The Divide (19 page)

On their wedding day, her father’s older sister had taken Sarah aside and, with a quiet intensity, vouchsafed some advice. Elizabeth had always been her favorite aunt and had once been a renowned society beauty. She had never had children and had enjoyed what the family referred to as a “colorful” life, which Sarah later realized was code for sleeping around. At the time, Elizabeth was on her third marriage (and subsequently died just after her fourth), so Sarah thought it both mildly amusing and a bit rich that she should presume to proffer guidance.

“Look after each other,” she confided.

It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering, but Sarah smiled politely and said of course they would. Elizabeth shook her head impatiently.

“No, you don’t understand.
Look after each other.
As a couple. When you have kids, you’ll want to put them first. Don’t. Marriage is like a plant. To keep it alive you’ve got to water it and feed it. If you don’t, when the kids are gone, you’ll look in the corner and it’ll be dead.”

E
ve had never consciously intended to keep her promise to call the Coopers. And even after she had done so, she was reluctant to analyze her motives. With all the hurt that was soon to be unleashed, she didn’t like to think of herself as the initiator. She preferred instead to believe it was all a matter of destiny. If not then and by those means, fate would doubtless have found some other way to bring her and Ben Cooper together.

During that week at The Divide she and Lori had become everybody’s new best friends and Eve had been touched by the warmth of their welcome. Sarah, in particular, had sought to involve them from the start. Eve liked her well enough, but no more so than any of the other women. She was interesting and witty and clearly very bright, but there was a slightly stiff quality, not grand or superior, just a little cool and inaccessible. She gave the impression that even if you were marooned for ten years with her on a desert island, you probably wouldn’t get to discover who she really was. But there was something about her husband to which Eve had felt herself curiously attracted.

It wasn’t by any means immediate. In fact, at first, among all those new faces at the ranch, she hadn’t really paid him much attention. He was one of the more interesting and artistic men there, for sure. She liked his sardonic take on life and how he asked questions about Pablo and about her work and her life in Santa Fe. And he actually seemed interested in the answers. But as the week progressed, even though she probably talked seriously with him on only two or three occasions, she began to sense a curious rapport.

In a group, when that Bradstock man or someone else was holding forth, she and Ben would catch each other’s eye, exchange a wry smile. They had talked a lot about painting and there was no doubt that she was flattered by his interest in her work. What had touched her, however, she later realized, was his sadness.

But he was married. How happily, she couldn’t say, but it made no difference. He was out of bounds. Eve had always been strict about avoiding romantic entanglements with married men. Not so much from any moral scruple but rather because she knew from the experiences of several friends that it almost always ended in tears.

On the wall above the phone in her Santa Fe kitchen was a cork pinboard, a cluttered collage of obsolete notes and grocery lists, photos and postcards, along with Pablo’s latest (and, naturally, brilliant) finger paintings. Among this chaos, which Eve never quite got around to tidying, was the invitation to the opening of her friend William’s exhibition. It was at an important SoHo gallery, his first big one-man show, and he was a jangle of nerves, calling Eve almost every day for moral support. Pinned next to the invitation was the scrap of paper on which Sarah had written the Coopers’ phone number. And one morning, in mid-July, after William had called, Eve caught sight of it and stared at it for a moment, then picked up the phone and dialed it.

It was Sarah who answered. And she sounded genuinely pleased to hear from her. After further consultation, during which Eve for no good reason found herself again pretending that she liked musicals, four tickets were duly booked for
Kiss Me, Kate
(four, because William, who really did love musicals, insisted on being Eve’s date). A table was reserved for afterward at a place on Madison called La Goulue, which Eve didn’t know but Sarah said she would adore.

When Eve’s cab pulled up in front of the theater and she saw Ben Cooper waiting outside, sheltering from the rain with many others under the glare of the lights, she assumed Sarah must already have gone inside or had yet to arrive. She suddenly felt shy and almost asked the driver to go on and circle the block but people were clamoring for the cab so she paid and got out. She had no umbrella and so hopped as fast as she could through the puddles but still got drenched.

