After the Fall (2 page)

CARY
•

I don’t think about it much. No, really. What’s there to think about? It happened; it’s over; I’ll survive. What’s the point in talking about it? It’s not going to change what took place. I mean, I made my decision too, and now I’m going to live with it—all this blathering around in circles isn’t my style.

I grew up in the country. Sometimes I think about moving back there, though I know there’s little work. What appeals, though, is that out there you just
do
. You don’t debate, or discuss, or try to weigh up every angle…. There isn’t time for it, and it’s never helpful. You come off your horse or your bike; you get up, brush yourself down and get on with it. No point wondering if you’ll ever ride again—it’s not an option; you have to. It might hurt, but bruises heal. Bones too. Even hearts.

CRESSIDA
•

For ages after I found out I tormented myself, wondering when it had started. Not the sex, which was too much even to contemplate. Not even the kissing, but the thought, the desire, the possibility. They’d always clicked; that much was evident to anyone with half an eye, but it’s still a fair stretch from flirting to fucking, particularly when you’re both married to other people. That’s crude, and I apologize. Luke would be shocked to hear such language from his virgin bride.

No, what I want to know is if such a thing can truly just happen, as Luke so ingenuously told the counselor. Surely people don’t go around just falling into bed with others on a whim? Not, as I seem to be reiterating, if they are otherwise legally wed. Did they discuss it? Or did they just know, the way I sometimes know when I see a patient for the first time that he or she is going to die? It’s something about their faces: something blurred or unfinished. There’s no sense of the adult version lurking underneath, maybe because they will never grow old. I’m invariably right, though I wish I weren’t. I’d rather not know at all, in case I then don’t try hard enough with the ones I’m sure won’t make it. Self-fulfilling prophecies frighten me.

When I first found out about that kiss, though, I wasn’t frightened. Angry, yes, but I never felt threatened. It didn’t even occur to me that this might spell danger. That probably sounds silly, but I knew my husband and the games he played. Luke is a flirt: a man who loves women and attention in equal measure, and preferably together. We had some stormy scenes over it when we were courting. It never did sit easily with me, but after a while it’s amazing how one can adjust. Then too, I guess once I knew he loved me I could see it for the sport it was. It even validated me in some crazy way: he would spend all night at parties charming these beautiful women, succeed, and yet still leave with me. And after we did leave he would be so aroused by the thrill of the chase that we would rarely make it home without pulling over into some darkened street to heave and tussle on the backseat of the car … my hair caught in static cling on the seat belt, my toes pressed hard against the misted windows. Those nights were the grace notes of my marriage. I truly didn’t care where the desire had come from as long as it was spent on me. And it was, wholeheartedly.

Luke is a golden boy, one of those the gods have smiled upon. Everything comes easily to him, or at least it appears to. Head prefect at school, valedictorian at university, a cushy job full of long liquid lunches and long-legged girls. Even his birth was blessed: after three daughters his parents were longing for a boy, and hey, presto, that was exactly what they got. Golden too in his coloring. A classical gold: hair the color of a halo in a Renaissance painting, eyes the blue of the Madonna’s robe. Rich, vibrant colors. He isn’t particularly tall or well built, but he stands out in a crowd.

Actually, I’m blond myself. I’m also good-looking enough, I suppose—I had to be to have attracted his attention in the first place. But my eyes are brown, my skin is fairer and my hair much lighter, a pale imitation of his, as if it has been washed once too often or left out on the line too long. When we stood next to each other it was
his
hair,
his
features the eye was always drawn to, as if he’d sucked all the color out of mine. My parents thought we looked like brother and sister, and my friends used to tease me about the beautiful blond babies we would make. I wanted children, and God knows I thought about them too. But try as I might I could never quite see them, their faces as hazy as the faces of the patients I knew would die.

KATE
•

It wasn’t as if I stopped loving Cary, not in the least. People don’t believe this, but I did love them both, and at the same time. Luke claimed he understood, but then he would, wouldn’t he? We agreed with whatever the other said, as lovers do. Luke even admitted that he still loved Cressida, something I found profoundly irritating, though I was professing the same attachment to my own spouse. He used to justify it by comparing us to parents, able to love multiple children equally. I was never convinced by that—like so much of what Luke said it had surface appeal, but didn’t stand up to closer scrutiny. The love for something you’ve made and must protect is surely different from the love that wants to possess, devour, exclude? No, for me it was more like when you hear a great song for the first time. For weeks you walk around humming it to yourself, unable to get it out of your head, playing only that one tune out of your entire collection. It doesn’t matter that there are loads of songs you love, whole albums that resonate deeply with you—they can wait. That’s not a great analogy—Luke is the one who is good with words.

