Just Fall (6 page)

She lifts her head and stares at herself in the mirror once again. Suddenly, her fingers are clawing through the beach bag, searching until she finds the gold wedding band that is twisted into a handkerchief inside. She stares at the ring Rob had slipped on her finger as he recited vows about loving and protecting her that now seem ludicrous. He is a complete mystery, snarled henceforth and forever with her utter debasement. She has committed grotesque and venal acts for this man. How much further will she degrade herself? His remembered assurances fade, empty echoing memories. She feels her anger flare. She just wanted to have some fun, was all. Break a dating losing streak! How did it ever come to this? The things she now knows about him are inconceivable. He’s her husband. She shudders.

Then her thoughts drift to that day in the hospital. Waking up, no recollection of how she got there, Rob so kind, so grateful and relieved she was all right. Isn’t that the man she married? He loves her. Doesn’t he? Is that enough?

These thoughts are useless. Paralyzing. She’s come this far.

She twists the ring back into the handkerchief and puts it away. Then, resolutely, methodically, she applies brown dye to her hair, careful also to coat her eyebrows.

Already she doesn’t look like herself; the dark dye makes her blue eyes pop. The heavy eyebrows change the shape of her face. She waits the required twenty minutes on edge. She wants to get out of there.

Finally. Into the shower. Ellie rinses her body of Harry’s smell and feel. She soaps her hair and the dark rinse circles down the shower’s drain. Her hands run over her breasts, down her hips, along her thighs. She thinks of Rob, fearing him, questioning him, hating him, wanting him. She wishes this were all a bad dream. There’s a rap on the door. Ellie jumps, clutching at the shower rail.

“Uh, honey…” She hears Harry through the door. “Uh, sugar…”

A sour smile twists her lips as she realizes he doesn’t remember her name. Even though she had given him a fake one, it’s just as well. She turns the water off and answers him.

“Just taking a shower. I’ll be out in a sec.”

“Uh, okay, but I gotta piss like a racehorse.”

“Like I said, one sec.”

Ellie exits the shower and dries herself briskly. She ties on the sarong, then wraps the scarf around her head once again, careful to completely cover her dark tresses. She shoves all of her belongings into her bag, including the box of dye and the tubes and bottle and gloves. Puts on the oversized sunglasses. She takes a last hasty look in the mirror. Then flings open the door.

“There you go.”

“Thanks.”

Harry hurries past her into the bathroom, only half shutting the door behind him. There is a loud sigh as the spatter of his piss hits the toilet.

“Uh…honey,” he calls. “Last night was fun—do you maybe want to spend some time together today? Rent a catamaran, do some exploring?”

His only answer is the sound of the front door closing. Harry flushes the toilet and steps out of the bathroom, his eyes searching, but she is gone.

Ellie readied herself for the blind date with a practiced measure of high hopes tempered by low expectations. After all, she had been single and dating in New York for six years now, which meant she had had her share of encounters and flings, and one or two small romances, not to mention one solid heartbreak.

The prevailing wisdom of her dating-jaded girlfriends seemed to be true: The good ones were either gay, taken, or looking over your shoulder for the next hotter thing. Still, despite the wealth of unsolicited opinions from others and her own experiences, Ellie reasoned that if you didn’t put yourself out there, you would never know. Despite the fact that the last seven dates she had gone on had all turned out to be first
and
only dates, a small drumbeat of hope still tapped inside her. Ellie was trying to keep an open mind, even as it all felt stupid and a little tired.

As she brushed her hair, she amused herself by cataloguing the last seven. Number one, Sean, had been perfectly nice, a federal prosecutor with a real passion for his work, but it was too soon after Hugh (who had moved to London just the week before, leaving her heart a bit battered). She just couldn’t follow the saga of Sean’s latest case, too distracted in mourning his predecessor to really listen. That one was definitely on her. Oh well.

