Silver Girl (27 page)

When they got outside, however, Freddy told Meredith that he’d paid the bill and that the bill had been three hundred dollars, and that he was, at that point, effectively broke.

Meredith wasn’t used to being angry with Freddy. Upset, frustrated, jealous, yes, but not angry. She didn’t know how to express what she was feeling.

She said, “Why did you pay the bill? Did they
ask
you to?”

He shrugged. “No. I wanted to.”

“But now you have no money.”

He gave her a hangdog expression. “I know.”

And she thought,
I can’t believe you, Freddy. How irresponsible!

And she thought,
He did it to impress the girl who looked like Trina.

Then she thought, softening, because there was something about Freddy that always made her excuse him,
He did it because he’s naturally generous and he wanted to make those strangers happy.

She did not think at the time (though she certainly thought it now),
He wanted their admiration, he wanted control. He wanted to walk out of there a big man.

When Meredith became a senior in college, Freddy left Princeton. He had taken one year off to stay with Meredith, but he couldn’t take two. Prudential had come back to him with another job offer at a bigger salary. It seemed that saying no to them and working with a famous economist had boosted his value, and Freddy couldn’t turn them down again. His loans beckoned.

Meredith wasn’t happy, but she agreed that he should go. It was only one year. She could make it.

She scheduled all of her classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so that by Wednesday night, she could be on a train headed for the city. Freddy, as a perk in the package Prudential had offered him, was living in a condo on East 71st Street. The condo was well beyond his means; it was, essentially, a free sublet from another Prudential trader who was spending a year with a Swiss bank in Zurich.

Meredith gasped. That trader had
remained
in Zurich; he had become a higher-up with a Swiss bank. A Swiss bank, where, possibly, Freddy had hidden money. Which bank was it? She’d asked, but had Freddy ever told her? She needed to remember so she could tell Dev. And what had that trader’s name been?
Thorlo
was the name that popped into Meredith’s mind, but that wasn’t quite right.
Ortho?
No. Meredith had spent a large chunk of her senior year living among this man’s possessions. She remembered that he had a Danish mother who had filled his apartment with sleek, modern furniture. She remembered a tall Norfolk pine that it had become her responsibility to keep watered; she remembered a rocking chair made from smooth, blond wood. She remembered a folk statue of a little man with a funny Alpine hat, his hair fashioned from gray cotton. The statue’s name had been Otto—was that the name Meredith was remembering? But what, then, had the trader’s name been? She racked her brain. This might be the name that could save her.
Thorlo, Ortho.
She had
lived
in this man’s apartment. She had chopped celery with his special, sharp knives and had stuck the celery in the Bloody Marys she made for herself and Freddy every Sunday morning. Back in those days, she and Freddy had gone out on the weekends. They went to bars, they danced. Freddy had once gotten so drunk that he climbed up on the bar, gyrating his hips to “I Love the Nightlife.” That had been a fun year, Meredith’s senior year of college, though college had nothing to do with it; it was her life in the city with Freddy that mattered. Half the time, they enjoyed doing adult things: every Sunday, Meredith would make Bloody Marys and they would get bagels and lox from H&H and they would read the
Times
. And the other half of the time, they were drunk at the Mill on 85th Street. Meredith threw “cocktail parties” for the guys from Dial who had graduated with Freddy and were now living in the city with their various girlfriends. Meredith served shrimp cocktail and Armenian string cheese and pigs in a blanket with spicy brown mustard, just like her own mother had.

She remembered entertaining Richard Cassel and his new girlfriend Astrid, who worked as an editorial assistant at
Harper’s Bazaar.
Astrid had shown up wearing a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress, one of the originals, and a pair of Oleg Cassini heels. A familiar insecurity returned to haunt Meredith, who was wearing a khaki skirt and a cable-knit cardigan sweater. Astrid, like Trina, was sophisticated in a way that Meredith feared she would never be. And to boot, the night Richard and Astrid came to the apartment was the night that Richard planned to propose. He had a ring from Tiffany’s in his jacket pocket; he was going to present it to Astrid after their dinner at Lutèce. It was all so exactly what Meredith wanted for herself that she had been overcome by nauseating jealousy. (The coda to that story was that Richard and Astrid did get married, did have five children, the second of whom was born with cerebral palsy, and Richard did step out of the marriage, having a long affair with an unhappy married socialite, whom he then married and divorced in short order.)

There was something incomparably romantic about an engagement, Meredith thought, which didn’t translate to marriage.

She and Freddy had had a lot of crazy sex that year on the impeccable white sheets of the Danish bed. Meredith had slept on this trader’s sheets, and still she couldn’t remember his name.

Thorlo.
No, that was the brand of thick socks that she and Freddy had worn while hiking in the Alps. She was getting confused.

The night purpled. Meredith heard water gurgling through the pipes; Connie was running the dishwasher. Meredith’s dirty dishes sat on her dresser. She would take them down in the morning and wash them herself. She brushed her teeth and changed into her nightgown. She listened to the waves. She had done so much thinking that Amy Rivers now seemed very far away. Amy Rivers was decades in Meredith’s future.

