I'm So Happy for You (11 page)

Wendy felt embarrassed, lest anyone at the table think she’d lost the ability to receive an instant response from her reputed
best friend. “Don’t worry about it,” she said quickly. In fact, as Wendy reflected on the email she’d sent—a request that
Daphne pass on the name and number of her masseuse, so Wendy could give it to her friend at the dry cleaners, Grace, who was
still sore from having been hit by a bus—she realized how random it must have seemed. In truth, she wasn’t entirely sure why
she’d written it.

“Is your dry cleaner okay?” asked Daphne.

“She’s going to be fine,” Wendy told her.

“Well, that’s good.” Daphne sat down at the one available seat—to Wendy’s right—only to turn her attentions to her own right,
where Wendy’s do-gooder friend Gretchen sat. “So, am I wrong?” Daphne began, one eyebrow raised. “Or has a certain someone
not been in Bali, honeymooning with their husband, four years after the fact?”

“Guilty as charged,” conceded Gretchen.

“The only crime is the color of your face,” said Sara. She turned to the others. “Gretch didn’t get the memo on tanning.”

“Thanks, Sar,” said Gretchen, whose cheeks and forehead were indeed the color of a shiny penny. “Just like you didn’t get
the memo on not being a bitch.”

“Hey, you two,” said Wendy, secretly tickled to see Sara and Gretchen fighting. “No more bickering like an old married couple.
You sound like Adam and me.”

“Who’s bickering?” said Sara.

“Not me,” said Gretchen, shrugging.

“Do you and Adam really fight?” asked Pamela, looking mystified by the concept.

“It only turns physically violent, like, one out of three times,” Wendy assured her.

Pamela, whose many virtues failed to include a sense of humor, looked even more stunned.

“Sara’s just pissed she’s part of an old
un
married couple,” offered Gretchen.

“Thanks, Gretch,” said Sara.

“Don’t thank me,” said Gretchen. “Thank Dolph. I’m sorry, but you should really give him an ultimatum already. I mean, how
many years has it been now?”

“Someone get these two to arbitration,” muttered Maura.

“Wait—time out!” cried Daphne, her palm raised. She turned to Pamela. “Pammy, I’m dying to know—how’s Baby Luke?”

“A little colicky,” Pamela said breezily. “But nothing we can’t handle.”

“He’s also incredibly cute,” added Wendy, who wanted it known that she’d already been over to visit.

“Thanks, Wen.” Pamela smiled warmly. “I think he’s pretty cute, too.”

Daphne leaned in. “So, are you getting any sleep at all?”

“Not much,” admitted Pamela. “But I always say—there’s plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead!”

“But what if you live to sleep?” asked Maura.

“Don’t have kids.” Gretchen laughed knowingly.

“Or hire a baby nurse, like Gretchen,” said Sara. “And refuse to let her out of the house until the kids are eighteen.”

Gretchen ground her teeth but said nothing.

“Or kill yourself now and get it over with,” said Maura.

“Hey, no suicide jokes tonight,” said Wendy with a surreptitious glance at Daphne to see if she’d caught the allusion. (There
was no evidence that she had; she was busy making a sad face at a broken nail.)

“Well, I’m
dying
to meet him,” said Daphne. “I’m
so
sorry about the weekend before last. I’m a horrible friend. I was just—”

“It’s fine! Really.” Pamela cut her off with a wave of her hand.

“Maybe I could come by next week?”

“Whatever works for you. Meanwhile, inquiring minds want to know—how is
your
new man?”

All heads now turned to Daphne, who pursed her lips and said, “He’s great. Beyond great.”

“So, when do we get to meet him?” asked Sara.

“Well, he’s been in the middle of this
big case,
” said Daphne, seeming to savor the last two words. “But it’s supposed to be over tomorrow, THANK GOD. So then I can start
showing him off again. Actually, he’s taking Monday off, and we’re going to Sag Harbor for the weekend. But after that we’re
not going anywhere ’til Thanksgiving.” She turned to Wendy. “Wendy and Adam already met him.”

All heads now turned to Wendy, whose pride at being the “only one” competed with her discomfort at being called upon to confirm
Daphne’s choice of mate. “Well, to start, he’s very good-looking,” she began. It was the one positive thing she could say
with conviction. And why was it that she hated to lie to Daphne, Wendy wondered, but not to her husband?

“He and Wendy have slightly different political outlooks,” Daphne informed the group. “But otherwise you liked him, right?”
She glanced back at Wendy.

“Of course! He was great. Super smart. And funny,” said Wendy, wondering if her facial expression gave her away.

