My One and Only

Instead, I had BeverLee, chattering constantly, forcefeeding me coffee cake and bemoaning that I’d opted against the dollar dance. While I knew her intentions were good, I’d wanted to tap her with a magic wand and render her silent, stop having her tell me I was “purdier than a new set of snow tires.” How could I be getting married without my mother? How I could I be getting married, period? How was it that I’d let things get so out of hand?

No one else seemed concerned. My father told me Nick was “a good kid” and imagined we’d “do all right.” Nick’s father was beefy and charming and shallow…alas, he was Nick’s best man; Jason was already half in the bag, his hair worn long for Tom Cruise’s Interview with a Vampire look. Christopher, then in high school, flirted with Willa, whom he wouldn’t see again for thirteen years.

Even as I walked down the aisle on Dad’s arm, that little voice in my brain was whispering furiously. You don’t have to do this. This has disaster written all over it. Nick’s face was solemn, almost as if he guessed what I was thinking. He recited his vows in a somber voice, his dark eyes steady, and even then I thought the words almost ridiculously naive. Did anyone believe that vows meant anything anymore? My parents had said the same things to each other. Nick’s parents had also promised till death did them part. Who were Nick and I to believe that our vows would be any more lasting than the breath it took to say them?

Then it was my turn. “I, Harper, take you, Nick…” and suddenly, my eyes were wet, my voice grew husky and I wanted with all my heart for those words to be true. “To have and to hold from this day forth…” We could do this. We could be that little old couple who still reached for each other’s hand. “…all the days of my life.” And I looked into Nick’s gypsy eyes and believed.

After the wedding, we spent a few days in one of those huge sea captains’ houses on North Water Street in Edgartown. It was owned, as are they all, by a fabulously wealthy off-Islander for whom my dad occasionally did some work. He’d generously offered his house for our brief honeymoon, as he wouldn’t come to the island till the Fourth of July. And so, for a few days, Nick and I played house as we were playing grown-ups…we drank wine on the vast back porch, planned our trip for next summer—our true honeymoon, we called it. We made love in a room overlooking the lighthouse, cuddled and watched movies, and for those five days, I believed in happily ever after. For five days, it seemed possible that Nick and I would have a house, children, a life, an old age together. Maybe I was wrong to be so…dubious. I wasn’t.

Six days after our wedding, we drove down to Manhattan to the tiny apartment in a desolate part of Tribeca, and everything changed. Nick went back to work. His hours were long. His dedication was impressive. His ambition was boundless. His wife was left alone.

Of course, I realized he had to work, to impress his bosses, to separate himself from the pack of other young and hungry architects. It wasn’t the hours—well, the hours didn’t help. But Nick had a plan, and that plan went as follows: graduate at the top of his class. (Check). Land job with top firm. (Check). Get married. (Check). And once the box next to my name had been checked off, Nick sort of…dropped me.

Because I’d missed the deadline on applying to New York law schools, I had an unwanted year off. Our plan— Nick’s plan, really—was for me to apply to Fordham, Columbia and NYU, make our little apartment a home and fall in love with the city. No need for me to work; he was making enough to pay our bills. Alas, our apartment was a dingy little walk-up in Tribeca, which was something of a ghost town in those days, a place where it was nearly impossible to find a newspaper on the weekend, where no families seemed to live, where the noise of the West Side Highway was endless and the screech of the subway woke me up at night.

I tried to make our apartment homey, but I wasn’t really the Martha Stewart type. Painting the bathroom, scrubbing grout with bleach, putting throw pillows on our futon couch…it failed to deliver the promised satisfaction. Though I initially cooked dinner every night, stretching our dollars as best I could, Nick rarely made it home before eight…or nine…or ten.

All the effort he’d put into our courtship, into wooing me, because yes, I was a prickly porcupine of a person, I knew that…all the little ways he’d made me feel cherished and safe…that all ended as soon as we hit the Big Apple. I found myself married to a man I barely saw.

