Opening Belle (25 page)

We've both just left an uneventful preschool chapel where everyone behaved. I was walking toward the office when Henry had his driver pull the Escalade over.

“Ride for Ms. Belle?” he asked with incredible sweetness. “Maybe even go get a coffee?” His angled face tilted up to grab the sunlight. He had such a huge smile on his face, making his mood contagious. I knew there wasn't an overwhelming in-box pile to greet me at work this morning, and I didn't resemble a packhorse with bags of papers. I even had on nice shoes, so why not keep walking to work and maybe even walk with Henry? But a coffee date? No, that's off-limits.

“On this morning where the sun shines right on me?” I responded, referring to a song we'd just been singing in chapel. “Days like this you should be walking, not riding your lazy carcass around town,” I said, “and no coffee unless you have a cappuccino machine in that rig of yours.”

“You're right,” he said, hitting his head as if a lightbulb had exploded in his brain. He opened the door, causing some stepping platform to slide from beneath the POLO-mobile, and stepped out.

“It's good to walk rather than caffeinate,” he said, “but maybe we can do both.” With that he handed me a hot, foamy coffee in a porcelain cup.

“So you
do
have a cappuccino machine in there, of course.”

“No, Bells. Don't be ridiculous. My driver picked these up when we were in chapel.”

“And just where do they serve takeout coffee in porcelain?” I ask.

“It's a bring-your-own-porcelain kind of place. Can we just shut up and chug?”

Like we did with the vodka shots of our youth, we down the delicious drink and hand the glasses back to the nameless driver who never makes any eye contact.

“Do you have a dishwasher in there too?” I smirk as I walk away.

Henry grabbed his briefcase off the seat and caught up to me on the sidewalk. Walking in step on a morning that hints of spring, with happy God music still stuck in our heads and caffeine in our veins, we seem positively saved at this moment.

“Might I remind you,” I say as I notice we are on East 65th Street, “I work on Park and Forty-Seventh Street while you're on Madison and Twenty-Third. This is a much bigger commitment for you.”

“I'm still not afraid of commitments, or have you forgotten that?” he jokes, and puts his arm around me.

I blush. “I'm trying to forget that.” I look straight ahead and try to navigate the parade of strollers that take over Park Avenue at this hour. Wait. Did I just sound flirtatious? I hadn't meant anything by it.

“Have you gotten my emails?” Henry asks, removing his arm from my shoulder.

Here we go. It's time to talk about the emails. The truth is, if they are flowery I sweep them into a special folder; if it's all business, I deal with it. I think of his last one, from three weeks ago, a message I've memorized:

Wanna be in that place along the roof of the sky, upside down along the horizon, someplace unreal where you could have everything you need.

What did that even mean?

Please, Henry
, I think,
please don't make me respond to that. Please don't make me tell you to stop sending emails.
But right now Henry is scrunching up his face, truly concentrating on what he is saying and thinking about . . . the currency markets. We are two well-dressed geeks talking about money, not lovers thinking about when we can rip each other's clothes off. Now that I understand that, I can relax. It's business.

He smells so good this morning. I walk on his left side and the wind blows his smell toward me. He's never been one for artificial men's scents and aftershave, instead opting for the smell of soap and clean. I hate that he's making my heart pound.

“I think my partner, Stone, has been speaking with you,” I say, “but last I checked I think you wanted to buy some Australian dollars?”

“Yes, Australia is one of the few countries that doesn't live in debt and has livable pension payments in its future, and by the way that Stone guy is appropriately named.”

I ignore the dig at my partner. “So we're down with Australia?” I ask.

“We are down”—Henry stops as if he had cleats in mud—“with this dress!”

He points to a store window, a French atelier that sells gorgeous gowns that nobody can really have much use for. The dress he likes seems lit from the rays of the morning sun. It's a sea-foam color, not blue nor gray nor green, and it's fitted to just below the waist, puffing slightly as it dips lower. The front plunges. It's meant to be worn by someone with young or never-nursed-upon breasts that are large and springy enough to hold up ample gossamer frontage without slipping. The silk satin fabric is cut and sewn in overlapping diamonds. It's the perfect gown for a mannequin, or maybe Naked Girl.

