Save Me (22 page)

Six courses later, I observe—because this feels like an out-of-body experience—that I haven’t had this much fun in years. Paolo has tutored me on each glass of wine I’ve consumed. The food was more art than sustenance, and I relished every bite, as evidenced by the way that Lucy’s dress is pulling tightly over my happy potbelly. Seated across the table from Paolo and Lucy and me is an architect and her partner, who is a banker and a fellow Massachusetts native, and a Web mogul and his sculptor girlfriend. The company has been interesting and wonderful, maybe in part because I had no expectation that I would enjoy anyone whom I met tonight. I assumed that they would be pretentious, snooty, too self-absorbed to bother with basic courtesy. I realize, once again, that I need to stop making assumptions about my sister and the world that she inhabits.

And so, when people stand and start milling around and giving each other good-bye air kisses, I suggest that we all go downstairs to the bar.

“How much wine did my sister drink, Paolo?” Lucy leans across me to joke, grasping his leg just above the knee.

“Can you blame her?” he says, squeezing his hand over hers. “Did you taste that Viognier? Have you ever had anything better?”

“Maybe once or twice,” Lucy says, winking at him.

“Oh, Jesus. Please.” I say, extracting their hands from each other’s. “Let’s go downstairs.”

The bar is crowded but Paolo is able to get us comfortably ensconced at a table in the back of the room next to the fireplace. It’s chilly, or perhaps I’m just cold because the silk dress that I’m wearing is no sturdier than a tissue. A bottle of champagne appears and Lucy hands me a glass, telling me that my birthday begins in exactly four minutes. She flashes her telephone to show me—11:56 p.m.—and for a moment, I feel despondent, that tumbling-backward sense of loss about the past few months. But then I raise my glass, and I take a small sip of the crisp, lovely champagne, and I vow to myself that I will get over it within the next four minutes. I will not let myself spend a second of my next year wallowing in what he did to me.

We get back to Lucy’s around three, an hour I haven’t seen purely for fun since my twenties. When she goes into the bathroom to get ready for bed, I call Owen. I know I shouldn’t—he’s most definitely asleep—but I’m a little drunk, it’s my birthday, and he’s my husband. I should be able to call him at three o’clock in the morning to tell him about dinner and “Moonlight Mile” and Paolo and the whole thing. The disappointment sinks deeper each time the phone rings and I realize that he’s not going to pick up. I wonder if it’s woken him—if he squinted at the caller ID, saw it was me, and decided not to answer. I wonder if he’s home. “Hey,” I say after the voicemail message. “Just me. Sorry to call late. Wanted to tell you about tonight. I’ll try you in the morning.”
He’ll wish me a happy birthday tomorrow
, I think, holding my phone in my hand.
He’ll call as soon as he’s up.

I lie back on the couch, looking up at the old tin ceiling tiles, and listen to the water running as Lucy performs what I’m sure is an overcomplicated beauty ritual that I will someday regret never doing.

I unfold the thick, soft throw on the end of the couch, place it over me, and click on the text message icon on my phone.

Have you heard of a new hotel in NY called the South Village Inn?
I type. It’s only midnight in California. He could be awake.

A message pops up on my screen almost immediately:
You could say that.

So you do know it?
I type.
I thought you would. I went there tonight—for a party with my sister. Came up to NY for a visit yesterday.

No kidding! I can’t believe that
, he writes.

No, I’m not kidding
, I type.
I do get out of Durham every once in a while, smartass.

No—ha. It’s not that
, he writes.
It’s just that as of ten o’clock this morning, we own that place.

I read the message twice to make sure I read it correctly—
owns
the hotel?

You OWN the hotel?!

Yep! My partner is there—signed the papers this morning. It hasn’t been announced yet. I can’t believe you’re there!

I sit up and read the line again.
Wait
, I type.
But Lucy said some family
owns this place. Didn’t it just open?

Yes. Owners about to announce their divorce—decided to sell the hotel rather than fight over who gets to keep it. Didn’t want to do Donald and Ivana, Part 2.

And they sold it to YOU? Amazing!

I know! US! The suckers. That’s why I had to go back to California so abruptly, to work on our pitch.

Unbelievable!
I write.
You’re even more big-time than I thought you were. I wish I’d known earlier tonight. Could’ve name-dropped—something the crowd I was with would have appreciated. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

Thanks
, he says.
No big deal, though, really, for a big-time guy like me.

