You're Not You (15 page)

I scrubbed my face with the hotel’s warm, mineral-smelling water.
As I did I had a brief vision of the two of us just living here, in the Marriott double room, wandering Chicago as we pleased and not returning for months. If ever. We’d go hear blues singers, shop, see a few plays. I supposed Liam would be the man to call to find out the best clubs, but he seemed so far away just then. I pondered him, hours away in Madison in his yellow house, feeling as detached as if he were someone I barely knew. In the other room a series of voices scurried through the television’s speakers until Kate stopped flipping and settled on a channel.

THE NEXT WEEKEND
I brought Jill to work with me, at Kate’s request. We let ourselves in the front door, calling hello, and found Kate at her computer, the stereo on. I glanced around for Evan. We waited while she backed up and turned the chair toward us. Her hair was down around her shoulders. She was wearing a white peasant blouse and turquoise earrings.

“So Kate, this is Jill,” I said. I was carrying a pizza we’d picked up on the way over. I wanted to get it into the oven, but I thought I should give them a moment before I left them together without a translator.

Kate smiled and said hello, welcome, and for a moment as I repeated her words to Jill I felt an absurd pride in Kate, her beauty and the flash of her grin and this pretty house. I set the pizza down and straightened a few magazines on the coffee table, putting a coaster back in its holder. I realized I’d felt freer when Kate’s friends were there instead of one of mine. They knew me only as the person lifting and aiding her, and for some reason that was helpful; it made me perceive myself in terms of mere action. But I was afraid that doing these things in front of Jill would feel showy. Or that she, having done something remotely similar to it but in a completely different place, would see that I was doing it all wrong.

“I’ve been reading all your books and eating your recipes,” Jill informed her. “So I’ll thank you now for culturing up Bec and making our apartment a better place.”

Kate laughed and answered her. Jill watched her speak, concentrating, but gave up and turned to me for the explanation. “ ‘She was cultured up already,’ ” I repeated. “Yeah, Jill.” I watched Kate speak to her again and then asked Jill, “ ‘Which ones did you read?’ ”

Jill started listing her lendings from the Kate library and I took the opportunity to duck into the kitchen and put the pizza in the oven. I had expected to find Evan in here, tearing up a salad or pouring the wine, but the kitchen was dark, the wineglasses still in the cupboard. I looked in the refrigerator and found the salad makings, untouched: a head of romaine, a flat bulb of fennel from the market, and a lemon.

Back in the family room Jill was still talking, slightly nervous, clearly worried about having Kate try to answer her before I was back. I knew I’d stayed away a little too long, but Jill was too polite to show that. I felt a little stab of satisfaction that she wasn’t totally at ease. I’d worked with Kate almost as long as she had volunteered, after all.

“Yeah, you know . . .” she was saying. “I liked
Jane Eyre
too. Not
Wuthering Heights
, I read it in junior high and I think I didn’t get it. I tried it again later and kinda got it that time. . . .” She had obviously been trailing on for a few minutes when she turned to look at me.

“Did you get the movie?” I asked Kate. She nodded, and I said to Jill, “We’ve been watching those movies from the thirties where they drink a lot of martinis and wear fur-trimmed evening gowns.” I handed Jill a glass of wine and said to Kate, “Where’s Evan tonight? I thought he’d be here.”

“No,” she said smoothly, “he had a poker game. How long do you think the pizza will take?”

After dinner we sat around the kitchen table. Jill had had a third glass of wine with dinner and was flushed and charming. She was telling stories about me.

“Once Bec ruined my brand-new Little Bo Peep doll. She waited till I went downstairs for Pecan Sandies and
took the hair net off
. She actually had to tear it out of this poor doll’s skull. It was stapled on.”

Kate was chuckling, her cheeks pink. Jill had been in rare form all through dinner. I toyed with a crust of pizza, then tossed it onto Jill’s plate. She looked at me in surprise. “You always hork the crust,” I said. She ignored me, gave the crust a dismissive glance, and opened her mouth to continue.

Jill had a knack for recalling the stories that really needled me, even after all these years. Next she’d tell Kate about the time I accidentally
laughed at a girl who fell in gymnastics, before I realized she’d broken her wrist.

