After the Fall (26 page)

LUKE
•

I opened the envelope with a sense of foreboding. Tim and I had hardly spoken since I’d left for the U.S., yet here was something suspiciously thick and creamy with his handwriting on the front. It wasn’t as if we’d had a falling-out, more that there just hadn’t been anything to say. He didn’t approve of what I’d done with Kate; that much was obvious. He didn’t approve of my moving to Boston either, though I failed to see how remaining in Melbourne would have won me any points. And I didn’t approve of Joan, though I’d been less up-front in conveying my emotions. It was none of my business, a lesson he would do well to learn. He drove me to the airport and we’d shaken hands. Since then we’d exchanged the odd e-mail: I’d forward the latest joke doing the rounds of North America; he’d write back and tell me about his job or Joan, as if I’d asked.

I knew they were engaged. It had happened before I left, further hastening my departure from his apartment. Through lawyers, Cress had proposed that we sell our house. We were both moving overseas at that point and neither could afford to buy the other out. I agreed without thinking about it much. It was too big for me to live in, and she was right not to want the bother of tenants and maintenance from the other side of the globe. I returned a few times before my departure to collect my designated half of the furniture and get the place ready for the auction. With both of us gone it looked vulnerable, smaller. For a minute or two I allowed myself to feel some regrets, then put them aside. I hadn’t even chosen the place; had never wanted to live in the suburbs anyway. Why start tearing up about it now?

As expected, the letter contained a wedding invitation. But there was worse: Tim had attached a note, asking me to be his best man. To tell you the truth I had been planning to skip the whole event, say with deep regret that distance and work commitments, yada, yada, yada. The guest list scared me. Tim was still in touch with Cressida, so there was every chance that she’d be there, and Joan, I knew, had once been friendly with Kate. Why on earth would I fly twenty-four hours to endure that?

Yet Tim’s request made a refusal difficult. I suppose I should have anticipated it, but I’d assumed Tim’s nose had been so put out of joint by my debauchery that I was no longer up for the role. Instead, it seemed that he was bravely going to put friendship and loyalty above my disgrace. What could I do? Tim was still my friend. He’d been best man for me; he’d given me a room when Cress threw me out. By then I would have been away for six months anyway, so it was probably time I paid my family a visit. I booked a ticket.

CRESSIDA
•

The wedding invitation included Paul, for which I was grateful. I’d moved in with him only two months after we met, and not everyone was as accepting of the relationship. I could almost hear the whispered phrases when I returned to work or walked into a room at either of my sisters’ houses:
rebound, impulsive, can’t cope without a man
. Really, though, the decision made sense. The sale of my married home had been arranged when I thought I was taking the fellowship, and since my father had been moved to the hospice there was no real reason to continue living with Mother. Oh, my sisters said I’d be company for her, but she spent most of her waking hours at my father’s bedside. I was no longer needed. Time to go back to my job, to find another place to live, to make a second attempt at a life of my own.

Paul was part of that. It was certainly convenient that he’d asked me to move in, but that wasn’t why I had accepted. We got along well; he made me laugh, he listened, he valued my ideas. He was nineteen years older than me, but that was about our only significant difference. Perhaps best of all, he was as passionately involved with his work as I was. He understood the late nights, the middle-of-dinner pages, the responsibility I felt for my patients. He never apologized if plans had to be changed if he was needed at the hospice, and he didn’t expect me to either. I had been dreading going back to work and facing the gossip of the hospital, but found to my surprise that I was enjoying my job more than ever, feeling free to throw myself into each shift without always watching the clock or wondering guiltily if I cared too much. My moving in was good for both of us. He’d been lonely since the death of his wife; I’d begun to resent my family’s claim on my time. Acquiring a partner, no matter how hastily, gave me back some status in their eyes. Yes, he probably was a bona fide father figure this time, but so what? It hadn’t worked out the traditional way. And it wasn’t as if I had promised to marry the man. We were just living together, seeing what happened, allies as much as lovers. Matrimonial refugees, as Paul once laughingly described us. We both knew that no matter how much a commitment was meant it could still be undone. Better just to live from day to day.

