Double Happiness (13 page)

This time Rome had been pleasant with only a sour moment or two. Megan's parents arranged the loan of a handsome apartment. A sweet terrace overlooked broken statuary in the garden of the Barberini palace. Good coffee and excellent fruit just out the door, but even the most fragrant orange peeled by Megan's happy hand couldn't extinguish the mild oppression he felt. Even at forty-five, fatherhood had arrived too soon. He knew there were those among their friends who understood him completely, but they hid their knowledge behind fatuous shouts of joy.

The most joyful of all was Megan. And her delight was distracting. She'd forgotten, for example, to select their seats on the flight home. Now Raymond was stuck with a fidgeting neighbor and a direct view to the toilets and the service niche. Seats bolted into the plane as an afterthought. In better times this area would be a spacious avenue, a place to stretch achy calves and suck on plastic cigarettes. But lately airlines had been expanding capacity. Other passengers had in-seat entertainment packages, but for Raymond only a single screen above the curtain to first class promised respite.

Raymond's eyelids began to quiver. The dry cabin air made his head sore. Still trying in her way, Megan swiveled over to the service niche for something anti-inflammatory. Italian stewardesses
slumped against the metal drawers. Drinks and salty snacks already flung around, movie cued, they could relax. Raymond inched a hip into Megan's seat on the aisle, slid away from the jittery man by the window. He craned his head to view the opening graphics of a newsreel. None of the wake-up pyrotechnics this network used on land. And Raymond would know. Occasionally he was invited on air to gloss a cultural mystery and he always chose a tie with the visual impact of a space launch. He refused to be outdone by a title sequence.

Raymond tried to concentrate. But there was Megan, inches away, hand splayed on her lower belly. Her contented smile persisted, Raymond thought
insisted
, until the stewardesses were finally obliged to glance down at the hand and beam their sudden understanding. Oh, heads came together. Apple juice was poured
gratis
. She winked her triumph, her happiness at the special status just begun. Then the plane rumbled in a moment of turbulence, the tiny screen flickered, and Megan made a quick grab for the roll bar above the coffeemaker. She found her footing and beamed. A mime of a brave chin-lift to signal he need not worry, she and the baby were fine.

He pushed the earbuds in tighter and dialed up the volume. Yet another former government authority had made an intemperate comment about the Muslims. Raymond listened to the clip. The man was retired so had no real clout. But the news-reel took his notion seriously enough to illustrate it. Raymond watched as a series of women's faces appeared, all quite pleasant,
each unsmiling but ready to smile, ready to listen and give a kind response. It was mildly disturbing. This parade of maternal-looking women. And it seemed to go on forever until finally the last with her veil. Only her eyes showed, dark, registering little emotion, just shapes above a blackened field, and Raymond felt relief. Sudden and powerful. As if he'd been granted an inner stay. He wanted to laugh. Just on this plane, how pleasant it would be if every woman, his wife with her superb joy included, could have the option—just the option!— to bring it all back inside.

What an idea! Men were just better this way. You weren't bombarded with personal feelings at every turn. Even the guy by the window squirmed in squared-off patterns, probably planning a crop rotation, not a romance. It was exhausting. And here was a simple answer, quite popular in some places. What was the big deal? But the voice-over and the retired high-level government official disagreed with Raymond. In a jovial voice, a tone that said this is obvious to us all, the overdub concluded that the veil was problematic. It cut off communication in the wider world community. And the very next thing, Raymond was looking at advertisements for perfume and Scotch, just the items confiscated at duty-free because he was flying to America.

He wished Megan would sit down. At the same time, he edged farther into her seat and closed his eyes. An animated film about the love trials of a racing car was about to begin. Not interested. He turned the earbud volume to buzz. It
might be possible to nap. He curled down lower. Megan's seat smelled of baby oil and something even less appealing, like an antibacterial rub. He wondered if they'd ever have sex again. Doze, he told himself. Though sleep often brought such unpleasant ideas.

