Then Came You (29 page)

I let the crisp fabric of the sundress fall over my shoulders and hips and smoothed lotion from the hotel’s little bottle on my skin, then took the elevator down to where India was waiting for me in the lobby. There was another car outside that took us to South Beach. The restaurant was big and crowded, full of groups that all seemed to be celebrating something. Over dinner—caesar salad, warm rolls, crab legs for both of us—India told me her story—how she, too, had grown up without much; how she’d gone to Los Angeles to try to be an actress, how she’d moved to New York City to work in public relations, how she’d met Marcus in a Starbucks, of all places. “What was that like?” I asked. What I really wanted to ask was, how had she found the confidence to go to a city all the way on the other side of the country, to get herself the kind of job I hadn’t even known existed, to turn herself into the kind of person Marcus wanted? She was so much smarter than I was, so much more clever, and I listened closely as she explained how she’d figured out what publicists were and what they did; how she’d made connections and networked with the right people to get an internship, then a job.

At the end of the meal, over decaf coffee and a slice of that tart, rich Key lime pie, India bent her head, suddenly shy. “I
bought you something,” she said. “Merry Christmas.” She handed me a little velvet box. Inside was a necklace, a gorgeous green stone suspended on a shimmering length of silver chain. “Emerald,” she said. “It’s the baby’s birthstone. I wanted you to have something so you can always feel close to her. Or him.” She smiled—she and Marcus had decided not to learn the baby’s gender, but we were both secretly convinced that I was carrying a girl.

My throat tightened. No one had ever given me jewelry, except for my engagement ring, and of course I had nothing for her except the card and the homemade raspberry jam I’d sent to her apartment before Christmas. “Oh, India. It’s beautiful, but it’s way too much.”

“No,” she said. Her eyes were shining. “No, it is not too much. What you’re doing for Marcus and me, there’s nothing we could ever pay you to thank you enough.”

We hugged, and I told myself to stop being so critical, to just enjoy the night, the sweet taste of fresh crab, which I’d never had before, and how lovely it was to slip deeply into those cool, crisp sheets in an immaculate room and sleep in as late as I wanted, to wander on the beach for hours, the sand warm and firm against my bare feet.

“Now listen,” she said, as we drove back to the airport. “If you start feeling overwhelmed or tired like that again, you call me, no matter what. I’m finding you a cleaning lady, and don’t even try to talk me out of it. It’s ridiculous that you’re scrubbing floors.”

“Lots of people do,” I pointed out.

“Lots of people don’t have a choice. But you do. So no arguments.”

“Thank you,” I said, for possibly the hundredth time in the last two days. The words were completely inadequate, but what else could I say? That she’d changed my life? That, looking at
her, I was starting to think about how things could have gone differently for me, and what might still be possible? That it was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time?

“Travel safe,” she said, hugging me . . . and in that moment I believed that if everything had been equal, if we’d met in school or working some job or pushing our new babies on swings in the playground, that India Croft and I could actually have been friends.

I made the trip in reverse: car to the West Palm Beach airport, plane to Philadelphia, car back to my parents’ house to pick up the boys. “They were angels,” said my mother, but she looked hollow-eyed, like she couldn’t wait to go back to her couch and catch up with her TV friends. My house hadn’t been trashed—there were no piles of dirty dishes or dirty laundry, no chair that had been flung through the television set—but Frank hadn’t done much cleaning. Things appeared to be exactly as I’d left them after Christmas dinner, the platters still in the drainboard next to the sink, the pine cones still in the middle of the dining-room table. Frank helped me bring the suitcases inside. Then he stayed out of my way, not offering to help as I fed the boys dinner and got us unpacked.

Finally, at eight o’clock, with the boys washed and brushed and tucked into their beds, I stood at the doorway of the family room. Frank was once again planted in front of the television set, watching some comedy with a cackling laugh track. I planted myself in front of the screen and stood there until he clicked it into silence.

“Nice necklace,” he said—the first words he’d spoken other than a muttered “hello” when I’d arrived.

I felt myself blushing, but I didn’t back down. “India gave it to me. It’s the baby’s birthstone. So I can remember her.”

