Love in Mid Air (11 page)

Frederica’s is full of ghosts. The last time I was here I was lingerie shopping with Kelly just before she married Mark. When
they heard that Kelly was shopping for her honeymoon, they put us in the dressing room on the end, a room so large it had
a pedestal for her to stand on and a full sofa for me. The salesgirl kept calling Kelly “the bride” in hushed tones, as if
she were referring to the recently deceased, and irritation had flashed across Kelly’s face, so fast that only someone who
knows her as well as I do would have even noticed. It’s like when people are all the time saying she’s pretty. Kelly hates
being reduced. But the salesgirl had insisted on bringing these big flowing peignoir sets, formless filmy clouds of pink and
white.

“They look like something Eva Gabor would wear to make flapjacks,” Kelly said, handing them back.

The girl was too young to get the reference to Eva Gabor and flapjacks but she did seem to understand that we would be requiring
something sexier. She returned with a black bustier with long flapping garters, and Kelly had nodded and begun pulling off
her jeans. Her body still looked great, her waist as tapered as always. I flopped down on the sofa and watched her struggle
to pull on the bustier, writhing like a snake trying to get back into its skin. It was a punishing sort of garment, thrusting
her breasts out the top and cupping her hips into an exaggerated curve. I asked her how you took it off when it was time to
have sex.

“You don’t, silly, that’s the whole point,” she said, and she’d twirled in the mirror, the garters slapping her thighs like
small whips. The salesgirl had brought us champagne—another perk, I suppose, if you’re in the big dressing room at the end
that is evidently the Frederica’s equivalent of a bridal suite. It was clear that she wanted us to be happier than we were.
She produced the champagne flutes with such a flourish that I think she expected us to squeal, maybe applaud or propose a
toast. When Kelly just said, very calmly, “That’s fine, put them down on the table,” the girl’s face had fallen in momentary
disappointment. But she pushed it aside with a professional smile and finally left me and Kelly alone. Kelly insisted that
I try on something too and—even though I was a little self-conscious about how my post-baby body looked in comparison to hers—I
stood up and yanked off my jeans and grabbed the first hanger on the peg. It was a red satin teddy that kept sliding down
my shoulders as I popped the champagne cork.

For the next hour Kelly and I gulped the cheap champagne, and we swapped the camisoles and slips and teddies back and forth
in a wild, pointless effort to mute our grief. Even though we were speculating about which of these garments might best seduce
her fiancé or my husband, the truth is we were really deep in mourning for men who weren’t there. The man who had left her,
the man who had not yet come for me. When Kelly had climbed up onto the pedestal, holding the empty champagne bottle with
her cheeks bright pink and her hair disheveled, I had almost asked her what she would do if Daniel came back. I had never
told her that he called me that time, never told her that his cell phone number was scribbled on the last page of my phone
book under the single letter D. “Leave her alone,” I had told him. “You broke her heart once and I’ll kill you if you show
up here and break it again.” It sounded good at the time I said it but when I saw her there in that dressing room, so flushed,
so beautiful, and so in despair, I wondered if I was really trying to protect her. Maybe I just knew that if Daniel returned
and swept her away that I would be left, for the first time, utterly alone.

This is not a happy story. Why am I remembering it now? I exhale sharply and pull a plum camisole over my head. It looks good
against my skin. Tara pushes open the door. She has the black hose and an armful of bras as well. She wants me to try them.
She says they’re the most comfortable bras on the market, and once women try them on they get one in every color. You know
how it is. Ladies will do anything to find a really comfortable bra, and I realize this is how I look to her, like a woman
who buys in bulk.

“Bring me some of those black satin heels,” I say. “The ones in the window.” I sit down on the little chair and pull the stockings
on carefully. I love the sound the nylon makes when one leg rubs against the other and I imagine the rough tug of Gerry’s
hands pushing my knees apart, Gerry’s head sliding up between my thighs. Tara knocks at the door, hands the shoes in without
a word. They’re too small but I jam my feet into them anyway and stand up in front of the mirror. This is all quite nasty
and lovely, the way the shoes lift your legs up to the eye level of the consumer, and isn’t that what they do with candy at
the checkout counter, after all? It’s the way of the world. What you see is what you want, and I would like to be candy at
the checkout counter, at least once in a while. I would like to be the guilty pleasure, that thing you know isn’t good for
you but you grab it anyway. You grab it hastily, guiltily, looking over your shoulder to make sure that your gluttony is unobserved.
I stand shakily in the high-heeled shoes, turning my hips one way and then the other in front of the mirror and murmuring,
“Would you like some of this, sir?”

“You’re sure you don’t need the bras?” Tara asks, but within five minutes I am out and walking through the mall, with the
shoes, the plum-colored silk slip, a silvery camisole, and the elastic hose nestled inside a swirl of hot pink tissue paper.
I am humming as I swing the bag back and forth in my palm, headed toward the bistro where I will meet Nancy for lunch. Headed
toward Gap Kids where I will buy a parka for Tory, toward Home + Garden where I will stir the tails of each wind chime hanging
in a row, my eyes closed, swaying in a small and private dance. Headed toward Nordstrom where I will spray a different perfume
on each wrist, headed toward Barnes & Noble where there are so many stories of so many people who have loved and lost in so
many ways, headed past the courtyard fountains and through the puddles of light that spill across the pretty slate floor.
Headed wherever it is that women like me go.

W
hat do you want?” Jeff asks me.

“That’s just it, I’m not entirely sure. I know, I know, you’re thinking that it’s unfair to make Phil try to guess what I
want when I don’t even know myself.”

Jeff shakes his head. “You sound human. But you’ve gotta know something—Phil is very sure about what he wants. He wants to
keep this family together at any cost.”