There'd been plenty of dreams about Helena. But now, closing his eyes, he didn't even need to sleep. He'd had a shock. A close call. Or was it? Raymond wasn't quite sure how to parse it:

They were sitting in a café, in a sticky red booth, under an enlarged photograph of Audrey Hepburn. Megan felt she resembled Audrey Hepburn and kept her hair styled in the duck-tail fashion of the early 1950s. As long as she kept her weight down, this looked okay. But right after the wedding she'd been less watchful than before. You look like a fat little boy! he shouted in their worst fight. The fight that cleared the air and marked the outer limits of aggression. She'd been on a diet ever since. But now, in Rome and pregnant, a daily craving for fettucine alfredo had set in.

So there they were, indulging a yen, when in strolled Helena. Helena on assignment in Rome. Ho ho! he laughed, oh my god! He peeled up and out of the booth. You remember Megan, of course. And Megan stood, too, belly pushed forward. She offered her hand and the victor's smile he'd seen before.

But Helena's face crumpled like a collapsing wall, so vivid in her distress. He forgot she'd never met Megan. Oh! he said,
this is my wife, and darling, this is that wonderful young woman I told you all about.

Megan smiled. Helena stayed very still. As if he might forget her, as if she could give him the slip even now. Kind of comic, really, but then he remembered that maybe he'd been a bit of a bastard. Maybe he'd said some things about Helena he shouldn't have. But the whole
Newsweek
mad-girl-stalker story was really not his fault. That was a mistake. A mistake that, by the way, happened years ago, really in another lifetime. And here he was celebrating, sort of, with his wife! A wife Helena had always known about. And there were those funny knees again he liked so much.

Megan kept up the chitchat. So great to meet you! Yes, fabulous place to visit. You live here? Wow. But guess what? They had the best news ever, and so on. Helena looked like she might throw up. Made an implausible excuse, something about Hermes, then waved good-bye. Megan dropped back into the red banquette, gaze fixed on her platter. She mopped up the cream sauce with the last heel of bread and didn't raise her eyes again until she asked with a more open appeal: dolce?

All the tears, all the drama. Not some fateful twine of love and work, as Helena had claimed. Just
hormones
, Megan's favorite word. Or sex, and even now that wasn't entirely out of the question. He'd ask around when they got back to New York. Find out what Helena was up to these days. Meanwhile, on the screen
the purple cartoon race car winced and cavorted and Raymond thought about the women in the newsreel. Helena would have a strong opinion about the march of those faces. She wouldn't agree with Raymond or with the government official, but then her opinions were often contradictory.

For example, their very last time together, she was both finished with him and full of urgent offerings. First weeping and wailing, mostly about Kamal and about how he, Raymond, was a monster. Then she admitted she'd barely been alive in some part of herself. Kind of dead, you know? Until I met you.

So Raymond was her prince. Then he was a bastard prince. Then he was just a bastard. He wanted to destroy everything around him. He wanted to ruin the thing that mattered most, her work!

Helena was silly and amusing. He remembered laughing and making a seductive gesture, Let me ruin you now. Something that had always been welcome before, a sweet
come here, you little nothing
. But she was in a childish mood.

It's not funny! she cried. Next she'd be stamping her foot. Those knees trembling in a way he found intriguing, but for the moment she whimpered, And how does it help you? That's the part I really don't get.

He didn't get the question. He'd pushed her through baby steps. Read her pages. Listened to her ideas when courtesy demanded. He'd given her plenty. What was the big problem? But she was on to Kamal again and how Raymond was the one who deserved to be arrested.

Finally all the poor posture and sniffles made one last back-flip into balling. The tweed sofa creaked and crackled. Then he was wriggling out from beneath her sweaty legs, heavy as fallen bricks.

What are you eating? he said, only teasing, he liked the narrow gauge of her. She was all bone, dense heavy bone, and she kept him pinned. Please, she said.
Please
, at least try to get him a decent lawyer?

Oh, come
on
, he said. Surely they were done with Kamal. Who do you think I am?

The first time he saw Helena she had a fistful of new peonies and was haggling for a better price with that cheapskate Lebanese Kamal. He sold burned coffee and buns in a tiny loamy-smelling storefront near Raymond's office in the flower district. They're buds, she said, not even real flowers. Raymond could see this was an old game for the two of them.

