The Men I Didn't Marry (22 page)

I can’t possibly miss more work, and I’m dressed for the office when Kevin finally wakes up, obviously feeling a little better.

“You’re leaving?” he asks, looking at me in disbelief.

“Just for one shift,” I say. “There’s no relief nurse, but I think you’ll be okay.”

“Can we make love first?” he asks. “I’ve been here three days and we still haven’t made love.”

Instead of snapping, “That’s because you were too busy throwing up,” I go over and give him a long kiss.

“Stay in bed,” I tell him. “I’ll join you there as soon as I can.”

“It won’t be soon enough,” he says, kissing me and stroking my cheek. But then he sits up. “Anyway, I’m finally hungry. Mind getting me some breakfast before you go?”

“Sure. What would you like?” I ask, looking anxiously at the clock and hoping he’s hankering for a Pop Tart, not a pile of pancakes.

“I don’t know. What do you think? Maybe a couple of hard-boiled eggs, or an omelette.”

“Either,” I say, trying to be agreeable.

“Hmm. I could eat oatmeal or eggs benedict. French toast with maple syrup. Or a bagel with cream cheese,” he says, thoughtfully going through every breakfast food available anywhere. “I love Belgian waffles. Do you have a Belgian waffle maker?”

“Sure,” I say slightly exasperated and finally losing patience. “I always keep a Belgian cook who specializes in waffles tucked away in the pantry. For God’s sake, it’s only breakfast. Just tell me what you want.”

Kevin crosses his arms in front of his chest, insulted. “I don’t mean to be a burden,” he says. “But I did rearrange my entire schedule to come up here and see you, and you can’t even rearrange a day to be with me.”

“I’d have to rearrange a lot more than a day to be with you,” I say, blurting out what’s been in the back of my mind for weeks now.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If we’re going to be together, I’d have to change my whole life. Move to Virgin Gorda and give up everything.”

“So much to give up,” he says snidely. “New York’s just a fabulous place, isn’t it? A thankless job. A bunch of pompous jerks at a party. People fawning over stupid art any three-year-old could make. Poison food. Yeah, so much to give up.”

“You forgot a couple of things,” I say, my voice trembling. “My kids. My friends. I thought that museum was interesting. At least it was different. And I happen to like my job and I want to keep it.”

“Then that’s it,” says Kevin, angrily getting out of bed. “I don’t want to keep you from anything. I’ll just leave.”

We stand across the room from each other, glaring, neither of us taking a step or giving an inch. Same old Kevin. Hurt him, and he’s done. But this time I’m not letting go of him that easily.

I walk over and put my arms around him.

“Don’t go. Not like this. I love you, Kevin. And if you love me at all, please be here when I get home.”

He strokes my hair but doesn’t answer. I feel my heart pounding. I couldn’t bear to come back later and find Kevin gone.

“You can’t go now; your plane ticket’s not until tomorrow. It’s got to be worth a night with me not to have to pay the penalty fare,” I say, making a weak joke.

Kevin sighs. “I’ll stay. Of course I’ll stay. The real penalty would be leaving before we had one more night together.”

Chapter SIXTEEN

INSTEAD OF OPENING The New York Times when I get on the train, I stare out the window, thinking about Kevin and what we’ll say when we see each other later.

“Mind if I join you?” asks Steff, taking the seat next to me. Then, knowing commuter-train etiquette, she adds, “We don’t have to talk. You can read the paper.”

“I’m not reading, as you may have noticed.” And it wouldn’t matter if I were. A man can get away with parking himself next to a friend, burying his head in the headlines, and not exchanging a word beyond “Morning.” No sense wasting a syllable on whether it’s a “Good” morning or not. But working women sharing a seat are compelled by the laws of sisterhood to chat. On our way into the city to run corporations and make high-powered decisions, we spend thirty-five minutes swapping stories about the new nail salon in town, the cheating butcher (he’s having an affair, and, worse, he overcharges for the ground round), and how the kindergarten art teacher gives too much homework.

