A Wife of Noble Character (22 page)

To which Bucky laughed, replying, “Nah, she's easy to get inside, she's just a nut.”

Bracken nodded with gravity. “Watch out for her. Little Lolita, if you catch my drift. And she knows it.”

At this, Bucky looked amused. “She can't keep playing that card forever,” he said. “I feel bad for her. If she was smart, she'd take it while she has it. Where's she gonna end up?”

Bolo-tie's eyes lit up, but he spoke gravely. “Could be she needs a guy like me.”

 

VI

Blad was washing his face when Vivienne came knocking near two
A.M.
She was still wearing her dress, but the skirt was rumpled, the bodice slumping over her boobs. He was annoyed—she was interrupting his bedtime ritual, and he had work in the morning. She looked like she'd been crying. Blad knew her crying face—it was duckish and, after the tears, swollen like a ripe tomato. She went straight to his little bedroom and face-planted on the bed, her dress making an elaborate rustle as she collapsed.

“I would have blown up the air mattress for you,” he said, standing over her. “What happened?” Her eyes were open, her mouth smushed into his royal-blue sham. She rolled onto her back.

“Can you help me out of this dress?”

She sat up and flopped her head forward. He unzipped her, then she flopped flat again and began sliding out of it, kicking it into a heap on the carpet.

“I just want you to know that I am abashed by the sight of a three-thousand-dollar dress crumpled on my cheap apartment carpeting,” Blad said. “And I'm not interested in seeing you pantyless or knowing why you're pantyless.” He picked up the dress.

To hang it up, he had to shove the entire length of his own clothing down a foot, and still it bulged out, like a pink dog tongue. “Your dress looks like a John Hughes movie in my closet,” he said, trying to cheer her up. He found her a pair of polka-dot boxer shorts—the castaway garment of a guy he went on three dates with—and his favorite extra-soft blue T-shirt.

“You know I only share this T-shirt with special people,” he said, handing it to her.

She folded his blankets over her legs and made a sort of closed-mouth smile-frown and sat up. Then she reached behind her back with one arm and did something, because suddenly her lacy peach bra fell and with it her breasts. They swung a little, seemed to exhale; in color and size her nipples were like small buttermilk pancakes. Blad went to the kitchen to get her water.

“As entertaining as I find boobs as a concept, I really don't need to see them in my bedroom,” he called out.

She called back, “Sorry, Blad!”

He washed out a glass, turning the water on hot—he liked to warm his hands under hot water. “It's two o'clock,” he said. “I have to be walking up some guy's hairy spine in six hours.” He filled the glass and grabbed a vitamin for Vivienne, returning to the bedroom to find her a new girl, in the polka-dot boxers and T-shirt, hugging her knees.

“Drink some water,” he said. “And take this.”

She finished the glass in a few long sips and smiled. “I'm so glad to be out of that dress.”

Blad sat at the foot of the bed. She wiped mascara from beneath her eyes and then wiped her fingers on his clean sheets. “I just washed those,” he said.

“Where did you go tonight?” she said. “You left without me.”

“Preston gave me a ride home,” he said. “Were we supposed to leave together? I thought you were busy with wedding-party stuff.”

Suddenly she was fighting tears.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Then why are you crying?”

She pressed her palms over her eyes. “Do you think Preston would ever sleep with Karlie Nettle?”

Blad shrugged. “Preston is one of the horniest guys I know.”

“So you do think he would sleep with Karlie Nettle?”

“I doubt it. She's married to that bear. Why are you asking me this?”

“But you think he might?”

“I don't know why you should be surprised if he did,” he said, a little petulantly. “He's a man with a penis.”

“But
Karlie
?”

“Maybe she seduced him with her blog,” he said. “If he did, I don't know why you should be upset about it. You've hooked up with people; so have I. Not married people, but still. Don't act scandalized.”

Vivienne grazed her fingertips over her toenails. “I wish you wouldn't be such a devil's advocate.”

“I'm not going to sit here and talk about hypotheticals with you,” he said. “I'm tired. It's the middle of the night. Is something actually wrong?”