“Looks like something a mermaid would wear,” Henry says dreamily. He had once loved my fascination with water: my love of swimming, of being underwater or some version of soaking, in my past life. He loved that I left for work each morning with wet hair, or unshowered skin after a weekend at the beach. I hated washing the sea from myself. That was so long ago.

“No time for that life anymore,” I say as we walk away. “You were mentioning Australia. I hear they have beaches there.”

“Oh, really? Beaches in Australia? I didn't know.”

Henry and I took a trip after college. We spent two months in New Zealand, three in Australia, and one in the Fijian Islands. Our money ran out in the fourth week and we worked mindless jobs, planting kiwi, picking apples, holding sheep about to be sheared for a rancher, and finally for a courier service. We started the trip as hotel guests, and eventually lived in a tent. We wanted to be married so badly then that it hurt. Love can be so perfect that it's painful. There were mornings I'd wake up next to him and not be able to tell where my skin ended and his began. We felt like one person. I remember wondering if anything would ever feel that good again, if maybe some of the hurt from love stems from the rest of your life being spent trying to re-create a time that has passed.

How we went from that couple to the one currently sauntering down Park Avenue talking about money, I can't explain. As I walk I wonder which was the real me and which was the real Henry?

Henry asks about work so I update him about the Glass Ceiling Club. He asks thoughtful, caring questions, and I tell him about the Gruss lunch, about being left twisting in the wind by the other women, about the GCC not believing I had really tried to speak up and how that made our little group fizzle out. I tell him how frustrated I am not being able to get any further in the firm, how few hours I spend with my kids. I tell him how gutting it was to go home to Bruce, who also reacted with nonreaction to the Gruss lunch, and then I am quiet.

“I forget what your husband does?” says Henry.

It isn't a sarcastic question. It's real. Can he really not know what Bruce does? Is that really all he cares about after all the stories I've just told him?

“He's a communications technician,” I say, bracing myself for comments about my husband and my pretending he actually goes to a job every day. “How could you not know that?”

“How? Because I always think of you as mine and Bruce doesn't really exist for me.”

Silence follows. Our heels on the sidewalk pavement seem noisy in this awkward moment. We have to stop for traffic and standing without moving is extraordinarily uncomfortable.

“Sorry,” Henry says, and clears his throat. “Well, it sounds like he gets to be home more than you do,” he continues truthfully. “I think you're still doing most of the kid work even though he's home most of the time.”

“I wasn't talking much about my home life, Henry. I was speaking about work.” And then, even though I knew what the answer was, I ask him the same thing: “What about
your
home life? Is Danielle working?”

I know his wife doesn't work, but it feels more respectful somehow to pretend to not know this. I choke down the idea that he thinks of me as his. “Because she exists for me.”

Henry laughs. “No, she loves to play,” he says, but there isn't scorn in his voice, it's admiration. “She knows exactly what she wants and what she wants is to not work a day in her life.”

This makes sense to me. Of course Henry prides himself on taking care of a woman, kept by her father and then by him. He would never get the chance to do that with me and it is suddenly so clear how much he needs to be that sort of man. Henry lets her keep living the cared-for life she has always known. Danielle is the opposite of me.

“She must be very happy,” I say, like a smarmy Hallmark card and feeling no jealousy at all. “Does she ever get a wifey bonus?”

“Two million a year and she accounts for every penny.”

“No.”

“Yes. She has one-third for fun, one-third for charity, and one-third for clothes and gifts.”

“I imagine seven hundred fifty thousand dollars can buy a lot of fun.”

“They take great trips.”

“They?”

“Her girlfriends. I'm too busy.”

“And she's able to squeak by on a seven-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar clothes budget?”

“Well, she buys the boys' clothes too.”

“That's tough,” I say, and we both laugh and then are silent.