I laugh just as Lucy’s coming out of the bathroom. “Who is it?” she asks, patting some sort of blue gel under her eyes with her ring fingers. “Owen?”

“No.” I glance up at her as I type.

She stops and raises her eyebrows at me. “Annie?”

I shake my head as another message pops up on the screen.
What are you visiting for?
he asks.

“Ohhhh,” Lucy says, looking over my shoulder before she leans down to plant a kiss on my cheek. “Well, don’t text all night. We have a big day tomorrow.”

I put the phone in my lap and look up at her. “Thanks for tonight,” I say. “It was so much fun.”

“Happy Birthday,” she says, tousling my hair.

After she’s closed the door to her bedroom, I pick up the phone.

I’m here to celebrate my birthday
, I type.

When is it? Not today?

Today!

Damn! Never should have let my partner take this one. Would have loved to celebrate with you.

I hesitate for a minute, my thumbs hovering over the screen, and then type back:
Me, too.

W
hen I open my eyes, it takes a second or two to realize where I am. The beigey pink curtains. The muffled whir of traffic outside the window.
Lucy’s room.
My phone is ringing. I reach across the bed to the spot next to the windowsill where I put it to charge last night.

“Hello?” I clear my throat.

“Happy Birthday,” Owen says.

“Thank you.”
He remembered.
I snuggle back under the covers. Lucy must already be up.

“So you had a late night,” he says.

“We had a lot of fun. I’m sorry I called so late. I couldn’t resist. Or maybe the wine couldn’t resist. Did I wake you?”

“Just briefly,” he says. “I fell right back to sleep.”

“Oh,” I say. “Then why didn’t you—”
Forget it—not worth it.
“Are you going to the hospital today?”

He laughs. “It’s ten o’clock in the morning, Daph. I’ve been here for two hours.”

“It’s ten?”

“Ten.”

“Wow.” I sit up and notice the note on the nightstand.
Went out to grab bagels, sleepyhead. See you soon.

“What do you two have planned for the day?” he asks.

“Lucy’s out picking up breakfast. She’s taking me to a spa later.”

“Of course she is,” he says. Something about his tone annoys me.

“It will be great,” I say. “I just want to put on a fluffy robe, let a stranger rub my back for an hour, maybe drink some more champagne. Forget real life for a few hours, basically.”

“Oh,” he says. “Well, good.”

Well, good?
There’s an awkward pause.
Is he going to say that he misses me? Is he going to comment on what I’ve said? “You deserve to be pampered, Daphne. Go enjoy yourself! I wish I could be with you on your birthday but I’m so glad you’re having a good time
.
”
When we were first together, we had a tradition of buying each other cheap, nostalgic birthday cakes—I made him a Funfetti cake from the boxed mix one year, he got me a Carvel ice cream cake the next. Last year, he brought home a box of chocolate and some flowers, and I remember thinking, as he presented it to me and I noticed the $7.99 price tag on the chocolate that he didn’t bother to scrape off, that he probably got both from the hospital gift shop as he left work. I’m surprised there wasn’t a little plastic “Get Well Soon” sign stuck in the bouquet.

“What will you do today?” I ask. “I hope you won’t work all day on a Saturday.”

“No. I’ll probably work here for a while, maybe catch the baseball game later.”

“Sounds good,” I say. “No other plans?”

“Nope.”

I wait a few seconds to see if he’ll elaborate. He doesn’t. The conversation is fading out (not that it ever really got started) and I suddenly want to escape it as quickly as possible. “Well, I should probably get up. Lucy may be waiting for me.”

“All right. Have a good day, okay?”

“I will,” I say.

“Okay, love you,” he says.

“Love you, too.” I hang up the phone and hold it to my chest. Why didn’t he sound more animated, more excited,
happier
? There are a lot of things that he could have said. I don’t know what exactly—I’m not sure what he did wrong.
Did I do something wrong?
The call felt edgy and weird. Uncomfortable. Bad.

I reach and pull the curtain from the window. It’s overcast. There’s a restaurant across the street where a crowd of people are standing outside, waiting for tables for brunch. I lie back down, pick up my phone, and start to reread last night’s texts from Andrew, but a few seconds in, I stop myself. This probably shouldn’t be the thing I use to make me feel better.

