Astor Place Vintage: A Novel (37 page)

JEFF’S VOICE WOKE
me up. “I confirmed everything with the insurance people.”

Wearing pants but no shirt, he spoke into his cell phone while looking out the window to the street. The clock on his nightstand said ten past eight.

“Everything is covered, even the ambulance.”

I wondered who he was talking to. Was this about his wife? I kept my eyes closed while listening.

“Great, so that’s all been taken care of.”

I’d slept horribly. At least I didn’t have any weird dreams—not that I remembered, at least.

“Okay, thanks for your help.”

He hung up and dialed another number. I kept my eyes closed.

“So it’s all arranged,” he said into the phone. “I’ll tell her tonight.”

Tell who, his wife? I waited to hear what he’d say next.

“I’m hoping she’ll be agreeable.”

Maybe he was leaving her.

“It will be good for Denise. For all of us.”

Maybe I didn’t need to make an ultimatum; he’d been thinking along the same lines.

“The kids will understand it’s for the best.”

That’s right. Who wanted to live with two parents who didn’t love each other?

“At the very least, it’ll give her a chance to relax.”

Wait a second. Divorce was not relaxing.

“It seems to be a nice place,” he said. “Expensive enough.”

Vacation? He was making her take a trip somewhere? I opened my eyes. Now he faced the room and saw that I was awake.

“Listen, I’ll call you later, I’ve gotta go.” He put the phone into his pocket and came to sit on the edge of the bed. “Do you mind if I take a quick shower?”

“That’s fine, go ahead.”

“Make some coffee if you want,” he said, stroking my hair. “There’s some good bread, and that jam you like in the refrigerator.”

“Thanks. Who were you talking to?”

“Just my father-in-law.”

“Your wife is going somewhere?”

“Yeah, she might take a cruise with her parents.”

“Oh really? Where to?”

“Barbados. I’ve never been, but it’s supposed to be great.”

His deliberately casual tone of voice convinced me he was lying, but I didn’t press. “Sounds nice.”

He took off his pants and threw them on the bed. “I’ll be right out.”

As soon as he shut the bathroom door, I got dressed. What a slut I was, or should I say tramp, falling into bed with Jeff when I needed to assert myself, and now what? I went to the window, leaned my forehead on the glass, and stared down at Park Avenue. No other city could boast having a cluster of twelve yellow cabs
waiting at a red light. I thought of Angelina in her “gentleman friend’s” room at the Plaza as she looked out the window at the horse cabs.

Jeff had taken his wife to the hospital in a cab. So what was he saying on the phone about insurance to cover an ambulance? The only explanation would be if she’d been taken to another hospital. If that was the case, her injury was more serious than he was letting on.

The shower was still running on the other side of the door. I’d never snooped around in his stuff. Now I wondered why I’d always been so honorable. My heart pounded as I reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone. The last outgoing call was to someone named Bob, presumably the father-in-law. The call before that had no name, but it was to a 203 area code. Connecticut. I wanted to dial it to see who would pick up, but not on his phone, so I dashed into the dining room to get mine, punched in the number, and returned his phone to the pants pocket. The shower was still on. I put the call through.

A woman answered. “Silver Hill.”

“Silver Hill?”

“Yes, may I help you?”

“Hi, yes, I’m wondering, could you give me some information . . . about Silver Hill?”

“Admissions won’t open until nine.”

“Okay, I’ll call back. Thanks.”

I hung up and took a seat in front of his computer and turned it on. At this point I didn’t care if Jeff caught me red-handed. While I waited for it to boot up, I looked at a framed photograph on his desk. It was of his two handsome boys and his wife—blond hair, dark roots, and a pretty enough face. She wasn’t smiling.

As soon as I got the Internet connection, I Googled “Silver Hill Connecticut.” The top listing was Silver Hill Hospital. I clicked on the site.

