Authors: Emily Listfield
Jack does not pick up the gauntlet. “Seriously,” he says, “I get a kick out of it whenever I see your byline. I realize I'm just an outside-the-Beltway plebe but I still find it impressive. You've done some terrific stories.”
Sam cocks his head to the side. “You weren't a plebe even when you were a plebe. But thanks. So, do you still have the ability to go days without sleep and ace everything that comes your way?”
“I'm not exactly taking tests these days.”
“Some of your courtroom summations might count as oral exams.” Sam turns to Deirdre. “Did you know that Jack has a reputation for shredding the opposition without ever raising his voice? He's so soft-spoken and polite, they don't realize what's happening until it's over.”
“I'm not sure if I should be insulted or flattered,” Jack says.
“Flattered,” Sam replies. “I mean it. You've gotten convictions for a lot of corporate scum.”
“And I've gotten others off the hook.”
“I thought in the interest of harmony I'd ignore that,” Sam replies.
When the food comes, we speak of politics and movies, steroid scandals and real-estate deals, but we keep circling back to us, as if our past selves are looming in the background, waiting to crash the party. Do you remember the time, I wonder whatever happened to, I never told you but, a magic carpet transporting us back in time, eclipsing the rock-strewn present with all that we don't know about each other, all that we don't ask, all that we would rather forget. And while we talk, we drink. If in the beginning the high alcohol content
served to ease our nerves, it has, by this point in the evening, spread over us like a sticky syrup, dulling the inhibitions and sharpening the needs. There will be a price to pay, I know that, but it does not change the course.
We are back where we once were, in the past, reliving the endless cheap spaghetti dinners and the dizzying all-nighters, the classes we cut and the tests we crammed for, the professors, some stellar, some wasted, and the marathon bouts of conversation when everything we said seemed to matter so very much. We turn the kaleidoscope of recollections and turn it again, savoring fragments from all those times that the four of us were together as well as the times we split off into various duets forged from friendship and desire.
“Do you remember that trip we took to the Adirondacks?” Jack says. “What was the name of the guy with the lodge there? You know, the one whose family made all that money in elevators?”
“Michael, Michael Parsons.” Deirdre pulls the name out of the shrouded ether of stonewashed memory.
I groan, knowing what is coming.
“I can still see you sitting buck naked on the rocks, refusing to jump,” Jack nudges me. They are all laughing now.
“I'm crazy but I'm not suicidal. And it wasn't rocks, it was a forty-foot cliff.”
After hiking all morning, we had come across a ravine and, in a fit of collegial daring, stripped off our clothes. That was risky enough, as far as I was concerned. While everyone else plunged into the icy water below I remained on the edge, my arms wrapped tightly around my knees, getting eaten alive by black flies but immobilized by fear. They have found this visual hilarious ever since. Needless to say, I don't.
Sam reaches over and squeezes my shoulder affectionately, but I recoil. He tries once more to reach me, to connect, and then, perplexed, he stops. This, of course, annoys me further; I don't want him to touch me but I don't want him to stop trying, either.
“Yeah, well, shall we discuss your reaction when that snake fell out of the ceiling onto your bed?” I retort, aiming my words at Jack
and Deirdre. “Seeing the two of you naked twice in one day was more than I could bear.”
After they went back to bed, Sam and I took our sleeping bags out to the vast lawn and lay there until sunrise, Sam pointing out all the constellations while I pretended to see them. At dawn, chilled and starving, we hijacked our host's car and drove to the fishing supply store in town, the only one open, where we devoured bags of stale peanuts and kissed with salty, chapped lips.
“I can't imagine why Parsons never invited us back,” Deirdre says. “Snotty bastard.”
The laughter, the memory, slowly trickle away from us.
“It was good then, wasn't it?” Jack says quietly.
We are each, for a moment, lost in our own thoughts.
When the dessert plates littered with half-eaten cakes are cleared, Deirdre stands up. “I have to pee desperately,” she announces.
“I always did love your impeccable manners,” Jack remarks, amused.
“Really? I seem to remember it was other things.”
“Please,” Sam says. “There's been quite enough oversharing for one night.”
Deirdre looks at me. “Are you coming?”