But one look at Steff, and I realize she’s worried about something other than ground round or her new self-ear-piercing business. Her eyes are puffy and she looks like she hasn’t slept. She reaches into her bag and some silver Hershey’s kisses tumble out. She unwraps three and heedlessly pops them into her mouth. Uh-oh. Eating chocolate in the morning can only mean one thing.

“Richard says he’s leaving,” Steff sobs. “It’s not me. We’ve had a great run, but he’s ready for his second act.”

I look at her in disbelief. Bill’s exact words. Did he feed Richard the lines or do men come preprogrammed with a midlife escape clause printed on their DNA? Maybe behind those
Wall Street Journal
s they do talk on the train, after all.

“Oh, Steff, I’m so sorry,” I say, reaching for her hand. “I wish I could do something for you.”

“You already have. I’ve been thinking about you every day. You give me hope,” she says, fumbling for a tissue.

I straighten my shoulders, feeling a tinge of pride. When you come right down to it, I’ve handled this pretty well. People always say that divorce is like death and you go through the same five stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I’m glad to be a role model for Steff on making your way through, but I should clue her in on the real phases: fuck him, fuck him, fuck him, fuck him, and what the hell I don’t care anymore.

“There is hope. Life goes on. After you get over the initial shock, it’s actually kind of exciting to go back into the world,” I say in my best encouraging tone. “We can make a future for ourselves, whatever it is.”

“Easy for you to say,” says Steff. “Bill told Richard that he and Ashlee broke up.”

“What does that have to do with me?” I ask.

“That’s what’s giving me hope,” she says, apparently not as inspired by my fortitude as by the latest rumor. “With Ashlee out of the picture, you two could get back together.”

“No, we couldn’t,” I say flatly. “I’m not that stupid. He ran around once; he’ll do it again. If it’s not Ashlee, it will be Candi or Randi or Mandi. With an ‘i’ instead of two ‘es.’ ”

“At least you wouldn’t be alone. You’d have a husband.”

“Not the kind of husband I want,” I say. “Besides, I have a boyfriend.”

Steff drops her tissue in astonishment.

“A boyfriend?” she asks, taking in the new information. And then, giggling at the word, adds, “That sounds so sixth grade.”

“Trust me, it’s not,” I say smugly.

“Do you sleep with him?” asks Steff, somewhere between shocked and interested.

“Of course,” I say airily. Though between the distance and the dysentery, Kevin and I haven’t made love in way too long. At least that’s one thing I know I can fix tonight.

When I get home, Kevin’s the one doing the fixing. A chicken is roasting in the oven, the table is set with candles—and despite the twenty-degree weather, Kevin greets me wearing a skimpy bathing suit.

“Nice look,” I say, untying my scarf and playfully draping it around his neck.

“I would have come to the door naked, but this is my concession to the conservative suburbs.”

“Speaking for myself and the entire block association, naked would have been good.”

“Not a problem.” He pulls off the bathing suit and flashes in front of the window.

“Kevin!” I shout, quickly closing the blinds. I told Steff I had a boyfriend, but she doesn’t really need this much proof.

“I’m sorry about this morning,” he says.

“Me, too. My fault.”

And that’s it. We both know there’s more to say—a lot more—but there’s something we have to do first.

“Hungry?” Kevin asks, kissing me.

“For you.”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”

We make love—hungrily—right there on the living room floor. Maybe I should have left the shades open, if not for Steff, at least for Darlie. She probably hasn’t seen it done right in a long time.

Dinner isn’t quite as formal as Kevin had planned, but it’s a lot more romantic. We take the whole chicken (perfectly roasted, but a little too much garlic) up to bed on a tray, and tear it apart with our fingers. I hold out a piece for Kevin, and he takes it in his mouth, then licks my fingers, one by one. We kiss, greasily, and I giggle as our lips slide apart.

“Breast or thigh?” I ask, offering him another piece of chicken.

“Mmm, both,” he says, kissing my breast and making his way slowly to my thigh.

