A Wife of Noble Character (13 page)

He confused her—she felt so happy, but on the other hand she always had to figure out what he was trying to say. “I didn't think the world was going to end, if that's what you mean,” she said. “Why do you care anyway?” She plucked a dandelion for herself and blew on the seedpods; a few floated away past Preston. The rest she pulled from the stem and blew off her palm.

He plucked a dandelion and ran his palm over its downy orb. He'd noted the worry on her face when she asked about Bucky earlier, and it wouldn't have surprised him if his company was a temporary bandage for some recent drama. He'd thought about her often the last couple of weeks; she'd come to his mind in the middle of a final, or near dawn, when he was hunched over a model. What he'd enjoyed most about their morning was how she'd kept up with him. He liked the aggressiveness she had no idea she possessed; only he saw it, he figured, because nothing was at stake between them. He tossed the dandelion over his shoulder.

“I forgot to make a wish on the dandelion,” Vivienne said. She hugged her knees, trying to forget about the wish. No doubt if she shared her superstition with Preston, he would laugh—he threw out his dandelion as if it were a straw wrapper. Still, it was exactly that response that would dismiss the worry from her mind. She couldn't manage to dismiss it herself; her mind spun worries like silk. She wanted his assurance that to brood over something like that was ridiculous.

Preston watched her fidget, perceiving details: Her second toes were longer than her big toes; there was dry turtle skin around her elbows; her wide mouth went crooked as she concentrated on getting comfortable. He sat up and gave her his sweater. She took it without saying anything and tucked it against the tree behind her back.

“To answer your question,” Preston said, “I care because you seem worried, but I don't understand why you care so much what people will think.”

“Why do you care whether I care what other people think?”

“Well, it seems exhausting.”

“It's not your business.” She felt hot emotion rising to her face. “Anyway, caring is better than being alone and broke.”

Preston was amazed to hear the word “broke” from her lips. “Quit the store and find something you like,” he said. “He'll come along soon enough and rescue you.”

“I don't want to be rescued.”

“Yes, you do,” he said.

“Don't tell me what's going on in my head.” She felt defeated—he spoke as if this thought had never occurred to her. He put the words to it and, in doing so, took from her the moment when she might have found them herself. The heat was reddening his cheeks, waking freckles she hadn't noticed, and weighing his sandy hair down into a mop. She tried to think what to say, but thinking was difficult in the hot afternoon with a hangover.

“You can get romantic about it all you want,” she said. “But money does provide freedom. I want that freedom, and I don't want to feel bad about it.”

“But you think you're entitled to it from a man.” He knew he was cutting a little deep, but it was true. To his mind, it was the beating heart of her dilemma. To restrain his frustration, he rose and began a small pace. “Say you end up with all the money in the world.” He gesticulated toward the sky, an infinite blue. “What would you do with it? Certainly not buy happiness.”

Vivienne got quiet. This was a private subject, even within herself. She knew how much she
wanted—
everything from an open line of credit at Neiman's, to a condo right on the hill in Vail, to a new black convertible Beemer to replace her old, nonconvertible one, to a golden retriever puppy. But she knew this was the wrong answer. “I have ideas,” she said. “I've always liked art. Paintings.” She took herself way back, to when she cared more about paintings than that open credit line at Neiman's. “Growing up, I used to stare at my aunt's art books. She has these medieval and Renaissance books. I would put myself in scenes from the Bible and mythology. I'd memorize the paintings and then go out to the bayou and try to reenact them.”

Preston remembered what an ass he'd been at the Rothko Chapel and how polite she'd been about it. “You didn't mention anything at the museum,” he said.

“I'm not familiar with modern art.” She paused. “One of my favorites is the painting by Corot of Orpheus leading Euridice out of the underworld. I used to pretend I was Euridice, but I changed it so that when Orpheus turned around, I ducked and didn't have to go back to the underworld. I've always wanted to see that painting in person, but it's in Paris.”

Preston imagined Vivienne, a lonely little girl, constructing in her imagination ways that she might save herself from the underworld. “The idea of an underworld has always scared me,” he said. “Much more so than hell. I know they're the same thing, but there's something about that word—underworld.”

