Once More With Feeling (16 page)

I’d always kind of loved how delighted by that he was. And I’d really loved that I wasn’t the crazy one, for once. It was amazing how much I’d loved that – and how different that dynamic had been from that of any other relationship I’d ever had.

‘I guess I never saw that part of him,’ Brooke was saying – carefully, I thought, but more or less sincerely. ‘I only saw that Wall Street wannabe thing and it didn’t make sense to me that you would choose that kind of guy. Not to
marry
.’

‘I was tired of playing games,’ I said, lifting my shoulders and then dropping them again. I thought of Alec and shoved that aside. Hard. There was no point dredging all of that up now, not when it was so far away, so beyond my reach. When he had been nothing but a lost cause
from the start. There was no point and never had been, and I’d accepted that a long time ago, hadn’t I? Brooke had seen that as depression. I remembered it as
realism
. ‘I was tired of the same old guys with the same old stale promises. All those marginal,
maybe
sort of lives. Tim was a grown up. He knew exactly what he wanted and he wasn’t afraid to ask for it. He had a great job that he liked and was good at, and he wasn’t embarrassed to say so. He told me he wanted to marry me on our third date.’

I smiled slightly, remembering that night vividly. He’d made me dinner at his place – an impressive gourmet meal in his beautiful, undeniably adult Upper West Side building complete with doormen, an elevator, and a kitchen that was not, in fact, a galley slapped on the wall of the living room. He’d kissed me and told me he thought he could marry me. When I’d only stared at him in response, he’d said that the truth was he
wanted
to marry me, and who cared if that might be rushing things because that was how he felt.

There had been a time in my life when the fact that a man indicated interest in me would have been all the information I needed to do whatever he asked – but I’d never felt that kind of edgy desperation around Tim. Not once. I’d never felt wild and out of control with him – I’d felt calm. Like I didn’t have to make any decisions with him from a place of fear. That had felt revolutionary. I’d told him that marriage wasn’t something I could think about at that point in my life, that it was much too soon
even to think about the conversation, and he’d smiled.

I can wait
, he’d said, his blue eyes clear.
I’m in absolutely no rush, Sarah. I’m not going anywhere
.

There was no part of me that hadn’t loved that.

‘I liked it,’ I told Brooke now. ‘I liked knowing exactly where I stood with him – exactly how important I was to him.’ I caught her gaze then. ‘And I really, really liked being that important to somebody. Being a priority. So much so that he was perfectly happy to wait until I was ready to take our relationship to the next level. And he did.’

Brooke pressed her lips together, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing. Of course we were. Dr Alec Frasier. He had been noble and good. He saved lives. With his own hands. He was everything a hero should be – so handsome, so smart, so capable. God knew, I’d thought he was a hero come to life, even if he was markedly more gruff and irritable than heroes usually were in my fantasies.

But heroes didn’t make particularly good boyfriends. Or at least, not for me. I had never felt
in control
with Alec. Not ever. He loved me, he’d said, but he wasn’t the marrying kind and anyway, there were worlds to save. He would love it if I came with him, he’d said, in his brusque, take-no-prisoners way – but that had to be my choice and yes, he’d be fine on his own. And no, he hadn’t been willing to wait.

There had never been any solid ground to steady myself
upon. Never any way to trust that I wasn’t the only reason we were together – that he would care or even notice if I stopped trying so hard. And after a while, life without a base, and without any kind of quantifiable future, became increasingly difficult to manage. Too difficult for me, anyway. Alec never made promises, he’d only offered me choices, and he’d demanded I make those choices alone.

And more than all that, there would never, ever, be anything as important to him as his job. His beeper. Any woman who stayed with him would have had to accept that she would always come a distant second to his calling. A far distant second, if she even made the list when there was a crisis he had to handle. And the truth was, I couldn’t begrudge that. I didn’t. Every patient wanted her doctor to have the same work ethic as Alec had, the same level of total commitment. Especially a doctor like him, who’d had every intention of saving the world one third world country at a time. One epidemic at a time. With the force of his formidable will alone, if necessary.

But I had been equally, heartbreakingly, sure that I was not that woman.

And Tim had been a deep, beautiful breath of fresh air next to that goddam beeper.