Later at the spa, Lucy and I are discussing the phone call with Owen and snacking on a fruit plate between treatments.

“It’s not that I don’t think he cares about my birthday, I know that he does, it’s just that he always seems distracted, especially on the phone. He was at work, though,” I say, leaning back into a lounge chair so soft and cushy that I’ve decided that the only thing that will get me out of it is the promise of more spa treatments.

“You’re supposed to be relaxing,” Lucy says. “Not thinking about Owen.”

“You’re right,” I say. “It’s just irritating.”

“No offense,” she says. “But I find it kind of funny, given recent events, that you say his quote-unquote
distractedness
is merely
irritating
.”

I ignore her. I have just spent an hour under the expert hands of Matilda from Finland and I will not let anything bother me now. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. They must pump eucalyptus oil into the ventilation system. I get the occasional massage at work and have had maybe one or two “spa day” experiences during bachelorette weekends for girlfriends when I was younger, but I’ve never been anywhere like this. The spa is a jewel inhabiting the top floor of a nondescript building off of Second Avenue. I have yet to see another customer, but I can only imagine what it costs people who do not have Lucy’s job title. Everything is white—the walls, the ceiling, the floors, the chairs, the towels, the robes. It’s like a new age asylum, or heaven. I suppose I could use some of both.

“So,” Lucy starts. That one syllable is all I need to hear to know that she’s not done talking about this. “What about that Andrew?”

I pick a bright red raspberry from the plate between us, pop it in my mouth, and savor the sweetness. “Well, for starters, ‘that Andrew’ isn’t my husband. Two, that’s not how I think about him. Three, even if I was interested in moving on and meeting someone new, it’s not that simple. My approach to men is not like deciding which chocolate to pick from the box.”

“Maybe it should be,” she says, stretching her legs out in front of her and wiggling her toes. “You know, I was thinking about this—” she starts.

“You were, were you?” I interrupt. “I should give you Annie’s number. You two could talk for hours.”

She gives me a look. “
Anyhow
, I was thinking: Remember that story about Grandma Jean and her emergency cigarette?”

“Yes, I remember.” My grandmother was a relentless chain smoker for many, many years, and when she finally quit, she decided to keep one last cigarette in the drawer of the old secretary desk in her family room, just in case. My mother always checks to see if it’s still there when she visits.

“I think Owen’s your emergency cigarette,” Lucy says.

I chuckle. “That doesn’t make the tiniest bit of sense.”

“I think it makes perfect sense, actually,” she says. “You’re hanging on to him
just in case
. You don’t think you can be totally without him.”

“Or maybe I
want
to be with him,” I say. “And this entire experience is going to make our relationship worlds better than it would have been otherwise.”

She leans over to inspect her just-painted toes—or to pretend to.

“Lucy, tell me what I’m doing wrong by wanting to build a life with the person I married.”

The messy bun on the back of her head shakes back and forth. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Well, then, thanks for the talk.”

“Daphne, I don’t know what I’m talking about, okay?” she says, leaning back into her chair and turning to me. “All I know is that even before all of this happened with Owen, you’ve never seemed particularly enamored. He’s great on paper, sure, but I never would have described the two of you as passionately in love.”

“We’ve been together for a long time, Luce. What do you think marriage is like? It’s not slow-dancing-in-the-kitchen,
Bridges of Madison County
bullshit.”

She sneers at me, jokingly, and reaches for a piece of apricot. “As I said, I don’t know what I’m talking about.” She chews for a minute and then continues. “Listen, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve carefully calculated every single thing that’s ever happened in your life. You’ve achieved everything you’ve ever wanted, and you should be proud of that. You’ve worked hard.”

“Uh-huh.” I turn to face her, warily anticipating what’s next.

“And what happened with Owen is awful and not at all your fault but I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think you were any better off before it all went down.”

“You don’t think my marriage was good, basically.”

She puts her palm up and shrugs.

“You and I are just different, Lucy. We want different things. With all due respect, I don’t want a life like yours. I don’t want to cheat on my boyfriend with Italian wine distributors.”

