Acts of Love (36 page)

 

T
HAT NIGHT
, while Ali slept, Julia carefully pulled the poster-board collage from beneath the bed, where Ali had stashed it. In the feeble light, she touched the faces of the four figures with her fingertips, stopping at the woman, twisting her brown, curling ribbon hair round and round. She remembered the smell of the sweet coconut suntan lotion her mother had rubbed on their arms and backs that day, remembered the cold shock of the early-summer water as it lapped up against her shins, remembered turning back once, waist-deep in water, and seeing her mother and father standing by their striped blanket, turning their eyes from the lake for just a moment to embrace and kiss, their faces, from the distance, melting into one before Julia dove beneath the surface, happy.

But that was a long time ago.

Before she had known anything at all.

She pulled one strand out of the mother's ribbon hair and put the collage back.

And then she tiptoed to her secret drawer and put the shining brown curl in the paper bag with Sandy's underwear and her mother's note and Peter Gorrick's numbers.

 

T
HOUGH
J
ULIA VEHEMENTLY INSISTED
that they were old enough to stay home alone—
we always did before
—Sandy had hired a babysitter for the evening, an elderly woman with a tight gray perm and a sky-blue cardigan loose about her frail shoulders.

“So what's this all about?”' she asked when John picked her up at seven-thirty.

“I told you, I just thought we needed a break.”

She looked at the smile, full of tenderness and need, that crinkled the skin around his eyes and mouth. It was an unwanted gift, that smile, undeserved, and she could not help resenting the pressure she felt to reciprocate.

“I've made reservations at the Colonnade,” he said as she got into his car.

Sandy groaned. “Christ, what a cliché. You didn't bring me a goddamned corsage, did you?”

He laughed. “Scoff if you must. Actually, I heard they just got a new chef. The food's supposed to be pretty good. Tell me the truth. Have you ever been there?”

“Sure. Jonathon and Estelle took us every Friday night.”

He looked at her.

“Okay, no.”

“So you just dislike it on principle?”

“Of course. Is there a better reason?”

“You're hopeless, Sandy.”

“Let's just say I'm in more of a Pizza Hut kind of mood.”

Sandy was still frowning as they walked into the crimson-and-crystal dining room and were led to a damask-covered table in the corner.

“You think this is where Ann and the good doctor sat that night?” she asked dryly.

“Oh, God, I'm sorry.” John looked stricken. “I should have thought.”

“Never mind. It's okay.”

They ordered drinks and glanced about at the other diners, silked and suited, while they waited for the cocktails to arrive.

“Am I being buttered up for something?” Sandy asked.

John smiled. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Fattening me up for the slaughter, are you?”

“I wouldn't look at it as slaughter.”

“What, then?”

They paused as the drinks and menus were delivered. When the waiter had left, John leaned forward and reached his hands across the table to her. “Sandy, there's something…” He paused, looked down, and then returned his gaze to her. “I think we should get married.”

Sandy leaned back, a demi-smile curving her lips. “Not this again.”

“I mean it this time.”

“You didn't the other times?”

“Of course I did.”

“Like I said, leading me to slaughter,” she remarked, taking a sip of the martini that seemed the only thing to order here.

“I'm serious. We need to talk about this.”

“Haven't we talked about it already?”

“No. We've joked about it and danced around it, but we haven't really talked about it.” He took a breath. “I love you. And I think you love me.” He paused. “Do you?”

“Yes,” she answered softly.

“So?”

“I just don't see why A plus B necessarily has to equal C.”

“What do you mean?”

“We're happy now,” she said. “God, I hate that word,” she muttered, “‘happy.'” She returned to him. “Why do we have to change things?”

“I'm not happy.”

“You're not?”

“No,” he said, so simply that she froze.

“I didn't realize that.”

“I want more than this, Sandy. This just feels like limbo to me.”

“Jesus, John, why now? I mean, isn't there enough going on? How can you even expect me to think about it at a time like this? That's not fair.”

“I thought going through a time like this together would make you realize how important it is to have someone.” In fact, he was fearful that it was teaching her the opposite, for he had been haunted lately by the sense that he was losing ground with her. “A partner,” he added.

She didn't answer.

“Sandy, tell me. What are your objections to marriage?”

“As an institution?”

“That's the thing right there,” he pounced. “You insist on seeing it as an institution. Can't you just look on it as you and me?”

“It's not that simple. It
is
an institution, a legal and social institution. At least admit that.”

“I'm not admitting anything.”

“I don't want to belong to anyone, okay?” she said. “I don't want anyone to tell me how to live, and I don't want to tell anyone how to live.”

“Complete autonomy seems like a rather lonely way to go through life to me.”

“Does it?” she asked.

“Yes. Besides, it's not as if I expect you to change into a different kind of person if we get married.”

“Don't you?”

“No.”

“Why is it so important to you, John?”