I rise a bit unsteadily. I can feel my legs wobbling and I move slowly, with a self-conscious determination to appear at least semisober. I'm sure I fail miserably.
“What's up with you and Sam tonight?” Deirdre asks when we are standing side by side, washing our hands and staring at ourselves in the mirror, or the expressionist versions of ourselves we have become.
“What do you mean?”
“You've hardly looked at him all night.”
“Don't be ridiculous.”
“You're not still obsessing about that phone call the other day, are you?”
I glance over at Deirdre. I am about to tell her about Sam's incontrovertible lie but abruptly change my mind. I love Deirdre but I
don't trust her, not tonight, when she seems hell-bent on provocation. I change the subject. “Why did you do that with Ben?” I ask as I apply lipstick, getting a gooey slash of “Sugarspun Mauve” on my front tooth.
“Do what?”
“Make it sound as if you were alone with Jack.”
“Did I? Well, a little jealousy would be good for him.”
“Yesterday you were all over him. Tonight you areâ¦well, I don't know what you are. You're making my head spin.”
“I believe it's the martinis and three bottles of wine that are making your head spin.”
“They're certainly not helping,” I admit.
“I told you we got into one of our great relationship debates last night.” Deirdre sighs. “It's just so exhausting. I'm beginning to think we're better off not talking. I'm much happier with him when I'm totally deluded.”
“Now there's a workable relationship strategy,” I mutter.
“He drives me crazy,” she continues. “Basically, he's not seeing other women right now but it sounds more like an accidental occurrence than an actual policy. He refuses to say he won't. It's like we're having an affair, even though we're both single. The pathetic thing is when I said that to him, he liked the idea. He found it exciting. I'm terrified of spending years waiting for him to want me, really want me, just me, and waking up one day to find out he never will. Or that it's someone else he wants. Someone younger. I just don't have that kind of time to waste. Not now. Not anymore.” She smooths the neckline of her dress around her pronounced collarbone and turns her eyes away from me. “The problem is that I still want him.”
“I know.”
“Lisa?”
“Yes?”
“What if I made a mistake all those years ago?”
“What do you mean?”
“With Jack. What if he was the one I was meant to be with?”
“Don't do this, Deirdre.”
“Do what?”
“He's married.”
“I know.” She studies herself in the mirror. The only damage the evening seems to have caused is a narrowing of her eyes, tipping her usually even features the slightest bit askew. Somehow this manages to make her appear quirky and endearing. “I know. But I can't help but wonder.”
“It's just that kind of night.”
She looks down, away from me. “Maybe.”
When we get back to the table, Jack has signed the bill and is carefully folding the receipt around his platinum AmEx. We are about to rise when he motions the waiter to come back. “Do you mind?” he asks, pulling the slimmest of digital cameras from his pocket. We squeeze in next to each other, our heads touching, our smiles lopsided and smeary. “I'll e-mail a copy to all of you tomorrow,” Jack promises.
The four of us make our way through the near-empty dining room and out into the cool September evening.
“God, I miss New York,” Jack says, glancing down the block at the softly lit restaurants and expensive shops shuttered till morning. He returns his gaze to us. “Would anyone like to go for a nightcap?”
“We have to get home for the babysitter,” Sam replies, before checking with meânot that I want to go, but it would have been nice to have been consulted.
Jack nods. He is watching Deirdre, waiting.
She smiles. “Sure, why not?”
I kiss Jack and Deirdre good night and then watch as they walk slowly away down the darkened street.
“No good is going to come of that,” Sam says, watching, too.
I turn to face him.
The night is not overâfor any of us.
T
he city is suddenly still around us, the very air sinking into a deeper shade of night. Jack and Deirdre have wrapped up the best part of the evening and taken it away with them. We are left with only each other.
The words, the questions, that have been pricking my skin push to the surface. But just as I am about to speak at last, Sam begins walking east, his usual fast and loping gait unaffected by the eighty-proof dinner. Like most native New Yorkers, he weaves and slices around people without thinking, while I have a tendency to hang back, tentative about boundaries only I can see. I do a little two-step to catch up with him, the sharp coolness of the air bestowing a momentary if false illusion of clarity.