I was alone in a city I didn’t know and didn’t like, to be honest. It was so loud, so hot and muggy. At night, I’d have to wash my face twice and swab my skin with toner to get it clean. Our apartment smelled like cabbage, thanks to Ivan, the sullen Russian who lived downstairs and rarely left the building, who listened to soap operas at top volume and always seemed to be lurking, shirtless, in his doorway when I came down the stairs. Garbage trucks clattered and banged down the street at four in the morning, and someone had a dog that barked all night. Central Park was a long, tooth-jarring subway ride uptown, and Battery Park, much closer, was dirty then, filled with drug dealers and homeless people sleeping on benches, a sight that never failed to gut me.

I had two friends from Amherst down here…one in law school, one in publishing, and both were caught up in the glamour and excitement of their lives. The fact that I’d gotten married was baffling to them. “What’s it like?” they’d ask, and my answer would be vaguely pleasant. The truth was, marriage thus far sucked.

Nick left for work about twenty minutes after he got up at 6 a.m. If he did make it home before ten he’d spend perhaps fifteen minutes talking to me before disappearing with a smile and an apology behind his computer screen. Many nights, he wouldn’t get home till after eleven, and I’d have fallen asleep, realizing he was home only when I rolled over and felt his sleeping form. In the five months we were married, he didn’t take off one entire weekend, opting instead to go to the office on Saturdays and most Sundays.

He quickly made himself indispensable at work. His boss, Bruce MacMillan, aka Big Mac, loved Nick’s quick wit and work ethic, so Nick was promoted to the wine-and-dine crew, charming clients, schmoozing with the more senior architects, learning from them, kissing up to them, getting in on their projects. He was happier than I’d ever seen him.

I tried to be a good spouse, tried not to be selfish and resentful. I wasn’t stupid…I knew this was an investment in the future. But it was Nick’s future, the one he’d always envisioned, without room for accommodating another person…or so it seemed. I wasn’t a part of his world; he didn’t need advice on how to handle people or how to do his job. What I wanted desperately was to feel included but instead, as the weeks passed, I felt more and more as if we weren’t really in this new life together. I was just along for Nick’s ride. Harper—check. On to the next thing.

I tried, I really did. Wandered the neighborhoods, tried to decipher the massive subway system. I spent all day collecting anecdotes to share with Nick, then began to resent him for not being home to hear them. I hung out at the local library, signed up for some literacy volunteering, but that was just a few hours a week. New York scared me. Everyone was so…sure. So clear on who they were and where they were going. When I voiced my feelings to Nick one morning as he hurriedly shaved, he was baffled.

“I don’t know, honey,” he said. “Just try to have fun, don’t overthink everything. This is the greatest city on the planet. Get out there, enjoy. Oh, shit, is that the time? Sorry, honey, I have to run. We have a meeting with the people from London.”

I got out there, if only to please my Brooklyn-born husband. But Nick knew all the neighborhoods, was something of an expert (and pain in the ass) on the city, so my tales of wandering (when I did get the chance to tell them) seemed to bore him.

“Actually, you were in Brooklyn Heights, honey. Cobble Hill’s a little more inland. Sure, I’ve been to Governor’s Island. I know exactly where you were. Of course I’ve been in the Empire State Building. A million times.” He’d give me a tolerant smile, his eyes drifting back to his computer.

I think things took an irreversible turn about three months into our marriage. When I forced myself to tell Nick how lonely I was, he suggested we have a baby.

I looked at him for a long, burning minute, then said, “Are you out of your mind, Nick?”

His head jerked back. “What?”

“Nick…I barely see you! You want me to have a baby? So we can both be trapped here while you swan off and work your eighteen-hour days? So you can ignore me and your child? I don’t think so!”

“You’re the one who’s complaining about being lonely, Harper,” he said.

“I wouldn’t be lonely if you’d actually spend some time with me, Nick.” My throat felt as if a knife was stuck in it, my eyes were hot and dry.

“Harper, baby, I have to do this. I have to work.”

“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.