“Do you need anything, Kate?” I said. They both looked at me, startled. “Readjust your chair, or go to the bathroom?”

Kate’s eyes clouded for a moment. Jill looked into her wineglass as she took a sip. Then Kate simply nodded and we left Jill at the table while I took her down the hall. The whole way back to the bathroom I wanted to kick myself. I could tell she was embarrassed to have me bring it up so baldly, and at the table too, and I was preparing myself for a reprimand. But she said nothing. It made me feel worse.

When the door was shut and I was lifting her to her feet, she said, “Do you suppose you could take care of getting me to bed tonight? Jill can have another glass of wine and watch TV while we finish up.”

I turned to face her. She was sitting on the toilet with her hands on her thighs, where I had put them.

“Of course,” I said. I had never known Evan not to be home in time to put her to bed. She seemed to have an idea what I was thinking because she closed her eyes briefly and then said, “Thank you. We can talk tomorrow if that’s okay.”

“Of course,” I said again.

When I left her an hour later she was in bed, the light off but the television on. I set the remote on her abdomen, beneath her hand, and made sure each finger was on the right button. Beneath the other hand I put the lifeline. I was worried I’d forgotten something. Normally I felt secure in the knowledge that Evan would take care of anything I had overlooked, but now I kept checking the oven, the lock on the door to the garage.

“Anything else?” I asked, peeking in on her in bed for the third time. Jill was waiting for me by the front door, and had been for the past fifteen minutes. “Whatever you need.”

Kate gave me a tolerant smile and shook her head. “Really, no. This is great.”

“Okay, well, I’ll see you tomorrow. We can talk then.”

Back out in the living room Jill was looking out the window. She
heard me come in and said, “This neighborhood is eerily quiet. Are you sure other people live here?”

“THANKS FOR BRINGING JILL
over,” Kate said the next afternoon. We were at her kitchen table. “It was fun.”

“Yeah, we had a good time.” All that morning I’d been waiting for her to tell me where Evan was. The jealousy I’d felt the night before seemed very far away. I thought she would continue, but she seemed uncomfortable, glancing around the room and out the windows. “So,” I said finally. “Is anything up?”

Finally she looked at me. “I wanted to ask you about your schedule. I know school is starting and you already work so much. But is there any chance you could extend your hours a bit? Come by in the mornings and get me up, or help me to bed?”

“Sure,” I said. “Just for a while? Is Evan going out of town?”

Kate shook her head. “No,” she said, “he’s moving out.”

There was a long pause. I realized my mouth was open. Of all the things I had suspected might happen—more arguments, maybe, counseling—I had never thought he would leave.

“You’re kidding,” I said. I busied myself with my purse, pretending to look for something. Kate just observed me. How did she do it, not being able to fidget when she was nervous?

“No,” she answered simply.

I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. I was trying not to put my foot in my mouth. If this had been Jill telling me about a boyfriend, I would have indulged myself in some inventive name-calling. What could he possibly be thinking? This wasn’t the usual situation where you could move out and pop back in and everything would be fine. He could have gone to counseling. He could have made up a bed in the guest room. He could have just kept doing what he was doing and left well enough alone. It had never occurred to me that he would leave her alone, sitting inside that house, with no one to help her.

“I’m sorry to put you in this position,” Kate was saying. “I’ll hire another caregiver right away, and I know I should have hired one before this. You probably had an idea there was trouble.” I watched her lips carefully, repeating as she spoke. It seemed especially important I
understand clearly. She paused and took a breath. “But I had to ask him to leave.”

“
I DON’T WANT TO PRY
,” I said the next morning. Kate’s eyes were closed. I brushed on shadow, watching the soft coins of her corneas shifting beneath her eyelids. Cosmetics were spread out over the bathroom counter. “But do you think this is temporary?”

Kate opened her eyes. “No,” she said, “it’s probably permanent.”

I stopped sharpening the eyeliner and watched Kate’s lips carefully. “ ‘Permanent’?”

Kate nodded. She shut her eyes again so I could smudge the gray eyeliner near her lashes. I drew her eyelid taut, bracing my fingers against her temple, and dotted the liner on, smudging it with a Q-Tip. She opened her eyes and peered into a mirror I held up. “More blending,” she said. I flicked a stiff brush over her eyelids.