Maybe a better illustration would be a migraine. One moment you’re well; the next you’re in so much pain you can’t open your eyes. Everything is changed. Nothing exists except the throb and fret between your temples, though underneath it all you’re still perfectly healthy. I sometimes think I had a migraine of the heart. I suppose you could call it infatuation, though to me it was stronger than that.
Eclipse
might be closer to the mark.

It was a different story with Cary. When we tell others how we met he likes to joke that there were fireworks from the word go, though in truth it took me almost a year to fall in love with him. Still, there
were
fireworks. We met at the Melbourne Cup. Cary’s not a big fan of the races, but I love them. Dressing up, champagne, lots of men in suits … what’s not to like? Usually I went with a group from school, but this year was different. Cup Day fell in the middle of our finals, and everyone else was staying home to study. I’d thought I probably should too, but when Joan called and offered me a spot in her parents’ marquee I couldn’t resist.

Joan and I were childhood friends—or childhood allies, anyway. We weren’t really similar, but had been thrown together by pushy mothers who partnered each other for doubles and thought how sweet it would be if their daughters did the same. Neither Joan nor I was even into tennis, but we quickly formed an alliance. I’d tell my mother I was practicing with Joan; she’d tell hers the same. We’d then go shopping or to the beach, where Joan would sunbake with her sneakers on so her tan lines would collude with her story. The ruse worked well, though our parents always wondered why we never made it to the second round in any of the tournaments they were forever entering us in.

Increasingly, though, as we got older, we spent more and more of our supposed practice time apart. Eventually, we gave up the game altogether. I did like Joan, but I never felt completely at ease in her company. Maybe it was because the friendship had been forced on us, or because, with her careful grooming and precise sentences, Joan always made me feel messy. I thought about declining her invitation, but the alternative of staying at home, trying to study while simultaneously resisting the urge to contact the guy I was in the throes of breaking up with at the time, was too terrible to contemplate. Besides, there were going to be free drinks.

It was one of those typical Melbourne days that can’t make up its mind. I’ve been to the Cup a few times, and it seems it’s always either scorching or pouring, never anything in between. That year, it was both. The morning had dawned hot and unsettled, and was quickly ambushed by a fierce north wind that pushed the temperature into the nineties before lunch and played havoc with sundresses and scarves. I didn’t know many of Joan’s family or friends, and as the day wore on, the atmosphere under the canvas became more and more stifling, till I felt that I was drowning in dead air and dying conversation.

By four o’clock I’d had enough.

“I’m going to place a bet,” I told Joan. “There’s one more race, and I need some fresh air.”

“Do you want me to come?” she asked, fanning herself with a form guide.

“No, you stay here. It might take a while. I’ll have that, though,” I said, plucking the guide from her fingers.

“Put something on for me then,” she said. “Are you feeling lucky?”

Though the big race was over, outside the crowds still heaved and surged. If anything, they were even worse, turned manic and unpredictable by too much sun and alcohol. The wind threw dust in people’s faces; whipped up the skirts of women passed out on the lawns. Men laughed and nudged one another at the sight, then turned their backs and had another beer. A cool change wasn’t far off. I really did plan to place a bet, but the queues for the bookies were so long that I gave up as soon as I saw them. Instead, I decided I’d watch the final race. I’d been there since nine without seeing a horse, and it would kill some time before I headed back to the tent.

I pushed my way to a spot by the fence, picking my way over prone limbs and through the middle of picnics. The horses were going into their barriers on the other side of the track, small black dots with no idea that they were the excuse for such bacchanalia. A man on my left swayed and laughed, belching uncomfortably close to my ear. I stepped back to avoid him, bumping into another suit.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, briefly conscious of the warmth of his chest.

“That’s okay,” he said pleasantly; he was possibly the only other person along the rail who wasn’t drunk. “Are you all right?”

