Love and Other Natural Disasters (21 page)

It felt like the equivalent of
saying,
I don't like you, but I'll always love you.
"How's it
different?"

"A lot's happened. It's been a
long time."

"Yeah, Laney happened."

"I never slept with her. She
wanted to, and I didn't do it. Why doesn't that count for anything?" he
said, frustration rising. "I could have had an affair and I didn't. But
that doesn't seem to matter to you."

"You did have an affair. And
you just admitted you don't love me like you used to. Why, Jon? Why don't you
love me like you used to?"

He slammed his hand down on the
table in an uncharacteristic display of anger, and I jumped along with the
silverware. Until then, we'd kept our voices low so the surrounding tables
would have known something was wrong only if they'd really paid attention. Now
people glanced over, but Jon didn't seem to notice. "It's because of
scenes like this, Eve. Okay? You want to know why I don't love you like I used
to? It's because you put me through shit like this. We were having a great
night, and I was enjoying you, and I wanted to take you home and make love to
you, but you had to ruin it."

I realized I was crying, I didn't
know when I'd started. "I want to go home now."

He didn't respond right away, and I
could tell he was trying to regain control of himself. "I'm sorry I said
what I did. I understand why you're still upset about Laney. Maybe I was just
trying to move too fast. The thing is, a lot's happened for both of us. We just
need to start over. We need to have more dates, just enjoy each other's
company, start to trust each other again. Okay? Can we do that?"

I shook my head. "I can't. Not
after what you just told me."

"I love you, Eve. That's what
I told you."

But that wasn't what I'd remember.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I wore sunglasses to work that
Monday, since my eyes were swollen and sunlight hurt. I forgot to take them off
before entering the building, which led to Chad dead-panning, "Where's the
paparazzi?"

I waved a hand at him wearily, a
gesture that split the difference between "hello" and
"whatever," and went into my office, shutting the door behind me. I
sank down into my chair, startled to find my descent interrupted by a pile of
books.

There were four of them, dog-eared,
moderately stained, with titles like
Perfect Match: The Right Job for Your
Personality
and
Find A Career in Ten Steps.
Dyan, of course. She'd
been loaning these out to students for years. They'd been pawed by myriad
twenty-two-year-olds who felt they had their whole lives ahead of them. The
books were absolutely filthy with hope.

Since my talk with Dyan, I'd done
everything I could to distract myself from her question. But she was right, it
needed to be answered. This was the life I had, so what now?

I tossed the books on the floor.

"He still doesn't get it. He
still doesn't even think he had an affair," I said.

"You were both a little drunk,
it was the middle of an argument." Lil took a sip of her paper-cupped
latte and grimaced. "This is some foul shit."

"Well, you can't have
everything. Look at this ambience." We were sitting at a table in the
center of what passed for a food court at the community college: a Chick-
fil
-A, an Orange Julius, and a coffee cart called
Espress
Yourself. "I mean, I can't believe he said
that."

"I guess he thinks he should
get points for restraint," she said. "He only saw her that day at the
baseball game?"

"That's what he says."

"America's pastimes: baseball
and adultery."

"All these months of therapy,
that stupid fucking book he read, and he still thinks it's not an affair."
I took an angry swig of my coffee, burning my tongue. "Shit."

"Maybe the two of you are just
calling it by different names. Do you think he knows it was wrong, what he did
with her, even if he's calling it something other than an affair?"

"I'm sure he thinks it's
wrong, just not as wrong as having sex with her."

"A lot of people think
that," she said. "No one at this table, but it's a pretty widely held
opinion."

"You know what bothers me?
It's that he gets to think he's still a good guy. It's like, he can write to
her for a year, he can tell her every fucking detail about his life and his
marriage, he can call her, he can smuggle her into town, and as long as he
doesn't cross that line, he's a stand-up guy. He gets to feel superior to all
those other guys who go through with it. Maybe it's not that he has better
morals than those guys, just less guts."

"Cheaters aren't really known
for their bravery, Eve."

"He was in love with another
woman. What could be worse than that?" I asked, suddenly tearful.

"He told you that?"

"No, I—" I realized I
knew only because I'd read his e-mails. "I just know he was. He
practically admitted it last night. I think some part of him still thinks I'm
overreacting, that he's the rational one and I'm the irrational one."

"So what are you going to do
about it?"

"I don't know. I want to say
that's it, last night was the last straw, I'm done, but until that argument, I
was feeling in love with him all over again." I stared at the table
miserably. "It's like, I can't get in and I can't get out. I look at my
kids, and I see him there, and I want to keep loving him. I think, 'What if I'm
robbing them of their dad the way I was robbed?' I know it's different, because
Jon would always be a part of their lives, but that doesn't mean they're not
still losing."

"Kids are resilient. They
compensate. You did."

Sometimes I wasn't so sure.

"And you really didn't see any
change in him over the past year?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"Then either he's a really
good liar, or..." She clearly didn't want to continue.

"Or what? Come on, or
what?" "Or you weren't too observant." "Well, I shouldn't
have had to be. I trusted him. This is my thanks for trusting him?"

She didn't say anything, just
fidgeted with her cup.

I checked Jon's e-mail every day
that week to see what he thought about our date. There was no mention in the
few superficial e-mails he'd written. I didn't know if that meant he was trying
not to think about it, if he was too upset to write about it, or if it hadn't
made a dent at all. It was hard to imagine that last one could be true, but it
surfaced in my most self-pitying moments. A week later, I got this e-mail:

Hi, Eve. I wanted you to know I
found an apartment. It's a studio in Nob Hill, just abutting the Tenderloin.
I've heard people call it the Tender Knob. Some call it the
Knoberloin
.
Whatever you want to call it, here's my address...