“Paige—don’t kill me, but I promised him the three of us could have drinks sometime next week, or whenever you have time,”
said Daphne, reaching her hand across the table and laying it on Paige’s arm. “His family is talking about investing in some
friend of the family’s hedge fund—some guy named Madoff. Jonathan’s really worried they’re making a big mistake.”

“Delighted to be of service in any way I can,” chimed Paige.

“And Sara, I can’t wait for you to meet him, too,” Daphne went on. “He’s
such
a lawyer. He’s always arguing about everything! The two of you are going to love each other.…”

It seemed to Wendy that for the rest of the evening, Daphne’s conversation was directed at everyone but her. What’s more,
Daphne’s body was turned at such an angle that Wendy spent dinner staring at her back.

Daphne returned from Sag Harbor the following Tuesday, but she remained unavailable to Wendy. Like Maura, Daphne had always
been a champion canceler, and the problem seemed to have grown worse since Jonathan had entered the picture. On Thursday,
Daphne flaked out of yet another dinner plan with Wendy, again citing a physical malady. (This time it was food poisoning.)
Wendy began to wonder if her best friend was purposely avoiding her. In retrospect, she regretted ever having opened her mouth
on the subject of the Palestinians the night the four of them had met. Of course, it was equally possible, Wendy told herself,
that Daphne was simply preoccupied with her new relationship and ignoring all her friends equally.

The latter theory seemed less likely after Wendy learned that Daphne and Gretchen had dined together later that same week.
But was that detail necessarily so telling? Maybe Daphne had been feeling better. And Wendy didn’t invite Daphne along every
time she had dinner with a mutual friend. In any case, there was no way for Wendy to know if Daphne was mad at her or not.
Daphne had never been the type to tell you if you did something wrong. She’d just start ignoring you, which always made you
feel a hundred times worse.

Meanwhile, Adam announced he was coming back to Brooklyn the following weekend. And Wendy rejoiced at the news, even though
his visit stood to fall during her period.

She filled the idle hours before his return working on her cooking skills. Armed with James Beard’s
Theory and Practice of Good Cooking
(1977), which had been left in the apartment by the previous tenants, she made, on successive nights, Braised Pork Hocks,
Italian Style; Stuffed Breast of Veal; and Jeanne Owen’s Chili con Carne. (Whoever Jeanne Owen was, her chili tasted like
Polly’s dog food. Which either was or wasn’t Jeanne Owen’s fault.)

In a semicharitable spirit—at some indeterminate point in life, she’d discovered that it made her feel good to be nice to
other people—Wendy also brought a bag of groceries to the ancient, never married, retired merchant marine, Barney, who lived
alone with his metal furniture, peeling contact paper, Wonder bread, and canned corn in a rent-controlled studio downstairs.
(Hoping to “mix things up,” she brought him wheat bread and canned peas.) And then, because no good deed goes unpunished,
Barney made her sit down on one of his metal chairs and listen to stories about lovesick sailors threatening to jump overboard
over “Orientals” they’d met in the South Pacific while escorting cargo ships of sugar.

The night before Adam’s arrival, Wendy partook of her favorite shame-inducing activity after smoking and masturbating: scouring
reproductive health Web sites and message boards in search of useful tips / old wives’ tales regarding the most expedient
way to get pregnant.

To her disappointment, however, she found no new nuggets of wisdom, having already served Adam coffee before sex, ingested
cough syrup to thin her cervical mucus, orgasmed first to favorably alter the pH balance of her vagina, and assumed the bicycle
position for twenty minutes after the act. She ended up on a Web site about male infertility, half-convinced that Adam had
an obstructed vas deferens thanks to a hernia operation he’d had ten years ago. This would explain why he’d gotten his college
girlfriend pregnant but had so far failed to knock up Wendy. She had no proof, of course. But what if Adam knew more than
he was letting on? Wendy couldn’t help but think of the contents of his “Screenplay” file. Was it a mere coincidence that
her husband was writing a movie about nonfunctioning sperm? Of course, there was always the possibility that something was
wrong with Wendy’s own reproductive system. As a general rule, however, she preferred to imagine that the blame lay elsewhere.

After exhausting the potential of her search words, Wendy found herself Googling Mitchell Kroker. If she didn’t miss his presence
in Daphne’s life, she couldn’t help but wonder how he was faring. Did he care that Daphne had left him? Was he drinking heavily?
Had he already found a new mistress/girlfriend? Wendy had never thought he’d leave his wife for Daphne. Yet she found it equally
impossible to imagine how, after an affair as passionate as she understood his and Daphne’s to have been, he could return
to his marriage as if nothing had happened.

