I'm Glad About You (34 page)

“What are you going to wear?” he said. Sex or the cell or her clothing, that was actually door number three.

“I don’t know, what do you think?” At this point, it would be madness to answer any other way. The idea that she might know anything at all about what looked good on her had been dismissed months before, along with the insane idea that something loose and comfortable might occasionally be fun.

“Something with color. I would say pink if that weren’t too much to ask.”

It was a reckless, careless dig. Pink was off limits, and he knew it. But he wouldn’t fucking let it go.

She had never told him what happened to the pink dress. How could she? Would he have wrapped her in his arms and comforted her? Would he have hunted Dennis down and beaten him to a pulp? Would he have done anything that any number of characters in one of his stupid movies would do? Not likely. She had taken the torn dress and thrown it in the garbage.

And then she refused to talk about it. There was nothing to say, any lie that she might have told—
I spilled coffee on it, I returned it, I didn’t look good in it, I loaned it to a friend and she ripped it—
would have been shredded. So she said nothing.

Which, perversely, worked. The day after it arrived, Lars called and left a message on her machine. “I hope you like the dress,” he said. “I can’t wait to see you in it. Give me a call.” She didn’t. The next day she got another call, this time from his assistant, the interminable Josh. “Lars asked me to call and make sure that you got the package he sent on Tuesday,” Josh told her machine. “Could you touch base with the office and let us know that you got it?” She didn’t call him back either. So then Ryan called. “Alison, it’s me. Give me a call.” She didn’t. He emailed her. And then he called again. “Alison, where did you go? Did you run away to Cincinnati again? I’m going to be really mad if you did. Call me back. It’s serious.”
Fuck you
, she thought. But after three days of locking herself in her own apartment and taking long showers, she got ahold of herself and called Josh back.

He was so relieved to hear from her, he practically jumped through the phone and hugged her.

“Alison, hi,
hi!
” he gushed. “Wow, it is so great to hear from you, we were getting worried!”

“Were we?”

“Yes, Lars has been really concerned.”

“I went out of town,” she lied.

“We tried your cell,” he informed her.

“Oh, it’s out of juice.”

“Okay, well—uh, Lars was wondering if you got the package he sent you? It should have arrived on Tuesday.”

“That’s what Lars wants to know?”

“Well—I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you about a lot of things. “

“Great, why don’t you tell him to give me a call.”

“Should he use your home or your cell phone?”

“Either works.” She didn’t care how inane this all sounded. She really didn’t.

“Okay, well, I’ll have him call you,” Josh said.

“You do that, Josh,” she told him, and then hung up the phone. She didn’t want to be mean; she knew that Lars had probably been taking the poor guy’s head off for the entire three days. But what the fuck, why was Lars having his fucking assistant call his
girlfriend
anyway? Not that that’s what she was. Who knows what she was.

Lars was waiting for her at the table when she arrived in the restaurant, which was good. Disappearing for three days had clearly been effective. For one unguarded moment, there was a flash of something that skittered across Lars’s face—
was that relief?
—before he stood and kissed her elegantly on the cheek.

“You’ve been elusive,” he observed.

“Not really,” she countered. “I needed a little breathing room.”

“The last work session was intense,” he admitted.
Oh yeah, you mean when you wanted to watch me pretend to have sex with two actors I’d never met, while you watched?

“A little intense, yes,” she said. She really didn’t give a shit. The whole fiasco of that so-called work session had been annihilated by subsequent events. Still, he wanted to see her in the dress. In the middle of all these nonapologies, the pink dress was the real apology, and he wanted to see her in it.

“Did you like the dress?” he asked.

“The dress is gorgeous,” she informed him.

“I was hoping you’d wear it.”

“This is what I wore.”

“A black sheath.”

“Yes, a black sheath, makes me look like I’m going to a funeral, I picked it out just for you.”

“That’s a bit edgy.”

“It’s Audrey Hepburn.”

“Audrey Hepburn would never have worn a sweater with it.”

“I was chilly.”

“You can take it off inside.”

“I’m still chilly.” She didn’t want him to see her arms, which Dennis had in fact bruised rather noticeably.

“It’s just a very sober look.”

“I’m feeling sober.”

“I see that.” His jaw was getting tense now. All this backtalk clearly wasn’t fun for long.

“It’s just a sweater, Lars,” she told him. She put her hand on his. “I really have been fighting a cold, and I’m honestly not feeling quite myself. But I wanted to come have dinner with you. I wanted to see you. Can’t we just enjoy ourselves?”

It did the trick, but not for good. Over time, the dress question appeared and reappeared as a running battle of wills.

“I still haven’t seen you in that dress.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Didn’t you like it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’d love to see you in it.”

“Why are you so obsessed with that dress?”

“I just think it’s a beautiful dress.”

“There are lots of beautiful dresses out there.”

“Did you not like it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then why won’t you wear it?”

“Why do you want me to wear it?”

This could go on for hours, as far as she was concerned. It was like being in an Ionesco play. She had done a scene from
The Bald Soprano
in an acting class in college. It was easy, light. Mean.

“I just don’t understand why I can’t see it on you.”

“Then you do need to talk about the dress.” And then, finally, she couldn’t help herself. “Because I would prefer not to.”

That “I would prefer not to” line was a stunner. Lars was so surprised by it he actually twitched. He stared at her. She could positively hear him thinking:
Is she fucking with me?

