After the Fall (4 page)

KATE
•

I love weddings, always have. I’m not usually a romantic, but there’s something about all that unbounded optimism, people hugging one another and toasting the future, that gets me every time. And the enormous power of those words, which are so well-worn but never fail to move me:
With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship…. With all that I have, and all that I am … till death do us part
. It’s the idea of giving oneself up so utterly to someone else, to something else, something bigger, more meaningful and grander than you both.

So I guess I was in the mood to fall in love. I was certainly in the mood to cry and feel sentimental and drink too much, all of which probably contributed to the former. And there was a ready-made target in Cary, who stood smiling on my doorstep at exactly the time he had said he would be there.

It was good to see him again. Cary isn’t stunning in the way Luke is. His hair is ash blond to Luke’s gold, his eyes gray and calm. He doesn’t make women turn around and look back over their shoulder when they pass him in the street, but he’s tall and slim, and has a friendly face. As soon as you meet Cary you feel relaxed, comfortable, as if the two of you went to primary school together or something. Not much upsets him. He wasn’t at all concerned about being a rent-a-date or spending an evening with strangers, and because he was so unself-conscious I soon felt that way too.

We got to the church a little early, a first for me. I was trying to talk to Cary above the strains of the organ when in the middle of a chord the music suddenly stopped, and I turned to see Sarah materialize at the back of the church. I think I might have gasped, then immediately turned it into a cough so as not to embarrass myself. She looked transformed.
Radiant
is a cliché for brides, but radiant she was, as if there were candles under her skin. I had the sudden urge to touch her, to see if she was real.

As she came down the aisle I felt Cary take my hand and gently stroke it. The service murmured in the background while his fingers moved lightly but purposefully over knuckles and wrist, making velvety forays along the five digits, faintly resting on the nail bed before retracing their path. There was a daring and a tenderness in the movements that stopped my breath, made my blood grow thick and languid, banished thought altogether. I felt that were I to look down, his passage would be marked on my skin, like henna on the hands of an Indian bride. When I glanced toward Cary he was looking straight ahead, to all appearances intent on Rick’s declaration to Sarah, though to me this was now only a sideshow compared to the three-ring circus in my lap. Cary’s touch was intimate, but not really sexual. Rather, it was a hypnotism, a promise, an opiate that both aroused and calmed. I was caught completely unprepared as the happy couple paraded back down the aisle, retrieving my hand with both haste and regret, feeling it burn and pulse at the end of my arm like a phantom limb.

Outside the church someone tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped, nerve endings still tingling. It was Jake, with a nervous-looking brunette in tow.

“Thought we’d better get the introductions over and done with,” he said, tugging his partner toward him. “I’m Jake,” he continued, looking at Cary curiously, “and this is Samantha.” Samantha smiled, but I was the only one who noticed. After all my fears she was just an average girl, like me.

“And I’m Cary,” said my partner, reaching across to shake Jake’s hand. “Did you go to college with this bunch? I don’t think I’ve heard Kate mention your name.”

I nearly snorted with laughter at his cheek, but managed to smile innocently at Jake instead. Jake, however, was not so easily discomforted.

“Yeah, I know her pretty well. Most of the guys here do,” he replied in a tone that hinted at more than my sociability.

Cary, bless him, was unfazed. “Then they’ll know how lucky I am to be here with her tonight,” he said smoothly, putting one long arm around me as if he had been doing it all his life.

“How long have you two known each other?” asked Samantha.

“Since last summer,” Cary replied, smiling down at me fondly. “There were fireworks from the minute we met.”

And from then on I was hooked. I don’t think I spoke to Jake the rest of the night, and he would have had to screw Samantha on the bridal table to get my attention. Cary and I drank champagne, we talked, I introduced him to my friends, and after dinner he held my hand again. When I met up with Sarah to compare notes in the bathroom she laughed at how flushed I was, and when we embraced at the end of the night she whispered, “Keep him,” in my ear. I didn’t need to be told. When she arrived back from her honeymoon ten days later his car was still parked outside my house.

LUKE
•

Cressida’s family had a beach house, of course, but I was surprised to learn that Cary’s did too. Actually, it was more of a shack, and on a lake, though one so vast that it could have been the sea. The property was in the north of the state, not far from where Cary had grown up amid the flat wheat-lands. Usually that part of the country was in drought, but this year it had rained, and for the first time in memory the lake was almost full. When Cary discovered that I was as keen a water-skier as himself, the first time they came over for dinner, he promptly invited Cress and me to join them for the approaching Easter break.

“Hey!” I remember Kate protesting through my acceptance. “I thought we were going to catch up with Rick and Sarah?”