She laughs. “Wait.
Paolo?
Is that what you’re talking about? I never slept with Paolo.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“He’s simply a massive flirt, Daphne. He’s Italian, for God’s sake.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously! I’ve never cheated on Bobby. And I can’t believe you would think such a thing.”

“On the occasion or two that I see you each year, and in every phone call or email I get from you, you’re always talking about some person you’re meeting for drinks or going to dinner with—I can’t keep up with all of the names!”

“Daphne, those are business dinners half the time and social outings with Bobby the other half. Honestly, do you think I’d do that to him?”

I shrug. “Lucy, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just drawing my own incorrect conclusions, but you and Bobby don’t seem all that committed. It’s a very different relationship than what I’m used to.”

“Owen seems real committed,” she says under her breath.

“Lucy, come on.”

“Bobby and I couldn’t be happier,” she says. “We’re absolutely serious about our relationship, but the difference is we don’t treat it like work. We have
fun
together. We keep it light because there’s enough heavy elsewhere. That’s why I love him, Daphne. We have very separate work lives that are plenty stressful—I know you don’t believe that my life could be demanding, but guess what? It’s more than facials and road-testing mascaras. Do you know what’s happened to the magazine industry over the past ten years? Circulation and advertising numbers have plummeted. It doesn’t exactly make my job easy. Bobby is the place where I go to get a break from all of that. He is the good part, the positive part, the
real
part.”

“Okay,” I say. “I get it.”

“Daphne.” She shakes her head. “Let me ask you this: If you were told you had one week to live, would you be happy to spend it the way that you and Owen spent your time, before he dropped the bombshell on you?”

I shake my head at her, wracking my brain to come up with an example of the
real
and wonderful life that Owen and I had together. The truth is that I barely remember being together during those weeks leading up to his birthday, when he confessed. I can’t remember one recent instance when we really laughed together, or shared a private and meaningful talk, or spent the kind of time together that left me feeling like there was no place I’d rather be. Maybe I have mistaken the way that we’d become for a “comfortable normal” when it was anything but. I feel that lurking suspicion rising to the surface—maybe we had lost each other long before he told me about Bridget.

“You’re not answering me,” Lucy says.

“We had a lot going on, Lucy,” I stammer. “We were renovating a house together. We were on the verge of starting a family. We were building a life.”

“Right, but were you doing those things together—
really
together? Or side by side like business partners? Or even—I know how those baby talks were going—as adversaries?”

The thing is, I know she’s right. I look at her—my dear silly sister with her fluorescent nail polish and her hair piled on top of her head—and I think that she is far wiser than I give her credit for. She has me pinned. I take a sip of lemon water.

“Listen, I never had a relationship like yours, that lasted so many years and went through so many changes,” Lucy says. “But I think that the person whom you choose to devote your life to should excite you at least and should give you some sort of comfort. I know that it’s not easy, but shouldn’t marriage at least be a sort of relief from the rest of your life? Just look at Mom and Dad.”

I think of my parents, who still go out for dinner every Friday night just like they did when we were growing up. Dad helps with Mom’s cooking contests, taking every mini pot pie and bar cookie recipe to his coworkers for feedback. She gets the paper for him each morning, unfolding it at his place at the breakfast table so that it’s ready to go when he comes down from his shower.

I don’t know that it’s possible for Owen and me to be that way now. We stopped cheering each other on years ago, if we ever really did it at all. When we began to drift apart, neither of us did anything about it. We were too busy with other things—other priorities—to stop it.

I remember something I learned years ago: The brain, despite all of the miraculous things that it can do, is actually incredibly inefficient, even lazy. It is attracted to things that it knows and even draws us toward what’s already familiar. On average, you will typically pick the ice cream flavor you usually order, or buy a car that resembles one that’s similar to the make and model you already have—and maybe even choose a partner based on your history instead of what’s better for you in the long run.

Change, meanwhile, is terrifying—especially, I suppose, for a prudent type like myself.

“There might be something to what you’re saying,” I concede, readjusting my robe around me. “Maybe I’m idealizing the
before
a bit too much.”

She leans across the table between us and pats my arm, and when she leaves her hand there, I put mine on top of hers and squeeze it.

“Maybe it’s something worth thinking about,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say, but as I look into my sister’s eyes, nodding to reassure her that she hasn’t offended me with the suggestion, I realize that I might not need to think it over at all. Maybe I already know. Maybe I always have.