Trading Up (17 page)

As she lay on the bed, she recalled the feelings that had led up to their marriage. That fateful moment when Mimi had told her she was seeing Zizi had reminded Janey of the harsh reality of love and romance, of the fact that a woman’s choice of partner is always limited to men who want her, not vice versa. And as she drove home from Mimi’s that afternoon, she decided that she wouldn’t be left behind again. And so, as millions of women have done through the ages, she made herself fall in love with the man who was in love with her.

It wasn’t easy at first, and for the first two weekends, when she’d allowed him to squire her around the Hamptons and had even held his hand, every part of her had resisted; she could barely bring herself to kiss him. His kisses were small and hard, like an old man’s; the idea of having sex with him repulsed her. But still, he persisted, and she watched and waited, searching for the good in him, hoping the moment would come when he would suddenly be able to break down her defenses . . .

And Mimi’s enthusiasm helped carry her forward. There is nothing a married woman loves more than the possibility of pulling the unconverted into the fold, and day after day, she made her arguments in support of Selden: He was the kind of single man who didn’t come along very often; women were already lining up to date him. He might not be the man Janey had always imagined she would marry, but the man you
did
marry never was. Janey had already dated every man in New York and nothing had worked out. And Selden was crazy about her—everyone who saw them together remarked upon it—and it was always better to have a husband who was more in love with you than you were with him (if one could stomach such an arrangement, Janey thought).

And then, at last, the moment did come when she fell for him.

They’d been seeing each other for about three weeks when he suggested a trip to Block Island on his boat. At first, she hadn’t wanted to go at all (what, or more accurately,
who
, was on Block Island?), but Mimi had pointed out that it might be helpful to see Selden in a different light. And it was true: Away from the hustle and competition of the Hamptons, Selden had literally appeared to grow . . .

His boat was wonderfully glamorous—an antique wooden thirty-foot Chris-18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 93

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Craft with red seats. As soon as they stepped onto the boat, Selden’s personality changed; he suddenly became the captain, piloting the boat with a joyful expertise.

For the first time, his attention wasn’t on her but on what he was doing, and the creation of that space made room for her own feelings to grow. Standing next to him at the wheel, she drank beer with him and laughed about the silly people they knew in common, like Mauve Binchely. And when she stripped down to a tiny pink bikini and he slipped his arm around her waist, she realized that, for one of the few times in her life, she felt comfortable with a man. Unlike most of the men she’d been with, he wasn’t swollen with his own ego . . .

They arrived on Block Island salty and windblown, and spent the afternoon bicycling around the island, picnicking on a rocky beach strewn with driftwood and seagull bones. They told each other their stories, and that night, when they stayed at the big old hotel overlooking the harbor, it was easy to fall into bed with him, and his kisses weren’t hard at all. Afterward, she had studied his face. He had a strong jaw and good features, and while none of it quite added up to handsomeness (there was something in the placement of his mouth and teeth that could border on goofi-ness), she saw that his was the sort of face that would grow to handsomeness through the eyes of affection.

And she made up her mind to go for him.

But despite her resolve, there had still been moments leading up to the marriage when she was so panicked that at times she felt numb, she couldn’t speak, she felt like she was drowning. And then she’d had dreams that she was getting married, and when she got to the altar,
the wrong man
was waiting there. And on those days, when she felt panicked, all she could see were Selden’s flaws.

On the bad days, the days when she felt she didn’t love him, everything else was blotted out. On their second day in Tuscany, Selden had worn dark socks with sandals. When she’d seen him in that getup, she realized there was no way she could be with him, and that whole afternoon, when they’d “explored the countryside” (which seemed to be one of his favorite pastimes), the beautiful yellow hills dotted with hayricks were invisible to her—all she could picture were those navy blue socks (they seemed to be new, but still, there was a thread sticking out of the toe on the left one), encased in the heavy brown leather sandals. The sandals were Prada, but even designer shoes couldn’t save a man with inherently bad taste, and all afternoon she agonized over it. Should she call off the wedding? But to cancel a wedding over a sartorial error implied a level of shallowness to which even she could not descend.

Should she tell him to take off the socks? But she was afraid if she did, her voice would be filled with such disgust it might release a whole litany of complaints about him. So she did nothing and said nothing, enduring an almost nauseating despair, like that of a prisoner on her way to the guillotine.

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Finally, when they had finished their tour and had spotted the landmark—a lone sandstone tower on the top of a hill—that pointed the way to the dirt road that led to their villa, he noticed her distress.

“You’re so quiet,” he said.

She could only nod in terror.

“Are you frightened?”

“Aren’t you?” she asked timidly.

“Of course I’m a little scared,” he said. He took his eyes off the dirt track to look at her and reached over to squeeze her hand. In that white Tuscan sun, his brown eyes had flecks of gold in them. “But more than anything, I know we’re going to be great together. We’re going to be happy. We’re going to have everything we’ve always wanted . . . and I can’t wait to give it to you, baby. I love you so much . . .” It was the same argument he’d made when he’d asked her to marry him, one week after that jaunt to Block Island. They were to be married in five days, and if he’d shown one chink of hesitation or fear or anger, she might have found a way to get out of it.

But he didn’t. Not for nothing was he a CEO at Splatch Verner.

And, she thought, lying on the bed in the suite at the Lowell Hotel and gazing at her engagement ring (
that
was a fun afternoon—they’d purchased the ring at Harry Winston the day before they left for Tuscany on their wedding journey), on the day of her wedding, she hadn’t been frightened. She’d been giddy with excitement and so had he—they’d made love as soon as they’d woken up and then had begun drinking champagne, bottle after bottle of Cristal, which Selden had had flown over specially from Paris. They had swum in the long, black pool, luxuriating in the warm water, unable to get over the fact that in a couple of hours, they’d be married. Then they’d gotten dressed together. She wore a white Grecian-style Valentino gown that was off the rack (but still $6,000); he an off-white Ralph Lauren suit with a pink shirt. When she looked at him, she wondered what she’d been thinking before because, suddenly, he was the most beautiful man in the world to her and she thought, crazily, that everyone else had to see it, too.