Number two, Marcus, talked incessantly about his ex-wife, “the model,” leaving Ellie feeling inadequate, even though Marcus himself had a belly that strained against his shirt buttons and a nose like a squash blossom. Number three, David, took her to a Ukrainian dive bar, touting how cool it was, and it was kind of cool, until the rat scuttled directly in front of them and David leapt onto the pool table shrieking like a girl. Number four, Wilhelm, an international bond trader, was just too German. Number five, Gregg, was charming and polite and thoughtful…until after a couple of drinks his conversation slid into a racist rant. Number six, Frank, was two inches shorter than Ellie, and his wrist bones more slender than hers, no chemistry there. Number seven, Vic, was a brawny and hunky fireman, who slung her over his shoulder and carried her up the stairs to her third-floor walk-up after escorting her home from a concert in the park. They had made out passionately in the stairwell, but she hadn’t let him in and he hadn’t called again. Even so, she thought the make-out session had been a good sign. It had made her feel desirable, and had helped to squelch the perpetually gnawing little mouse of insecurity that nestled deep within her.

Acknowledging the little mouse, even momentarily, put Ellie on edge. She spent a lot of energy keeping these feelings deeply buried, enveloped as they were in a toxic black cloud of self-loathing that too often threatened to overwhelm her. Sure, she had hashed it out in therapy, week upon week of it after her sister had died, but the foundation had already been laid and life had only built upon it.

Ellie’s sister, Mary Ann, had been diagnosed with leukemia when Ellie was twelve and Mary Ann fifteen. The next five years were absorbed by Mary Ann’s illness, like a sponge soaking up a rancid spill. Ellie’s parents were always at the hospital or seeking out some experimental cure. Ellie’s failures, her triumphs, her strivings and dilemmas, went unnoticed because Mary Ann took everything. One day, home alone while her parents were at the hospital, Ellie impulsively thrust a soft white pussy willow nub into her ear. After one week, her hearing was fuzzy. Within a couple of weeks, her hearing was noticeably compromised and her teacher sent home a letter requesting a hearing test. By this time, Ellie’s ear was inflamed and throbbing. Her mother finally took her to the doctor and the nub, now virtually unrecognizable, black and oozing, was extracted. Ellie denied any knowledge of how the nub had gotten into her ear, and the doctor prescribed an antibiotic.

In the car going home, her mother turned to Ellie at a stoplight and said coldly, “Don’t I have enough on my plate?”

Ellie protested convincingly. “Why am I in trouble for needing a doctor? For fuck’s sake, Mom.”

“Watch your language” was the only response.

After Mary Ann died, Ellie thought she might get her parents back, but they were lost and misguided in their grief. They never let Ellie see Mary Ann’s body, believing it might be too difficult for her. They got her a shrink to talk to but didn’t talk to her themselves. They devoted themselves to raising money for leukemia research, and once again Ellie’s triumphs and failures continued to be her own, not shared with her family. She won design competitions and learned to salsa, mastered the perfect popover and built a car engine one piece at a time; she graduated at the top of her high school class and got into an Ivy League college. Through all of it she felt invisible to her parents and as if she was seen by everyone else as “the girl whose sister died.”

It was in college that she began to feel visible. Her first best memory of college was Freshman Orientation week. The school had organized an outdoor, nighttime glow-in-the-dark capture-the-flag game. Ellie had gone along to it reluctantly, herded with the other freshmen on her floor by their RA. She was lying low, in the game but not really playing, when suddenly she saw a wide-open pathway. Without even thinking about it, she kicked into gear, sprinted downfield, and secured the flag in one easy sweep. Her success excited the cute guy on her team who up to that point had seemed equally reluctant to be there. “Yo! Stealth!” he had yelled, before sprinting over to give her a high five. Stealth had stuck as a nickname. Ellie liked being called Stealth. It completely suited who she wanted to be in college, a departure from the inherited notoriety that had surrounded her when she was “the girl whose sister died.” She was seen in her own right, and had a cool nickname, one that also spoke to being unseen, which felt like a private little irony. She and Jason became friends that night. Over a year later, he initiated a tentative and surprising kiss after a late-night study session for a shared class (Ethical Thought in Contemporary Politics). The kisses grew more confident in the wake of her pleasurable response and sent them tumbling back to her dorm room. In the morning they emerged, satiated, nervously exhilarated, and coupled up. Jason was her first real boyfriend, her first love.