“He thinks,” Kate said, “he should have another outlet.”

“You mean a woman?”

“And my family acts like I should be grateful . . .”

I nodded to show I was following, but I could feel my cheeks stinging. In the mirror I saw the flush creep up my neck, and I saw Kate’s eyes alight on me and then shift tactfully away. I swirled a wide sable brush in a jar of powder and then swept it over her face. It left a gleam on the smooth apples of her cheeks, the high slope of her cheekbones.

“. . . Grateful he wants to live with me, and just accept it.”

“You talk about this with your family?” I held up three lip liners. Kate nodded at the Tawny Rose.

“Not willingly. But I got fed up and let it slip.” She let her mouth relax. I cupped her jaw in one hand and with the other feathered the pencil over the rounded wings of her upper lip. I switched to broader strokes over the pillow of the lower one. Kate rubbed her lips together.

“They think I’m being unreasonable,” she continued.

“I guess you know what you need,” I said. I was trying to avoid offending her, but it all seemed so fast to me. Shouldn’t it take longer than this to end a marriage? They had seemed so happy when I met them, and still did at times. It frightened me, though, the fact that whatever Evan had done, an affair or two, or whatever, had had such
consequences. I realized that I had assumed all along, without ever stating it to myself, that he probably did something of this kind and no one felt the need to deal with it directly.

I dredged the stiff short bristles of an eyebrow brush in a light brown shadow and then blew away the extra powder in one puff. I brushed it against the grain of Kate’s fine eyebrows. Their arch emphasized the almond shape of her eyes and the high dome of her lids.

“Thanks.”

“And you can’t work it out?” I asked. Was this affair really deserving of the name—encounters, perhaps—or was it more the satisfaction of a petty necessity? But not the kind of thing you ended a marriage for. Not in this case.

And yet how had Kate found out? Maybe it wasn’t the offense itself so much as the manner. At least Liam never let his wife know. At least he was considerate enough to deal with it on his own time. Kate, of course, would clearly disagree. Yet the more I thought about an affair for Evan as something like clinical relief, like the occasional visit to a chiropractor or the Shiatsu guy, the more I felt a prickle of shame and belittlement sweep over me as well. Perhaps Liam was only moved to call me after grading a stack of especially clunky term papers, or a class that hadn’t had a word to say about Andrew Marvell.

“I did try,” Kate said. “I even thought I could handle it, but he didn’t end up just having a little . . . encounter on the side. It ended up a whole affair. I can’t just sit here while he
dates
. I need to have some say in something. Why does everyone think I don’t deserve to mind?”

I thought about Evan meeting a parade of women for brunch, bringing them back to the house on Saturdays while Kate and I went to the market. I thought about his ingratiating smile, which always won me over, his extra bottles of wine and hundred-dollar bonuses for staying an extra hour or two when he was late. I not only never complained about staying late, I thought guiltily, I’d often hoped for it. I liked the wine, and I liked the extra cash.

“I understand,” I said.

“I don’t know how I thought it would work,” she said meditatively, looking off toward the wall. “He couldn’t just proposition some
woman and get laid. He wouldn’t go to a prostitute. So, of course, he would have to establish a relationship first.”

I was too surprised to say anything. I closed the powder box and began to clean the makeup brushes.

“For a while I told him he should have an option, so to speak. I was so fucked up and sad it seemed like it might work better than anything else we’d tried. But I couldn’t handle it,” she said, more briskly. “I had this compulsion to ask for details.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then she added, “If someone else told me this, you know, if I were just a bystander, I might sympathize with him. I don’t think I’m moralistic. Everyone’s marriage is different, blah blah. But from here it feels like shit, this on top of everything else. And he
knows
it makes me feel like shit, and he refuses to acknowledge that.” Kate took a breath and looked away. “I just think, I won’t be here forever, maybe not even that long. He can’t just
wait
?”

I was running hot water over the eyeliner brush and scrubbing at the bristles. I stopped moving. Kate and I looked at each other in the mirror. She searched my face, calculating my response to this, and then said: “I’m sorry. You don’t want to know this.”