Before I could answer him, a loudspeaker screamed the start of the race. As one, every head along the fence swiveled to the left, craning to catch a glimpse of the pack as they came around the turn and along the straight toward us. Just then the wind swung around violently, suddenly freezing where a minute ago it had been hot. The change moved up the course almost in line with the horses, the sky rapidly darkening, a few drops beginning to fall. I watched its hasty progress: women clutching desperately at their hats; tents sinking inward, then filling with air as if they were breathing; the crowd at the turn running for shelter as the first thundercloud burst. As the field galloped past, the change was upon us too, almost as if the horses were dragging it along behind them like a great silvery sheet. The rain hit, and I turned to flee.

Of course, I didn’t get far. Everyone had had the same idea, and the lawns were in chaos. Almost immediately I knocked into two people, and tripped over a third. Then my heels caught in the wet turf, and I broke one wrenching them free. I stood there cursing, dripping wet.

“Hey—are you all right?”

It was the guy from the fence, repeating his question of ten minutes ago. I held up my broken shoe in mute reply.

“Come on, then,” he said, tugging my hand as the rain beat down. “Can you walk?”

I swear I tried, but with one high heel and one bare foot I could barely manage a hobble. The fence guy suddenly lunged forward, scooped me up over his shoulder, and carried me at a run through the pelting rain, expertly dodging gamblers and debris. I wondered if I should scream, or pummel his back. Instead, I started to giggle.

He jogged like that for a good five minutes, me jouncing inelegantly over his shoulder. Past the bars, people lined up five deep trying to get in; past the restaurants and the awnings and the public toilets, all suddenly bursting at the seams. When he slowed down we were in one of the small lanes of stables at the back of the racecourse.

“I used to work here when I was studying,” he said, depositing me gently onto a bale of straw in the comfortable gloom of what seemed like a feed shed. “Mucking out stables, cleaning tack … It was that or wait tables, and I liked the company here better.”

He held out a hand, warm and large. “I’m Cary,” he said.

“Kate,” I replied.

“Sorry—I didn’t ask you where you wanted to go. I thought we should both just get out of the rain. Is there somewhere I can take you?”

We looked out at the rain, now coming down in sheets. I thought of the tent, its stale air, the stagnant conversation. Joan would be waiting for me, her skirt still pressed, lips pursed as she checked her watch.

“There’s nowhere I need to be,” I told him.

Girlfriends have looked at me askance when I’ve told them this story. There I was, they point out, soaked to my skin, no doubt freezing, perched on a hay bale in some dingy shed at the back of a racecourse with a total stranger. Wasn’t I scared? Apprehensive? Or at the very least uncomfortable?

Well, no, on all counts. The way Cary sat beside me, careful not to make any accidental contact, told me that he meant me no harm. Plus he loaned me his jacket, which was as wet as the rest of our clothes, but stopped the chill. We talked, and he told me he was a geneticist at the Royal Children’s Hospital; he had been at the Cup with a group of colleagues before they got separated in the crush on the lawns. At one stage he ducked out briefly and returned, improbably, with some strawberries, a tea cake and a rather warm bottle of wine.

“They were just about to throw it away,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the corporate tents. I didn’t care—I was suddenly starving. We ate and talked, laughing as we passed the bottle back and forth between us. Occasionally I thought of Joan drumming her fingers, ringing my cell phone and giving up in disgust. I hadn’t charged it before I left home, and it lay lifeless in my bag, fogged with moisture. But the parking lots would be boggy now, if not flooded. They wouldn’t be leaving for a while yet.

Around us I could hear movement … horses being boxed for the night or prepared for the trailer ride home; the low, reassuring tones of grooms soothing nervous animals. It was dusk, then dark. The rain had stopped. Cary pulled me to my feet and I felt a pang of disappointment that our idyll might be over. But he simply wanted me to see the city skyline, lights left on in the office towers hovering in the distance like fireflies. After its long day, Flemington was almost still.

“I love it like this,” said Cary, almost reverently. “Quiet, returned to itself. That relief you feel at the end of Christmas Day when everyone’s gone back to their own homes.”

I wasn’t sure that I knew what he meant, but it didn’t matter. Cary’s hand brushed against mine, and without really knowing who initiated it we were leaning toward each other. As our lips touched there was a burst of sound and the sky lit up around us. Fireworks, probably part of the package at one of the corporate tents. I gasped as a flotilla of blue and white sparks floated gently to earth around our heads; then Cary was kissing me again, his mouth tasting of strawberries and cinnamon.