“We can do that anytime. You know I never get a chance to ski,” Cary said, then turned to Cress and me. “She’s not all that keen unless it’s about a hundred degrees, and even when the weather is right, skiing’s not legal unless there’s a third person there to keep watch. So I’ve got my boat sitting in the garage, and it gets out about once a year when I can talk some mates into coming.” He turned to Kate. “Say yes—I don’t think I’ve seen you in your bikini all summer.”

Kate giggled, slightly shrill from the champagne. “Well, it’s not my fault if you’re always spending your weekends off at conferences rather than at home with your bikini-clad wife.” She swallowed another mouthful, then shrugged. “Okay, then.”

I was a bit surprised—Kate had struck me as someone who usually got her own way.

“Is that all right with you?” I asked my own wife belatedly.

Cress replied as she always did: “Sure, as long as I’m not working.”

Of course, Cress
was
supposed to be working, but for once she managed to swap her shifts, all except for the last day of the break. We took her car so she could come back to work on Monday, following Cary’s four-wheel drive as the city gave way to suburbs, paddocks, unending land. Easter was early that year, midway through March, and hot enough even for Kate. As holidays go, it was close to perfect. Though the four of us hadn’t known one another for long, we got on easily. Cress and Cary had worked together on and off for years. At first I found him a bit withdrawn, but he loosened up and relaxed as the days went by. Kate was different altogether—laughing, talkative, noisy from the word go. I don’t think she was ever completely quiet; even when reading or making her breakfast she would be humming under her breath, occasionally singing a few lines. She flirted with all three of us, Cress as much as Cary and me. Cress is too self-conscious to have ever been a flirt herself, but she responds to it in others and was easy prey for Kate’s charms. The two of them couldn’t have been more different physically: Cress with her almost Nordic good looks and thoroughbred body, all lean lines and flared nostrils. Kate was slim too, but in a different, more compact way, half a head shorter than my wife, her hair and skin dark.

The days fell into a pattern: regular, comfortable. Mornings were for fishing while the girls slept in, then lunch on the deck before afternoons spent reading or sunbathing on the small crescent of beach near the house. Around four, with the sun still high but the evening calm descending, Cary and I would launch the boat while Cress and Kate tied back their hair and eased into wet suits, squealing as warm skin met rubber still wet from the day before. Kate would usually ski first, too impatient to wait once she was ready. Cary would throw her the rope; then we’d idle as she adjusted herself, the small, sleek head bobbing in the water like a seal’s, eyes narrowed in concentration. Behind her floated the bush and the beach, our bright towels on the sand the only man-made items.

Kate, I remember, was learning to slalom. She got out of the water all right on one ski, but then invariably lost control and skidded off over the wake to either side, her slight body jerked straight out of the binding on more than one occasion. This made for some spectacular falls and, hours later, even more impressive bruises, spreading like sunsets on the flesh caught by the rope or the ski as she toppled. “Lean back!
Back!”
Cary would yell over the din of the engine as she emerged from the water, only to groan as once again the ski began to wobble, and Kate received another dunking. But she refused to go back to two skis, despite her frustration. “Just stubborn,” Cary said, shaking his head in resignation as Kate nosedived off our stern for at least the twentieth time that weekend. Finally he’d order her into the boat and I’d drive while Cress skied—elegantly, gracefully, the way she did most things, not even getting her hair wet—and Kate sat shivering beside me in the observer’s seat while Cary rubbed feeling back into her battered limbs.

We’d return from skiing as dusk was falling, then sit with beers on the sagging deck until the mosquitoes drove us inside. Spread out at our feet the lake glowed like a mirror, brighter each night as Easter’s full moon bloomed. Kate drank straight from the bottle, occasionally pressing the cold glass against her skin to ease sunburn or muscle strain, Cary toying with the damp hair still slicked to her neck. Eventually, someone would start dinner while the others showered and cleaned up.

On the second night Cary excused himself sheepishly after Kate had left for the bathroom, and a few minutes later we heard giggles and shrieks over the thrum of the water. Cress and I exchanged knowing glances and laughed, slicing tomatoes for a salad as the noise continued. But then it went quiet, the water stopped, and moments later I heard a soft, stifled moan.

“That was Kate!” I said, intrigued. I’m always interested in other people’s sex lives.

“Mmmm,” replied Cress, slicing faster, biting her lip.

There was another low moan, and I reached to turn down the volume of the CD we were listening to.

“Don’t,” said Cress, blocking my hand, then increasing the sound instead. When I looked at her she was blushing, eyes riveted to the chopping board. “It’s none of our business,” she added, sounding tense.

“Let’s do some business of our own then,” I suggested, lifting a strand of pale yellow hair away from her face.

“In here?” Cress asked, shocked.

“Why not? It’s not as if they’re going to notice.”

The noise from the bathroom had risen in pitch, and the water had been turned back on.