We forget about dinner, and make love again. As the bed bounces, our leftovers topple off the tray and onto the sheets, but I’m too transported to care.

We’re lying in each other’s arms when the phone rings, and noticing it’s Adam’s number, I pick up, as I always do. “Hi, Adam. How are you sweetheart!” I say.

Adam launches into an enthusiastic description of his day skiing, and as I sit up to talk to him, I mouth “Sorry” to Kevin, who shrugs.

Mogul by mogul, Adam tells me about his run down one of the black-diamond slopes. While I’m busy talking, Kevin rolls over so his back’s to me, and I reach across to rub his shoulders.

“Sounds like a great day,” I tell Adam, willing for once to cut the conversation a little short. “Say ‘Hi’ to Emily for me. And when you head back to school tomorrow, drive carefully.”

“Thanks, Mom. I’d never think to drive carefully if you didn’t remind me.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll always remind you,” I laugh, knowing that no matter how old they get—and how self-aware I think I am—I’ll continue to offer every cliché known to motherhood.

I hang up and kiss the back of Kevin’s neck, but before he even has the chance to turn around, the phone rings again. Emily.

“Mom, you told Adam to say ‘Hi’ to me,” she says in mock indignation. “You couldn’t even say ‘Hi’ to me yourself? I didn’t know you were so busy.”

I look over at Kevin, thinking I’m not telling Emily just what a busy girl I’ve been.

Emily’s as full of stories as Adam was, but she has a different slant on the slopes. Notably, a handsome ski instructor bought her hot chocolate and she thinks she’s briefly fallen in love. First scuba, now skiing. I’ve got to keep my daughter away from sports. Who said you should get a girl involved with athletics so she doesn’t spend all her time thinking about boys?

“My kids are such a kick,” I say happily to Kevin when I finally slide back under the covers.

“You’ve got good kids,” agrees Kevin, but instead of expressing any deeper interest in family life, he takes the remote and flips on the TV. We nestle against the pillows, and he scans the channels—hockey game, news, bad sit-com, rerun of
TV Guide’s Twenty Greatest TV Moments
(the original was fifty, but who has time?), weather channel, bad sit-com. If we stop at QVC, maybe I’ll buy some more jewelry.

I gently take the remote from him and click off the set.

“Is something wrong?” I ask.

“No,” he says, unconvincingly.

“I’m sorry we got interrupted,” I say, trying to snuggle closer. “But I’m always going to pick up the phone when my kids call.”

“You should,” he says.

“There’s a ‘but’ in there.”

He sighs and gets up from the bed, pacing in front of me. “I’m just starting to understand what you meant this morning about rearranging your life. It’s not that easy, is it? I haven’t had that much fun this trip, trying to fit myself into your world.”

“That’s just the food poisoning speaking,” I say.

“No, it’s reality.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy yourself,” I say feeling defensive. “I did the best I could.”

Kevin stops pacing for a moment and looks steadily at me. “I know that. We’ve both tried. I dropped everything to come up and see you during my busiest season.”

“And now you’re mad because I didn’t drop everything to be with you every minute.”

“I’m not mad.” Kevin stands square-shouldered at the edge of the bed. “I care about you, Hallie, I really do. But your world is here, mine is in Virgin Gorda. I’ve always been honest that I could never move back. But now that I’m here, I can see what your life is really like. It would be lousy for you to have to sacrifice everything for me.”

“Being with you could never be lousy,” I say. I walk over and put my arms around him, laying my head against his bare chest. Then softly I add, “But it might be hard. Too hard.”

We hold each other, not saying a word. Kevin strokes my hair and I feel my tears spilling against his chest.

“What do you think?” he asks.

I take a deep breath and bury my head deeper against him. “I think I can’t move to Virgin Gorda,” I say, my voice breaking, “even for you. I guess I’ve known that in my heart for a while now, but I couldn’t face it.”

“I’ve known it, too,” he says. “I’m not good at commitments. You figured that out the first day we were together. But I thought, maybe this time. Go for it, go to New York. But what can I say? The place made me sick.”

