After the Fall (3 page)

CARY
•

Kate can’t help but give the romantic version. She swears she’s a realist, but I’ve seen how she pouts when other women get sent flowers; how her eyes cloud over at diamond commercials on the TV. I’m not big on flowers, but she got her jewelry and a husband, and for most women that would have been enough. Marriage isn’t just about romance, is it? It’s about family and companionship and teamwork, not just bouquets and fireworks. The advertising industry has a lot to answer for.

Still, that November night when we met did have its share of romance. Kissing Kate under a sky full of Catherine wheels is a memory I’ll take to the grave, no matter whom I’m buried beside. But she didn’t mention that the feed shed smelled like horse piss and wet straw, that the hay bale scratched, that the drenching had left us both freezing and her eye makeup was halfway down her face. I wonder if she remembers, or has she conveniently blotted those things out? A woman who claims she’s a realist but still checks her love horoscope in
Cosmopolitan
is a dangerous mix: she’d rather die than ask for what she wants, but she’ll sulk when she doesn’t get it. Although sulking would have been the least of my worries.

Yet when people ask how we met I tell a version just like Kate’s. No stink, no scratches, just champagne and pyrotechnics. I guess I’m as guilty of romanticizing as she is, though at least I know how it really was. Deep down she probably does too.

LUKE
•

As winter draws a gray cloak around Boston I find myself thinking more and more of Melbourne. I wouldn’t call it homesickness. Maybe it’s simply that the adrenaline of the sudden move here, the shell shock of packing up and relocating to an unknown city half a globe away, is wearing off. And really, there’s no particular place I miss as I pick my way to work on footpaths obscured by salt and grit and snow. Rather, it’s the feel. Sunlight on the back of my neck on the days I used to cycle to the office, the suburbs slipping past in a fog of dewy lawns and people walking dogs. The city as ripe and fresh each morning as the apples wrapped in tissue paper at the Queen Vic market.

To be honest, I resisted those suburbs for a long time. When Cress and I first married we had an inner-city apartment, not far from the one I’d rented in my bachelor days. Both places were tiny, but I loved them, loved the city and the energized hum that was the backdrop of each day. Later, when the lease ran out, we moved to a four-bedroom home that her sister had chosen, Cress being too busy at work to house-hunt. I’d argued against its size; Cordelia had calmly informed me that we’d need those rooms for children before too long. Cress proposed a compromise: we’d stay in the city if I could find a house equal to her sister’s offering. I looked, but such a thing didn’t exist, of course, at least not within our price range. Some compromise.

I’m adjusting to Boston. It’s good to be back in a city, good to have left behind the constant lawn mowing and gutter cleaning of a suburban home. The locals are friendly, better educated than most Yanks, more sophisticated than most Australians. I guess that comes from being forced to spend so many months indoors, from having to entertain themselves with books and movies and restaurants rather than just sport.

One thing I’m still getting used to, though, is snow. Snow is funny stuff. Most of the time it is ugly and difficult, turned black and brown and yellow by the actions of passing cars and dogs. It goes slushy or icy, coagulates with grit and ends up walked into every shop or office in town, melting into grimy puddles. But when it is freshly fallen, white and pristine, it looks wonderful. Snow softens the edges on everything: buildings, litter, noise. For some reason it’s far less cold when it snows, and I’ve come to anticipate those days as a respite from the cruel bite of the usual negative temperatures. Underfoot, really fresh snow is crisp and makes a squeaking noise as you walk on it, just like sand on the beach. Maybe that’s what makes me think of home.

CRESSIDA
•

I wasn’t quite a virgin bride, but I almost made it. That seems an incredible thing to admit in this day and age, and for a while I was as ashamed about my pure prenuptial state as I would have been by its converse just a century earlier. Certainly friends have looked surprised when I tell them—not that it’s the sort of thing you put on your résumé.
Relatively unsullied: only one sexual experience prior to marriage
. Considering I was twenty-seven at the time, who’d believe me?

That isn’t quite true either. Really, I’d had my fair share of sexual experience; it just hadn’t quite reached the natural conclusion. Nothing was consummated; the deed wasn’t done. Penetration, I mean, to be blunt. For all those years I remained intact, then threw it away less than forty-eight hours before my wedding. I’m a doctor; why do I find this so hard to talk about, for goodness’ sake? I reminisce about falling in love and end up using words like
penetration
and
intact
instead.

