CHAPTER
TWENTY
I watch the bartender pour a clear stream of vodka into my glass and top it with a foamy spritz of tonic. She wedges a lime on the edge and slides it across the smooth wood, then removes the empty glass from in front of me.
“Do you want some water, too?”
I shake my head. Damp strands of hair stick to my neck, and my thighs feel sweaty against the vinyl chair. My shoes rest on the floor beneath me.
After Emma dismissed me and disappeared into the taxi, I stood on the street corner for a long moment, not knowing where to go. There was simply no one I could turn to. No one who would understand how spectacularly I had failed.
Then, because I couldn’t think of an alternative, I began to walk. With each step, my anguish grew wider, like a yawn I could not contain. A few blocks later, I found the Robertson Hotel bar.
The bartender silently pushes yet another glass in front of me. Water. I look up, wondering if I did actually shake my head or just imagined doing so, but she avoids my gaze. She moves away, straightening the stack of newspapers on a corner of the countertop.
I catch sight of myself in the large mirror behind her, the one that reflects the rows of Absolut, Johnnie Walker, Hendrick’s Gin, and reposado tequila.
Now I see what Emma saw.
I’m looking into a fun-house mirror. The image I wanted to project—the old me, Richard’s Nellie—is distorted. My hair is brittle from overprocessing; more straw than butter. My eyes look sunken in my gaunt face. The makeup I’d so carefully applied is smudged. No wonder the bartender wants me to stay sober; I’m in the lobby of a fine hotel, one that hosts international businesspeople and offers two-hundred-dollar snifters of Scotch.
I feel the vibration of my phone again. I force myself to pull it out of my purse and see five missed calls. Three from Saks, beginning at ten A.M. Two from Aunt Charlotte in the past thirty minutes.
Only one thing can break through the dull ache engulfing me: the thought of Aunt Charlotte worrying. So I answer.
“Vanessa? Are you okay?”
I have no idea how to respond.
“Where are you?”
“At work.”
“Lucille called me when you didn’t show up.” My aunt is my emergency contact; I put her home number down on my application.
“I just needed—I’m going in late.”
“Where are you?” my aunt repeats, her tone firm.
I should tell her that I’m on my way home, that my flu has returned. I should make excuses to ease her worry. But the sound of her voice—the only safe thing I know—unravels me. So I give her the name of the hotel.
“Don’t move,” she says, and hangs up.
By now, Emma has arrived at her dress fitting. I wonder if she called Richard to tell him I intercepted her. I think of how the pity in her eyes transformed into scorn; I’m not sure which made me feel worse. I recall her shapely legs folding up into the cab, the door shutting, her image receding as I stared after her.
I wonder if Richard will reach out to me now.
Before I can even order another drink, I hear Aunt Charlotte’s Birkenstocks slap against the floor as she approaches. I see her absorb my new hair color, my empty cocktail glass, and my bare feet.
I wait for her to speak, but she just takes the stool next to me.
“Can I get you anything?” the bartender asks.
Aunt Charlotte peers at the cocktail menu. “A sidecar, please.”
“Sure, that’s not on the menu, but I can whip one up.”
My aunt waits while the woman pours the cognac and orange liqueur over ice and squeezes in a lemon.
Aunt Charlotte swallows a sip, then puts down her frosted glass. I brace myself for more questions, but they never come.
“I can’t make you tell me what is going on. But please stop lying to me.” A bit of yellow paint stains the knuckle of her index finger—just a small dot—and I stare at it.
“Who was I after I got married?” I ask after a moment. “What did you see?”
Aunt Charlotte leans back and crosses her legs. “You changed. I missed you.”
I missed her, too. Aunt Charlotte didn’t meet Richard until just before our wedding, since she was doing a yearlong apartment swap with a Parisian artist friend. After she returned to New York, we saw each other—more frequently in the beginning and then much less often as the years passed.
“I first noticed something the night of your birthday. You just didn’t seem like your old self.”
I know exactly which night she is talking about. It was August, shortly after our first anniversary. I nod. “I’d just turned twenty-nine.” A couple of years older than Emma is now. “You brought me a bouquet of pink snapdragons.”
She’d given me a small painting, too, about the size of a hardcover book. It was of me on my wedding day. Instead of a portrait, Aunt Charlotte had captured me from behind as I began to walk toward Richard. The bell shape of my dress and my gauzy veil stood out against the vivid blue Floridian sky; it was almost as if I were walking off into infinity.
