My One and Only (15 page)

“Do you have to work so
much?
Can’t you ever make it home for dinner? Can’t you ever take one whole weekend off, Nick? Ever?”

It was one of our more impressive fights. I hated it. Hated myself for needing him as much as I did, hated him for not knowing that. He may have been actually a little scared at my reaction; clearly, we weren’t on the same page. We weren’t even in the same book. He promised to do better. Said he’d take this coming weekend off, both days. We’d go up to the park, have a picnic, maybe go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Cooper Hewitt.

But Friday night, when he came home well after nine, he broke the news. “I have to go in tomorrow. Just for an hour or two. I’m really sorry. I’ll be home by eleven at the latest.”

I’ll admit now that I knew he’d never make it, and thus, wanting to increase my ammunition, went all out preparing a Martha-style picnic for us. Curried chicken with raisins, cucumber salad, a loaf of French bread from a bakery in the Village. Oatmeal raisin cookies baked from scratch. A bottle of wine. At twelve-fifteen, he still wasn’t home. At one, not home. At 2:24, he called. “I’m running a little late,” he said. “Just have to do one quick thing, then I’m out the door.”

He got home at 5:37, a bouquet of browning daisies in his hand. “Babe, don’t have a fit,” he began inauspiciously. “Big Mac needed me, because apparently Jed totally flaked out with getting the permits from—”

I took a fistful of chicken salad and threw it at him, getting him right in the face. “Here. I made this for you. I hope you get salmonella and spend the next four days puking yourself raw.”

Nick took a piece of chicken off his cheek and ate it. “Pretty good,” he said, lifting an eyebrow.

That was it. I stomped into the bedroom, slammed the door and clenched my arms over my head.

Of course he came in (we had no locks). With exaggerated patience, he wiped off the chicken salad and put the towel in the hamper, came over, wrapped his arms around me. He didn’t apologize. Kissed my neck. Told me he loved me. Asked me to be patient, since this was all, in his words, just temporary. It wouldn’t happen again. We’d work things out. Then he turned me so that my face was pressed against his beautiful neck, so that I could smell his good Nick smell and feel his pulse. It worked. I cracked.

“I hate it here, Nick,” I whispered into his collar. “I never see you. I feel like…like an appendix.”

“An appendix?” he said, pulling back.

I swallowed. “Like I’m here, but you don’t really need me. You could cut me out and everything would still work just fine.” I had to whisper, it was so hard to admit.

He looked at me long and hard, his eyes inscrutable. I waited for him to understand. Waited for him to remember that I had abandonment issues, that the only other person who was supposed to have loved me forever had left me. I waited for him to realize I needed him to do more than check me off, waited for him to tell me I was no appendix…I was his beating heart, and he couldn’t live without me.

“Maybe you should get a job, honey,” he said.

That was the beginning of the end.

“A job,” I echoed dully.

“You’re alone too much, and I hate to say it, but I really can’t slack off at work right now. If you get a job, you’ll make some friends, have more to do. We can always use the extra money, too, I won’t lie. You can quit when you start law school.”

He’d wanted me to marry him, I had, and that was the end…to him, anyway.

“I’ll ask around the office,” he added. “Maybe someone has a lead.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll find something on my own,” I said. My heart felt like a rock sitting hard and cold in my chest.

“Great, honey. Good girl.”

Then he took me to bed and we had sex, and it was his way of saying,
See? Everything’s just fine.
And that, according to Nick, was that. It certainly let him off the hook. Me getting a job was much more convenient than admitting that marriage needed an investment of time, especially a new marriage, especially when the bride was me. This way, Nick didn’t have to change his hours or tell his boss sorry, not tonight, he had plans with his wife. No, clearly this was just what the doctor ordered. Harper needed a job. Not a husband who actually showed up.

Almost defiantly, I answered an ad. Bartender, which was old territory for me since I’d worked my way through college bartending. The restaurant was called Claudia’s, a trendy new place in SoHo.

The morning of my interview, still angry with Nick for not understanding, I accidentally slammed my hand in the front door. My left hand. No cut, but my fingers had taken the worst of it and almost without thinking, I moved my wedding ring from my left hand to my right. I rarely wore my engagement ring, which was surprisingly large. It was also, to my small-town girl’s mind, an irresistible prize for the many roving thieves of New York. Nick only laughed when I told him that and didn’t seem to mind.

