All You Could Ask For: A Novel (32 page)

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she says.

“It does to me,” I tell her. “You are living for tomorrow, and there’s nothing wrong with that because the best days in your life are in your future. But
this
is the best time in my life. I will never have this back again no matter what I do, so I’m not giving it up for anything.”

That’s around the time in the conversation I usually tell her we need to change the subject, because I’m not going to be able to be friends with her if we don’t.

“You see?” she’ll say. “You can’t take it because you know I’m right.”

But I don’t know anything of the kind.

In fact, what she is really doing is proving my point for me.

Samantha is the only person in my life who knows what I have been through, and she is practically incapable of talking to me about anything else. And
that
is exactly what would happen if I battled this publicly. It’s all anyone would talk to me about. It’s all they would see when they looked at me. It’s all they would think of when they see my kids, my husband. It would become my entire life, and that isn’t what I want. I want the life I have right now.

She’s also wrong because, beneath it all, she thinks this is about Scott. She thinks I worry that if he knew I was sick he wouldn’t love me anymore, or he wouldn’t want me sexually or he just wouldn’t be able to deal with the whole thing. She’s so wrong about that. My husband is a good man. He’s not perfect, none of them are, but if he knew what the doctors had told me he would absolutely force me to go through
all
the treatment and he would never take no for an answer. And that’s precisely why I don’t want him to know. I’m choosing today. I’m choosing to have and to cherish every precious moment of this life Scott and I have built for as long as I can have it. I hope it is for a really long time and I know it isn’t going to be forever, so I’ll just take whatever is given to me and be grateful for it. It doesn’t seem to make sense to Samantha and it may not make sense to you, but it makes sense to me and I think that’s all that really matters.

Anyway, tonight I am calling Samantha because it is an hour before her date with Dr. Marks and I am so excited I could burst. It’s been a long time since I’ve successfully fixed anyone up. And, as you know, I have a little crush on him, too, which makes this all the more thrilling in a different way.

“
Yes,
I’m getting a blow-out,” she said upon answering.

That was it. No greeting, just her complaint that I’d been nagging her about this date for a week. But, come on, the poor girl doesn’t have a mother to talk her through these things. Dr. Marks is a handsome, charming, single man; those don’t grow on trees. She cannot meet him in a nice restaurant with her hair up and nothing but lip gloss on her face. He is a man worth a little effort.

“You don’t have to be so cranky,” I said, though I didn’t really mind.

“Sorry,” she said, sounding frazzled. “I’m just running a little late. What’s up?”

“I just wanted to wish you a wonderful evening and good luck,” I told her. “I hope that the magic is still there, and I have a funny feeling it is.”

“Thank you very much,” she said, more quietly. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Are you nervous?” I asked.

“I am
not
nervous.” She hesitated. “I’m excited. There’s a difference.”

“I’ll accept that,” I told her. “Now remember, don’t drink too much, don’t even consider offering to pay for anything, and don’t forget not to say anything about my situation.”

Samantha huffed an exasperated sigh, loudly. “You know,” she said, “the best thing I could ever do for you would be to tell him.”

“I know you wouldn’t do that,” I said calmly. “I know you wouldn’t violate the trust I have placed in you. I was just reminding you because he’s the only person you know who also knows me.”

“How about Katherine?”

“Yes, okay, she would remember me, too,” I said. “Don’t tell her either. Now, you need to get going. Have a wonderful, romantic, memorable night. Don’t sleep with him on the first date, under any circumstances. And if you don’t call me first thing tomorrow morning with all the details I shall never forgive you.”

KATHERINE

“TELL ME, WHAT HAVE you heard about my marriage?”

The words hung in the air like the echo of a firecracker. Phil was beside me, our hands intertwined, his knee touching mine. It was the closest we had been in a long time. I wasn’t going to kiss him. That was out of the question, though it didn’t mean there wasn’t a part of me that wanted to. Despite myself, despite everything that happened, I had to admit that even now he was just my type. He is strong and smart, decisive and dynamic. Perhaps he is everything my father turned out not to be. I never really thought of it that way but suddenly now I did. Suddenly now, sitting on the couch, near enough to smell the cigarette smoke in his hair and see the tiny spot beneath his jaw he missed when he shaved, I figured it out. He’s everything I wish my father had been. Oh, the money I could have saved on therapy if I had seen that before.

Anyway, Phil didn’t look so good but he still looked
good
. He still has those huge, strong hands, muscled from a childhood spent helping his father carry milk crates in Brooklyn. You can file the nails and cut the cuticles, but the muscles in a man’s hands will always betray him.

And I’m still a woman. Maybe that’s the most important thing I figured out sitting here. It’s easy to forget sometimes when you’re sick, when you become so accustomed to undressing in front of nurses that you stop bothering to close the door, when the attractive male doctor wants only to know how many times you’ve moved your bowels this week, when you’re afraid to fuss with your hair because so much of it remains in the brush when you do, when you take to wearing men’s boxer shorts rather than your usual underwear because they are so much easier to manage and more comfortable. I hadn’t been in my closet in three months, I realized, but as Phil held my hand I knew I would again, perhaps the moment he left. I wanted to dress like myself. I wanted makeup. I would buy that long, blond wig Samantha has been trying to talk me into. All of a sudden, Marie’s black-tie wedding party, which I’d been dreading, sounded pretty good. And, frankly, so did the idea of having sex with Phil.

