The First Time (23 page)

“I’ll clean everything up when I get back.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Foolish question, Mattie understood as Jake shook his head. Of course he didn’t want her to go with him. What kind of man takes his wife along to visit his girlfriend?

“You’re sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’m fine, Jake,” Mattie repeated.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said.

Mattie’s eyes followed him out of the room. “Drive carefully,” she said.

J
ake? Jake, are you ready?”

Mattie stole a final glance at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, noting gratefully that everything seemed to be in its proper place, no unwanted black squiggles under her eyes, no stray hairs escaping their jeweled clasp at the back of her neck. Pretty in pink, she thought, adjusting the satin collar of her cashmere sweater, making sure the vintage rhinestones at her ears were securely fastened. The only discordant fashion note were three phone numbers scribbled across the palm of Mattie’s left hand, fading reminders of yesterday’s folly. The numbers had refused to disappear despite repeated scrubbings, clinging to Mattie’s skin with the stubbornness of a tattoo. Hopefully Jake wouldn’t notice, Mattie thought, deciding not to worry. It was doubtful Jake
would get close enough to notice. A slight tremor teased her fingers. Mattie thrust her hands into the pockets of her gray slacks and exited the room.

“Jake? Are you almost ready?”

Still no response.

“Jake?”

Mattie walked down the hall to the guest room, peeked inside the open door. “Jake?” But the room was empty, the white-and-yellow-striped comforter tossed carelessly across the bed, exactly as it had been the day before. Had the bed even been slept in? Mattie wondered, turning away.

The closed door to Kim’s bedroom stood before her like a silent and implacable rebuke. Her daughter had barricaded herself in her room last night and hadn’t stirred since. She’d refused dinner and hadn’t appeared for either breakfast or lunch. She must be very hungry, Mattie thought, knowing how proud her daughter was, how stubborn. Just like her father, Mattie thought, knocking gently on the bedroom door, cautiously pushing it open when she received no reply.

The room was in darkness, the shutters closed, no lights on. It took a few seconds for Mattie’s eyes to adjust, to differentiate between the bed against the far wall and the chest of drawers beside it, the desk to her right and the straight-backed chair in front of it. Abandoned articles of clothing covered every available surface. Mattie inched her way forward, the toe of her black shoe hitting a discarded cassette on the floor, sending it flying into the closet door. The figure in the bed stirred, sat up, pushed a matted tuft of hair away from her face, stared toward Mattie, said nothing.

“Kim? Are you all right?”

“What time is it?” Kim asked, her voice husky with sleep.

Mattie peered through the semidarkness toward the clock on the wall. The clock was the size and shape of a small watermelon, its bright rosy pink face surrounded by a dark green frame, its minutes represented by a series of black seeds. “Almost four o’clock,” Mattie said. “Have you been asleep all day?”

Kim shrugged. “On and off. What’s it like out?”

“Sunny. Cold. January,” Mattie said. “Are you all right?” she asked again.

“I’m fine.” Kim pushed her hair away from her forehead, a gesture she’d inherited from her father, one that said she was already impatient with the conversation, and looked toward the windows. “You going somewhere?”

“A photography exhibit, and then we’re meeting Stephanie Slopen and a friend of hers for dinner. You want to join us?”

Even in the darkness, Mattie had no trouble making out the sneer on her daughter’s face. “I’m grounded till my fortieth birthday, remember?”

“What you did was very wrong,” Mattie reminded her.

“Is that what you came in here to tell me?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t you have enough to worry about without worrying about me?”

Mattie began mentally straightening up the room,
picking her daughter’s clothes off the floor with her eyes, returning each item to its proper place. Kim had always been so neat, so precise. When had she turned into such a slob? “But I do worry about you. I know how confusing a time this must be for you.”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Kim said.

“I was thinking, maybe you should talk to someone.…”

“Someone? You mean like a psychiatrist?”

“Maybe.”

“You think I’m crazy?”

“No, of course not,” Mattie said quickly. “I just think it might help if you had someone to talk to.”

“I have you.” Kim’s large eyes raced through the darkness toward her mother. “Don’t I?”