He didn’t see her until she was close beside him, and when he turned and saw her, his face broke from a harassed frown to a smile so warm and welcoming that something turned over inside her. They tried to kiss each other on the cheek but both went for the same side so that their faces collided and they almost kissed on the lips instead. They joked about the rain and the traffic and then she told him she was sorry, but William wasn’t with her. A big German dealer had breezed into the gallery just before it closed and said he wanted to buy the whole show.

“I would have called but it was too late.”

“We wanted to call you too but Sarah couldn’t find your cell number.”

“Is she inside or . . . ?”

“She couldn’t make it either. Some pain-in-the-ass author who was supposed to be doing an event tomorrow night at the bookstore just pulled out. She’s got a hundred people coming and nobody to talk to them. So now she’s melting the phones trying to find somebody else. I can’t tell you how mad she is. She was so looking forward to seeing you.”

So it was to be just the two of them. And though they both went through the motions of asking each other if they should call the whole thing off and go their separate ways, it was clear neither of them wanted to. There were people waiting in line for returns and Ben handed the two spare tickets to a young couple and wouldn’t allow them to pay him.

The show was wonderful. How could she have ever thought she didn’t like musicals? They came out exhilarated, both saying they hadn’t realized where all those famous songs came from. It was still raining but somehow they managed to find a cab. Again they acted out the routine of asking each other if they should call it a day and go home. But, of course, they didn’t. Sitting next to him in the cramped backseat of the cab on their way uptown to the restaurant, laughing and talking about the show, their legs touching and neither of them making any effort to move, she thought how handsome he looked and how good he smelled and then sharply told herself off.

The restaurant was crowded and they sat crammed in a corner next to a young couple who, somewhat disconcertingly, couldn’t keep their hands or lips off each other. More by accident than design, Eve was wearing the same green dress she had worn on the night of Benjamin’s birthday party. She thought how smart and different he looked in his black polo shirt and flecked charcoal jacket.

“Why does everybody in New York wear black?” she said.

“Maybe we’re all in mourning.”

“For what?”

“Our lost innocence.”

They ordered steak and salad and a delicious bottle of Margaux. He asked her how Pablo was and she ended up telling him all about the boy’s father, Raoul, and how they had never really been a conventional kind of couple, more just good friends who made the mistake of becoming lovers. Though, given that the result was Pablo, she said it was without a doubt the best mistake of her life.

Then it was his turn to answer questions. She asked him about Abbie and Josh and this led to a long discussion about parenting and their own parents. Eve told him hers were still more or less happily married and lived in San Diego, a place she didn’t much care for. Ben talked about his father and how they had never managed to get along.

“He thought I was an arrogant sonofabitch and he was probably right. I was. It’s nearly fifteen years since he died and I’ve only just made peace with him. It’s funny how these things go through phases. At first I was angry with him. I used to go on about how he never loved me and always criticized me. I actually really hated him for a while. Then, somehow, that passed and I just felt sad. And kind of cheated, you know? That we were never able to find each other. And now, it’s funny, but I can honestly say I love him. And I know, in his own way, he loved me too. He just belonged to a different generation. Men weren’t supposed to show their feelings like we do today. And he was so great with Abbie when she was a baby. He absolutely adored her. Used to sit her on his knee and tell her stories. So sweet and tender. I’d never seen him like that. It was like he was trying to give her the love he hadn’t been able to show me.”

He smiled. “Mind you, if you see photographs of me as a little kid, you can understand why he might have found it hard.”

“Ugly, right?”

“More like obnoxious.”

“Mine are ugly and obnoxious. Kind of Missy Prissy meets Barney the Bullfrog.”

“Somehow I find that hard to believe.”

