CHAPTER
THIRTY
I exit Saks for the last time, avoiding the security guard’s eyes when he checks my bag, then I begin to walk to Emma’s apartment. I try to tell myself that it is also for the last time. That after this, I will leave her alone. I will move on.
Move on to what? my mind whispers.
Ahead of me on the sidewalk, a couple strolls hand in hand. Their fingers are interlaced, and their gaits are in sync. If I had to make a snap determination of the quality of their relationship, I would say they are happy. In love. But, of course, those two feelings are not always intertwined.
I consider how perception has shaped the course of my own life; how I saw what I wanted to—needed to—during the years I was with Richard. Maybe being in love carries the requirement of filtered vision; perhaps it is so for everyone.
In my marriage, there were three truths, three alternate and sometimes competing realities. There was Richard’s truth. There was my truth. And there was the actual truth, which is always the most elusive to recognize. This could be the case in every relationship, that we think we’ve entered into a union with another person when, in fact, we’ve formed a triangle with one point anchored by a silent but all-seeing judge, the arbiter of reality.
As I stride past the couple, my phone rings. I know who it is before I even see Richard’s name flash.
“What the fuck, Vanessa?” he says the moment I answer.
The fury I’d felt earlier when I looked at Duke’s photo comes roaring back to me. “Did you tell her to stop working, Richard? Did you tell her you’d take care of her?” I blurt out.
“Listen to me.” My ex-husband bites off each word. In the background on his end, I can hear honking. He obviously just received the photograph, so he must be on the street outside his office. “The guard told me you tried to deliver something to Emma. Stay the hell away from her.”
“Bought her a house in the suburbs yet, Richard?” I can’t stop goading him; it’s as though I’m letting out everything I was forced to repress during our marriage. “What are you going to do the first time she makes you mad? When she isn’t your perfect little wife?”
I hear a car door slam, and suddenly the background sounds on his phone—the city’s ambient noises—cease. There’s a hush, then a distinct voice I recognize as one that runs on a loop on New York Taxi TV: “Buckle up for safety!”
Richard is adept at being a move ahead of me; he must know exactly where I’m going. He’s in a cab. He’s trying to get to Emma first.
It’s not even noon; traffic is light. From Richard’s office to Emma’s apartment is maybe a fifteen-minute drive, I estimate.
But I’m closer to it than he is; my trip to Saks took me in the direction of her place. I’m just ten blocks away. If I hurry, I’ll beat him. I quicken my pace, feeling for the letter in my purse. It’s still there. A breeze tingles across the light perspiration on my body.
“You’re insane.”
I ignore this; those words from him no longer have the power to derail me. “Did you tell her you kissed me last night?”
“What?” he shouts. “You kissed me!”
For a moment my pace falters, then I recall what I said to Emma the first time I confronted her: Richard does this! He confuses things so we can’t see the truth!
It took me years to figure that out. Only by writing down all the questions that were battering my mind did I begin to see a pattern.
I started about a year after my mother’s death. I began to keep a secret diary that I hid under the mattress in the guest room. In my black Moleskine notebook, I logged all the statements Richard made that could be construed in more than one way. I recorded the supposed lapses in my memory—big discrepancies, such as my wanting to live in a house in the suburbs, or the morning after my bachelorette party, when I’d forgotten Richard was flying to Atlanta—as well as smaller ones, such as my supposedly mentioning I wanted to take a painting class, or thinking lamb vindaloo was Richard’s favorite dish.
I also painstakingly documented unsettling conversations I couldn’t ask my husband about—such as how he knew I’d gone to see someone other than my aunt when I’d secretly traveled into the city. I wrote down some of what had happened during that first clandestine meeting. After I’d introduced myself to the sympathetic-looking woman who’d ushered me inside, she’d gestured for me to sit on the couch across from an aquarium filled with colorful fish. She took the upholstered straight-back chair to my left and told me to call her Kate. What would you like to talk about? she asked. Sometimes I worry I don’t know my husband at all, I blurted. Can you tell me why you think Richard is trying to keep you off-balance? she asked toward the end of our discussion. What would his motivation be for this?
That was what I’d tried to puzzle out during the long, empty days when Richard was at work. I’d pull out my notebook and ponder how my cell phone hang-ups had begun immediately after Richard and I had gotten engaged and only seemed to occur when he wasn’t around. I wrote about how I was certain I’d told Richard I regretted insisting Maggie had to wear the blindfold, how much that particular detail—that I’d made her cover her eyes—had bothered me. I added, So why would he give me a blindfold to wear when we drove to the new house? I chronicled how I’d found the heirloom cake topper that had been manufactured years after Richard’s parents had gotten married. The words on my page smudged from my tears as I recalled Duke’s mysterious disappearance.
When my insomnia struck, I’d ease out of bed and tiptoe down the hall so I could fill pages with the insistent thoughts that invaded my brain in the darkest hours of night, my handwriting growing sloppy as my emotions grew heightened. I underlined certain notes, drew arrows connecting thoughts, and scribbled in the margins. Within months, my ink-stained notebook was more than half full.