“Not fair. Our future being determined by a rotten crab cocktail.”

“Who would have thought.” He hugs me and we’re quiet for a long time.

“Are you sorry I tracked you down? Should I have just left you alone after all these years?” I finally ask in a small voice.

“Never,” he says ardently. “It’s been wonderful. It was a vision to see you that first day on the island. High school Hallie come to my own paradise.”

“For me now it’s going to be paradise lost,” I say.

At least he catches my literary allusion. “I think we were supposed to read that senior year,” he says. “Dickens, wasn’t it?”

“Milton, but close enough.”

“Did they write at the same time?”

“No, a couple of centuries apart. But Dickens and Milton were both English.”

“At least I got that right,” he says.

“You got a lot of things right,” I tell him. “In fact, I can’t think of anything you do wrong except live in a place I can’t.”

We hold each other tightly, Kevin running his strong hand up and down my back.

“Do you think it would have worked if we’d stayed together after high school?” I ask finally.

“No, our worlds were too different even then.” Kevin lifts up my chin and gives me a plaintive smile. “I guess that’s one thing that hasn’t changed.”

“Can I still visit you in paradise?” I ask.

“Anytime,” he promises.

“And can we fall in love with each other once every twenty years?”

“You bet,” he says. He gives me a long, tender kiss. “Something to look forward to. And the best reason I can imagine to get older.”

Kevin and I manage to do now what we couldn’t after high school— stay friends. After he leaves, we speak almost every day, and by our second week apart, our conversations are easygoing, actually a lot more comfortable than they were in the will-we-or-won’t-we phase of our relationship after I left Virgin Gorda. Sitting in my office late one night, I call him just to chat. He’s cheerful and full of stories because the movie shoot with Angelina Jolie has started. Everything is going—in his words—swimmingly. I laugh and tease him about how many times he thinks he can use that joke.

I hang up, feeling comforted and knowing we made the right decision. In those years with Bill, I’d sometimes get exasperated with my marriage and imagine what my life would have been like if I’d stayed with one of my other boyfriends. Now I got a chance to go back and make my decisions again. And I still said “no” instead of “yes”—to Kevin, to Eric. To Ravi? Well, I didn’t really get to say “no” to Ravi. I didn’t get to say much of anything to him.

Thoughtfully, I open my desk drawer to retrieve the napkin I’d tucked away after my brave solo-night dinner at the Brasserie—where I’d written down the names of the men I didn’t marry. I take out the list and stare at it, looking at the fourth name, Dick Benedict. Ravi made me realize that you have to live in the present, but that doesn’t change the endless regret I’ll always feel about name number four. I fold the napkin up again and hold it in my hand for a minute. No, not every choice you make in your life was the right one. I still have to confront that.

I go back to work and make myself focus on the papers in front of me. Frankly, there’s nothing else to focus on right now. No husband, no boyfriend—no way I’m going to blow this job. Looking for clues in the Tyler case, I go over every deposition we’ve taken. I reread Melina Marks’s but there’s nothing. Just like Mr. Tyler, she stonewalled neatly, saying only that she deserved her promotion. Going to hear her speak at Dartmouth may be grasping at straws, but right now I’m following any lead. I send a late-night e-mail to Arthur explaining why I’ll be out of the office tomorrow. All I can hope is that when I get back, nobody else will be sitting at my desk.

I leave at five A.M. the next morning to drive up to Dartmouth and, in honor of Kevin, I speed along the highway with my windows down and Bon Jovi blaring from the speakers. Icicles form on my eyelashes and I finally give in and turn on the heat. Easier to be a free spirit in the tropics.

When I get up to Dartmouth, I walk through the campus, envious of the kids who get to spend their days listening to great professors and pondering life’s important issues. I yearn to be back at college. Going to classes and writing papers always sound so appealing when you don’t have to do it anymore. But why do I think it’s any better than going to meetings and filing briefs?