After the Fall (5 page)

CRESSIDA
•

It wasn’t his looks that attracted me to Luke. I can be sure of that because I hadn’t even laid eyes on him when I first started falling in love. It happened over Christmas, at the end of my second intern year. After six years of medical school, then two years in the public hospital system, I was exhausted, and had no greater plans for the festive season than to crash at the family beach house before commencing my pediatrics training in January. The rest of my family was there too, but they’d been in the same boat and understood my fatigue enough to leave me to a routine of sleeping in and long afternoons lying on the sand.

The first note appeared on Boxing Day. After Christmas lunch I’d come down to the beach for a swim, as I’d also done the day before, the first of my leave. Our house was right on the water, with a little beach hut off to one side. My mother had insisted on the hut so that all our beach equipment—buckets and spades when we were younger, sun lounges and umbrellas as the family grew up—could be left there and not transferred inside, where sand might sully her carpets. It was a hot afternoon, and I had gone to the beach hut for an umbrella when I found the note, jammed into the U of the padlock.
To the girl with blond hair and green bikini
it read, the words spelled out in a loose, attractive script. I unfolded it, glancing around. Only a lone geriatric dog walker was in sight.
Merry Christmas!
the note read.
Can I be your present?

I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered by the attention, or terrified that I had acquired a stalker. On reflection I determined to be neither, and got on with reading my book.

But the next day there was another one.
You’re too pretty to stay under that umbrella
, it said.
Can I tempt you away for a swim?
Foolishly, I blushed at the compliment, and again looked around. The beach was rocky, and relatively unpopular. A few families splashed nearby, but there was no sign of my anonymous suitor. I felt annoyed, and more than a bit silly as I scanned the horizon. Was this supposed to be a joke? Maybe tomorrow I’d stay at the house.

But when tomorrow came my curiosity got the better of me. Despite myself, my pulse surged as I approached the beach hut, noticing the now familiar white cardboard wedged into the lock. This time it was wrapped around a small bunch of flowers, pink daisies with faces as yellow as egg yolk. With eager fingers I opened the note, dropping the flowers into my bag.
Hello again, gorgeous
, it said, the tone confident and cheeky.
Can we meet just once? I’m single, straight and on the balcony of the house at the bottom of the cliff—the one with the Spanish roof. Just raise your arm if I can come down and say hi
. I looked up, panicked, knowing immediately the home that was meant. The sunlight was strong, and for a second I couldn’t quite pick it out. Then something bright caught my eye, and I could just make out a man standing on the balcony. It was too far away to see much, but I could tell that he was smiling and had an arm raised, his golden hair catching the light like a jewel. Without thinking and despite my better instincts I raised my own arm. Then I stood there waiting, my heart pounding in my ears, while my future husband strolled down the beach toward me.

LUKE
•

Though that Easter break was only four days it felt like forever, the warmth of the sun wrapping my memories in a kind of opiate haze. I’m not a sentimental man, but I often find myself remembering that holiday. On the last morning Cress left around dawn so she could make it to her shift. Though she was quiet, her departure woke Cary, who took one look at the becalmed lake and insisted the three of us head out for a ski. The sun hadn’t long been up by the time we got the boat in, and mist lingered on the water like guests reluctant to leave a good party. Kate had to be coaxed into the lake, grimacing as she lowered herself from the back of the boat.

“Now remember,” Cary instructed as he lassoed the ski rope toward her, “weight on the back leg, then go with it. Okay?”

Kate just nodded, teeth chattering as ripples lapped at her ski. Cary resumed his seat, looked back over his shoulder, then threw the throttle forward. Kate shot up from the foam, the ski wavering beneath her. For a moment it veered wildly toward the wake and I groaned to myself, sure she had lost it again. But with a monumental effort Kate centered her weight, dug in, then finally leaned back as if there had never been any problem. Her features relaxed and she let out a whoop, frightening the cormorants paddling for fish on the edge of the lake, the flapping of their black wings as they took flight sounding like applause. Cary grinned and gave her the thumbs-up.

Kate made it around the lake then, growing in confidence, zigzagged back and forth across the wake, occasionally unsteady but always recovering. When her thin arms could finally hang on no longer she threw the rope in the air, making a quick curtsy on her ski before it sank beneath the water. We motored back to pick her up and found she was still smiling.

“It all just clicked,” she said, thrilled, treading water as she pushed the ski toward me.

“You did look pretty good out there,” I said as I plucked it from the lake, then extended my hand to help her into the boat.

