Love in Mid Air (37 page)

“She told me,” Belinda said grimly, “that you’ve gotta learn to love the game you’ve won. Do you think that’s really true?
That none of us will ever be happy until we’ve learned to love the game we’ve won?”

T
hat afternoon when I check the mail my postcard has finally come. A picture of Mayan ruins is on the front.

The postcard is bent and battered. It looks as if it came from Belize to North Carolina by way of Guam and I wonder if Lynn
wrote it last, if she had trouble thinking of what to say to me. Perhaps she carried the card in her purse for days, debating
whether it was worth sending. Or maybe she wrote them all at once, sitting at a pool bar with a fruity drink by her side,
and mine was simply the message that mysteriously went astray.

I walk down the driveway with the card on top of the stack of mail, carry it in, and place it on the counter. It stays there
for a couple of hours as I go back and forth between the house and the studio, as I’m taking the chicken out to defrost, as
I come in to pick up my keys for the afternoon carpool. It is not until I start supper that I pick it up again.

The ruin is dark, imposing. The man standing at the top of it looks as small as a splinter, barely recognizable as human against
the bright blue sky. I turn the card over and over in my hands until the writing on the back, Lynn’s neat round letters in
heavy black ink, turns into a blur. Whatever Lynn has seen, I will have to see it in my own way. Whatever she knows, I’ll
have to figure it out for myself. I throw the postcard into the trash and begin to rinse the salad in the sink.

E
veryone’s talking about us,” Phil says.

Actually, everybody’s talking about Lynn. We’ve finally been knocked off page one, but there’s no point trying to explain
that to Phil. “Well, if they are, whose fault is that?”

Phil frowns. “I never tell anyone anything.”

“Come off it. I know you call Nancy and basically ask her to spy on me. And then there are all these so-called counseling
sessions. I’ll bet we were hardly out of Jeff’s office until he was on the phone. I’ll bet he’s called Nancy every time we’ve
gone in and given her a blow-by-blow account of everything we said. We talk to him, he talks to her, she talks to everybody
else, and I go out to lunch with my girlfriends and look like a fool. I’m sick of it. It’s a sick situation.”

For a moment, Phil looks guilty. It’s not an expression that comes easily to his face. “You think we should get a different
counselor? Someone we don’t know? I could make some calls.”

Perfect. I’ve begged him to go into counseling for three years and now all of a sudden the idea has just occurred to him.
He is standing in front of me, the very embodiment of a concerned husband, eager to do everything he can. I suppose I should
take comfort that I’ve done a good job breaking him in for his second wife. But as for us—it’s too late to even bother explaining
why it’s too late. I shake my head. “I don’t see why we’re in counseling at all.”

“You want to quit?”

“Phil, we already have quit.”

“Because Jeff called me this afternoon and had a suggestion. I think we really upset him with all that stuff about the cat,
and anyway, he said that Nancy could sit in on our sessions too, if that would make you more comfortable. You know, so you
wouldn’t feel like the men were ganging up on you.”

“You’re kidding.”

“They’ve done couples therapy together. Back a long time ago, before their kids were born, but he said in our case he was
sure she’d be happy to—”

“Jeff and Nancy have a shitty marriage.”

“You think everybody has a shitty marriage.”

“No, just me and you and Jeff and Nancy.” I can think of a few others too, but it’s not the right time to go into it. “I don’t
want them working with us. I don’t want what’s left of our privacy to go completely down the drain. Have you managed to somehow
forget our entire last therapy session?”

“Nancy’s your best friend.”

“God help me if that’s true.”

“She cares about you.”

“In her own little tiny way, I guess she probably does. But the fact that she’s married to your best friend doesn’t make her
my best friend.”

“Jeff wouldn’t have told her if he didn’t think—”

“Do you really want to be having this conversation?”

“No,” Phil says, but he’s uneasy. He remembers the days when I would do anything to get him to talk to me. He remembers me
curled up in a fetal position, pleading with him under the bathroom door. He remembers the brochures for bed-and-breakfasts
I’d leave lying around the house on the off chance he’d see them and suggest going away for the weekend. The way I’d reach
for his hand in movies. Now he’s got a wife who walks out of the room while he’s still talking.

“Maybe you should reconsider and come to Florida with me and Tory,” he says, following me out through the garage.

“No. We need the break.” This is my chance to prepack a few things for the June 2 move and take them to Kelly’s. I don’t want
to be actually lugging boxes around while Tory is in the house. I’ve given this a lot of thought and I believe it would be
better to only tell her we’re moving about a week before the actual event. But that doesn’t mean I can’t get a few things
out while she’s in Florida.

“I’ll be back by Easter.”

I turn to him, trash in my hands. “Is that what you’re worried about? How this is going to look to the neighbors?”

“We’ll actually be back by Saturday. In time for the cookout.”

“Well, I certainly hope you’ve made sure that Jeff and Nancy have a copy of your flight schedule.”

“It’s not just that,” he says. Phil takes off his glasses and pretends to clean the lenses. He makes a great show of blowing
on them and wiping, but his eyes are lowered. At some point he has become afraid to meet my gaze. “I thought you might get
lonely.”

It would be enough to make me cry if I had any cry left in me. “Don’t worry about it,” I say, raising the heavy gray lid of
the garbage bin and dropping the bag inside. “I don’t get lonely as much as I used to.”

I
can’t believe he’d even think of coming here. This is your town.”

Kelly has begun wearing her hair up and it makes her look like a schoolteacher, or maybe more like a porn star playing a schoolteacher.
I imagine her releasing the clip from the back of her hair and tossing her head. Pulling off her glasses and being suddenly
beautiful.