“You realize that entire show was for Deirdre's sake,” Sam remarks, glancing up the street for a cab while he talks. “Jack has always been like a little kid playing dress up. It's not real. Nothing about him is real. I can't believe she falls for it every time.”
I have no interest in a post-prandial assessment, I have something else in mind. Still, I get sidetracked by a surge of annoyance at Sam's transparent jealousy of Jack, a puerile blend of superiority and insecurity. “Every time? That's ridiculous. They haven't seen each other in years.”
“You know what I mean.” His arm hovers midair, futilely trying
to wave down a cab that is not only off-duty but has a couple making out in the backseat.
“No,” I reply angrily. “I have no goddamned idea what you mean.”
He whips around to me, stung.
His eyes narrow as they always do when he is bracing himself. These are the things you know about someone after so many years; their warning signs, their tells, the tics that once charmed you and are now irritants, stumbling blocks to affection. “I don't know what the hell your problem is tonight but I'm getting pretty sick of being on the receiving end,” he spits out.
Adrenaline pumps through me, making me think I am braver than I am. “Where were you today?” I demand.
“What do you mean? I was in Chicago. I told you that.”
“Really?”
“What is this about, Lisa?”
“I called your office. I had a very interesting little chat with Kathy.”
Sam says nothing. Like any good journalist, he is trained not to volunteer information before ascertaining precisely what the other person knows. His strategic use of silence has, through the years, given him the upper hand in our arguments, those marital spats that seem so inconsequential, so miniaturized in retrospect. He switches his weight from one foot to the other and glances back to the street for a cab, like the unconvincing piece of busywork a novice actor indulges in.
“Tell me,” I continue. “How's that Wells piece coming?”
His shoulders tense but before he can answerâbefore he has to answerâa taxi screeches to a halt beside him. Relieved, Sam opens the back door, motioning for me to climb in.
I do not move.
“Get in,” he says.
I remain frozen.
“Lisa, get in the cab.”
I do not want to give in to even this simple request. Nevertheless,
I exhale in protest and step reluctantly forward, jerking my legs angrily as I slide in with an ostentatious show of displeasure.
Sam gets in beside me, closes the door and gives the driver our address.
“You didn't answer my question,” I say when the cab lurches forward.
He turns to me. “Why don't you just come out with whatever it is you want to ask me?”
“I wouldn't know where to begin.”
“What?”
I turn to face him. “Okay, let's start with this. Kathy told me the Wells piece was killed.”
“I see.”
“Do you mind telling me what the hell you've been up to?”
Sam slumps against the backseat. “All right, yes, the Wells piece was killed. I'm sorry. I should have told you.”
“Where were you today?”
“I was in Chicago. Simon was wrong about killing the piece. I can feel it. But the only way to convince him is to get more proof, so I've been working on it on my own. If I can just get one of the board members to lose their amnesia, I'll have a chance at cracking this.”
“Why didn't you just tell me this?”
“I was going to tell you this morning but then Kathy walked in and I didn't want her to overhear. I've got enough trouble with Borofsky being spoon-fed all the best assignments. If Simon thinks I'm spending time on this, I'm screwed.”
“You could have called me from the airport, you could have found a way.”
“Maybe I wanted to surprise you, maybe I wanted you to be proud of me for a change, okay?”
“I'm always proud of you.”
“Really? Because it hasn't felt that way lately. I haven't exactly gotten the feeling you trust my instincts on this one.”
I'm not quite sure how I ended up on the defensive here. “Why should I trust you? You've been lying to me,” I retort.
“You're convoluting the issue.”
“No. Trust is the issue. What else haven't you told me?”
“Nothing. Nothing else.”
We ride a little bit in silence. The cabbie's radio is tuned to a French station and the announcer's mellifluous voice drifts through the scratched glass divider, soothing and incomprehensible.
I turn to my husband and look at his profile as the city moves in slow motion by us. “Sam?”
“Yes?”
“Are you having an affair?”
“That's ridiculous.”
“Are you?”
He covers my hand with his large, slightly calloused fingers. “No, of course not,” he answers softly. “Lisa, I was wrong. I should have told you. I should have told you all of this. But with everything going on, I didn't want to make you more anxious than you already are.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“You're worried enough about your job. I don't need you worrying about mine, too. That's all it was. I love you. You have to know that.”