‘I don’t get it,’ Brooke said then, studying my face. She tucked her legs up beneath her on the couch. ‘You don’t seem angry at him. Shouldn’t you be?’

‘Alec?’ I hadn’t said his name out loud in such a long time, it felt like an incantation. As if I’d kicked up magic
all around us, just by invoking him, and there would be a price for that kind of carelessness. There always was. I repressed a shiver. Brooke finished chewing her piece of pizza and eyed me as she licked her fingers.

‘Not Alec,’ she said gently. ‘Tim. That story you told me was all about Carolyn. How furious you are with her and all the crap she pulled at the hospital. Not that she’s not guilty here. You know I’ve never particularly loved her whole thing or the way she treats you. But he’s your
husband
. Isn’t his the greater betrayal?’

I shifted against the couch, suddenly far more uncomfortable than the question probably warranted. How was I supposed to answer that? The truth was, I wasn’t sure I’d even thought about it in those terms. Lianne had, I knew. She held the two of them to be equally guilty. Any bonfires she built or face punches she dispensed were, she’d made it clear, to be shared between them.

But I was less certain.

‘Carolyn’s known me since I was born,’ I pointed out, possibly hedging. ‘Tim’s only known me for the past seven years. I actually lived with Carolyn longer than I did with Tim, you know. If we’re counting things like that.’

Brooke leaned forward and topped up her wine glass. She didn’t speak until she settled back against the couch again, and when she did, I got the sense that she had very carefully chosen not to say any number of things. It was as if those unspoken words hummed in the air between us.

‘Do you actually believe that?’ she asked.

I opened my mouth to answer her and then shut it again. What did I believe? Shouldn’t I know? All I felt inside of me was the wine, the pizza and that great rage at Carolyn that nothing seemed to ease. Not even a little bit. And I didn’t feel that way about Tim.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t angry at him – of course I was. Deeply, wildly angry. But it seemed that every time I started to fume, I fumed over her. Every time I thought about it, I thought about her.
He
was almost incidental to the situation. Was there something wrong with me for thinking that? He was the one who had made vows to me. He was the one who had broken them. Brooke was absolutely right.

Why didn’t I focus on Tim instead? I realized as I asked myself this that I’d gone to great lengths to erase his part in all of this – even the scene I’d walked in on. I’d made this all about Carolyn’s
evil clutches
and had created some fantasy Tim, who’d blown into her talons like an easy summer breeze.

But that wasn’t the Tim I knew. He was a planner. He plotted for years, he didn’t succumb to passion. He was tenacious and he
waited
. He had never toppled over weakly to anything in all the years I’d known him.

It was possible that the sudden punch of nausea that made my stomach buckle was one reason why I’d avoided thinking about that.

‘I guess I don’t care that much about what happens to my relationship with Carolyn,’ I admitted after a while
had passed and I was sure I’d keep my pizza down. Though it was a close call. ‘She’s always been so challenging. While some part of me really thought, for a long time after I walked in on them, that things would work out with Tim. I thought that right up until she told me she was pregnant and honestly? On some level I still thought it until I walked out of the hospital yesterday.’

Brooke said nothing, and it felt like more of an indictment than if she’d unleashed the entire argument I was sure she was very carefully keeping to herself behind her calm exterior. Which was why I didn’t tell her that if I was completely honest, I still hadn’t given up on him. Not all the way. Not yet. It was that coma, I thought now. Again. I still believed that he could wake up a changed, penitent man. I still wanted him to do that, no matter that there was a baby now. I still wanted him to make this right.

‘Look,’ I said, restlessly fidgeting forward and up until I was on my feet. Then I had to face the fact that I didn’t have any idea what to do once I was standing. ‘We had a whole marriage. It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t something I just made up in my head. It wasn’t
settling
, not the way you mean it when you say it.’

‘I’m not judging you for that, or at least, not really,’ Brooke said with a sigh. ‘I mean, what do you think my life is really like, Sarah? I’d kill to find love, and some days I think any reasonable facsimile will do. I’m not even that fussy. I just want someone who likes me a lot, who
won’t become one more task I have to manage.’