Restoring Mental Health Since 1931. A Psychiatric Hospital Distinguished by Eighty Years of Excellence.

Wow. Not exactly Barbados. I stared at Jeff’s wife in the photograph. That woman didn’t have an accident while slicing an onion. She had an accident . . . while slitting her wrist?

—

By the time Jeff emerged from the bathroom, I’d dressed, made coffee, and eaten a piece of toast. He leaned over and kissed the top of my head. Smelling slightly of lime, he glowed with clean-shaven innocence.

“We have to talk,” I said.

“Now?” Jeff knew I wouldn’t normally want to have a conversation before reading the morning paper.

“Now.” I’d waited long enough.

“I need coffee.” He got a mug from the cabinet.

“Your wife. She didn’t really have an accident, did she.”

“Amanda,” he said, pouring the coffee, “we went over this already.”

“You mean you lied about this already.”

Without responding, he went to the refrigerator for milk.

“She isn’t going on a vacation, is she, Jeff. Your wife is going to a mental hospital.”

He silently poured the milk into his coffee as if mixing dangerous chemicals.

“She tried to kill herself, didn’t she.”

He didn’t ask how I knew. No denial sprang from his lips. So it was true?

Leaning back against the counter, he sipped his coffee and stared at the floor. His face was hard. With anger? Resentment? I couldn’t tell.

“Is it true?”

He looked up at the ceiling and sighed.

So it was true. “I don’t understand,” I said. “How could you
have an affair when your wife is . . .” I didn’t know how to put it, so I let my voice trail off. Crazy? Depressed? Suicidal?

He was done looking at the ceiling; now he looked at the floor again.

“Jeff! Speak! What happened? Did she find out about us? Is that why she tried to kill herself?”

He shook his head. “That’s your imagination.”

“What else do I have? You don’t tell me anything about your marriage.”

“You don’t ask.”

“I’m asking now.”

“Okay.” He came to the table but remained standing behind the chair opposite me. “Okay. You’re right. She did try to kill herself.”

“Oh my god.”

“And I’m very upset about it, don’t get me wrong. But it wasn’t her first attempt. And it wasn’t so bad that . . . Let’s just say she wasn’t close to dying. I was home. She knew I’d find her.”

“She found out about us, right? And couldn’t handle it. She needed to keep you home, get your attention.”

“Our relationship has nothing to do with this, Amanda. She doesn’t know about us. She has no way of knowing, believe me. The money for your business comes out of an account she has no access to. I use a separate phone to contact you, and she doesn’t know it exists. She never comes into the city—it freaks her out.”

“Maybe she hired a detective.”

He shook his head. “She doesn’t think about me. She thinks about herself.”

“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

He looked at me, hesitated, and then groaned so miserably that I thought remaining in a state of ignorance might have been better.

“She has a mental illness,” he said. “She’s bipolar.”

“Bipolar? You mean, like, manic-depressive?”

He nodded. “She takes a cocktail of medications. The doctor is always trying different pills, special diets, even electric shock . . . nothing works. I keep my expectations low.”

“Wow.” Electric shock? Did they still use that? “God. It sounds hard, very hard. I’m sorry you’ve had to go through this, I really am. But I still don’t understand. When you got married . . .” I didn’t know how to put it. “Was she this way already?”

He let out a short, bitter laugh. “Back then, no. Maybe a little down sometimes, but nothing that seemed extreme. Everything changed after the kids were born. She had terrible postpartum depression. The first time around, she bounced back. The second time, she got more depressed than ever. She didn’t want to get out of bed or leave the house. It went on for months.”

“Did she see a shrink?”

“Yeah, she went to a psychiatrist.” He sat down opposite me. Finally, he opened up about what he should’ve told me the very first time he came to see me at the store on Mott Street and took me out to dinner. “He gave her an antidepressant. That made her crazy. Too happy. Manic. All of a sudden she proclaims she’s going to become an interior designer and starts going around to our friends, to people whose houses I designed, offering her services.”