I wasn’t always so clinical. When I first met Luke I even eased up on my studying for a while, much to the horror of my parents. My father is a doctor too, an anesthesiologist. It’s an appropriate choice, given that bedside manner has never been his strong suit. All those years spent sitting by comatose flesh have atrophied his social skills, nothing for company but the hiss of the gas and the plink of machines. He’s polite, but small talk is like Japanese to him, and etiquette as useless in his world as calligraphy. I never felt pressured to study medicine, but I never considered any alternative either. Somehow it was just communicated to us that that was what we would do, the fact inhaled with the scent of furniture polish in our carefully tended home. We all followed in his footsteps, my two older sisters going into rheumatology and dermatology, respectively. Joints and skin … I wanted something a little more personal.

Pediatrics was a natural choice, as I’d always loved children. “That’s lucky, because you married one,” jibed a friend when she overheard me saying this once at a ball. I laughed dutifully but was slightly stung, though a quick glance at Luke illustrated her point. In the corner, a band was trying to pack up, having finished their set. Luke, however, had a microphone, and despite the best efforts of their female singer he wasn’t going to give it up. A little drunk, but higher still on the crowd around him, he circled the stage, alternately posing as Mick Jagger, Elvis Presley, Bono—responding to any suggestion that was thrown at him. In between he’d return to tease the singer, crooning at her in character so that the anger left her heavily rimmed eyes and she became as giggly and light-headed as the rest of them. I have to admit, it was funny—he’s always been a showman. In the end I think the drummer got tired of waiting around, grabbed the mike and the girl and hustled them both off the stage. Luke finished his act without even looking embarrassed. The singer, of course, was still trying to catch his eye.

KATE
•

I’d love to be able to say that after that magical first kiss Cary and I fell hopelessly in love, then had sublime sex, the perfect wedding and babies straight out of a diaper commercial. But it wasn’t quite like that. For one thing, at the time we met Cary was interested in someone else, a girl at work whom he had been hoping to see at the Cup. I was embroiled in a pretty painful breakup myself. We exchanged numbers and chatted on the phone once or twice but nothing really came of it. The evening of Cup Day had been magical, but that was the problem—it was so exquisite it seemed like a dream, not something that could stand up to daylight. When I spoke to Cary on the phone he seemed withdrawn, even uninterested. And after a few how-are-yous, what was there to say? It wasn’t as if we had a history, or even mutual friends to talk about.

Still, I was a little piqued when it appeared that nothing would come of the whole encounter. I had found Cary attractive and interesting, and thought the feeling was mutual. Plus it seemed a terrible shame to waste such a romantic story. On my way home that night I was already dreaming of how one day I would tell our children that their parents met in a rainstorm and kissed under a sequined sky. Despite herself, even sensible Joan was quite taken by my tale, once I had apologized about a hundred times for being so late. I dined out on the story for a few weeks, and I have to admit it was embarrassing when nothing eventuated. But that was all. I wasn’t crushed by it, and after six months it was difficult to believe it had ever really happened.

That might have been it if it weren’t for glandular fever. My best friend, Sarah, was getting married, and my ex, Jake, had also been invited to the wedding. The three of us had met in college, where we all began in classics. We still moved in roughly the same social circle, though
ellipse
was perhaps a better term, given how hard Jake and I worked at avoiding each other whenever our paths crossed. I’d remained single after our breakup, though I’d heard through the grapevine that he was seeing some blond Amazon whom no doubt he’d bring to the wedding. Knowing that I’d hate to be there alone while Jake was flaunting his new chick to all our friends, Sarah had suggested I attend with her cousin.

I agreed immediately. Ryan and I had met a number of times over the years, at Sarah’s family beach house and her various birthdays, and we got along well. Better yet, he wasn’t planning on taking anyone to her wedding. Maybe he was gay, I wondered, and was cheered by the prospect—at least that way he was less likely to pick up at the wedding and leave me all alone.

It all sounds a bit sad and desperate, doesn’t it? I guess in truth it was, but I was still a bit sad and desperate about the way Jake and I had ended. Ryan was the best face I could put on it … at least until he called to tell me he’d just been diagnosed with glandular fever.

I hung up the phone in a panic. It was the night before the wedding, and the outlook was grim. Who would be available at such short notice?

I was toying with the idea of asking Joan what her brother was doing when I thought of Cary. Cary looked okay in a suit. He was easy to talk to and respectably employed. Even if I had to explain the situation to him, he seemed nice enough to go along with me for a night. I dug around in my purse for his number, still scribbled on a scrap of napkin from our impromptu picnic on the hay bale.

The phone rang five times before it was answered by a machine.

“Hi, this is Cary, and here’s the beep.” I liked the message. No theme tunes, no zany sound effects, no time wasting: just concise and to the point. No games, I thought to myself as I stammered out something about please calling me urgently. You’d always know where you were with this one. Then I went to bed at the ridiculous hour of eight thirty, depressed, thinking about how at the same time the following night I’d be sitting alone in a sea of couples, adrift and unclaimed.