Other than the time that Wendy had accidentally barged in on the two of them in Daphne’s apartment the month before, she’d
met Mitch only once. Near the beginning of his and Daphne’s affair, the three of them had met for drinks in the lobby bar
of the Four Seasons Hotel in midtown Manhattan. He’d been friendly enough, asking faux-interested questions about
Barricade
. (“So, is Charlie Kohn still beating around the place—or did he die yet?”) But it had been clear to Wendy from the outset
that he’d only been there as a favor to Daphne, and that he couldn’t wait to leave, either out of boredom or because he was
terrified he’d run into someone he knew. He’d spent most of the hour drumming his fingertips against the top of their bar
table and checking his Rolex. Wendy felt as uncomfortable as she was fascinated by the way he kept looking over at Daphne.

As if he wanted to climb inside her skin.

Wendy knew it was creepy and uncouth to imagine your friends having sex with their husbands or lovers. Many times over the
past two years, however, she’d allowed herself to picture Mitch and Daphne together. Sometimes, she envisioned him huffing
and puffing atop Daphne’s prostrate form, beads of sweat dangling from the undulating lines that ran across his forehead,
lines so deep they resembled a seismograph printout after a low-level earthquake. But more often, Wendy pictured Daphne on
top, naked and slithering across a transfixed Mitch as a snake traverses a mossy rock. It was the latter image that Wendy
found the most erotic, not because she longed for Daphne to slither across her own body, but because she liked to imagine
being
Daphne. That is, what it must feel like to be possessed of a body like hers (a body that appeared at once breakable and omnipotent),
and also to be on the receiving end of the kind of obsessive desire that Mitch clearly had for her.

After clicking on the first search result, Wendy found herself staring at an “official” portrait and biography of Mitch, courtesy
of the television network at which he worked. His face made pink and smooth, his smile rising higher on one side than the
other, his arms folded over each other like Yul Brynner’s in
The King and I,
Daphne’s former lover appeared to be ten years younger than he actually was, far nicer, and made of wax. His biography seemed
equally unreal. The last line read, “Mitchell Kroker lives in Georgetown with his wife, Cheryl (weatherperson at CBS affiliate
WUSA), and his two children.” Wendy’s search turned up nothing more revealing than that—moreover, no evidence that he and
Daphne had ever known each other. And was it possible that Cheryl had never found out, never would? And were other people
simply better than Wendy at letting things go?

Before shutting down her computer for the night, Wendy also Googled Jonathan Sonnenberg. From what she learned, after clocking
several years at Schiffer, Wallengberg, Griscom & Steinholz, he’d moved to the organized-crime and terrorism unit of the US
Attorney’s Office. True to Wendy’s inquiries at dinner that night, he’d also been involved in several high-profile fraud and
money-laundering cases involving the Gambino crime family. For Wendy, however, such factual information paled in interest
next to the snapshot she uncovered of Jonathan on spring break in some tropical wonderland, a decade or two before. His chest
bare, his shorts Hawaiian, his arms dangling over the shoulders of his fraternity brothers—the Greek letters on their T-shirts
identified them as such—he seemed even then to be brimming with self-confidence. Wendy wondered if, late at night, alone and
awake in a dark room, Jonathan ever had moments of self-doubt.

She also wondered what he and Daphne did together in dark rooms. When Wendy envisioned the two of them, she saw Jonathan running
his hands through Daphne’s tangled mane and moaning clichéd things like “You’re so fucking beautiful”—while he received expert
fellatio. Yet where Wendy had always somehow relished the image of Daphne and Mitch together, she found the one of Daphne
and Jonathan vile.

Adam arrived home in a swirl of luggage and coats and soiled paper bags containing fast food he hadn’t gotten around to finishing
on the train. In his absence, Wendy had purchased an Indian bedspread and two velvet pillows to better disguise the Ikea sofa
they couldn’t currently afford to replace. Every night before she went to bed, she’d taken to straightening the spread over
the cushions and angling the pillows against the sofa’s arms. No sooner had Adam walked in the door, however, than the pillows
found their way to the floor and the bedspread pulled away from the sofa, exposing its old, pilled upholstery. Wendy knew
she was indulging her “fussy old lady” side, but his carelessness annoyed her. To add to her irritation, Adam seemed as excited—if
not more so—to see his dog as he did his wife. Or was she looking for problems because she couldn’t justify the truth, which
was that she was mad at him for being away? As Adam stroked Polly’s head, Wendy announced, “To be honest, as much as I love
her, it’s been kind of a burden having to walk her every night.”