“Henry, about those emails—”

He interrupts, “Belle, baby, everything is okay.” He turns and looks directly into my eyes. “Please don't make me stop. I need this. You don't have to read them. I'm asking you to not ask me to stop. It doesn't come from a place of disrespect. I've grown up since we knew each other. I don't cheat on my wife. I just . . . I just . . . need this.”

“Henry, we slept in the same
bed
not that many weeks ago,” I point out. “What was that? We both don't want that.”

“It was close to something I want,” he said, “but it wasn't cheating. I think that I should let you know that we didn't have sex, in case I'm that unmemorable.” He laughs. “It's just that you fit me.”

Henry steps away from me and there is an angle of sunlight hitting his dark eyes, which makes them come alive. If we were in a movie, this is the part where we would have gotten a room, but this is real life, our bizarre, real life.

Henry squeezes my hand and dashes across Madison Avenue, against traffic, disappearing in a crowd of boys with rolling backpacks and acne and their entire lives still before them.

T
HE TRADING CLOCKS
, LED lit with giant numbers, note the precise time a trade crosses a buyer with a seller. Each trade is clocked in every time zone in the world. We keep the clocks clean and lit here because time is money. When the clocks pass 5 p.m., my guilt grows in tandem with the flipping of the numbers.

It's easy for me to be happily settled at work when my kids are in school, but at noon, I imagine Brigid and Owen finishing preschool and I feel just a little bit worse. By 3 p.m., Kevin finishes big-kid school and my spirits sink lower. By 5 p.m., the sound of idle chitchat and banter in my workplace grates on my nerves. Conversations better have a point if they're to include me. When I begin to wonder what frozen food product is finding its way into our microwave oven, I feel positively ornery. From that time forward I'm continually calculating, how many more minutes until I can leave? Can I possibly make it home for story time or will I miss it again? Do the people I work with realize how much time they waste?

This evening, the clocks on the floor have all clicked to 5:15 p.m., leaving only a few minutes before I break for the door and get home to my small people. I combine stacks of paper accumulated during the day. I flip on screen savers and congratulate myself on what will be a successful early exit. Better than that, tonight I plan on being Supermom—I'm hosting Owen's playgroup.

Caregiver found a playgroup for me consisting of frazzled working mothers and their three-year-olds. A group of nannies that frequent the same playground in Central Park decided their bosses should get to know the kids their own children hang out with. In some sort of reverse-networking feat, babies who liked each other brought together their caregivers, who then brought together the moms. Tonight will be the fourth meeting of this group but the first one the McElroys have hosted and the first one I'll actually attend. Bruce has gone to the last two.

“Playdates at night?” a disbelieving Ballsbridge inquires as he sees me readying for the exit.

“Part of the working mom's guilt-reduction program.”

“We have Home Depot night,” he says. “I get home so late, the only place to bring my kids is home improvement centers. I run them up and down the aisles, we treasure-hunt for weird shit like posthole drills, lug nuts. You may want to try that instead of six p.m. playdates.”

“Yeah, I'll keep that in mind.”

“Seriously, Home Depot. Now open on Lexington Avenue. Check it out sometime.”

This is what I love about Marcus. The guy makes a few million dollars each year and the high of his day is recreating at Home Depot. It's hard to believe he is or was trysting his nights away with Naked Girl.

“Where's Tiffany?” I ask. Naked Girl has missed a lot of work lately; it's quieter without her cloud of excitement hovering behind me.

“Belle, I do not know and I do not care,” Marcus says in a way that makes me believe him.

“You can talk to me, Marcus,” I say, surprising even myself. I want him to know that I'm on his side, that I really do understand.

“She is a complicated em-ploy-
ee
, Belle. Let us leave it at that.” He smiles for the first time in what feels like forever and seems less jittery without her around. Maybe his marriage is safe for now.

As I stand to leave I notice gobs of dust bunnies clumped under my computer screens and they bother me. Before I can stop myself I pull some chemical cleaner from my drawer and am just finishing a quick wipe when Greene approaches the memo board. I freeze.
Please, God
, I think,
nothing today.
I just don't want an interruption tonight. I don't want anything to interfere with Owen's playdate and my chance to meet his three-year-old entourage. I want to make some mom friends.