“Good? I looked fantastic!” Kate exulted. Then she took my hand, but instead of climbing into the boat she gave a sudden sharp tug. Not expecting it, I was pulled off my feet and headfirst into the water, hearing her laugh as I went under. When I came up coughing she was halfway up the ladder, still laughing. I made a lunge to pull her back in, but she was too quick, wriggling out of my grasp as she scrambled up the rungs to safety, giggling. And that was it—literally, I guess I fell for her. Maybe not immediately, but that was the start of it. For the rest of the day and all the way home in the backseat of Cary’s car I sat and tried not to think about the way Kate’s thighs had slipped through my hands, like mercury rising up a thermometer.

TIM
•

I thought nothing Luke could do would ever surprise me, until the day he told me he was getting married. Don’t get me wrong—Cressida is a wonderful woman: intelligent, refined and undeniably beautiful, and I couldn’t fault his choice in any way. I actually even worried about her at first. I wondered how she’d cope when Luke’s interest flagged, and anticipated missing her when they broke up, as they were sure to do. When Luke called after they had been seeing each other about six months and said he had some important news I just assumed it was over. But before I could get to the hows or whys he was telling me they were engaged, and asking me to be best man.

I suspect people think I’m jealous of Luke, though I swear that’s not the case. I know that next to him I seem drab and unexciting, my mediocrity magnified by his own sheen and poise, like cheap buttons on an expensive suit. But appearances aren’t important to me, and Luke’s life is far too complicated for me ever to covet it. We are so different that I doubt we would have become friends if not thrown together by the private school we attended, whose classes were seated according to alphabetical order. It meant that Luke Stevens and Timothy Stevenson, who would never usually have moved in the same circles, became inseparable.

A lot of Luke is about surface, but it’s a mistake to think that’s all there is. By thirteen, Luke’s face had already marked him out from the rest of us. Teachers paid him extra attention; he was regularly picked early for teams at recess, though he was no better at sports than anyone else. In tenth grade, when we started dancing lessons, it seemed as if the entire one hundred and twenty girls bused in from a nearby school had eyes only for him, a collective passion that occasionally erupted in name-calling and tears after class. Luke made the most of it—who wouldn’t? But he never relied on it. He still did his homework. He still practiced for those teams, when he probably could have gotten away without it. And because we were seated next to each other he talked to me, though I was never in the popular group, and stayed my friend even after we left school.

Predictably, the wedding couldn’t have been lovelier. Cressida’s family has money but, more important, taste. On top of that, Cressida and Luke made a stunning couple, never more so than on that bright afternoon, when the glow coming off them was almost palpable. They were in love, but the most touching thing was how both thought they had done so well to be marrying the other. “Isn’t she just gorgeous?” Luke whispered to me as Cressida came down the aisle, as humbled as if he were the woodcutter marrying the princess. “I still can’t believe he chose me,” confided his bride later, as we danced at the reception, her voice thrilled and awed in equal measure. If I was ever jealous of Luke, it was on that day. Not because, once again, he was getting what he wanted, or because I secretly lusted after Cressida. No, what I envied was the excitement that they both radiated, the certainty that they couldn’t have done better.

And for that reason I expected it to last. God knows, Luke had been flighty with women. But then, he could afford to be, and it was no more than you’d expect from any good-looking male in his twenties. For all his conquests, though, Luke had never before admitted love.

In a funny way, I was kind of relieved when he told me he was getting married. It was exhausting keeping up with Luke’s dalliances. Months went by when he would see and/or sleep with five, six or seven different women. I’d find myself having drinks with him and some Monica when I’d seen him the week before with a Kelly, after bumping into a bothered Belinda, moping because he hadn’t called. Stupidly, I felt bad for those girls, and if I’m honest probably a little piqued that he invested so much time and energy in them. I had seen much more of him since he met Cressida, and I liked her a lot. She was calm, kind, dependable, and more adult than him, though a few years younger. I thought she was great: a smart choice, a good influence who would save him from AIDS or a palimony suit. I thought marriage would be the making of Luke. And I really did think that nothing he could do would ever surprise me again.

LUKE
•

I did love Cress, and I expected to be faithful to her. I wrote those notes because of how she looked when I spied her on the beach from my brother-in-law’s home, indulging in a little voyeurism between courses on Christmas Day. That’s pretty superficial, but it turned out I couldn’t have picked better if I’d asked for résumés. She was sweet and smart, not just a doctor, but one who treated kids with cancer. I thought my mother would expire from delight when I told her.

