wasn't quite an argument but was on its way to becoming one. He wanted me to stay home once the baby came. I wanted to go back to work after three months. He said that I'd want to be with our baby once it was born. I said that I'd seen enough newborns on the job to know that I found them as interesting as potted plants that pooped and cried, and that if I was stuck with one I'd go crazy. He said it would be different when it was my own child and not some client's, and we'd finally agreed to table the matter until after the birth, but it was like someone had left the window open in the room that was our marriage, and a chilly wind had blown through. My easygoing, affable husband became almost scary when he didn't get his way, with his lips clamped shut and his nostrils flaring and the condescending, scolding,
Father Knows Best
tone that made me want to clamp my hand over his mouth. I felt like I was getting a preview of what he'd look and sound like in forty years, and the picture did not thrill me.

At least he looked good, I thought, dressed that night in a crisp button-down and khakis, with a confident walk and an easy smile as he introduced himself to my classmates and their dates or spouses, hand extended, saying, “Jay Kravitz,” and then cocking his thumb and adding, “I'm with her.” Jay had gone to work with his father, and with a little help from his parents and a little more from mine, we'd purchased a beautiful brownstone in Brooklyn, with fireplaces and a small backyard and enough bedrooms for three or even four kids if we wanted them. He was perfectly comfortable in places like the Clearview Country Club, to which my parents belonged and I would have, too, if I'd stayed in Florida.

“Raaaa-chel!”

Britt's hair was a brighter blond than it had been in high school, and she'd either grown it out or gotten extensions for the occasion. Her dress was short, red, and fringed, her heels impossibly high, and she was doing her makeup the same way she'd done it in high school, heavy on the black eyeliner, flicked out at the corners. “Honey!” she squealed, throwing her tanned arms around me. “Where's your guy?”

“My husband, Jay, is over there,” I said.

Britt's head swiveled, along with Kara's and Kelsey's. “Oooh, nice!” she said, like Jay was a handbag I'd bought on sale. “So, okay,” said Kelsey, grabbing my arm. “Last summer I was watching the Olympics, and I saw his name, and I screamed . . .” She raised her voice to Olympic-viewing-scream level. Heads turned. “I said, ‘Oh my God, I know that guy!' And it was him, wasn't it? The same Andy Landis?”

“The same,” I said, resting my hand on my belly and shooting Marissa a look. I'd finally settled on a black jersey tunic with an empire waist, black leggings, a pair of high-heeled boots that I was already regretting, and a statement necklace I'd borrowed from Nana, three strands of amber prayer beads, the first row small as peas and the last big as gumballs. “But how are you guys?”

Britt was teaching fifth grade in Clearview (I wondered what the boys there made of her long blond hair and even longer tanned legs). Kelsey was planning her wedding to a hotel manager named Rick, and Kara had gotten a nursing degree and worked on the labor and delivery floor. “But never mind us. What about you?” Britt grabbed my arm and pulled me close enough to smell the white wine she'd been drinking. “Are you and Andy still in touch?”

“Not really,” I said. “Things fizzled out after college.” Never mind my years in Portland; never mind that Andy had been living with me when he'd met Maisie. They were still together, I knew. I tried not to care and I tried not to Google, but over the years I'd had a few slips. I decided to try out Marissa's line. “How many people marry their high school sweetheart?”

Grinning, Britt pointed at Patti Cohen, who, per her name­tag, was now Patti Cohen Mendelsohn. She'd actually married Larry. I hoped he'd improved as a kisser.

“Not every couple makes it,” she said. “But if I had to bet on anyone, I would have bet on you two. You were so . . .” And then she spotted Pete Driscoll by the buffet. Our former quarterback had gained fifty pounds and lost all his hair. Britt shrieked, “Pete, oh my God, you ASSHOLE, you didn't tell me you'd be here!” Giving my arm a final squeeze, she teetered away, with Kara and Kelsey behind her, leaving me limp and tired and wanting desperately to be home.

I looked for Jay. When I didn't see him or Marissa, I got a glass of water at the bar, sat down at a table for ten that had emptied once the music started, and surreptitiously kicked off my boots. I was rubbing my right foot and flexing my left when someone walked up and said, “Hi, Rachel.”

It took me a minute to recognize the woman, and when I did, it took a considerable effort not to gasp. Bethie Botts was wearing a dress. Short-sleeved, dark blue, made of jersey that skimmed over her body, showing off her bare arms and creamy skin. Her hair, which wasn't the least bit greasy, was pulled back in a bun. She wore dangly earrings, a beaded comb in her hair . . . and on her left hand, I saw a tiny diamond flash.

“Bethie?”

“It's Elizabeth now.” I saw her little teeth, the ones I remembered from high school, like kernels of corn. Hardly anything else was the same. At some point, either she'd swapped her glasses for contacts or she'd gotten the surgery. Her eyes were blue-green, and she had a genuinely pleasant expression on her face.

“You look beautiful,” I blurted.