But my wedding ring…that was a different story. That ring, I loved—two strands of gold woven together, one slightly darker than the other. It was delicate and beautiful and one of a kind, made by a Vineyard goldsmith. It didn’t look a lot like the classic wedding ring…especially when worn on the wrong hand. Claudia’s manager didn’t ask if I was married, and I didn’t think to tell him.

You get better tips as a bartender if you’re young and pretty…and single. Or if the patrons think you’re single. My fingers were swollen for a few days. The ring stayed on my right hand. It meant nothing. Except, of course, that it did.

Work at Claudia’s was a lot of fun. Located in SoHo on a cobblestoned street, it drew in the
Sex and the City
-type crowd—beautifully dressed women who wore outfits that cost more than my rent, men who smelled expensive and thought nothing of leaving me a twenty-dollar tip on a ten-dollar drink. And my coworkers…they were just like me. Higher aspirations, temporarily in the service biz, some balancing grad school. None of us planned to be there forever. All of us were in our twenties—Claudia’s owner knew that the actor/model staff drew in a better clientele or something, so we were all slim and good-looking.

As the new kid, I watched from the sidelines, but even the sidelines were thrilling. Occasionally, someone would confide in me—Jocasta had dated Ben, then dumped him for Peter; Ryan needed a roommate and Prish was looking, but did they really want to work
and
live together? Especially after that one-night stand? Flattered to be included in their drama, their angst, I’d give a noncommittal answer, didn’t take sides and was generally well liked. They fascinated me…they were so free. Big plans, lazy days, a pleasant place to work. The way it was supposed to be at our age.

For the first few weeks, I just watched, did my job, listened. No one asked if I was married, and I didn’t offer up the information. Was I punishing Nick? Of course I was. I barely saw the guy. He said he’d drop by one night and see the place, but the weeks passed and he never did.

I was young, stupid, insecure, lonely. Walking home some nights, I’d feel that dark, pulling thing in my chest and I’d wish I could cry, because I hated Nick, I loved him so much. I felt tricked and betrayed, and I kept waiting for him to do
something
that would make me feel the way I’d felt before we were married…that I was cherished, loved, irreplaceable. But he was young and stupid too, and the ocean between us darkened and deepened.

I didn’t have the type of bond with my family that would allow me to vomit up my misery over the phone…besides, Willa was only a high school kid and thought Nick and I were the height of romance. BeverLee…no. As for my father, I’d stopped even trying to tell him the truth years ago.

Then one night, a waiter named Dare asked me to hang out with them after closing, and suddenly, I had a group of friends. I don’t think I realized how deep my loneliness went until then. My college friends had grown distant, engrossed in their fabulous careers or the challenges of graduate school. But my coworkers…they were right where I was, at this strange phase of life where we worked, but not in our chosen fields, where Real Life still seemed a way off. They were like butterflies, lovely to behold, free to float and flit wherever the breeze carried them, no responsibilities other than making rent.

Of course, none of them was married. In Manhattan, you started thinking about marriage after living together for a decade or so, when you were closer to forty or fifty than twenty. Married at twenty-one? Willingly? I told myself I’d bring it up…eventually. If the gang and I became closer, sure, I’d tell them in some droll, charming way, make a joke out of my
de facto
missing husband. Or maybe when Nick finally showed up at Claudia’s, as he continually promised he would. Any pangs of guilt I had on the subject were smothered in the relief of finally belonging.

So I kept my wedding ring on my right hand. Nick didn’t notice…but then again, our marriage now consisted of an occasional bout of sex in the wee hours of the morning and a few polite sentences exchanged here and there, mostly via voice mail. I missed him so much that I literally had to turn myself away from it, to stuff it down and ignore it. And hey. I was good at that sort of thing.

My new circle of friends became more and more important. We ate together before work, an early dinner around four-thirty, and we would try to outdo each other with pithy comments and observations of the city and its inhabitants. We might hang out at Claudia’s after closing, and I’d make specialty drinks, grapefruit gin fizzes, honey-almond martinis. One day, Jocasta, Prish and I braved the mob at Century 21 and bought cheap designer shoes. We went to a book signing in the Village. When Thanksgiving rolled around, Nick had to go to Lisbon, his first international trip with the firm (or ever). I congratulated him, smiled as he packed, kissed him as the car service came to bring him to the airport.