Is she indeed
, thought Alison. She smiled at him, dazzling, and the questions about the dress went on and on and on. Eventually the subject mutated into a discussion about the color pink, is it
pink
that you object to or that specific pink (
who said I objected to anything?
), what color pink would you agree to wear if you were theoretically going to agree to wear pink? The rage behind the triviality of the discussion revealed itself in the sheer insulting relentlessness of it all. But Alison never faltered. How could she? The dress no longer existed. And there was simply no way on earth to explain to him why.

twenty-one

V
AN WAS FINALLY HAPPY.
Since Georgia’s birth, she had taken to wearing flowing white frocks, which made her look like a pre-Raphaelite goddess—a startling distance from when they first met, when contemporary fitted sweaters and narrow skirts showed off her figure. But the loose new look suited her. She was now letting her hair air-dry, so that it fell in untamed locks to her shoulders. The whole picture was stunning, frankly. And it was definitely easier to live with. The hardened determination which had ruled their lives for years seemed finally to have run its course. She was wistful and dear with the girls, kissing them and making much of Maggie’s small accomplishments, but not demanding her undivided attention with anywhere near the same ruthlessness as she had commanded in the past. She gave the baby up to Kyle regularly, with a surprising ease. For all his hours with the many patients who came through his office, he remained surprisingly awkward with his own children, but Van made no more cutting remarks about it. Rather, she would smile encouragement to him, touch him lightly on the shoulder, and move on.

It was a magnificent autumn day. They had gone to his parents’ for an early supper, and his father was taking advantage of the weather to grill hamburgers and hot dogs outside one last time before the winter frost set in. Van had brought special veggie burgers for Maggie, who was hopping up and down with delight while her grandpa fussed slowly around his rusted old Weber grill. Over the ironwork patio table, Kyle’s mom was carefully laying a tablecloth with a homey red-and-white check, which Kyle could swear he remembered from his boyhood. He suddenly felt strange and old. But when his mom turned to him, her face blossomed with delight.

“Give me that baby,” she laughed. “Oh, she’s so big! Goodness, you’re such a big girl.” She held the baby’s glorious little body up to her face. He thought his mother had never looked so lovely.

“Almost a year,” he agreed.

“Yes, she is a
big
girl, a whole year old! What will we do for your birthday? Maybe we can go to the zoo and see all the baby animals, the baby
bun
nies and the baby
cows . . .”
Maggie turned at this, jealous and interested.

“I want to go to the zoo and see the baby bunnies,” she informed them.

“Of course you’ll come, what fun would it be if you didn’t?” Grandma asked. “It would be no fun at all.”

Reassured, the child turned her attention back to her mother, who had stretched out in a lounge chair to enjoy the afternoon sun. Maggie had a spectacular red oak leaf in her hand, which she was presenting to Van as the treasure it was. “Look, Mommy,” she said.

“Oh, goodness, that is
gorgeous
. And so big!” Big was a big thing that day. Van took the leaf into her hands and showed Maggie how it was almost as big as her face. Maggie squealed with delight.

“We can’t wait to hear your news,” his mother told him. He looked at her, surprised, and found her positively bursting with smug, unspoken joy. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “I am so glad that you and Van have worked things out,” she whispered. And with that, she cradled Georgia on her hip and sauntered over to the grill, to watch silly old Grandpa cook.

Kyle turned his gaze to Van and Maggie. Looking for more leaves, Maggie had skipped back to the one large tree that graced the suburban yard. Van followed her with her eyes, her left hand shielding her face from the afternoon sun. The white dress had settled; for once it wasn’t billowing around her like the sail of a boat. Lying there in the flickering afternoon light, she looked content, regal, a princess in repose. A thoroughly pregnant princess in repose. The flimsy dress, when it wasn’t billowing around, was revealing as hell.

He had known it intuitively for weeks. Her pale skin ripening like a rare peach, her energy shifting not away from the girls, but toward something more internal, something that demanded her secret attention. There were none of the usual telltale signs; if she was throwing up or eating weird things, she had managed to hide that business from him. But the dress asserted quite clearly that things were progressing on this front. She was a tiny person, and so she would show early, she was maybe three months along. But she was definitely pregnant.

He didn’t wonder for one moment why she hadn’t told him. She hadn’t let him touch her since the baby was born; they hadn’t had sex in over a year. Unless the good Lord really did occasionally descend from on high in order to impregnate pretty women, Van was having an affair. Which might explain how happy she was.

She was having an affair, and she was having someone else’s baby. She was sitting on his parents’ back patio watching his folks make dinner for their two daughters, and she was pregnant with someone else’s child. She was lounging in the sun, contented, filled to the brim with her joy, drinking iced tea, smiling at his father, while her body grew a baby for someone else’s lovely family. The level of the betrayal was so vast, and came upon him so quickly in the late afternoon air, that he felt light-headed, dizzy even.
But you knew
, his brain reminded him.
You’ve known for weeks.

Yes
, he replied to himself.
But now I have to talk about it.

It was the rising of the truth to the surface of the world which finally and utterly filled him with rage. So much of his life had become his own secret. His wife didn’t love him, so be it. His children were afraid of him, so be it. His wife had gone into the bed of another man,
so be it.
He had what he valued more than all of that—he had silence. He also had bitterness, grief, fleeting joy, struggles with the devil, conversations with God; he had within himself a universe of hope and disappointment and that was fine, it was what he had learned to make do with and even love. But
no one else was allowed to see it.