“I’ve been to Boston.”

She rolls her eyes as if she can’t believe my stupidity. “That’s completely different, you know it is. If some guy he worked
with happened to run into the two of you together, he would’ve just turned away. Hell, next time he saw Gerry he’d probably
high-five him. But what do you think would happen if somebody saw you here, walking with some man that nobody knows? Do you
think they’d just snicker and turn away?”

“They’d probably chase me down with bows and arrows.”

Kelly’s eyes narrow. “This isn’t funny,”

“I wasn’t joking.”

She pushes away her uneaten muffin. “You don’t even have enough sense to be scared. You’re not thinking of taking him to your
house, are you?”

“I don’t know. I mean, why not? Phil and Tory are leaving tomorrow.”

Kelly reaches across the table and grabs my wrist. “For once just slow down and listen to me. If Phil decides he wants Tory,
what will you do? You don’t have any money, Elyse, you don’t have anywhere to go.”

I start to say, “Not even to your house?” but I don’t. Her house isn’t really her house. It’s Mark’s house, and he wouldn’t
want me there. Much less me and my daughter and my cat and my pots.

“Nancy’s seen bruises on your arms,” Kelly continues, her voice dropping a little as she leans toward me. “She was talking
about them back around the holidays, months ago, and despite what you might have told yourself, Nancy’s not an idiot. If you
give her enough time she’ll put it together. And if Nancy could see marks on you when you’re fully dressed, how can you pretend
that Phil isn’t going to notice anything?”

I don’t tell her that the bruises Nancy saw were from the night Phil handcuffed me to the bed. “It’s fifty-two days until
June first,” I say. “That’s when the apartment will be ready.”

“A lot can happen in fifty-two days.”

“Is it really so wrong for him to come to my house? I want him to see who I am.”

“You want him to see what you’re giving up. It’s a dangerous game, that’s all I’m telling you. That you’re playing a dangerous
game.”

Kelly thinks I haven’t got enough sense to be scared, but she’s wrong. Ever since I said the D-word the whole world has begun
to look like a dangerous game. I threw up twice yesterday. I slept three hours last night. All my friends are married. They
might not be my friends if I’m not married. I only have four thousand in my checking account. Last night Tory went straight
to Phil with her certificate for placing second in the spelling bee. She crawled on his lap. Maybe she loves him best. Maybe
she would want to stay with him. I turn on the news and there’s been a plane crash in Brazil, an earthquake in Taiwan, a woman
from a nearby town who ran out to the grocery store and ended up locked in the trunk of her car. This woman was just like
me, just somebody who was going to pick up a few things and all of a sudden they find her in the trunk of her own goddamn
car. Fear swirls around me, invisible but real as air. I try not to breathe it in but I do, every day.

Kelly sighs, pushes her hair back. It falls into her face again immediately. “So when is Wonder Boy flying in?”

“Wednesday.”

“Will I meet him?”

“I doubt it.”

“Sometimes I wonder if he even exists.”

Sometimes
I
wonder if he even exists.

“There’s a chance he doesn’t love you, Elyse.”

“Maybe I don’t love him.”

“No,” she says. “Listen to me. There’s a chance he doesn’t care about you at all. No matter what he says, no matter what you
feel, this isn’t real.”

“He does cartoon voices,” I say. “He does Pepé Le Pew.”

Kelly refastens the wayward strand of hair back into her bun. “Are you talking about that skunk?”

“Yeah, the French skunk in cartoons. Pepé Le Pew.”

“Pepé Le Pew was a rapist.”

“Pepé Le Pew was not a rapist.”

“I can’t believe we’ve gotten to the point in our lives where you think something like that is romantic. Jesus Christ, what’s
happened to you? You used to be Homecoming Queen.”

“No, really, he was putting my legs around his shoulders and he saw I had this bruise. He pulled my ankle toward his face
and he said it all French, he said, ‘She has injured herself to prove her love to me. It is strange, yes, but romantic, no?’
” I wait for a moment, but Kelly doesn’t react. Her face is blank, as if she’s having trouble even following the story. “You
don’t think that’s cute?”

“You don’t speak French.”

“He wasn’t speaking French, he was speaking English with a French accent.”

“Oh yeah, that’s totally different.”

“You’re just pissed because I’m happy,” I say. “You’re afraid I might actually get what I want and you can’t stand it. Because
you’ve always been the golden girl. You’re supposed to be the one who gets the Pepé Le Pew.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You think what happened back then is going to happen again, but you’ve got to know this,
Kelly. I’m not you.”

“You don’t have to sound so damn pleased about it.”

“You’ve forgotten. You’ve forgotten what it feels like. Try. Just for a second. Do you remember the day we called him on the
patio?”

“Do you remember the day you drove me to the clinic?”

“Gerry’s not Daniel. You’ve never even met him.”

“I don’t have to. Men like him use women, they use them completely up.”

“Is this what you tell yourself late at night? Is this how you justify marrying Mark and going to live in that big marble
house?”

“Go to hell.”

“When I get there, be sure to open the gate and let me in.”

We push away from the table in one move, as if we’ve planned it. I pull out my car keys and, just as abruptly, she sits back
down. “He’s playing you,” she says. “Someday you’ll wake up and see this for what it is.”

T
hat night, I dig out Daniel’s letters to Kelly and read them all again. I read them slowly, in sequence. I read them out loud.
Somebody has to remember. I sit on the floor as I read them, squinting in the dim light until I hear Phil’s car pulling into
the garage. Then I run into my closet and cram them into the first bag I can find.

But it isn’t Phil at the door, it’s Kelly.

“Don’t be mad at me,” she says. “You don’t know how much I hope I’m wrong.”