He listed his address, signed his
name, and that was it. There was no reason to expect more. But somehow, I did.

I tried to divert myself in all
sorts of ways, the most embarrassing being my new preoccupation with my skin.
Considering my battered self-esteem, the increasing likelihood that someday I
would have to reenter the dating world, and Lil's encouragement, it was only a
matter of time before I wound up at her medical spa.

I followed the directions I'd
printed out, but arrived in a no-man's-land of warehouses and fluttering
garbage instead of in the chichi enclave where the medical spa was located. By
the time I got to my appointment, I was sweaty, red-faced, and sputtering
apologies. The glowing blonde behind the desk smiled at me beatifically and
said, "You're only a few minutes late, don't worry about it at all. Can I
get you some water? Still or sparkling?"

I breathed deeply, then smiled.
"Still, please."

She rose and walked toward a closed
door. I glanced around. The walls were a soft white, as was the lighting. One
wall featured artfully arranged products from floor to ceiling, and the waiting
room of tasteful modern furniture was decorated in white and gentle blues. A
woman in expensive loungewear with startlingly dewy skin was perched on one of
the chairs, reading a magazine. That was encouraging. I told myself the spa had
created her.

The blonde returned with a small
bottle of water. She handed it to me, along with a clipboard of forms to fill
out. I settled across from the success story (or was she a plant?), took a swig
of water, and began to read. The questions were typical medical history, except
for the fill-in-the-blank
My number one dream would be to fix my
_________.
It was a tantalizing phrase. I was a girl with a dream, and it was to fix
my_________. My what? My marriage? My fear that I didn't measure up to some
woman in Chicago I'd never even seen? My poor judgment for possibly eating into
my children's college fund;, just to fix my_________?

I went with
redness. Also, my
acne.
(I always have-between one and four pimples. Clear one up, and
there's another on the way.) It wasn't the severity of my skin's problems, but
the unpredictability that vexed me. Maybe today, I could get control of
something. More or less satisfied with my answers, I turned in the form and
waited.

It wasn't long before I was ushered
into a private room. There was something comforting about the fact that despite
some flourishes (the room's oceanic color palette, dimmed lights, and music
that could have been the soundtrack of
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon),
it
was basically an exam room. While I don't dismiss Eastern medicine, I tend to
be a devotee of Western. It's what I know. If someone's going to laser my face,
I want to know they have all the credentials the Western medical establishment
can bestow, and I don't want said
lasering
to take
place in, for example, a gently undulating pool meant to evoke the sense memory
of being in the womb.

Dr. Klinger was Western all the
way. Lil told me she trusted all the doctors there, but she hadn't told me
anything specific, like that he'd be so young. Well, youngish (thirty-five?
forty?); it was hard to tell given his
poreless
,
wrinkleless complexion. He had sandy hair, hazel eyes behind stylish glasses,
well-pressed clothes, and my favorite bedside manner: good-humored,
informative, and gracious. He was in no rush, even though I wasn't paying him,
which sat well with me. Of course, every free consultation was a potential gold
mine in future procedures, none of them covered by insurance and, thus,
completely at his discretion. But I saw no need for cynicism.

"So we'll tackle the acne
first," he said.

"Well, I thought maybe we
could do it all together?" I asked hopefully. "One procedure takes
all?"

He laughed. "Acne's sort of a
stand alone, unfortunately. Let me just look at you under the light." He
moved toward me and turned on the light above my head, its brightness roughly
the equivalent of a solar eclipse. Weirdly, when I looked at him also bathed in
that light like some sort of angel, I still couldn't detect a single pore. Then
I realized how my searching gaze might appear to him and I looked away.

He snapped off the light and
returned to the seat opposite me. "Here's what I propose for your
acne," he said. "We could start with a salicylic acid peel, really
get a deep clean, and then there's a regimen my patients have had great results
with..."

I was more disappointed with each
word. He was talking about a long-term commitment. I wanted a quick fix.
"But couldn't we try one of those newer treatments? I was reading on the
Internet about how pulsed light can really help acne."

"I tend to be a little
conservative with the procedures. I actually talk people out of more than I
perform, to be honest." He paused, perhaps sensing my mood. "I really
think the best thing is to start with the salicylic acid peel. It's the
cheapest procedure, and it's likely to be the most effective, in conjunction
with the daily regimen I'd recommend. And to be honest, there's not all that
much to suggest that the pulsed light or the lasers improve acne by very much
and the treatments are really expensive."

I was sitting there, ready to be
bamboozled, and he wouldn't do it. All he'd give me were realistic expectations
and a goddamned salicylic acid peel.

"You know," I said,
"what I really want to fix is my redness. My cheeks and my nose seem a lot
redder than they used to."

"We could do the peel today
and you could start the regimen and then come back in six weeks. If the reds
aren't getting any better, we could talk about maybe doing a series of laser
treatments to cauterize your blood vessels."

Now he was talking my language.
Except—did he actually say "the reds"?

Next up was the aesthetician,
Julie. She was another blonde with good skin, though not quite as enviable as
the receptionist's. I noticed she had several grooves in her forehead. I felt
another twinge of disappointment that this was no miracle factory, and then I
recognized the absurdity of having allowed myself to believe it could be. Now I
was lying there, and Julie was dabbing the acid on my face, which started
burning instantly. Well, of course it did. But somehow, I hadn't expected that,
the feeling of someone holding a
tiki
torch to my
face. Tears sprang to my eyes. I gritted my teeth.