It took him a moment to answer. “Maybe I'm the opposite of you. I feel constrained
now.
You put all these limits on what I'm supposed to feel, on what I can or cannot plan for the future. You make me put limits on myself. The only way I'll feel really free with you is if we make a full commitment. Maybe then we can both let go.”

“Let go, and what?”

“And see what happens. Call it a leap of faith.”

She played with the oversized linen napkin spread across her lap.

“I can't continue this way indefinitely,” he said.

“Are you giving me an ultimatum?”

“No, of course not,” he said, then added, “I don't know.”

“What about Julia and Ali?”

“What about them?”

“Where do they fit into your plans?”

“I don't know,” he admitted. “Don't you think we have to get the question of ‘us' settled before we can even think about that?”

“It's not that simple.”

He took a deep breath and leaned across the table. “Look, I realize you may be a package deal. We'll just take what comes, all right?”

“Even if that means keeping the girls?”

“Yes.”

She looked at him long enough to see that he had considered this seriously before speaking. “Give me a little time, okay?” she asked.

He met her eyes and held them before slowly nodding.

She exhaled and relaxed against the back of her chair. “Can we order now?”

He sighed. “Sure. I heard the sole was the thing to have here.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Your paper,” he said, smiling. “Some of us still read it.”

“I think I'll have the duck,” she said.

For the rest of the meal, they spoke of food and the real estate deals of friends and movies that they disagreed on, rummaging for conversation as if this were their first date. Sandy drank more than usual, and by the time they climbed back into John's car to drive home, her mind was too clouded and confused for her to speak anymore. She flipped up the metal top of the ashtray and let it snap down, again and again.

“Stop it,” he said.

Neither spoke again until he steered into her driveway. “How can you be so sure of me,” she asked quietly as the car pulled to a stop, “of wanting to be with me?”

“I just am.”

“You don't even know me. Not really.”

“I think I do. Besides, how much can one person ever truly know another?”

She did not answer.

The headlights created diffuse pools of white against the side of the house.

She leaned over and kissed him goodnight. There was no question of his coming in with her.

Sandy found the babysitter at the kitchen table, sipping a drink that she made no attempt to hide.

“How much do I owe you?” Sandy asked.

“Not enough.”

Nevertheless, Sandy paid her the hourly wage they had agreed upon and saw her to the door. She walked slowly up the stairs and into her own bedroom, without checking on the girls, and climbed into bed fully clothed.

 

H
ER SHOES FELL TO THE FLOOR
with a clump as she pulled her legs into a fetal position.

She had never had a first love, never had that singular onslaught of elation and heartache that can come only at a particular age or level of inexperience—for surely the statute of limitations wears out, and after a certain age, after a certain number of affairs, it is no longer possible. Perhaps a love like that—one, she reminded herself, that she did not want at the time—requires a degree of innocence she had never possessed.

Only lately were there moments when she felt a melancholy loss for this love she had never had, a longing for that sweet ache where she had a foundation only of numbers.

She pulled the pillow closer to her face.

The first time John had told her he loved her was after they had been seeing each for three months. They had gone to a movie and out to dinner that night, and all the while they had sat across from each other in the Tokyo Inn he had looked at her with such a strange smile that she had finally gone to the bathroom to see if there was a piece of sushi or seaweed caught between her teeth. It was later, as he held her after making love, that he had said, “I love you.” The words had come wrapped up in a short laugh of revelation and pleasure.

Her body tightened, she did not respond at first. Finally, she said, “Do you think it's a good bet for me to fall in love with you?”

“What?”

“I mean, what are the odds that this thing is going to work? If you were me, would you fall in love?”

He laughed. “Would it be so terrible?”

She let her head fall back against his shoulder.

Only when she heard his breath begin to grow heavy did she whisper, “I love you, too,” and he squeezed her in his arms as he fell asleep.

 

S
HE FUMBLED WITH THE TELEPHONE CORD
through her heavy, red-wine sleep.

“Well?” he said.

“How dare you call me so late?” she muttered. “You'll wake up the girls.”

“Have you talked to her? Have you spoken to Ali?”

“I'm working on it, Ted. I need more time.”

“Time's the one thing I haven't got,” he said. “Don't jerk me around, Sandy.”

“You can do that all by yourself.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I told you, I'm working on it.”

“Get back to me. Soon.”

The phone went dead in her ear.

 

“T
HE DEFENSE CALLS
Theodore Waring.”

Ted walked to the bench and was sworn in. His voice in his own ears as he swore to tell the truth had the tinny, distant echo that lack of sleep or shock can cause, when breath and tone and meaning are drowned out by the incessant thrum of adrenaline. He could not tell if his movements were fast or slow, smooth or jerky, though, in fact, his own efforts at self-control gave him an aura of calm that many in the courtroom found disturbing in someone about to testify about his wife's death.

“For the record,” Fisk began, “will you please state your full name?”

“Theodore Lionel Waring.”

“Mr. Waring, what was your relationship to the deceased, Ann Waring?”

“She was my wife.”