The transfusion of nervous energy that rushed through me just minutes ago deserts me in one great whoosh. The heat of the cab, the alcohol, the conversation all suddenly leave me dizzy and depleted. “I'm not sure what I know anymore,” I say quietly.
We ride the remaining eight blocks in silence, staring out of our separate windows, his hand still on mine like a suspension bridge across the distance. When the taxi pulls up in front of our apartment building, Sam pays the driver and we get out without a word.
The apartment is quiet as we close the front door gently behind us. I peer into the living room but there is no one there. In a minute, I hear footsteps and Marissa pads down the hallway from the bedroom, yanking down her three-inch-long white denim mini as she approaches. An art major from Indianapolis, she is, I suspect, more committed to dressing the part than actually going to classes. She is playing at New York, one of those girls who will go home within a couple of years with a deep relief she will never quite own up to.
“What time did Phoebe and Claire go to bed?” I ask.
“Around ten?” She obviously has no idea. Her rather casual relationship to timeâshe has a seemingly philosophic objection to watchesâis surely why she is the girls' favorite sitter.
Sam pulls out his wallet to pay her.
After Marissa leaves, I walk back into the bedroom and see that she has left a half-eaten bag of barbecue potato chips by the computer. Tiny crumbs phosphorescent with grease are nestled into the keyboard like caulking.
The sight makes me more than a little nauseous and I realize that I am still very drunk. I kick off my shoes, go into the bathroom and wash down two Motrin with a large glass of Emergen-C, then look around for anything else I can take that might make the morning more bearable. I spend far too long pondering the benefits of drinking a few extra glasses of water versus having to get up to pee five times. It is rather depressing to have reached the age when you begin to regret the price you will pay even before the night has worn off.
When I return to the bedroom, Sam is sitting on the edge of the bed, his elbows resting heavily on his knees, waiting for me. “Lisa, I really am sorry,” he says. “The last thing in the world I wanted to do was upset you.”
I sit down beside him. “Sam, what's our deal?”
“What do you mean?”
“The other day, at breakfast, Ben said every relationship has a deal. What's ours?”
“I wouldn't exactly call Ben an expert on love.”
“That's not the point.”
“What's Deirdre and Ben's deal? âI'll pretend I've changed and you'll pretend to believe me'?”
Like all couples, we have always found a certain satisfaction in defining ourselves in opposition to other, less successful unions. That doesn't seem so easy now. “Sam.”
There is a long silence.
“We're not like that,” he says at last. “We don't have a deal. Not the way Ben means anyway.”
“I need to be able to trust you.”
“You can.”
I want so much to believe him.
Despite myself, I feel a softening around the edges, a malleability, my borders growing permeable, letting him in. I don't know if this is good or bad, right or wrong. It is so hard to tell when it comes to love if you are being blindly delusional or are simply accepting the flaws and compromises, the disappointments and prosaic compensations necessary to stay together.
Sam slides out of his pants and leans back, reaching for me, stroking my arm, but I am not ready to lie beside him. He stares at the ceiling until his eyes slowly drift shut. As I sit watching his chest rise and fall I feel overwhelmingly bereft, deserted by Jack and Deirdre, deserted, too, not by my husband but by my own feelings for him, by the love that I know is still strong within me but feels just out of reach.
I leave him sleeping and go to sit in the living room, the sole light left on creating a cone of near-whiteness in the otherwise darkened room. For a long while, I remain completely still, trying to sort through the remnants of the evening, but they continually shift, realign, I cannot quite grasp them.
It occurs to me that I didn't ask Sam if he found out anything about Wells, if, after all this, the trip was even worth it.
Though I hate to admit it, he is right, I don't trust his instincts on this story. I cannot help but think he is being reckless to jeopardize his job over something no one else seems to feel has one bit of merit. It smacks of desperation. Or sophomoric grandstanding. Or both.
But if I tell him this it will only confirm his argument that I have no faith in him. In a convoluted way I will be proving him right, justifying his lie.
I'm stuck.
Which annoys me further. Or would, if I felt well enough to be actively annoyed.
Instead, I dig my BlackBerry out of my bag and open the latest e-mail from David Forrester. Not one has mentioned business.