I spent so many hours writing, my words unspooling across the pages, and in the process, unraveling my marriage. It was as if my relationship with Richard was a gorgeous, hand-knit sweater, and I’d found a tiny thread that I kept worrying between my fingertips. I’d slowly tugged on it, twisting and turning it, erasing patterns and colors and distorting the shape with every question and inconsistency I laid bare in my diary.
He’s, left foot, wrong, right foot. The words fill my brain as my legs churn even faster. I must reach Emma before he does.
“No, Richard. You kissed me.” The only thing Richard hates more than being challenged is being wrong.
I pass Chop’t and turn the corner, glancing behind me down the street. A dozen cabs are heading my way. He could be in any one of them.
“Are you drinking?” He is so good at shifting the focus, at exposing my vulnerabilities and putting me on the defensive.
But I don’t mind as long as he keeps talking. I need to keep him on the phone so he doesn’t warn Emma that I am coming.
“Have you told her about the diamond necklace you gave me?” I taunt him. “Do you think you’ll have to buy her one someday?”
I know this question is the equivalent of throwing a bomb through the window of his cab, and that’s exactly what I intend. I want to enrage Richard. I want his fists to clench and his eyes to narrow. That way, if he reaches Emma first, she will at last understand what he has so adeptly concealed. She will see his mask.
“Dammit, you could have made that light,” he shouts. I picture him coiled on the edge of the taxi seat, hovering behind the driver.
“Have you told her?” I ask again.
He is breathing heavily; I know from experience he is on the verge of losing control. “I’m not engaging in this ridiculous conversation. If you come near her again, I’ll have you locked up.”
I press End Call. Because right in front of me is Emma’s apartment.
I have wronged her so deeply; I’ve preyed on her innocence.
Just as I was never the wife Richard thought I was, I am also not the woman Emma believed me to be.
On the first night I met my replacement at the office holiday party, she rose from behind her desk in a poppy-red jumpsuit. She flashed that wide, open smile and extended her hand to me.
The gathering was as elegant as everything else in Richard’s world: A wall of glass overlooking Manhattan. Ceviche in individual tasting spoons and mini lamb chops with mint being offered by waiters in tuxedos. A seafood station with a woman shucking briny Kumamoto oysters. Classical music soaring from the strings of a quartet.
Richard headed to the bar to get us drinks. “Vodka and soda with a twist of lime?” he asked Emma.
“You remembered!” Her eyes followed him as he walked off.
It all began in that moment: A new future materialized in front of me.
For the next few hours, I sipped mineral water and made polite conversation with Richard’s colleagues. Hillary and George were there, but Hillary had already begun to distance herself from me.
The entire night, I felt the surge of energy arcing between my husband and his assistant. It wasn’t that they exchanged private smiles or ended up side by side in the same conversational group; on the surface, they were perfectly appropriate. But I saw his eyes slide to her as her throaty laugh spilled out. I felt their awareness of each other; it was a tangible, shimmering link joining them across the room. At the end of the party, he ordered a car to see her safely home, despite her protestations that she could hail a cab. We all walked out together and waited for her Town Car to arrive before we got into our own.
“She’s sweet,” I said to Richard.
“She’s very good at her job.”
When Richard and I arrived home from the holiday party, I began to climb the stairs toward the bedroom, looking forward to rolling down the elastic band of the stockings that were cutting into my stomach. Richard extinguished the hallway light and began to follow me. The moment I stepped into the bedroom, he spun me around to face the wall. He kissed the back of my neck and pressed himself against me. He was already hard.
Usually Richard was a tender, considerate lover. Early on, he’d savored me like a five-course meal. But that night, he grabbed my hands and used one of his own to trap them over my head. With his free hand, he yanked down my stockings. I heard a ripping sound and knew they had torn. When he entered me from behind, I gasped. It had been so long, and I wasn’t ready for him. He thrust against me as I stared at our striped wallpaper. He came quickly with a loud, raw groan that seemed to echo through the room. He leaned against my body, panting, then turned me around and gave me a single kiss on the lips.
His eyes were closed. I wondered whose face he was seeing.
A few weeks later, I saw her again when she arrived at the cocktail party Richard and I hosted at our home in Westchester. She was as flawless as I’d remembered.
Not long after our soirée I was supposed to go to the Philharmonic with Richard. But I came down with a stomach bug and had to cancel at the last minute. He took Emma. Alan Gilbert was conducting; Beethoven and Prokofiev would be played. I imagined the two sitting side by side as they listened to the lyrical, expressive melodies. At intermission, they would likely get cocktails, and Richard would explain the origin of Prokofiev’s dissonant style to Emma, just as he had once instructed me.
I took to my bed and fell asleep to images of them together. Richard stayed in the city that evening.