I didn’t want to talk about Tim any more, and I wanted to talk about Carolyn even less, suddenly. Even though I knew that Tim was no facsimile. I’d wanted him. I’d wanted every part of him. I hadn’t thought I’d
settled
on our wedding day – I thought I’d won a great prize. I hadn’t been pretending. I’d been thrilled. And I’d thought Brooke’s dress was pretty.

But I understood that she wouldn’t believe me, even if I could bring myself to admit that now, knowing where it all had ended up. What he’d done with all those things I’d believed. Did the way things ended change the way they’d been before? Did what had happened now retroactively make everything that had gone before invalid? I didn’t think so. I didn’t
want
to think so.

I walked toward her stunning array of books instead, sighing in pleasure as I reached over and traced the raised lettering on the spine of something very old and not in English.

‘I can’t believe that you’re single for any reason but your own personal choice to be single,’ I said after a proper moment of reverence. ‘Not you, Brooke. You always had packs of them fighting over you in the street.’

‘Fighting in the street, yes,’ she said dryly. ‘Over me, not so much.’

‘That’s revisionist history if ever I’ve heard it.’ I picked up a framed photo of some black-and-white street scene. Somewhere stark. Bold and a little bit sad. Berlin, maybe.
I imagined she’d taken her own trips in these years. The way I’d wanted to do and yet had never found the time. ‘You’ve never walked into a bar in New York City without coming out with three men begging you for your number. It’s never happened.’

That had never been my experience in the desperate wilderness that was the Manhattan bar scene. I had never exactly shone brightly under those circumstances. I had comforted myself with the knowledge that I wasn’t one for the first impression, but the long, slow build. It hadn’t really been comforting at all.

‘And yet somehow that has not led to lasting romantic bliss,’ she said, and when I glanced back at her she was making a wry sort of face. She caught my eye and grimaced. ‘Don’t,’ she said, holding up her free hand to stop me. ‘Don’t do the thing where you talk about how they’re all so intimidated by my poise or beauty or intellect or whatever else. That’s just not true. In the whole history of the world, that has never been true, and only women think otherwise. Men never sit around and tell each other that the hot chick at the bar failed to approach them because she was intimidated by their charm, wealth, and good looks. It would never occur to them to say something so ridiculous.’

‘You’re thirty-three years old,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s hardly time to decree yourself a lifelong spinster and find yourself a Boston marriage to while away your latter years, is it?’

‘Don’t think I haven’t thought about it,’ she said, sounding particularly aggrieved. ‘My problem is that I’m just not gay, no matter how much I’d like to be, intellectually. Which is really too bad, because all the really interesting people I know are women. And mostly single, as a matter of fact.’

‘New York City is really hard for single women,’ I said helpfully. Or maybe not so helpfully, now that I heard myself say it. ‘Everybody says so.’

‘I don’t even think I really want to get married,’ Brooke said with a sigh. ‘But I’d like the option to mull it over at some point. To consider it carefully and come to the appropriate conclusion. You know?’

I did know. That was exactly what Tim had given me. The option. I decided not to share that with her, either.

I walked down the length of the shelves, amazed anew at the sheer quantity of all her books. All shapes and sizes. Paperbacks stacked on top of hardcovers. Squat, fat ones and lean, glossy ones. Art books and coffee table books next to true crime stories and the odd sculpture or photograph. So many books I’d already read, and a hundred books I wanted to sit down and read right this minute, now that I’d seen them here. She’d always had entirely too many books. They’d spilled out all over the floors and onto the windowsills and radiators in that tiny Alphabet City apartment and in the bowling alley dorm room before it. We’d lived in a precarious hazard of words.

‘Did you miss me?’ she asked in a small voice.

I could hear how much that cost her – and I could feel it ricochet in me, like a bullet. And I understood, then, exactly what had happened – what I’d done. I even knew why. I’d had to step away from Brooke to figure out who I could be without her. But I hadn’t done that, had I? I’d jumped right into Tim’s world instead. I’d become Tim’s perfect wife. Tim’s partner. Lived in Tim’s dream life. Who was I, after all of that? Just some kind of demented Goldilocks creature who went around trying on whole lives as it suited me, leaving nothing but wreckage in my wake? I didn’t much like that image. But that didn’t make it any less true.