“At any cost?”

“Those were his exact words.”

“I guess it’s easy to say ‘at any cost’ when you know the bill is going to be delivered to somebody else.”

Jeff sits back in his chair and folds his hands very carefully in front of him.

“Didn’t you think it was weird,” I ask him, “that Phil was the one who called to schedule our counseling?”

It was damn weird and he knows it. “Couples have all sorts of arrangements,” he says. “I thought maybe at your house Phil
was the one who scheduled the family appointments.”

“Please. He wouldn’t know the name of Tory’s teacher or her pediatrician if you held a gun to his head. He just wanted to
make sure we ended up here. He wanted to make sure that this whole thing would be argued in a court that was sympathetic to
him.”

“I take it you don’t think the church is as responsive to the needs of women as it is to the needs of men.”

“Bingo.”

“Well, you’re right. Of course you’re right. But you’re not talking to the church, Elyse, you’re talking to me.” Jeff rubs
his eyes. “Does it make you uncomfortable—that we’re all friends?”

“I thought about putting up a fight for my own therapist. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask, that I’d just go out and hire
somebody like a normal person, but then I thought that it’s not that big a deal and I should just give Phil what he wants.
Keep it within the family.”

“The church family.”

I laugh. I’m not sure why. “Yeah, the church family.”

“You sound like you’ve thrown in the towel and we haven’t even started.”

What can I say? He’s right. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I say, “but it doesn’t matter who we talk to. It’s too late.”

“Phil said one other thing. He doesn’t think you’ve fully considered what all this could mean for Tory.”

He starts talking about those studies that show, even now, that children from broken homes don’t do as well in school. They
have sex earlier, their own marriages fail. I’ve read the same studies. Then there are the biographies. Go to the library,
pick one up. The famous person came from a broken home and from there the dominoes begin to fall. There’s something different
about these people, these children of divorce. They walk with their legs farther apart than the rest of us, like they grew
up on a boat. These are the people who’ve learned to expect changes at any minute. They may grow up to be famous, but they’re
not happy.

Jeff pulls off his glasses and I wonder, not for the first time, if they’re real. They have thick, heavy black frames like
the kind Michael Caine used to wear and I’ve never seen Jeff use them anywhere outside this office. “Of course I know what
happens to the kids,” I tell him. “That’s all that’s keeping me here.” Which is a small lie but one I figured would shut Jeff
up. I wouldn’t put it past him to wear fake glasses. Jeff has a lot of props.

“I don’t know, Elyse, you just seem so…” Jeff stops, fumbles for a word.

“Angry? Stubborn?”

“Well, yeah, of course you’re angry and stubborn, but there’s something else going on.”

“You think I’m scared? You think like Phil does, that I make these wild statements but when push comes to shove I’m too scared
to go out there and live on my own. You think I’m just some dentist’s wife living in a four-hundred-thousand-dollar house
with twenty bucks in her purse who talks this big game but doesn’t have the balls to see it through.”

Jeff fidgets a minute, straightens the Bible on his desk. I wonder if it’s an unconscious gesture or a bit of a threat. Phil
has made it here first, practically painted the walls with his interpretation of events. It’s very hard to prove you’re not
crazy. Hard to prove you’re not selfish. Almost impossible to prove you’re not paranoid. No matter what I say, Jeff—well,
all of them, really, the whole chorus—will try to call me back. My reasons will never be good enough. My explanations will
always fall flat. The only way I’d be allowed to leave this marriage is by stretcher.

“What happened to your hand?”

“What?”

“Your hand. Why is it bandaged?”

“Phil accused me of being overdramatic so I stabbed myself in the palm.”

Jeff has a strange look on his face and we sit there for a long time before he finally speaks. “Marriage is funny, isn’t it?”

“Hilarious.” I stare at the cross behind his head and bite my lip. For some reason, he’s the last person I want to see me
cry.

A
s I walk down the hall from Jeff’s office I see Lynn standing in the atrium, talking to a man with a clipboard. Evidently
the church has decided to go ahead with the renovations and she has taken charge of getting the estimates. She is wearing
a pale pink suit, a Chanel-style knockoff, and she seems absurdly overdressed for the occasion. Her hair is blown into a neat
little cap and she looks good in the suit, slender and tastefully accessorized. The fact that she’s stopped walking with us
doesn’t seem to have affected her weight. Lynn is disciplined and always has been. When we used to go out to eat for book
club she would order an appetizer and swear she was full.

I start to wave at her, but that feels wrong. She’s trying to be professional. She’s trying to figure out what her new job
is. The last thing she needs is me hanging around.

G
erry says give him a minute and he’ll call me back. When he says “a minute” my heart sinks. It was a mistake to call. He calls
me. I don’t call him. Maybe he thinks I’m being pushy. Maybe he’s already starting to feel trapped. But I drive to the mall
anyway and pull into the far side of the parking lot, the section that only fills up around Christmas. I’ve only been there
a few seconds when the phone rings.

“Sorry,” he says. “I had to find an empty conference room.”

“I just left a counseling session,” I say. “This time it was only me and Jeff.”

“Did he talk mean to you?”

“No. That’s the bad part. He was nice.”

“I’ve got to tell you something,” Gerry says. “Don’t laugh at me.”

I am giggling already. “What?”

“I get hard dialing your number.”

“No you don’t,” I say, although the thought makes me absurdly happy. I am smiling at the steering wheel.

“I swear. I’m like Pavlov’s dog. I hit that 704 and go hard as a rock. Where are you?”

“The mall parking lot. The far corner, where they put tires on your car at Sears.”

“Very romantic. Where’s your hand?”

I look down at my bandaged palm. “You’re always worried about where my hand is.”