“Must be nice,” he said sarcastically. “A friend who can give you presents like that.”

I felt like throwing something at him, but I didn’t want to wake up the boys. “I don’t care about jewelry! For God’s sake, Frank, all I wanted to do was get us out of this mess, get us a little extra money...”

“Well, you did it. Good for you.”

“Frank,” I said. My voice cracked. “What do you want me to do? I can’t undo this,” I said, running my hand over my belly, so he’d know what I was talking about.

“I don’t know.” He bit off each word, and I realized that he wasn’t just angry, the way I’d seen him a few times over the years, when the bill collectors would call, or the time he’d been passed over for a promotion. He was way past angry. He was furious . . . and it scared me.

He got to his feet. “I’ve been thinking maybe I’ll go stay with my mom for a while.”

“You do that.” The words were out of my mouth before I could think about them, but it only took me a moment to realize that this was the right choice, maybe the only choice. Angry as he was, I didn’t want to be around him, and I didn’t want the boys around him, either.

“This was a mistake,” he said, walking past me without sparing me a glance. Questions swirled in my head: Would he come back? Would he see the boys? Was this a separation? Did he want to get divorced? But I didn’t ask any of them. I just stood there, frozen, unbelieving, as he climbed up the stairs, packed a bag, climbed into the car, and drove off into the dark.

I
t started out a day like any other chilly, gray-sky April morning. I woke up feeling Marcus’s lips on my forehead, hearing the soft clink as he set down a cup of tea beside me. “How is the mother-to-be?” he asked, and I smiled. Neither of us was trying to pretend that the situation was anything other than what it was, but Marcus still treated me like I was expecting. We had the ultrasound pictures stuck to our refrigerator with a magnet; we sent Annie downloadable recordings of our voices reading the baby stories and singing lullabies, and kept a calender marked with red Xs through each day before the baby’s arrival hanging on my dressing room door.

Once Marcus was showered and dressed and off to work, I padded to my dressing room and pulled on the workout clothes I’d laid out the night before—tights and running pants, a long-sleeved Under Armour shirt with a fleece jacket on top of it.

My trainer met me in the lobby, and we jogged across the street, across the wide sidewalk through the gap in the stone gate and into the park for the usual ninety minutes of torture. Back at home, my breakfast was waiting for me on a tray: a white china plate covered with almonds, dried apricots, a peeled, cored apple cut into slices so thin they were translucent, and a hard-boiled egg. I looked longingly at Marcus’s soaking tub before skinning
off my sweaty clothes. It wasn’t as if my shower was Spartan: the water assaulted me from a half-dozen nozzles and there was a marble ledge, specially designed so I’d have a place to prop up my foot while I shaved my legs. Some couples had his-and-hers sinks. Marcus and I had his-and-hers bathrooms. “It’s the secret of a happy marriage,” I’d told Annie. “That, and Viagra.” The truth was, Marcus liked to visit me in my bathroom, knocking on the door in his bathrobe. Sometimes he’d slip into the shower with me, getting his hands slick with soap and running them over my body, and sometimes this would lead to sex, but, more often, he’d just pull up the chair from my vanity and sit by the shower, talking about nothing and everything, his children, his colleagues, the next trip we’d take. At first I’d been shy about letting him see me backstage—he didn’t need to know that I used concealer or plucked my eyebrows—but, after a while, I found that I genuinely enjoyed his company, and I looked forward to those mornings more than any other part of the day.

By ten o’clock I was out the door, dressed, hair blown straight, makeup applied. In my office, I sipped a latte and returned calls and e-mails for an hour and a half, revising a press release announcing my jewelry company’s new line of charm bracelets (“The perfect gift for Mother’s Day!”), calling to confirm receipt for the invitations we’d sent for a cocktail party in honor of a bridal magazine’s new editor, their fourth in three years. I was taking my assistant Daphne to lunch at Michael’s. Then I’d head to the salon for a bikini wax and a facial. On Friday, Marcus and I were flying to the Bahamas for the fiftieth birthday of one of Marcus’s partners’ wives—a first wife. Seeing one of those was sort of like glimpsing a rare bird or monkey, a member of an endangered species, upright and uncaged and walking among us.