“You mean because now I’m so drop-dead gorgeous.” It was a dumb thing to say and it came out all wrong, as if she were putting him down for making a pass, which wasn’t how she had taken it. He looked embarrassed and smiled and took a sip of wine. The couple at the next table were spoon-feeding each other chocolate mousse.

“You know something?” she said, trying to put things right again. “If he was alive today, you two would probably be friends.”

“You’re right. I think we would.”

She asked about his mother and he told her how he’d always been her favorite, how in her eyes he could never do anything wrong, how he could probably tell her he was a serial killer and she would still find a way of rationalizing it and admiring him for it. Her adoration, he said, had become something of a family joke.

“Not so long ago she came to stay and we were driving into town. She was sitting up front and Abbie and Josh and Sarah were in the back. And when I managed to park in what I have to say wasn’t too challenging a space, she said,
Ben, you are such a fanastic parker.
Really. And I could see Sarah and the kids in the mirror, just cracking up. They still say it every time I park the damn car.”

Eve laughed and he shook his head and smiled and took another sip of wine.

“It’s fine,” she said. “She loves you, that’s all. And they say a boy can never be loved too much by his mother. It’s empowering.”

“Well, they’re wrong. I did therapy for a few months after my dad died. And the guy told me that if you feel you are being loved for something that you know to be unjustified or false, in other words, if you know you are actually not the superhero the other person thinks you are, then it doesn’t count. That kind of love doesn’t empower you, it just makes you feel like an impostor. So just you watch out with that son of yours.”

“He parks his tricycle better than any kid I know.”

“Well, there you go.”

He had already refused to let her pay for the theater so she sneakily paid the check on her way back from the restroom. It annoyed him a little but not for long. Outside the rain had stopped. The streets and sidewalks glistened and the air was washed and cool and smelled for the first time of autumn. They walked a couple of blocks and then he suddenly realized how late it was and that he was in danger of missing the last train home. They waved down a cab and Ben asked the driver to hurry to Penn Station. When they got there he stuffed a twenty-dollar bill through the screen and made sure the driver knew where to take her.

“I’ve had such a great time,” Eve said. “Thank you.”

“Me too.”

They kissed each other on the cheek and this time got it right.

“Listen, I’ve got to run,” he said, climbing out. “I’ll call you—I mean,
we’ll
call you, okay?”

“Okay. Go see William’s show if you have a chance.”

“I’ll try. Bye now.”

“Bye. Say hi to Sarah and the kids!”

But he was shutting the door as she spoke and seemed not to hear. Eve watched him jogging off into the station as the cab pulled away and when he had disappeared she leaned her head back against the seat and stared at the stained lining of the roof. As Lori always said, it was one of life’s bummers: how the only nice guys she ever got to meet these days were either married or gay.

Eve called the following morning and was both relieved and a little disappointed when it was Sarah who answered. They agreed how sorry they were not to have seen each other. Sarah had found a less-well-known stand-in for her pain-in-the-ass author but was still anxious about breaking the news to her customers when they arrived. Eve was flying back to New Mexico that afternoon but she said she came to New York two or three times a year and on her next visit they would definitely get together.

“Definitely,” Sarah said.

“And you and Ben should come out to Santa Fe sometime. Bring the kids, too.”

“You know, I’d
love
that. I’ve never been.”

On the flight home and over the days that followed she occasionally found herself thinking about Ben and about how much she liked him. Yet it wasn’t with anything remotely like yearning or regret. The notion of their shared destiny had yet to take shape. Over the years she had taught herself that to look with longing down roads that were blocked brought only pain. And she thus simply accepted that this was how things were and that they could not be otherwise.

Nor, even if Ben had been single, would her attitude necessarily have been different. There was an intensity about him that interested her but daunted her too. And she didn’t feel the need for that in her life right now. She had always, even as a child, been self-sufficient. Her parents had been caring but slightly remote, nurturing in all three of their children an independence that only later did Eve appreciate as their greatest gift.