Kamal frowned, then smiled, then wiped an imaginary load from his mind and waved her away. Take them, little monster, he said with an exaggerated accent. You fleece me and I like it. What's wrong with me?

Indeed, thought Raymond, who always bought there, and always felt the fleecing went the other way around. The flowers were usually half-wilted. Coffee twice heated on principle. Kamal was a crook, but a convenient crook. No one else in the neighborhood sold retail.

She smiled, Helena smiled, and kept her hand holding the unbloomed flowers quite still. Only her chest raised up a little to place her whole slim frame at a better angle. Very pretty, thought Raymond. And wondered how old she was? Guessing twenty, maybe twenty-one, with a touching case of physical immaturity. But Megan had a dinner party that night, and his job,
his only job
, she liked to point out, was to find some flowers and bring them home. Anything, as long as they're not dead, she'd said.

That evening, as promised, he arrived before the company did. I'll jump in the shower, he told Megan.

Don't splash the floor, she called, I just finished scrubbing. Then she stood on the threshold while the water ran over his hot head. His flower offering gathered in her smallest vase. Oh, Ray, she said, these things aren't even open.

Now the airplane was desert dry. His shoulder pinched against the outside armrest. Megan tapped him right where it hurt the most. He started and looked up at her with some alarm. Ray, she mouthed, hanging her face above his. He pulled the earbud out just an inch to listen.

Don't worry, sweetheart, but my ankles are swelling. The stewardesses found me a seat in first class. Megan lifted an elastic cuff to show the ridge marks deep in her skin.

Fabulous, he said, and leaned down to assemble his belongings.

Just me, she giggled, unless you're having sympathy bloat.

Well, this was preposterous. Megan in sweatpants slipping behind the impassable curtain, the fidgeter sliding halfway into Raymond's seat, a woman he'd virtually handed a career to skittering back wide-eyed from a pleasant encounter as if he were holding an explosive. What was the world coming to?

Of course, Helena hadn't exactly been his assistant, but she was something professional. He let her fill in the blanks now and then. She wasn't good at it, he had to admit, sadly. And she was flaky, disappeared for days at a time. But something was working, maybe just the look of her stretched out on the brown tweed sofa squinting to decipher the nonsense of his rivals. He loved when she tossed things over the back of the cushions or faked a swoon from the noxious fumes, or pretended to puke. He liked how her face actually went purple, then released back to her normal pale. And once she lit something on fire. He thought she was kidding, but sure enough, the smoke alarm went off before she could hustle the thing into the loo and snuff it out.

But everything he wrote, from index cards to e-mail, she read with reverence. She went very still when she had some page of his in hand. And it eased something in him to watch her then, so quiet and concentrated. He found himself believing in her faith in him, and he wondered at his own delightful innocence. There all along. Like some wide silvery sky outside his office window. Sometimes she'd drag out some hidden scrap of her own, minor in every way, but he gave her the amniotic approval
she desired. He thought they were happy for a while. Then Helena had something else to show Raymond. A printout of a tiny blip she'd published on the Internet. Right away he could see there were problems.

Wow, he said.

You think?

Uh, yeah.

Really? She beamed at him. She was gorgeous in a new way. But her teeth looked unpleasant. He preferred her old smile. And her eyes were weird, like there was nothing stopping them. Bottomless open-ended interest. He had a responsibility here.

Okay, said Raymond, what's with all the death?

The death? she asked.

The brother
and
the mother? Incurable childhood cancer
and
a car crash? I mean, it's only three pages long.

Um. It's an elegy? I know the rule for fiction, but essays, it's okay to just say what happened. Right?

He shook his head. Pick one. Probably the mother because vehicular manslaughter is more interesting. Then: light touch. Just itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny hints.

Her smile went very wide and stuck. Is this a joke? she said.

Joke? he said, then suddenly realized he was supposed to go home early. I'll be right back, he said. Next time, show me first! He waved, then flew out the door.