“Of course you do. But I’m part of the problem, Kim,” Mattie told her.

“You’re not the problem.
He
is.” There was no need to specify who
he
was.

“Your father loves you very much. You know that.”

“Yeah, sure. Enjoy your dinner.” Kim flopped back down in bed, covered her head with her blankets, a clear signal the conversation was over.

Mattie hesitated for several seconds, then carefully backed out of the room, closing the door behind her. There was a great deal that still needed to be said, but she didn’t have the energy to say it. Or the time, she thought, checking her watch. Where was Jake? They needed to get going.

“Jake?” Mattie called again, heading down the stairs.

She knew he was on the phone even before she saw
his closed office door, knew he was speaking to Honey even before she lifted the extension in the kitchen to her ear, knew what she would hear even before she heard him say the words. “I’m sorry,” he was saying.

“Stop apologizing,” Honey told him, in her now-familiar rasp.

“She made these plans without my knowledge. I can’t get out of it.”

“I’m the one who should be sorry. I should have been here for you yesterday.”

“You had no way of knowing.”

“I don’t know why I picked yesterday, of all days, to go to the gym so early.”

“Tomorrow night,” Jake interrupted forcefully. “Tomorrow night, no matter what.”

“Sounds good. Where should we go?”

“I was hoping we’d stay in.”

“Sounds even better. Seven o’clock?”

“I can’t wait to see you,” Jake said.

“I love you.”

Mattie hung up the phone before she could hear her husband’s reply.

“What do you think?” Mattie asked, the eavesdropped conversation still echoing in her ears as she stood beside Jake in the center of the small gallery on Erie Street, around the corner from the Magnificent Mile. The floors of the gallery were bleached wooden strips, the lighting high and recessed. A large front window took up half the north wall. The other walls were filled with a stunning array of large color photographs: a young Mexican woman in a bright floral dress, with
flowers in her hair and a crucifix around her neck, posing in front of a painted backdrop of the Virgin Mary floating in a cloud-flecked sky, the painted flowers beneath the Virgin’s feet blending into the flowers along the bottom of the girl’s dress; a group of hand-painted angels, on a cracked turquoise wall, watching over a small black-and-white photo of a young man; a large TV sitting incongruously on a table in front of a painted backdrop of an old-fashioned landscape; a fat, sour-faced Latina in a gold-flecked blue dress staring accusingly into the camera, more fearsome than the array of uniformed generals sitting behind her.

“I like them,” Jake said.

(I love you
, Honey whispered.)

“Why?” Mattie asked. (Why are you here?)

Jake laughed self-consciously. “I’m a lawyer, Mattie,” he said. “What do I know about art? Do
you
like them?”

“I love them,” Mattie said, then bit down on her tongue.

(I love you
. Honey whispered.)

“Why?”

Why am
I
here? Mattie wondered, trying to force the earlier conversation from her mind. “The use of color and composition,” she explained, using the sound of her own voice to banish unwanted echoes. “The way the photographer combines reality and artifice, using one to compliment and accentuate the other, occasionally blurring the boundaries between the two. The way he uses inanimate objects to make a statement about the self-image of a culture. The way these pictures
combine visual language with personal understanding.”

“You see all that?”

Mattie smiled, despite herself. “I read the brochure before we got here.”

Again Jake laughed. Mattie realized how much she liked the sound of his laughter, how little she’d heard of it over the years. Does he laugh with Honey? she wondered. (
I can’t wait to see you
, he’d said.) She focused her attention on a photograph of a young man posed provocatively in front of a wall filled with painted images of war—soldiers, tanks, guns, explosions. The boy stood with his back to the camera, his red T-shirt pulled up and away from his faded denim jeans to expose a large white bandage that ran, like a jagged scar, across his back.

“Powerful stuff,” Jake said. “Who’s the photographer?”

“Rafael Goldchain. Born in Chile in 1956. His Jewish grandparents emigrated from Germany to Argentina in the 1930s. His parents eventually moved to Chile, where Rafael was born, then settled in Mexico in the early 1970s. Rafael moved to Israel, where he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and then, in 1976, he emigrated to Toronto, Canada, where he’s lived ever since.”