I have no way of knowing for certain, but I imagine that was the night of their first kiss. I see her staring up at him with her round blue eyes as she thanks him for a wonderful evening. They hesitate, reluctant to part. A moment of silence. Then her lids sweep shut as he bends down, closing the distance between them.
Shortly after the Philharmonic, Richard flew to Dallas for a meeting. By then I was making it a point to keep better track of his schedule. This was an important client to Richard. Emma would accompany him. I was not surprised by this: Diane had traveled with him on occasion, too.
But Richard didn’t call or text me to say good night.
I was certain their affair was under way after that trip. Call it a wife’s intuition. I went into the city a few weeks later. I wanted another look at Emma. I lingered in the courtyard outside their building, shielding my face with a newspaper. That was the day Richard, gently touching the small of her back, held the door for my replacement as they came outdoors. She wore a blush-pink dress that matched the tinge on her cheek as she looked up at my husband from beneath her eyelashes.
I could have confronted them. Or I could have called out, feigning enthusiasm, and suggested we all have lunch together. But I simply watched them go.
Now I frantically press all the intercom buttons belonging to the residents of Emma’s building, hoping someone will let me in. I hear the door buzz a second later and I burst inside the modest small lobby. I glance at the row of mailboxes, grateful that her last name reveals her floor and apartment number: 5C. As I run up the stairs, I wonder if she will take Richard’s name. If we will be linked in that way, too.
I stand in front of her apartment and knock loudly.
“Who is it?” she calls.
I stand to one side so she can’t see me through the peephole. If Emma recognizes my voice, she may not read my note. So I just push the envelope through the crack at the bottom of her door. I watch my note disappear, then I run back down the hallway to the stairs, hoping I’ll get out before Richard arrives.
I picture her unfolding my letter, and I think of all the things it didn’t say.
Like how I faked my stomach flu the night of the Philharmonic.
“Why don’t you take Emma?” I had suggested to Richard when I called him to cancel. I made sure my voice sounded weak. “I remember being young and poor in the city. It would be a real treat for her.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. All I want to do is sleep. And I’d hate for you to miss it.”
He agreed.
The moment we hung up, I made myself a cup of tea and began to think about my next move.
I knew I had to be careful. I couldn’t afford a single mistake. My attention to detail needed to be as scrupulous as Richard’s always was.
When I went to bed that evening, I put a bottle of Pepto-Bismol on my nightstand, next to my water.
I paced myself. I didn’t even mention her for weeks, but when Richard closed a big deal, I suggested he thank Emma for her help by giving her a generous gift certificate to Barneys.
For a moment, I worried I’d gone too far. He paused in shaving and looked at me carefully. “You never reminded me to do anything for Diane.”
I shrugged and reached for my hairbrush. Trying to cover, I said, “I guess I identify with Emma. Diane was married. She had a family. Emma reminds me of myself when I first came to New York. I think it would go a long way toward making her feel appreciated.”
“Good idea.”
I slowly released the breath I’d been holding.
I imagined her opening the certificate, her eyebrows rising in surprise. Perhaps she’d go into his office to thank him. Maybe, a few days later, she’d wear to the office a dress she’d bought with his certificate and show it to him.
The stakes were so high. I tried to continue with my usual routines, but adrenaline flooded me. I found myself constantly pacing. My appetite evaporated and weight fell off me. I lay awake beside Richard at night, mentally reviewing my plan, searching for holes and weaknesses. I was desperate to hurry things along, but I forced myself to bide my time. I was a hunter in a blind, waiting for my prey to wander into position.
My big break came when Emma called me one evening from Dallas, saying Richard needed to catch a later flight because his meeting was running long.
I’d prayed for an opportunity exactly like this one. Everything hinged on what would happen next; I had to play my part seamlessly. Emma couldn’t suspect I’d been creating a house of cards; that I was poised to set the final one in place.
“Poor guy,” I’d said. “He’s been working so hard. He must be exhausted.”
“I know. This client is really demanding!”
“You’ve been working hard, too,” I said as if it had just occurred to me. “He doesn’t need to rush. Why don’t you suggest he have a nice dinner and book a hotel? Just come back in the morning. It’ll be easier on both of you.” Please, take the bait.
“Are you sure, Vanessa? I know he wants to get home to you.”
“I insist.” I faked a yawn. “To tell you the truth, I’m looking forward to watching some trashy television and vegging out. And he’ll just want to talk about work.”
The idle, dull wife. That was how I’d wanted her to think of me.
Richard deserved better, didn’t he? He needed someone who could appreciate the intricacies of his job; who would take care of him after a rough day. Someone who wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his colleagues. Someone who was eager to be with him every night.
Someone exactly like her.
Please, I’d thought again.
“Okay,” Emma had eventually replied. “I’ll just check with him, and then if he agrees, I’ll let you know what time we land tomorrow once I switch the flights.”
“Thank you.”
As I hung up the phone, I realized that, for the first time in a long while, I was smiling.
I’d found my perfect replacement. Soon Richard would be done with me and I’d finally be free.
Neither of them knew what I’d orchestrated. They still don’t.