“Thanks,” she said, and then looked at my bare feet. “Are they swelling? Mine got so big when I was pregnant I couldn't even lace up my sneakers by the end.” She touched her belly with one shapely hand.

“You've got a baby?”

“A little boy. Gabriel. He's six months old. He's with Grandma for the night, so my husband and I could come.” From the shyly proud way she said
my husband
I could tell that she, like me, was still getting used to having one.

I stared at her, trying to align the perfectly normal-­looking woman with the snot-and-tear-plastered horror show I remembered. I wanted to ask what had happened, how she'd transformed herself, who she was now, but instead, I ended up babbling about random classmates.

“Isn't this crazy? First I think that everyone looks exactly the same or even better, and then I'll see, like, Pete Driscoll, who's entirely bald . . .”

Bethie smiled—a real smile, not the fake, simpering thing she'd worn when I'd known her. It was like seeing an entirely new person, Bethie but not Bethie. Elizabeth now.

“And you!” I said. “You look spectacular!”

“Thanks,” she said. “But let's be honest. I looked so awful in high school that all I would've had to do was comb my hair to look about a thousand times better.”

I looked at her. “You want to know what happened, right?” I nodded, and she said, “Remember when we went to Atlanta and Melissa Nasser's mom was one of our chaperones?”

“Right.”

“Mrs. Nasser—Diane—she's a therapist,” Bethie said. “After the trip, she would call me or she'd find me at school or she'd drive to my foster home or she'd corner me at synagogue, and she'd say, ‘Let's talk.' I think it was a year before I even spoke to her, and that was just to tell her to go away, until I finally said, ‘Okay, fine,' to get her to leave me alone.” She twisted her ring. “I didn't think it would work. You know, how was talking about what happened going to help me get over it? But she had some skills that she taught me. Things I could do to distract myself or reframe a situation or break the pattern when I was thinking about the bad times. So it wasn't just talking.”

I thought about Dante, Brenda's little boy, and how, in spite of everything that Amy had told me about professionalism and boundaries and not getting too attached, I would think about him more than the rest of my clients' kids combined. Bethie must have been Mrs. Nasser's Dante.

What happened?
I wanted to ask.
What were the bad times? What happened to you?
I didn't ask, because I already knew the answer . . . or at least a version of it. What happened to Bethie was the same thing that had happened to so many of the women I'd worked with over the years. Different specifics, same story. Probably if I'd made myself think about it back then, if I'd wanted to think about it, I could have figured it out.

Bethie said, “I aged out of my last foster-care placement when I turned eighteen. I lived with the Nassers for a year, and I got a job at a dog-grooming place and started taking classes at St. Petersburg College, and I just, you know . . .” She lifted her eyebrows. “Cleaned up my act. I'm in rabbinical school, if you can believe that. Paying it forward.”

“You'll be great,” I said, and Bethie smiled.

“So what are you up to besides growing a person?” she asked.

I told her that I'd become a social worker, and we talked about work for a while, about what the recent federal budget cuts meant for schools and for services to women and children, and whether President Bush's faith-based initiatives would be enough to close the gaps.

“I have to tell you something,” I began. This was the reason I'd finally let Marissa talk me into coming. Bethie was the one person I'd hoped to see. But before I could start, she shook her head.

“It's okay,” she said quietly.

“I feel so terrible.” My eyes were welling. “The way I behaved.”

Bethie looked down, one finger tracing lines on the tablecloth. “At least you never went out of your way, you know? There were people, it was like I was part of their checklist. Drop off their books, sign in at homeroom, make fun of Bethie.” I turned my head and wiped my eyes. That was another delightful part of being pregnant—in addition to everything hurting, everything made me cry, from the evening news to novels with plots about babies in peril and commercials for dog food for senior dogs. Now that I was closing in on thirty, it looked like the warnings were right, and I was finally going to turn into my mother.

“Maybe I didn't do that much,” I said, even as I remembered the things that I had done or said, the way I'd rolled my eyes and laughed behind her back. Sometimes—more often than I liked—I remembered the scene in the dorm room, Marissa ripping Bethie's bags open, shaking her and calling her names, and the way I'd flicked the eye out of her stuffed elephant. I remembered everything—her unicorn T-shirt, the way her face had looked, the noise the disc of glass had made falling to the floor. “But I didn't try to stop it. Isn't that the saying, about how all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing?”

“It was high school. Evil is kind of the name of the game.” She patted my hand. “And I really enjoyed your Walkman.” I exhaled and smiled back at her, feeling like I'd been granted a forgiveness that I didn't deserve.

“Are you in touch with Andy? Dale—my husband—we were watching the Olympics, and I saw his name, and I said, ‘I knew that guy!' ”

“I knew him, too.”

“So what happened?” she finally asked. “Did you see that
Sports Illustrated
story, about how he thought his father was dead for his whole life, and then it turned out his dad was in prison? I can't imagine what that must have been like.”

“Awful,” I said. “It must have been awful.” If tormenting Bethie was the great regret of my adolescence, then not being able to be there for Andy when he'd learned about his father was surely the great regret of my adulthood.