“We almost had sex tonight, in the pool.” She broke down. “But then he didn't want to. And then—” She grabbed his pillow and dropped her head into it. “He asked me to go to Paris with him. I didn't know what to say, because I was overwhelmed. I'm starting that job. I'd have to give it up. I didn't know what to do.”

“He told me,” Blad said. “Not the sex part, the Paris part.”

“He did? What did he say?”

“He told me he asked you. Don't tell him I told you.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“This is not a bad problem to have,” he said. There was so much that Vivienne didn't see. She had this pure way about her that made beautiful places more beautiful and brought ugly places into uglier relief. She didn't realize that she looked like she didn't belong in this apartment, with its low cottage-cheese ceilings, in a bedroom with plastic vertical blinds concealing an alley where bums relieved themselves behind sticky shit-brown trash bins. Or in a bathroom with a shower door caked in utterly irremovable soap scum from old unknown tenants, or in a kitchen with warped beige linoleum flooring and fake-wood cabinetry. She didn't know that she made all his attempts to spruce the place up—the blond matching Ikea bed frame and side tables, his splurge on a black sabre-leg coffee table from West Elm, the votive candles in their ninety-nine-cent glass holders placed here and there on bamboo corner stands—seem pathetic. “You're like the heroine in the latest French novel Preston read, and now he's going to save you in Paris.” He paused. “Your
problems
are the things I daydream about.”

Upstairs, his neighbor's toilet flushed. They were both quiet as the water rushed and rumbled down the pipes. Blad sighed. “I really resent how every time I hear that it makes me visualize a shit sliding behind my bed.”

“I'm sorry,” Vivienne said. “I didn't mean to ignore your feelings.”

Blad crawled over her legs and slid under the covers on the side of the bed he never slept on. “Forget it,” he said.

“Whenever I talk to Preston he hassles me,” she said. “I always leave him feeling like I'm doing something wrong. He didn't want to have sex with me.”

“Why do you want to have sex with a guy who makes you feel like you're doing something wrong?”

She hugged herself. “I don't know.”

Blad sat up on his elbow. “I think you're confused because you can't wrap up your entire existence in him. You didn't love Bucky; you just loved that you could wrap up your entire existence in him.”

Vivienne went over to the mirrored closet door and despaired at her reflection. “What if you're right?”

“I am right,” Blad said, plopping back down. “If you like Preston, you can't hide from yourself.”

She whipped around. “Why have you never told me this before?”

“Because it didn't come up. Lots of people are fine living their lives that way.”

She turned back and stared at herself with a wrought, self-condemning expression. “At least your life is yours, Blad. I know you think it's dingy here, but it's yours.”

She rubbed her hands over her face and returned to the bed, nuzzling under the blankets, facing him. “The only thing I really know how to dream about is men.”

“Welcome to the club.”

She smiled, wiping her eyes. “He doesn't take me seriously.”

Blad shook his head. “He's just critical. That's how he is. I doubt he'd invite you to Paris if he didn't take you seriously. Actually, he probably takes you
too
seriously.”

“I'm scared he wants me in Paris because he's trying to prove something to himself. It's a victory for him.”

“Are you worried Preston feels about you how you felt about Bucky?”

She buried her face in the pillow again.

“Preston doesn't play games,” Blad said.

“I told him no,” she said, “when he asked me if I thought we could be together. Would he believe me if I told him we could try?” She looked up and folded her brows into a tender, unpretty expression of insecurity. She blinked at him, at the ceiling, then down into his sheets, her face contracting with a fierce resistance.

Blad pulled the comforter up to his chin. “Sometimes I look at you and I see all this potential that no one else I know has. But you don't believe it because you always feel like you're doing something wrong for being yourself. The world is a bully. I know all about it too.”

Vivienne whispered, “What should I do?”

“Stop asking me that,” he said, his eyes growing heavy. “I can't answer that for you. You shouldn't want me to.”

 

VII

Vivienne arrived home wearing Blad's T-shirt and flannel pajama pants, her dress bundled into his suit bag. Katherine had gone to church. The house was quiet and spotless, the white shutters closed, darkening the den and the kitchen to an hourless gray. The grandfather clock chimed ten times. The long, empty countertop glowed like ice. She grabbed the Sunday
Chronicle
and went upstairs to her room, where the shutters would be open, the morning light streaming in.