My father was holding on, though just barely. Often if Paul was paged into work while we were at home together I would go in with him and spend the time in an extended paternal visit. Father was almost always cataleptic with painkillers, but that didn’t matter. In many ways it was better. He asked no awkward questions about my failed marriage or the divorce settlement; he didn’t sit in judgment on my career or life choices. He would have approved of Paul, I’m sure, but it was a relief not to have to seek that out.

Some days, if Paul had the time, he would help me bathe him. There was a nurse for such tasks, of course, but that didn’t seem to stop him. I fell in love with Paul in these moments, my heart defenseless against the tenderness with which he shaved my fallen father or soaped his atrophying limbs. At other times Paul would help me feed him, wipe his mouth or his bottom when it was needed. Luke would never have done such a thing. He would have thought it beneath him, obscene. I replied to Tim’s invitation, joyfully accepting for us both.

KATE
•

I couldn’t find a damn thing to wear to that wedding; nothing, anyway, that didn’t make me look fat or frumpy. I’d reached the four-month mark of the pregnancy, an awkward time when it was obvious I was putting on weight, but not yet that I was expecting. Everything I tried on stretched too tight across my abdomen or hung tentlike from below my bust, hardly the look I was trying to achieve. But what was I trying to achieve? I didn’t want to go anyway, would never have agreed if Cary hadn’t insisted.

I had realized I was pregnant just before we left Europe. For the previous week all the symptoms had been there: nausea, fatigue, aching breasts, though I was thankful I’d never gone the complete Hollywood route and fainted. At first I thought I was just tired, then that I’d eaten something that disagreed with me. When I finally did my math the grim truth dawned on me, and was quickly confirmed by a trip to the drugstore. Pregnant! I couldn’t believe it. What were the odds? I’d stayed on the pill, at least up until the prescription had run out, a few weeks after ending things with Luke. I’d meant to renew it but was too depressed or distracted at the time. It had felt like I’d never have sex again anyway, so what was the point? The thought crossed my mind when I finally slept with Cary in Venice, but I could hardly stop him. As far as he was concerned I hadn’t been taking it for a year, and was probably infertile. I didn’t want to get into any deep discussions about family or future at that time anyway, and the risk of conception seemed so slight. It wasn’t as if we were going at it night and day, even after that tentative reconciliation. I’d just tried not to think about it, crossed my fingers instead of my legs, hung on and hoped for the best.

But pregnancy was something I couldn’t ignore. As if to prove the point, the morning sickness that would be my companion for the next ten weeks kicked in as soon as we got home. I vomited all through Christmas, a very different Christmas from the last. As I doubled over the toilet for the third or fourth time on the morning of Christmas Eve it suddenly occurred to me to wonder if the heart I’d carved into the fig tree in the botanic gardens one year ago was still there. I wasn’t doing anything special that day, but I didn’t have the energy to go and look.

I’ll admit I wasn’t too thrilled about the situation on any number of levels. It was too soon. We weren’t ready. Cary and I were barely talking to each other normally; now we were having a baby. I’d hardly proven myself reliable, but before long something was going to rely on me. I wasn’t even sure I possessed a maternal streak. I kept waiting for it to show up, but all that arrived instead was nausea, regret and anxiety. At night, when the worry kept me awake, I imagined the little one inside me, shipwrecked in such a hostile environment, and hoped that I’d learn to want it.

But in another way I guess the pregnancy was for the best. It closed all other options. Right through everything, through Europe, through being able to look Cary in the eye again and not pull away when he reached for me, I still wondered if just maybe … I knew Luke hadn’t chosen me; I knew Cary had and that I was better off with him, but every so often I’d find myself wondering if things were truly over. This baby said they were. Utterly. No other man would ever want me now, and from what I’d seen of Sarah’s life I’d hardly have time to think of anything else anyway.

Cary, of course, was thrilled. He cried with joy when I told him the news, and slept each night with a hand on my stomach. He had even started thinking about names, e-mailing me his ideas from work almost hourly for the first trimester. And I guess the timing was appropriate—I was thirty-three and didn’t even have a job I had to resign from. It was time to grow up and get on with things. And that meant attending this damn wedding, if I could ever find a dress.

LUKE
•

I flew into town the day before the wedding. Why arrive any earlier? I had dinner with my parents that night, dropped into the rehearsal and planned to fly out again on the Sunday morning after the big day. No point using up too much precious annual leave.