Ellie had been determined never to go back to her hometown after college and she hadn’t. She had moved to New York City. Now, as she readied herself for date number eight, she reminded herself that she was solid. Tangible. Visible. Worthy.

So,
Ellie thought as she always did,
it’ll be a good date or a good story.
At least this one, Rob Beauman, was a setup through someone who actually knew Ellie, not a random Internet dating hit, or a friend of a friend of a friend. No, this time, the connection was her colleague Marcy Clark.

Ellie and Marcy had been working together for a year in the design department, had shared a number of lunches and the occasional drink. Marcy was married to her college sweetheart, Ethan, blissfully content in her relationship, trying to get pregnant. She wanted all of her single friends to “be as happy as I am,” although up until this point, she had never suggested a fix-up for Ellie. When she had done so on Monday, it had been with a high degree of excitement.

Marcy and her husband had been out with a group of friends on Saturday night, a boozy pub crawl of an evening (although Marcy was careful to stress that she drank only water and one spritzer in pursuit of the deeply wanted first Clark baby).

This guy Rob came along, she told Ellie. He’d been working with Ethan at the investment firm for just a couple of weeks. Single. Gorgeous. Moved to Manhattan from Chicago for the job, still basically unpacking, so no attachments. But that was all just surface. Why did Marcy think of Ellie for this charmer? Why not any of her other single girlfriends? Marcy just “knew.” And her husband, Ethan, whom Ellie had only recently met—an evening of cocktails and laughter for the three of them that had moved Ellie and Marcy’s friendship to a whole new level—completely agreed. Marcy and Ethan both had a hunch, a big one. Couldn’t even say why. Marcy had grinned at her. “It just feels like magic.”

Ellie had googled him, of course, it would be foolish not to in this day and age. (She had, for example, been asked out by an attractive guy who had found her on a dating website, and while he had seemed perfect on paper, once they had exchanged names and she had run a check on his, she had discovered he was twice married with five children.) But when she googled Rob Beauman there were no red flags. Four Rob Beaumans came up: a dentist in Rutherford, N.J., a high school student in New Hampshire, a retired ophthalmologist in Florida (locally notorious for having crashed his two-seater prop jet into a golf course but walking away without a scratch), and the one she was about to meet, Rob Beauman, investment strategist. There wasn’t a lot, his profile on the firm’s website and not much more, but Ellie kind of respected a guy who wasn’t living his life in the public arena of social media.

Ellie took a final check in the mirror. Blond hair sleek. A hint of cat’s-eye eyeliner. Naturally pink cheeks and a coat of plum lipstick. Her favorite, deep navy body-con dress. If she liked him, she’d take off her coat slowly and let him see how the dress clung to her body. A rush of desire for sex flooded her unexpectedly. Hugh was old news now, and while at first she couldn’t imagine being with anyone else, that session with the fireman had stoked her fires. Maybe she’d take off the coat even if she just liked him a little. Ellie smiled at her reflection. She was ready for some fun. The hell with it, she didn’t even want a relationship. She wanted a good time. It looked like Ethan’s friend could get lucky.

Later. Rob opened the door to the restaurant for her after dinner and they emerged into the brisk, sweet first wisp of New York autumn. Ellie took her time slinging her coat on, making the most of the moment. She caught Rob looking at her, surreptitiously, adjusting his collar. She could tell he liked her. Dinner had been fun, easy.

She gave him a little half smile. “Well, then—” she began.

“Can I walk you home?” He blurted it out. Ellie got the sense that he was surprised he had asked the question. Still, she wasn’t going to say no. She was reckless. Ready for adventure.