“I used to get scared my parents were in the underworld,” she said, picking at the grass. “Sometimes I wonder if all I really want is not to end up like my parents…” She trailed off, wondering why she told him this. She hardly knew anything about his family. “I realize what you're trying to say,” she said after a moment. “You think I'm more than a trophy wife.”

“Isn't that a compliment?” he said. “I wouldn't say that about most of your friends.”

“It might be, if you weren't smug about it,” she said. “You act like you know everything because you read books.”

“I don't know everything, but I do think you're confusing freedom with money,” he said. “People compromise their integrity with that kind of thinking all the time.”

“Please don't lecture me.” She felt the tears welling up, but she held them in. There was nothing to cry about.

Preston noticed. While it wasn't the first time he'd made a woman cry, it was the first time he'd hurt himself by doing it. He stood silently as she tried not to cry and then finally did, very softly. He knelt, unsure whether to touch her. “Vivienne?” he said.

She dropped her hands in a gesture of resignation, and he saw her eyes, patchy red and glistening. He wanted to tuck her hair behind her ears and wipe her cheeks, but instead he placed an awkward hand on her left knee.

“I don't even know why I'm crying,” she said. “This is so dumb.”

“Maybe I'm an asshole about the things I know I can't give you,” he said.

She wiped her eyes. “What, is that your way of telling me you want to be my boyfriend?”

He smiled. He loved her candor. She had no idea how pure it was, how rare. “I probably don't fit the criteria,” he said.

“Right, because you know everything about me,” she said, and swiped his hand off her knee. She stood, clapping the dirt from her palms.

Preston reached up and grabbed her hand. She let herself drop back to the ground. “Maybe I wish I did fit the criteria.”

“Maybe?”

“Yes, maybe,” he said. “Because wouldn't I have to be a different person then?”

She tipped her head onto his shoulder. “I'm a terrible reader,” she said. “I'd drive you crazy because I never read.”

Cautiously, he wrapped his arms around her, and they rested there, he wiping the specks of bark from her back, she watching the day pass in slow seconds from the foreground of his shoulder.

“How'd I get pegged as such a reader?” he said. “Architects don't have time to read.”

“You seem like you would be.” With her face tucked into the nook cut by his chin and shoulder, she could smell him close; he was earthy, like oats, masculine in a tart hormonal way. His stubble scratched her hairline.

She closed her eyes and exhaled, an audible, blood-soothing exhale, and sank into his body. He sat wide awake, mindful not to let her go or embrace her much tighter, working to suspend the moment. He touched her hair, which spilled over her shoulders like a veil, golden and soft-seeming but between his fingers like straw, chemical-coarse. The skeleton-weed flower dropped to the ground.

He could not have said how much time had passed when her phone chimed. She jerked a little at the noise, and he, anticipating that she wouldn't ignore it, opened his arms before she could pull away. The phone was in her purse, which lay in a lump at the base of the walnut tree. She twisted away from him to grab it.

The text, from Karlie—
where the f are you?
—was like a whiplash rippling all the way from the Blank house.

“I didn't realize it was so late.” She stood, shaking dirt from her sandals. Shouldering her purse, she smoothed her hair and tucked it behind her ears, finally regarding Preston from above as if she were surprised to see him sitting there.

“Ready to go?” she said, her tone sharp, not really a question.

He thought of stopping her—but no. He got to his feet and followed her down the path they'd trod, the sun at their backs.

*   *   *

B
UCKY WAS WAITING
for her in the kitchen, grimly eating shards of cold brisket off a napkin. Karlie and Reis were at the table, painting their nails. Bucky asked Vivienne to follow him outside. His truck was already loaded up. Crossing his arms, leaning on the grille, he looked tired and pasty and, worst of all, indifferent. Vivienne felt sick to her stomach and tried to gather herself.

“I think it's better if you go home with one of your friends,” he said.

“Why?” She shifted her weight. She knew why.

“Don't make me explain.” His tone was shaming, victimized. “Last night—and then today you skip off with that Presley douchebag?”

“I didn't skip off,” she said. “I fell asleep. No one woke me—”

“I don't care,” he said. “I don't want to know.”