Jake was introducing me to a woman with breasts the size and color of cantaloupes when the phone rang. Relieved, I turned to look for it, then woke up confused and angry when it wasn’t in my handbag. For a moment I lay there disoriented until it dawned on me that somewhere a phone was still ringing. As I retrieved it from under my clothes on the floor the digital clock flashed eleven twenty.

“Hello?” I mumbled, still half-asleep.

“Hi, Kate. It’s Cary.” The voice at the other end was wide awake, confident, even amused. When I didn’t immediately respond he prompted, “You called me earlier tonight.”

“Oh, God, yes, I’m sorry,” I said, sounding dazed even to my own ears. “I just woke up,” I added, aware that I was effectively admitting that I had no life to be sound asleep before midnight on a Friday.

“If you want I can call back some other time,” he offered.

That brought me around. “No, no, don’t hang up,” I practically begged. “I have to ask you for a favor.”

To his credit Cary didn’t burst out laughing at the whole sorry tale of Ryan, the wedding and the glandular fever.

“When did you say this was on again?” he asked, just as I was wondering whether to mention my nightmare of the cantaloupes in a play for sympathy.

“Tomorrow,” I said despondently, hating to sound so pathetic.

“Okay,” he replied. “What time?”

“Okay?” I almost shrieked. “You mean you can do it? You don’t have something else going on?”

He laughed. “I do have something else going on, but I can cancel it. It sounds like your need is greater. And I even have my own suit. I bought one when I got married.”

I felt dazed again. “You’re married?”

“Does it matter?” he asked. When I didn’t answer he took pity on me and said, “No, I just wanted to see how badly you needed a date. It must be pretty serious if you still didn’t turn me down.”

“It is,” I conceded. My pride was well and truly gone by now, but I was so grateful to have a foil for Jake and his melon-endowed partner that I hardly cared. We agreed that Cary would drive over to the house I shared with a friend; then we’d take a cab from there to the ceremony.

“Good night, Kate,” he said, as we hung up. His voice was sweet, almost wistful. “It will be lovely to see you again.”

For the first time in weeks I suddenly found myself looking forward to the wedding. Jake could bring whomever he wanted. I would be safe.

CARY
•

To tell you the truth, it was Cressida I was interested in at first. I’d seen her in the corridors at work, her light blond hair rippling down her back as she walked, a stethoscope slung loosely around her neck holding it in place. It was amazing hair, and to be honest probably not all that appropriate for a hospital. But as far as I know she was never once told to tie it back, not even by the carbuncled old professors who usually took such delight in petty administration. My guess is that they enjoyed looking at it every bit as much as the rest of us. Once she came to a meeting in scrubs, her hair hidden under a green cloth cap, and there was a palpable sense of disappointment in the room.

We all looked at Cressida. I wasn’t alone in that. Her iridescent hair and medieval name made her stand out, even when she was a student. But despite all the attention she had never relied on her charms to make her way. Hospitals are like country towns, and I would have heard about it if she slept around. No, the astonishing thing was that she really did seem as pure and unsullied as that sheaf of blond locks. She went out, I guess, but not with any of us. Not, that is, until persuaded by Steve.

Steve was the guy I shared my lab with at the time. He’s noisier than I am, so every year he got the job of lecturing the med students for their six hours of genetics, and I got the job of setting and marking their exams. It was a system that suited us both, particularly Steve, who’d turn his last lecture into a forum at the local pub and use the opportunity to chat up that year’s talent. Steve was gregarious and well liked, but even I was surprised when he told me he had managed to persuade Cressida and some of her friends to join the group of genetics staff who were planning a picnic at the Melbourne Cup.

He watched me carefully as he told me the news.

“Really? Are you sure?” I asked when he mentioned her name in the group of student attendees. Cressida had always seemed friendly enough, but distinctly unattainable.

I’m not a gambling man. I’m always weighing up chance and probability for the families who consult me; it’s what I do for a job. I work with odds every day, and I know that they’re rarely on your side. So I don’t like to bet, but I went along to that picnic in the hope I’d see Cressida.

I didn’t. I couldn’t imagine her there anyway, among the debris and the debauchery; couldn’t imagine her at ease between the girls with vomit in their hair and the boys wearing top hats and board shorts. Steve thought he had seen Cressida in the crowd, but wasn’t completely sure. Had she even turned up? It hardly matters now, I guess. By the time our paths crossed again years later and we finally did become friends I was married to Kate and she was seeing Luke.