She took a quick shower and went right to bed. Her sheets smelled like rosewater. It was a green day; the breeze picked up the leaves on her tree. She thumbed through the paper till she found what she was looking for: the celebrations, and a color quarter-page portrait of Waverly, doe-eyed, hair in a tight bun beneath her raised veil, in profile at an angle to highlight her bustle and train, holding her bouquet before her like a prize.

Waverly had agonized over this photo shoot, gone through three different photographers and locations. Vivienne hadn't quite seen the difference in any of the resulting photos. In this one, she was standing in a gazebo, but you could hardly tell. It just looked as if the photo was taken outside, azaleas blurred into magenta dots in the background. Waverly was pretty, though, and that was the point. The only bride in color, and the only bride who looked like she'd be pretty even without the gown and the makeup.

Waverly Blank Weds Clay Fitcherson, Jr.

Miss Waverly Madelyn Blank and Mr. Clay Tanner Fitcherson were united in marriage on September 4 at four o'clock in the afternoon at Prayerwood Baptist Church. The double-ring ceremony was officiated by the Reverend Stratton Johns of Houston. Following the ceremony, the parents of the bride hosted a reception at the Bayouside Country Club, with entertainment provided by the Dazzle Orchestra. On the eve of the wedding, the parents of the groom hosted a rehearsal dinner at the Petroleum Club of Houston. On Friday, a bridal luncheon was hosted at Houston Country Club by the groom's mother, Mrs. David Fitcherson. The bride is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bracken Blank of Houston. The groom is the son of Mr. and Mrs. David Fitcherson, Sr., of Houston. Escorted by her father and given in marriage by her parents, the bride wore a couture gown of ivory silk accented by a crystal-embroidered sash and a semi-cathedral-length veil of ivory silk illusion. The fitted gown, with a sweetheart neckline and multiple draped pleats, flared into a trumpet skirt. The bride carried a bouquet of calla lilies and white hydrangeas, tied with the handkerchief carried by her maternal grandmother on her wedding day in 1948. Serving as her maid of honor was Miss Vivienne May Cally of Houston. Following their honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas, Mr. and Mrs. Fitcherson will reside in Houston.

Maid of honor. Miss Vivienne May Cally of Houston. It all had such a decisive ring to it. The announcement summed up everything anyone else needed to know, but the satisfaction was short-lived, like a rich dessert that sickens the stomach. She sat imagining what Waverly was doing, wishing she could call her and discuss. The newlyweds were already in Mexico. Bracken had chartered them an early plane. She imagined the palm trees, an infinity pool disappearing into an electric-blue ocean. Waverly was married. It was done and, knowing Waverly, for good. Her best friend had begun her life. Vivienne felt left out, eddied by a cruel tide.

The memory of Preston's voice struck her hard.
“I want you to come with me.… Have you ever been to Paris?”
She'd never been to Paris. What would everyone think if she flew off to Paris with Preston? What would it be like, walking the streets of Paris with Preston? He was a different man to her now. The vulnerability in his voice, the assurance of it, the strength of his kiss. The more she thought about it, the more impossible the whole thing seemed. And the more impossible it seemed, the more appealing it became. It was so typical of Preston to encourage her ambition, only to undercut it with his own romantic whim. He'd ridiculed her for being the very kind of helplessly romantic woman he now expected her to be with this invitation.

She picked up her phone and stared at Preston's message:
Can I see you tomorrow?
It wasn't a friendly message—no friend would phrase a text with that urgency. Its assumption of intimacy had to be a direct reference to his invitation. Or her rejection. She planned to return Karlie's note to him today. She didn't want it, and as much as she was dying to know what it said, she also didn't want to know at all. If she read it, she'd have to return the note to Preston and confess that she had read it, or return the note to Preston and lie that she hadn't read it, or not return it at all, which was also a sort of lie. That it was written by Karlie meant that it could say anything and that anything it said could be untrue.