“You sure you’re okay on your own?” he asked, hesitating there on our grimy sidewalk.

“I’ll be fine. I’m going to Prish’s for dinner. Have fun. Good luck!”

I waved as he left, then called my pals and let them know I was free for the animated film festival at the Angelika theater. We all went and felt very sophisticated indeed. Actually, my friends
were
fairly sophisticated. And shallow and somewhat heartless, but they were better than nothing. I tried to keep up, tried not to feel like such a rube.

The waiter named Dare (short for Darrell, but dear God, don’t ever say that aloud) was a very intense guy…wanted to write the next tormented, twisted, bleak Great American Novel and had plans to get his MFA from somewhere very impressive. Jocasta and Prish both had the hots for him, as did just about every female who walked into Claudia’s. He had long blond hair and smoldering gray eyes, and he was tall and thin and made you want to feed him. He took himself very, very seriously, and hey, it worked. He flirted with me…well, not really. Flirting was beneath him. He stared intensely at me (between serving meals, of course). I knew he was interested, but I certainly didn’t lead him on.

The need to say something about Nick grew, but for whatever reason, I kept waiting. Maybe for him to remember he adored me, to do something so loving and memorable that all doubt would be forever swept away and we’d live happily ever after. Again…I was young and stupid. And the thing with secrets is, the longer you keep them, the more tightly rooted they become.

By the Night of the Unforgivable Event, I’d been working at Claudia’s for almost three months. It was December, and New York is never prettier than at the holidays, Christmas lights in every restaurant and coffeehouse, wreaths on the charming doors of the Village, menorahs winking in windows. Splashy, colorful displays shouted out from the big department stores, and Santa stood on every street corner. Finally, I was falling in love with New York.

As I walked to Claudia’s that night, lazy snowflakes swirling in the dusk, I stopped in front of a shop window. There sat a good-sized model of the Brooklyn Bridge, cast in bronze, solid and lovely. Nick would love it. I’d buy it for him for Christmas. For a second, it felt as if I was standing on the bridge again, Nick on one knee, those Charles Dickens gloves, his beautiful, happy eyes…

Something shifted in my chest, as if a rock had rolled off my heart. I loved my husband. We could get through this long, tough time. Maybe I’d even quit Claudia’s, find something more compatible with Nick’s schedule so we could figure out how to make this work. Tonight, I’d tell my buddies I was married, we’d have a few laughs, whatever.

It was the night of Claudia’s staff-only Christmas party, a Monday when the restaurant was closed. There were about twenty of us including the kitchen crew, and the party was in full swing when I arrived. Prish had commandeered the bar and handed me a cloyingly sweet peppermint drink. The restaurant was loud, bright, festive and happy, my coworkers already buzzed and thrilled to see me. Maybe tonight
wasn’t
the night for telling everyone about Nick. I’d do it at a more quiet time. That would be better.

Prish’s cocktail invention was vile, so I shook up a few special martinis made with cranberries and Grey Goose. The food was smashing, goat-cheese-and-dried-tomato pizzas and crab cakes with remoulade sauce. Ben wore a reindeer hat, Jocasta had on a blinking-light necklace and a glittery red miniskirt.

By 10 p.m., we all sat around the table in the middle of the restaurant, all of us with a few drinks in us (some with more than a few), all quite happy. At some point—I hadn’t noticed exactly when—Dare’s arm had gone around the back of my chair. Very casual. We were a close bunch by now, and affection was always given freely. We all hugged good-night like a bunch of eighth-grade girls, the guys would do that hand-clasp, lean-in thing and the women would kiss the men’s cheeks. Asking Dare to move his arm would only draw attention to it, so I left the subject alone.

This was a mistake.

Something tickled the back of my neck, and I jumped. Dare gave me a half-lidded, steamy glance, but he didn’t interrupt himself, just kept talking to Ben about some political battle over a federal court appointee. Taking Dare’s hand from my neck, I set it on his lap, and he gave me a sexy little smile. Didn’t touch me again.