She stared at her feet. It was quiet, no four-wheelers, just the cheeping of finches. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“What's that?” Bucky asked, tilting his ear, as if he hadn't heard.

She said it again. “I'm sorry.”

He pulled his worn white cap from the back pocket of his jeans, slid his free hand over his curls, and slipped it on by the brim. His beloved move. His goodbye gesture. “Yeah, well…” he said.

Vivienne didn't watch him drive away. She just kept her head down.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,”
she chanted the words, returning them to herself.

 

If you wait,
all that happens is that
you get older.

—LARRY MCMURTRY

 

I

June and July passed drearily. With the wedding approaching and summer in full swing, Vivienne had to increase her hours at the store to six days a week. Bikinis, new sundresses, strappy sandals to replace the previous season's, and gifts for the many imminent showers in celebration of weddings and babies—all insufficient to her salary, even to her less-than-prudent withdrawals from Katherine's hatbox.

Folding designer jeans into flush stacks, fondling cashmere sweater sets, and sitting on a padded stool behind a glass display desk surrounded by lavender travel candles and thirty-five-dollar friendship bracelets provided no comfort from her mounting regret over Bucky. She hadn't heard from him. After he'd left that evening at the ranch, Karlie, bitchy at first, had turned sweet. Then Vivienne really knew she'd blown it—Karlie was sweet when she had no reason to be jealous. Preston had wasted no time in returning to Houston. He'd sent her a couple of text messages asking her to meet for coffee. She wanted to see him, but he was too much a reminder of her mistake. The whole weekend burned in her memory and made her at turns angry, determined to forge ahead with indifference, and hopeless, smiling but on the verge of disintegration, a figurine in despair.

The boutique was located in a fashionable shopping center near Katherine's townhome, a luxury strip center enhanced with light-pink brick, decorative lantern sconces, and long, shady arcades. It was small; from the register she could see the whole spread. A doorbell admitted customers. She was supposed to play music—something calm and uplifting—but when she was alone she kept the stereo low, or off altogether, so she could zone out into the glint of stainless-steel racks and blended silk. It was like being wrapped in a cotton ball, a cotton ball in a down comforter in a cumulus cloud.

Unless a group of bridesmaids had an appointment to try on dresses, she rarely had more than one or two customers at once, and most only wanted a mini bottle of Pellegrino and to be left alone. But occasionally a talker would come in. Vivienne had two or three talkers, who never, ever asked Vivienne about her own life and seemed utterly unaware of the fact that she was working. She'd recently received a note to her work email from a talker who was in love with her husband's business partner, informing her that she wouldn't be able to come in that day—as if Vivienne had been waiting.

There were also long empty stretches. She eased the boredom by reading blogs, particularly Karlie's blog. Karlie had been blogging a lot since Memorial Day, posting pictures of the weekend—Bucky and Tim on four-wheelers, Waverly and Reis grinning in the kitchen, their cheeks squished together, and pictures from subsequent weekends at barbecues and lunches and shopping dates, Vivienne notably absent from the pictures despite the fact that she'd been there for much of it. Waverly's dress-fitting at Neiman's, for example: Vivienne was there, but only Karlie, Sissy, and Waverly showed up on the blog, with Waverly's gown photoshopped out and replaced with Princess Di's wedding dress. To pretend she didn't care, Vivienne commented,
Ha, love it!

Bladimir came for lunch. He was assisting the head of an environmental consulting firm part-time, but mostly he did massage at a luxury Thai spa. This job provided an endless well of laughs, as the owner had hired Bladimir—a half Cuban, half Irish American—because he looked “Thai enough.” The idea of Blad standing in as a native of Thailand, with his mat of sideswept black hair, china-white complexion, and hazel saucer eyes, was hilarious. A lover of products, Blad had flawless skin. He often brought his latest loot into the boutique to make Vivienne jealous. Vegetable-skin mists. Rosewater masks. Seafoam eye gel. She couldn't understand how these products worked on him but never on her. When she narrowed in on her own magnified face in the scary vanity mirror, she saw faint lines materializing around her eyes.