We’d invited Aunt Charlotte to Westchester for a drink followed by dinner at our club. I’d already started taking fertility pills, and I remember I couldn’t zip up the skirt I was planning to wear. The silk A-line was one of the many new items filling my enormous closet. I’d napped that afternoon—the Clomid left me woozy—and was running late. By the time I’d changed into a more forgiving dress, Richard had greeted Aunt Charlotte and poured her a glass of wine.
I’d heard their conversation as I approached the library. “They were always her favorite flowers,” Aunt Charlotte was saying.
“Really?” Richard said. “They were?”
When I entered, Aunt Charlotte set the cellophane-wrapped snapdragons down on a side table so she could hug me.
“I’ll put these in a vase.” Richard discreetly took one of our linen cocktail napkins and wiped away a drop of water from the blackwashed mango wood; the piece had been delivered just the previous month. “There’s mineral water for you, sweetheart,” he said to me.
Now I reach for the glass of water on the bar in front of me and take a long sip. Aunt Charlotte had known I was trying to get pregnant, and when she smiled at Richard’s remark, I’d realized she might have drawn the wrong impression from my thickening waistline and the nonalcoholic beverage.
I’d shaken my head slightly, not wanting to say the words to correct her. At least not then, in front of Richard.
“Beautiful place,” Aunt Charlotte says now, but I’m not tracking the conversation. Is she talking about our old house or the club?
Everything in my life looked beautiful back then: the new furnishings I’d picked out with the help of an interior decorator, the sapphire earrings Richard had presented to me earlier that day, the long driveway winding through lush golf greens and past a duck-filled pond as we approached the club, the explosion of crape myrtles and creamy dogwoods surrounding the white-columned entrance.
“The other people at the club all seemed so . . .” She hesitates. “Settled, I guess. It’s just that your friends in the city were so energetic and young.”
Aunt Charlotte’s words are gentle, but I know what she means. The men wore jackets in the dining room—a club rule—and the women seemed to have unspoken edicts of their own governing how to look and to act. Most of the couples were much older than me, too, but that wasn’t the only reason why I felt I didn’t fit in.
“We sat at a booth in the corner,” Aunt Charlotte continues. Richard and I attended lots of events at the club—the Fourth of July fireworks, the Labor Day barbecue, the December holiday dance. The corner booth was Richard’s favorite because it afforded him a view of the room and was quiet.
“I was surprised by the golf lessons,” Aunt Charlotte says.
I nod. They’d been a surprise to me, too. Richard had given them to me, of course. He wanted to play together and had mentioned a trip to Pebble Beach once I’d mastered my fairway drive. I’d talked about the way I’d learned to tell my seven from my nine iron, how I always shanked my shot when I didn’t spend enough time taking practice swings, and what fun it was to drive the golf cart. I should have known Aunt Charlotte would see through my lively chatter.
“When the waiter appeared, you asked for a glass of Chardonnay,” Aunt Charlotte says. “But I saw Richard touch your hand. Then you changed your order to water.”
“I was trying to get pregnant. I didn’t want to drink.”
“I understand that, but then something else happened.” Aunt Charlotte takes a sip of her sidecar, holding the thick glass with both hands, then sets it carefully back onto the bar. I wonder if she is reluctant to continue, but I need to know what I did.
“The server brought you a Caesar salad.” Aunt Charlotte’s voice is soft. “You told him you’d wanted the dressing on the side. It wasn’t a big deal, but you insisted you’d ordered it that way. I just thought it was strange because you’d been a waitress, honey. You know how easy it is for mistakes to happen.”
She pauses. “The thing is, you were wrong. I ordered a Caesar salad, too, and you just said you’d have the same. You didn’t say anything about the dressing.”
I feel my brow crease. “That was all? I mis-ordered?”
Aunt Charlotte shakes her head. I know she will be honest with me. I also know I may not like what I hear next.
“It was the way you said it. You sounded . . . agitated. He apologized, but you made it into a bigger deal than it needed to be. You blamed the waiter for something that wasn’t his fault.”
“What did Richard do?”
“He was finally the one to tell you not to worry, that you’d have a new salad in a minute.”
I don’t remember my exact exchange with the waiter—although I do recall other, more fraught restaurant meals during my marriage—but I’m certain of one thing: My aunt has an excellent memory; she has spent her entire life cataloging details.
I wonder how many other unpleasant moments Aunt Charlotte witnessed during those years and has held close out of love for me.
Although we were still newlyweds, my transformation had already begun.