But then he asked that question about his marriage, and I felt everything inside of me that had begun feeling warm quickly go cold. Gently, I pulled my hand away from his and tugged the collar of my sweater closer to my ears, and I kept my hands to myself the rest of the time we were together.

“I heard that you and Holly separated,” I said flatly. “I’m sorry I didn’t send a note but I’ve been a little busy.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he said, shifting a bit uncomfortably. “What did you hear?”

I didn’t have any desire to hurt him, I really didn’t. Despite all the horrible things I had wished upon him over the years, here was the perfect opportunity to hurt him and I didn’t want to do it. Maybe because he looked so vulnerable. Maybe
that
was really all I needed, not to see him suffer, just to see him in a place where he might. I didn’t need to tell him what I’d heard just to humiliate him, but the truth is the truth and there didn’t seem much point in hiding from it.

“I heard that Holly was having an affair,” I said slowly and carefully. “That was the rumor that ran around the office. But I’m aware of how inaccurate the grapevine can be, so I assumed it probably wasn’t true.”

“It was.”

I couldn’t quite place the look in his eyes. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“Thank you,” he replied, and then paused and took a little breath. “But there’s more to the story than that.” He pulled another cigarette from the package and held it, unlit, between his fingers. “I don’t have any idea why I’m telling you this, but for some reason I want you to know. Maybe it’s because of everything that happened between us. Maybe it’s because I think it will make you happy. Or maybe it’s just because I need to tell somebody and for some reason I feel like, in spite of everything, I’m still closer to you than anybody else.”

I just stared at his face, and started to feel a little angry. After all these years, why the hell was he talking like this
now
?

“You’re about to become the only person besides my doctor who knows about this. There are confidentiality laws that dictate he
has
to keep it between us. No such laws govern this conversation, of course, but I trust that you understand I am telling you this in confidence and it will stay between us forever.”

“I won’t say a word,” I said.

“My marriage has been in major trouble for years,” he said. “And to tell you the truth the reason why is the same reason I chose her instead of you.”

I sat up a little taller. “Well, I can’t wait to hear this.”

“Holly didn’t challenge me so much,” he said. “When I took her to restaurants, she thought they were the most special evenings in the world. When I talked about going to Europe, she acted as though it would be like flying to the moon. You were different. You had more than I did coming in and just the same vision for the future as me. I felt like anything I could give you, you already expected. She
appreciated
it all so much more. Somehow that made her much easier for me.”

I’d heard those words before. I’d heard myself say them, but coming from him I found they left me feeling disappointed. Twenty years of my life boiled down to nothing more than this: Holly was more impressed to have whatever Phil chose to give her than I would have been.

“At first it was fine,” he continued, “because of the kids. When they were small I was always working and she was always with them, so the time we had together was usually reserved for sex. But when Daniel was ten or eleven, and Michael was away at boarding school, then it became just her and me, and there was nothing there. She didn’t push me. She didn’t challenge me. And where I once thought that made her the perfect wife, suddenly it was the opposite.”

I cut him off, sharply. “Phil, nothing about this story interests me so far, and I am having really serious doubts about it getting any better. I thank you for taking care of my money, that was a wonderful gesture on your part and even if you did it solely to assuage your own guilt over all the bullshit you put me through, I still appreciate it. And, frankly, I have come to realize in the last few months that it wasn’t
you
that put me through all of it anyway. It was me. All you did was dump me, and worse things than that happen to people every day. The fact I chose to let it define me for so long was my problem, not yours. And in the very same way, the fact that you chose to marry a vapid whore is your problem, not mine. So I hope you don’t mind if I don’t cry over the fact that she cheated on you. She probably saved you half of everything you own, which she would have gotten in the divorce if you had just told her to hit the road. So, it’s been great seeing you again, let’s do it again real soon. I think I’m done for the evening.”

I stood and started toward my bedroom. I was a step from escaping when he said, “Kat, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but the truth is it wasn’t her cheating on me, it was me cheating on her.”

I stopped. I didn’t turn back toward him but I listened.

“I’ve been running around for years. Started probably the second year of our marriage, even though I was happy at the time. As crazy as it sounds, I just did it because I could. I kept it away from work, but that still left plenty of other options, on airplanes, in hotel bars, at health clubs. I could get any woman I wanted and I did, and I never gave it a second thought. I didn’t view it as a referendum on my marriage or my feelings for my wife or even on my own morality, it was just something I did because there didn’t seem to be a compelling reason not to.”

“Not if you’re a narcissistic sociopath, I can see that,” I said. “Go on.”

“In recent years, it changed. Not the frequency of it but the meaning. I was completely disillusioned in my marriage. I started looking for more from these other women. It wasn’t just a little flattery, a little jewelry, a lot of sex. I wanted to talk. I wanted to have dinner. I wanted it to matter, and that was when I knew it had to change.”