After the rehearsal I tried to tempt Tim into coming out for a drink. He wavered for a minute, then declined as Joan swooped over to claim him.

“Hello, Luke.” She gave a polite nod in my direction, then took his arm. “Come on, Tim, we still have to staple the wedding programs.”

He smiled ruefully and allowed himself to be led away. My disappointment surprised me. I could have done with the company. For some reason I felt on edge, was more jittery than I had been the night before my own wedding. Exactly why I couldn’t say, though it obviously had something to do with the thought of seeing Cress and maybe even Kate again. Still, I didn’t anticipate any scenes, and had no intention of causing them.

As it turned out, they were both there—one ignoring me, the other eating me up with her eyes. I couldn’t look during the first part of the ceremony, but later, from my vantage point at the altar as Tim signed his life away, I had a chance to study them both. Kate was near the back, dark head lowered, uncharacteristically subdued in navy blue and somewhat heavier than I remembered. To be honest, it took me a few seconds to spot her, and I would never have thought that of Kate. But when I did finally locate her and my gaze lingered it was as if a message had been sent. She looked straight up, straight into my eyes, almost devouring me with her hunger. The impact was such that I nearly took a step back; then Cary touched her arm and she dropped her face again. Cress, by contrast, wouldn’t even glance in my direction. She looked great—creamy shoulders, upswept hair, pink lips—though I couldn’t work out who the older man sharing her hymnbook was. Maybe a friend of Joan’s parents whom she’d been saddled with and was too polite to ditch.

I didn’t see either of them again until much later in the night. There was the service, of course: promises and confetti flung around with comparable ease. Then there were the photos that dragged on for an hour, and parading in ahead of the happy couple with the chief bridesmaid on my arm. Neither Cress nor Kate was seated near the bridal table, and I spent the evening making polite conversation with the bridesmaid and Tim’s mother while surreptitiously scanning the room for both of them.

It was Cress I had expected to feel bad about. She was the one I’d betrayed, after all, the one I’d promised to forsake all others for, an oath I’d managed to keep for less than a year. But to my surprise and slight pique she looked fine. Happy even, and genuinely so. She smiled as she danced, whispered and giggled to the old man next to her all through my speech, something the decorous doctor I’d always known would have frowned upon. I was sorry I’d never seen that side of her.

Kate, though … Kate was drowning in the noise, in the music, in that terrible blue dress she was wearing. I could see her going under, opal eyes flashing a distress signal every time she looked my way. But did I dare approach her? I knew her fierce pride, the anger and humiliation she would have felt when I elected to stay with Cress. Twice I got up to go to her; twice I sat down again. Maybe she just wanted to have it out with me, and I couldn’t face that here.

I was jolted back from my thoughts by the bridesmaid tugging at my arm, looking slightly green.

“We have to dance,” she hissed, gesturing toward the floor, where Tim and Joan were already shackled in their bridal waltz. Tim couldn’t dance, I thought, as I watched him shuffle around the floor as if he were wading through mud. I allowed the bridesmaid to lead me up to join them, hoping she at least knew what to do with her feet. For a moment we managed all right, but then I felt her clutch me and put her head to my chest.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered, alarmed. Her arms had gone around my neck, and I felt her going slack.

“I’m not well,” she moaned quietly. “I think I’ve had too much to drink. Or maybe it was the oysters. Or both.” She belched softly, and I could smell the main course.

“Do you want me to take you back to the table?” I asked, our feet slowed almost to a stop.

“Yes,” she murmured, all her weight on me now, head buried in my neck.

We’d gone only a step or two, though, when I felt her body tremble, heard that shallow cough. She was going to vomit, so instead of heading back to the bridal table I quickly steered her straight outside, past the surprised eyes of the guests and into the cold night air. The last thing I saw as we left the reception was Kate, her eyes naked with want. I knew that look. I’d seen it a million times, every time we’d made love, or said good-bye: every time I looked up and saw her coming across the gardens, the pub, the forecourt of the museum.

As the bridesmaid retched into the rosebushes I urged her silently to hurry. I
knew
that look, and it was still there. I thought Kate would never forgive me for not choosing her—it was why I hadn’t called after Cress threw me out, sorely as I’d been tempted to—but maybe I was wrong. Maybe we still had a chance. As soon as this girl had finished being sick I was going to go straight back in and find out.