“Pretty mixed-up guy.”

He’s not the only one, Mattie thought, glancing back at the brochure in her hands. “He says that when he’s photographing in Latin America, he feels he’s engaged in a purposeful and meaningful process of
self-discovery,” she read out loud. “By creating within that culture, he enhances his sense of belonging.”

“So he’s using his profession as a way of working out his own issues,” Jake said.

I guess we all do that to one degree or another, Mattie thought.

“So now that you’ve viewed this exhibit,” Jake continued, “what do you do now?”

He’s asking what I’ve been doing for the last sixteen years, Mattie thought with wonder, not sure whether to be angry or pleased. Maybe if you’d taken the time to get to know me, she thought, the same kind of time you’ve squandered over the years on women like Honey Novak, then you wouldn’t have to ask.

(Tomorrow night
, she heard Jake say.
Tomorrow night, no matter what.)

“I decide whether I have a client who might appreciate one of these images,” she told him, pointing to a photograph on the far wall. In the picture, an old-fashioned jukebox sat in the corner of a blue-green room, the jukebox all but overwhelmed by posters of half-naked women pinned to the walls, the emphasis on one poster in particular, a woman wearing a pink corset and black nylon stockings, her fingers hooked into the sides of her panties, about to pull them down over her rounded backside. “I was thinking this one might look particularly good above the sofa in your office.”

Jake laughed, clearly not sure if she was serious. “I’m not sure my partners would appreciate it. They still haven’t gotten over the baked potato.”

Mattie understood he was referring to the Claes
Oldenburg lithograph she’d persuaded him to hang on the wall behind his desk. “I was thinking of your office at home.”

Jake nodded, a guilty blush suddenly flashing across his face. “I’m sorry, Mattie,” he stammered. “I’ve been meaning to spend more time at home.”

It took Mattie a few seconds to connect one thought to the other. “Jake, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s just been so hectic—”

“I only meant—”

“— what with the trial—”

“Honestly, Jake, I wasn’t implying—”

“As soon as this trial is over—”

“Stop apologizing,” Mattie said.

(Stop apologizing
, Honey echoed.)

Mattie gasped, brought her hand to her mouth. Did her husband spend his life apologizing to women? she wondered. Apologizing and seeking absolution?

“What’s that?” Jake asked.

“What’s what?” Mattie looked toward a young couple gesticulating broadly in front of the photograph of the surly-looking woman in the gold-flecked blue dress.

“On your hand.” Jake caught Mattie’s left hand in his, turning it palm-up before she was able to twist it away.

Mattie mumbled something about needing a phone number and not being able to find a piece of paper. Not quite a lie. Not nearly the truth. Jake seemed to accept it. Why not? Mattie wondered, hiding her hand in her pocket. She’d been accepting similar mumblings for years.

“You really think this would look good over the sofa in my office?” Jake asked, his focus returning to the photograph.

Now it was her turn to wonder if he was serious. “What do you think?” she asked.

“I think it’s perfect,” he said, and laughed.

“Sold to the gentleman with the great laugh.” Mattie found herself laughing as well.

“Thanks for letting me tag along today,” Jake said, after they’d completed arrangements to purchase the photograph. “I really enjoyed myself.”

“Thank
you,”
Mattie said in return. “I’m sure there were places you’d rather be.”

(She made these plans without my knowledge. I can’t get out of it.)

“Can’t think of one,” Jake said, managing to sound as if he meant it. He checked his watch. “Hey, it’s getting late. You hungry?”

Mattie nodded, allowing him to take her arm. “Starved,” she said.

The restaurant was already full to the rafters by the time Mattie and Jake pushed through the glass-paneled front door just after seven o’clock. A large number of patrons were stuffed, like well-dressed sausages, into a small waiting area, and stood jostling for position around the self-satisfied maître d’. Several delicate perfumes fought a losing battle with a conflicting variety of more oppressive scents, including a cigar being smoked by a ponytailed young woman at the bar. “Excuse me, but we have a reservation,” Mattie heard someone say.

“Everyone here has a reservation,” came the maître d’s chilling response.