Daphne and I were halfway through our salads, and I was listening to her tell me about her latest boyfriend’s new job—something to do with corporate branding and search-engine
optimization—when my phone trilled from inside my bag. I bent down to look at the number. When I saw that it was Marcus’s office, I picked up fast, pressing the phone against my ear and bending my head close to the table. Marcus and I e-mailed. The only times he’d call me during the workday was when it was an emergency.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Croft?” Kelly, one of Marcus’s executive assistants, was on the line, and she sounded as rattled as I’d ever heard her.

I was on my feet before I knew it. Daphne stared at me.
What’s wrong?
she mouthed. I hurried through the restaurant without answering, not even sparing a glance at Barbara Walters at the table by the window, and stood on the sidewalk as Kelly gave me the details.
Chest pain . . . called the doctor . . . Beth Israel . . . intensive care.
“Does his cardiologist know? Is it the same blocked artery?”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Croft, but I told you everything they told me.”

“I’ll be right there,” I told her. I ran out the door and into the first cab I saw, snapping out the hospital’s address, hardly able to breathe.

What would I do without him? I thought, as the cab made its way downtown. How would I live? How would I pay the bills, how would I manage the staff? I had no idea how any of it worked. I hadn’t wanted to learn. I’d been superstitious, thinking that too many questions would be asking for trouble. I’d turn myself into Bluebeard’s wife. If I went poking around, I’d find . . . what? A row of my beheaded predecessors rotting in the basement? Documents showing that Marcus was secretly broke? And what was I doing, thinking this way at a time like this? Marcus. My husband. The man I’d come to love, with all my heart, in spite of myself.

Through the windows, I saw a man with a plastic bag over
his hand holding a little dog’s leash, a boy and a girl walking side by side, one earbud of the iPod she carried in each of their ears. I pulled my telephone out of the purse and called Trey at the office and Tommy on his cell phone and Bettina at Kohler’s, saying that I didn’t know what was happening, but that I’d been told it was urgent; that I was on my way to the hospital and that they should probably join me.

“I’ll leave right now,” said Trey.

“Be there as soon as I can,” said Tommy.

Bettina hadn’t said anything before she’d hung up. I knew she was thinking that this was, somehow, my fault, even though I’d been the one to call the doctor that first time, and I’d been the one to monitor his diet, to make sure he took his medication, to buy a treadmill and hire a trainer, to tell him, every night, how much I loved him.

The cab dropped me off by the emergency room. I ran through the automated doors. “Marcus Croft,” I said to the receptionist. My chest was as tight as if someone was squeezing it, the skin of my forearms pebbled with goose bumps. The receptionist pecked at her computer, then gave me directions: elevator to the C wing, down the second hallway, left and then another left, check in at the blue desk, and I hurried away, not feeling the floor underneath me or seeing the faces of the people I passed.

When the elevator doors slid open, there were three nurses gathered around a desk, talking quietly. A blue light flashed in the hall, and an orderly pushed an empty stretcher. “Marcus Croft,” I said. All of them looked up, guiltily, like schoolgirls caught passing notes, and I knew, in that instant, what had happened.

“Oh, God.” My knees felt like they’d melted, and I would have fallen if I hadn’t managed to grab the edge of the desk.

“Where is he?” My voice was loud and high and frantic. I
could see my reflection in the pane of glass behind the desk, skin pale, hair disheveled, eyes unrecognizable.

“I’m so sorry,” said the nurse. She was short, round-faced, copper-skinned, wearing white clogs and pale-pink scrubs. I knew exactly how I must have looked to her: too pretty, too thin, too young. I might as well have been wearing a tiara that spelled out the words
TROPHY WIFE
in flashing neon bulbs above my head.

There was a waiting area up there, a few benches, a few people, the inevitable television bolted to the ceiling, blasting talk-show noise into the hallway. That hospital smell of chicken-noodle soup and industrial cleansers, of blood and rubbing alcohol, filled the air. A mother sat with a toddler in one corner, a little girl she bounced on her knee.
I’ll remember this,
I thought, trying to catch my breath.
I will remember all of this forever.