I planned our meeting as carefully as any advertising campaign: the notes, the daisies, what I was wearing the day she looked up to the balcony. Later, with Kate, it was a lot more visceral, completely out of my control, which should have told me something. But with Cress I was stage-managing the play. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, so I set out to woo her, guessing that she was the type to be won over with patience, not passion. Years of practice give you an instinct. Three days later I kissed her for the first time in her parents’ beach hut, surrounded by rotting spades and damp towels, the smell of seaweed and the ocean thick in my nostrils.

And then the crowning achievement on that conjured résumé: she was still a virgin. I was almost tempted to tell my mother that too, so pleased was I. Though I didn’t marry her for it, Cressida’s virginity appealed. I’ve never subscribed to the try-before-you-buy theory, and I knew enough about sex to understand that if you love someone the physical stuff will be commensurate, at least while the love lasts. Of course, love is no prerequisite for good sex, and I’d also learned that. But it’s crazy to think that you could be mad about someone and then incompatible in the sack. The chemistry comes first, and well before you take off your clothes. I truly didn’t care if she’d had other men before me. I’d had other women and that didn’t mean a thing—sex is just sex, not something to be saved or traded like shares. But I think it was the whole mythology of the virgin that appealed—the integrity and strength it implied, the way it made my choice of her seem even more astute.

So I was quite prepared to wait for Cress in that regard. Truth be told, the anticipation was a turn-on, abstinence being about the only sexual technique I hadn’t tried. It wasn’t complete chastity—I couldn’t have borne that—just enough of the taste to make me crave the whole meal. Once we were engaged it seemed we might as well wait, and I thought we’d come to some sort of understanding. I’d kiss and tease and fondle; she’d respond to a point, then push me away. It drove me wild. No one had ever pushed me away before. Each time I tried to get a little further, sure that she would put the brakes on, arousing us both in drawn-out, months-long foreplay. It was all building up to one hell of a wedding night when, two evenings before the big day, she suddenly gave in. I was so used to her stopping things that I just kept going, and before we knew it that was that.

To be honest, I think we were both a little disappointed. Not by the sex, but the fact that it had happened: my climax was an anticlimax. And then there was the question of contraception. I hadn’t used it, and I assumed Cress hadn’t either—it wasn’t as if she had ever needed it before. I spent the entire day leading up to our wedding worried about becoming a father rather than anticipating being a husband. I knew Cress wanted kids—of course she did, with her job—and I supposed I wanted them too, just not yet, or anything even approximating yet.

By our rehearsal that evening I couldn’t bear it.

“You look nervous,” said Tim, when I met him at the church.

“You don’t know the half of it,” I muttered grimly as he steered me inside.

At the far end of the church Cressida was laughing with her bridesmaids. In a floral-print dress and wearing no makeup, she looked about twelve years old. For a second I felt a stupid urge to turn and run.

“You’re doing the right thing,” Tim reassured me. “Heck, if I meet anyone half as good as—”

“I’m scared I’ve gotten her pregnant,” I hissed, cutting him off midfantasy. Even through my panic I almost laughed at his expression. Tim must have had sex by now, I thought, but you’d never know it.

“How?” he asked, loudly enough to make a bridesmaid turn. I just rolled my eyes. Perhaps he hadn’t after all.

“Hello, hubby,” said Cress, almost skipping over and taking my arm. She looked flushed, and I wondered if she felt all right. Before I could kiss her, the minister cleared his throat and asked us to kneel. We mouthed words after him for twenty minutes, then approached the altar to practice signing the register.

“Cress, last night …” I whispered over the organ’s drone.

“Was perfect,” she finished for me, giggling, “even if it means I can’t wear white tomorrow.”

“Did you use anything?” I demanded, aware even as I did so how bald the words sounded.

“What?” she replied dreamily, practicing her new signature. My name looked alien coming after hers.

I was opening my mouth to ask again when the priest indicated we should proceed back down the aisle of the church, and the moment was lost. Anyway, what could I do? Cress was so excited that I didn’t have the heart to push it. The odds were low, I told myself. Cress shouldn’t have her big day spoiled by my panic.

I needn’t have worried. Driving home after drinks with the wedding party, Tim revealed that he’d overheard the bridesmaids chatting as Cress and I pretended to sign the registry. One of them had remarked that Cress had lost weight, putting it down to prenuptial nerves. The other had agreed, adding that she’d probably been lucky not to gain any, given that she had recently gone on the pill. I felt ridiculously relieved—relieved and ridiculous. Of course Cress would have done something like that. She was a doctor, after all, as well as being one of the most organized and efficient people I knew. I stared out the window, cursing myself for overreacting.

“Can I ask why it mattered so much?” Tim said, choosing his words carefully as he steered around a parked car. “I mean, even if the timing wasn’t ideal, you are still getting married.”

He was right, but I didn’t know myself.