“I don’t know,” said Cress, crossing to the refrigerator for more tomatoes. “There’s something a bit sick about their being so overt and your being so turned on by it.”

I walked over and pinned her against the fridge, cutting the sentence off with my lips. Caught by static, her hair fanned out across the surface of the door, sparking and crackling as I pressed myself against her. For a moment she resisted, but then kissed me back, giving in with good grace. Try as I might to ignore them, Kate’s moans were still faintly audible as I made love to my wife. Dinner was late, and our own showers cold.

CARY
•

Weddings aren’t my scene, as spectator or participant. As a general rule I try to avoid them, though when Kate called and begged me to come to Sarah’s I agreed at once, thrilled at the second chance. We’d drifted out of contact after that evening at the Cup, though not because I was pining after Cressida. Like any man with eyes in his head I was interested in her at first, but once I met Kate, Cressida was just a pretty face. Guys like me don’t end up with women who look like Cressida anyway.

No, what happened was that I lost my nerve. I’m pretty shy, and Kate was like one of those firecrackers that had danced in the air as we kissed, full of light and spark. Usually I’d tag along with Steve, eking out a social life from the students he met or parties he invited me to. On my own I was less confident—I think I called Kate twice before giving up and hoping she’d call me. That strategy eventually worked, though I can’t say I’d advise it.

We started going out after Sarah’s wedding, effective immediately. I couldn’t believe my luck when Kate took me home, and to be honest figured that what came next was a particularly generous thank-you gesture for rescuing her in her hour of need. But the next morning she seemed to want me to stick around, and the next night too. Before I knew it we’d been together for six months, then twelve, and I wasn’t even sure how it had happened.

Three and a bit years on we went back to the church for the christening of Sarah and Rick’s first child. Kate was one of the godmothers. Afterward we picnicked on Sarah and Rick’s sloping back lawn. Kate was on her third glass of champagne when Sarah wandered over.

“Here,” she said, thrusting the child at Kate, who took her awkwardly—reluctant, I suspect, to put down her glass.

“So,” Sarah said without preamble, sitting down next to me, “enough of us always inviting you two to these things. When are you going to make an honest woman of her?”

I glanced across at Kate, expecting her to howl in protest. We’d never really discussed the future—it was hard enough getting Kate to commit to dinner with my parents in a week’s time. Besides, things were fine as they were.

“Good question,” Kate said, bouncing the baby rather gracelessly on her lap without looking up. “When are we getting married, Cary?”

“Married?” I said. “I’ve never thought about marriage.”

It was the wrong thing to say, though in fairness I was put on the spot. Kate colored but was silent, her movements gaining in vigor. The infant in her lap shrieked with glee, her head wobbling about on the stalk of her neck.

“Never thought about it?” scoffed Sarah, reclaiming her baby lest Kate do actual damage. “How can you have been together for this long and not have thought about it?”

I shrugged, outnumbered. “Kate knows I want to be with her. I just didn’t think the whole white-dress thing was really necessary.”

“Well, you never asked,” Kate shot back, her eyes finally meeting mine.

“I don’t like weddings,” I tried to explain, irritated at having to justify myself in front of Sarah. I’ve always hated scenes. “They’re expensive, outdated, too formal. And a piece of paper won’t make any difference to how we feel or whether we stay together.”

“Well, you’re wrong if you think we’ll stay together without it,” Kate snapped, her tone making it clear she wasn’t joking.

Sarah shushed the baby, though she was already quiet. Though she swore later she’d had no idea what trouble her question would provoke, I was furious at the unexpected interrogation and humiliated by our private business being dealt with in public. It wasn’t even as if marriage had ever been an issue before. Early on, in the first rush of love, I’d deliberately not mentioned it for fear of scaring the somewhat flighty Kate. Later, I guess, I’d just gotten settled. It was a ridiculous scene, and for a second I thought about walking out. But Kate is a proud woman, and I knew if I left she would never forgive me. Besides, I’d been sure since the start that she was the one, and if this was what she wanted, was it really such a sacrifice?

Nonetheless, I hesitated for a second, the car keys in my hand biting like tiny knives. Kate’s opal-colored eyes sparkled defiantly, the picnic around us gone quiet. Then I put the keys back in my pocket and picked up the half-empty champagne bottle at Kate’s feet.

“Okay, then,” I said, raising it as if for a toast. “Kate, will you marry me?” The funny thing was that as the words left my mouth I felt my anger leave too, replaced with assurance and the closest I’ve yet come to joy.

A few people on an adjoining rug turned around to look at us, one of them knocking over a deck chair as she craned to hear Kate’s answer.

“Are you serious?” asked my bride-to-be. Then, without waiting for an answer, she leaned over, took my face in her hands, and kissed me until we were both breathless. Through the applause of the watching guests I heard the clink of glasses and the laughter of children playing at the end of the garden.