And then their four guests arrived. They still laughed proudly about that—at how they’d had only four guests, and those guests only because they also happened to be vacationing in Tuscany at the time. They were Harold Vane and his latest girlfriend, Mariah, who was Janey’s age and the publisher of a new magazine about shopping, who kept telling Janey how lucky she was, and Ross Jared and his wife, Constance, whom Selden knew from Splatch Verner. Ross was the CEO of the Internet division and his wife was the ballet dancer. She was about the size of a pea, Janey thought, dark-haired and about five foot two and probably less than a hun-18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 95

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dred pounds. She hardly said a word but seemed to get very drunk, because later on in the day she ran across the lawn, leaping like a fairy.

The ceremony took place in the large courtyard; Selden, again, had miraculously found someone to festoon it with flowers. A Catholic priest performed the bans (Selden had an Italian grandmother somewhere in his past and said he felt an affinity for the religion) and the ceremony had been in Italian and Janey hadn’t understood one word, except for the parts where she said her name, and then, “I do.” Afterward, someone put on the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers, and they danced madly. “This is the way to do it, baby,” Harold Vane kept saying, over and over again. “This is the most fun wedding I’ve ever been to in my life.” And Janey had thought that the fear was gone for good.

But it wasn’t. And since their marriage, there were times when she found herself
despising
her husband with a level of hatred she’d never felt for any man before.

She was stuck with him and his flaws, like the way it seemed to take him forever to get out of the house, because he always had to check for his keys and wallet three times, and the way he would stop in the middle of the street to talk on his cell phone, making her stand there for sometimes five minutes or more, and when she opened her mouth to protest he would rudely hold up his hand. Or that belly he was developing and his flat, sagging ass, and his penis—it was a perfectly normal size, but why couldn’t it have been just a little bit
bigger
? And the problem was that he had taken away her possibilities. When she was thinking these black thoughts, she wondered why she hadn’t aimed
higher
.

Her imagined dissatisfaction stemmed from the idea that without his job, Selden Rose was really nothing more than a nice guy from Chicago. He wasn’t inherently glamorous, he didn’t possess a creative talent that had lifted him above the masses. He didn’t come from a particularly distinguished family (even though his father, she knew, had been a lawyer and his mother worked at a newspaper)—he wasn’t even a “killer,” like Comstock Dibble or George Paxton. In short, he was an average American guy from an upper-middle-class family. And while there was nothing inherently wrong with that, it was her background, too—the very background she’d been trying to escape ever since she was a teenager.

Until she got married, she had always fantasized that when she did marry, it would be to some kind of European royalty, or a movie star, or a successful painter or novelist. She had seen herself with someone exceptional, someone who, in every minute of their life, stood out from the morass of humanity. And by marrying Selden Rose, she had denied herself that opportunity forever.

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happen in the future. It didn’t matter if a couple had known each other for five years or five minutes before they married, the important thing was to take a chance, to make the commitment. And then to live each day as it came.

The phone rang—two short bursts, indicating a call from the front desk—and she picked it up, knowing it would be the concierge, announcing Mimi’s arrival.

What a little fool she was being, she thought, jumping off the bed. The suite was strewn with her spoils from Milan—dresses and shoes and handbags and even gloves—and Selden had been so sweet, and so excited, to pay for it all. Naturally, like most men, he’d made a bit of a show about the prices, shaking his head over a sheer sleeveless and backless turtleneck that folded up into a five-by-five square that was no thicker than a quarter inch (“five hundred dollars for a little piece of fabric that wouldn’t cover a baby’s bottom?” he’d exclaimed), but she could tell by the glint in his eyes that he was enjoying dressing his beautiful young wife. And it did give her pleasure to give him pleasure . . .

If only he would leave her alone every once in a while! she thought, digging through an open suitcase to find the turtleneck. He was always on her, watching her, as if he were fascinated to see what she might do next. Just that morning, after she’d given him a blow job (at least it was easy to please him in that department) and they were sitting at the table drinking coffee and reading the paper, he had suddenly put down his cup, and she realized, as she was in the middle of turning a page, that he was staring at her fingers. She caught his eye, giving him a sharp look, and he gave a little embarrassed laugh, and his mouth formed into that goofy smile that always made her stomach sink in despair. If only she could train him not to smile like that! “Your hands just look so beautiful, turning the page,” he said, reaching over to capture her hand in his two hands. He bent his head and looked up at her, opening one hand to reveal hers, as if it were a little bird, and then he leaned down and kissed it.

What could she do? She didn’t want to be unkind, but she could feel tears of frustration forming in the corners of her eyes. “Oh, Selden,” she snapped. “My fingernails are disgusting . . .”

The bell rang and she hurried to the door, throwing it open. “Hello, married lady,” Mimi said. “Am I happy to see you.”

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Janey said, as they exchanged kisses. Her misgivings about Selden disappeared as she suddenly thought,
I’m equal to you now
. . .

Aloud she said, “Come in. It’s a mess of course, we just got back last night and the maids haven’t had a chance to clean up . . .”

“Don’t hurry on my account,” Mimi said, entering the living room. “They wouldn’t dare start without me, considering how much I buy from Oscar . . . It’s so 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 97

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funny, you and Selden living here as a married couple. You know, the Lowell is where all the men stay when they’re getting divorced from their wives.”