“Isn’t that good, though?”

“She knows nothing about interior design. No training, no skills, no idea what she was doing or getting involved in. Once she got people interested, she started going to auctions, flying off to Europe on shopping sprees, randomly buying expensive furniture and art that piled up in some warehouse. Meanwhile, she kept missing appointments with clients. She couldn’t face them, couldn’t deal with it. The whole thing was a disaster. She got depressed again.” He shook his head. “It’s like I’m her caretaker, Amanda. She doesn’t seem to conceive that I might have my own needs or my own feelings. She isn’t curious about my life. Mostly, she likes . . . I don’t know . . . sitting in bed and staring into space.”

“I don’t know what to think, Jeff. I sympathize, I really do. But I can’t believe you kept this secret from me all this time.” I
had
been carrying on with a ghost.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I mean, didn’t you
need
to talk about it?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got a therapist for that. And her family.”

“Sure, but I mean didn’t you want to talk about it with me?” I used to congratulate myself for being so good about not meddling in his relationship with his wife. Now I wondered if I’d just been selfish, completely missing signals that he was suffering and needed comfort.

“It felt good to be able to leave all that behind. It’s horrible how it takes over everything. I was glad to keep us separate and unaffected by it.”

“But we couldn’t really be unaffected.” Maybe I’d always sensed there was something about his marriage that I needed to leave alone. If I’d pushed him to reveal it, we wouldn’t have been able to continue our relationship. Now it was out and couldn’t be ignored.

“I try being patient with her,” he went on. “I try to help every way I can. But after years of trying and getting nothing back and seeing no change, I started getting depressed, too. Then I found you again. I don’t think I could’ve stayed married otherwise. At least when I’m with you, I can get away . . . forget about her for a while, have a life.”

His words hit me hard. “Did you hear what you just said? You just said you can’t stay married without me.” I stood up and looked down on him from across the table. “What am I, some kind of marital aid? Why bother with couples counseling? Just go out and have an affair!”

“Come on, that’s not what I meant.”

“That’s exactly what you meant. Jesus! I’ve been helping you
keep your marriage together! As long as I stick around, you don’t need to leave her. Meanwhile, I’m supposed to keep my life on hold.” I pulled on the bracelet. The gold band dug into my skin like a handcuff. “I never knew that was the bargain here, Jeff, you know? And now . . . I’m afraid of waking up all alone in the world one day with no one who truly cares about me.”

“I care. You know that. I love you, Amanda. And I’ll always be here for you.”

“But you aren’t here for me, not really. She comes first. She has to. She needs you. And here you are, having an affair!”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he said, glaring straight at me. “You can’t imagine! No one can if they haven’t lived through it.”

“I’m sure it’s hard. And I feel horrible for you, I do. But still, this is wrong.” I went to the window and looked out. I couldn’t face him. My eyes teared up as it hit me in the gut. I knew. No one else had to tell me—not Molly, a therapist, a hypnotist, a psychic, or a mechanical gypsy. This was the end.

“You think I’m a bad person for cheating on her.”

“No.” I leaned my forehead against the glass as tears trickled down my cheek. “You’re a good person, Jeff. That’s not what I meant.”

“I could’ve left a long time ago, but I stayed. I make sure she gets the care she needs.”

“I understand that.”

“The last thing I wanted was to hurt you. I’m sorry. I’ve tried to figure this out, but it seems to be an impossible situation, especially because I don’t know what she might do if I leave her.”

The truth was too horrible to say out loud. Kill herself. Or him. Or even, potentially, if she did find out about the affair, me.

“Yes,” I said. “You’ve devoted yourself to her.” I wiped the tears off my cheek and then turned around. “Her, not me. And you’re there for your kids, which you need to be. Meanwhile, I
may never have any kids because I’ve spent my late thirties hoping a man will leave his wife for me when that was never a real possibility.”