Meredith graduated from Princeton with honors, but not Phi Beta Kappa as she had hoped. She had studied on the train between Princeton and New York, and all day Thursday and Friday while Freddy was at work—but she was away from the precious resource of the Firestone Library, and there had been times when she had been quick or lazy with a paper because she wanted to be with Freddy, or she was hung over from too much fun in the city. Still, her mother beamed with pride, and she had the news of Meredith’s graduation from Princeton published in the
Main Line Times
and the Aronimink newsletter. She took Meredith to dinner at the Nassau Inn and gave her a string of pearls and a check for $5,000. A week after graduation, Meredith found that she had been chosen for a teaching program which placed top university graduates into failing school systems and that there were openings in Appalachia, Brownsville, Texas, and New York City. Meredith would go to New York, no question. If there hadn’t been a position in New York, she would have abandoned the idea of the teaching program altogether, even though teaching English was all she’d ever wanted to do.

But, thankfully, she didn’t have to worry. She had her degree and a job in New York City. She would be with Freddy!

There was more rustling outside the door. Meredith heard Connie sigh at her note. Another note floated under the door. Again, Meredith waited until she heard Connie retreat. The note said, “Your dessert, madame. Sweet dreams!”

Meredith opened the door. A square of something creamy on a graham cracker crust. Cheesecake? She brought the dessert to bed with her, tucked herself under the summer blanket, and tasted a forkful. It was tart: key lime. Key lime put Meredith back in Palm Beach with Amy Rivers, but no, she wouldn’t let herself travel that mental highway. Stay present, find the answer. What was the name of that trader?

Meredith wanted Freddy to propose. It was all she thought about. Why? She wondered now. Why, why, why? What about him had been so irresistible? So impossible to let go? His blue eyes? His cutting wit? His natural, easy confidence despite the fact that he came from absolutely nothing? His brilliance in economics? His early success in the financial world? His innate generosity? His burning desire to be the man who took care of things, who solved problems, who made people happy? Was it the way he held Meredith, touched her, talked to her? Yes, now she was getting closer. It was the way he believed her to be a delicate treasure, no less precious than the crown jewels that they had seen together at the Tower of London. Freddy was devoted to her. He wasn’t going to leave her the way Toby had. He wasn’t going to sail off into the sunset in search of his freedom. He didn’t see the allure of a different woman every night. He was singular in his desire. He wanted Meredith. It was intoxicating.

And then, just as soon as Meredith became cozy and secure in Freddy’s constancy, Prudential sent Freddy on a two-week trip to Hong Kong. He let it slip that there was talk of moving him permanently to Hong Kong. This gave Meredith emotional seizures. She had just moved into Freddy’s sublet, very much against her mother’s wishes. (Her mother didn’t like how it “looked,” the two of them living together.) Meredith would begin her teaching job in September. What would she do if Freddy moved to Hong Kong?

She would move to Hong Kong as well.

She had wanted to go with him on the trip—she could use her graduation money—but Freddy said no, this was work. This was something he had to do himself. Girlfriends weren’t welcome.

“How do you know?” Meredith said. “Did you ask?”

“I just know.”

Meredith spent two weeks in the hot, dirty, miserable city while Freddy was in Hong Kong. Connie called and invited Meredith to Nantucket. Connie had just begun dating a man named Wolf Flute, whose family had a cottage on the beach. The place was simple but it had four bedrooms. Meredith could stay for a week, or longer.

Meredith had said no.

She stayed in the apartment, she ordered in Chinese food, she read books in the blond wood rocking chair (
Sophie’s Choice; Goodbye, Columbus
); she pined for Freddy. Freddy called three times, but the connection was bad. Meredith heard the words “Victoria Peak,” “Hollywood Road,” “the Peninsula Hotel.” She heard the excitement in his voice. One of the partners had taken Freddy on a junk to another island where they had gone to a seafood restaurant. They picked a fish out of the tank, and twenty minutes later it was sautéed, sauced, and garnished in front of them. Freddy had never been anywhere like Hong Kong. Before meeting Meredith, he had never been anywhere at all.

Meredith hated Freddy, she decided. He was going to leave her behind just the way Toby had, but she wasn’t going to let that happen. She was going to preempt him. The next time the phone rang and Meredith suspected it was him, she didn’t answer. The phone stopped ringing, then started up again. Meredith smiled vengefully but didn’t pick up. She left the apartment for the first time in days. She would go for a walk in the park, then take herself to the Belgian place for
moules et frites
. When she walked out of the apartment, the phone was still ringing.

She calmed down, then revved up again. She screamed at the folk statue named Otto. She lunged at Otto with one of the sharp Danish knives. She wrote “Fuck you” in soap on the bathroom mirror; Freddy would find it when he returned, but Meredith wouldn’t be around to witness his reaction. She was going to Nantucket to visit Connie after all. Connie had told her about a party called the Madequecham Jam—hundreds of people partying on the beach! All Meredith needed to bring was a bikini.

Meredith packed a bag. She was taking the Chinatown bus to Boston, and a second bus from Boston to Hyannis, and a two-hour ferry from Hyannis to Nantucket. It was a longer journey than Meredith had anticipated; the mere thought of it exhausted her, but at least she wouldn’t be sitting around the apartment,
waiting,
when Freddy got home.

She had been at the door, she remembered, ready to leave for the bus station, when there was a knock. She peered through the peephole. It was Western Union, with a telegram.

“Meredith Martin?” the man said.

She accepted the telegram, her hands shaking. She had never received a telegram before. The only people she had known to receive telegrams were mothers whose sons had died in Vietnam. So this said what? That Freddy had died? He’d been hit by a bus while crossing the street in opposite-side traffic? Or maybe it was a telegram
from
Freddy, saying he wasn’t coming back. They were placing him permanently in Hong Kong, and he wanted Meredith to send his things. Maybe he’d meant to tell her this over the phone, but she hadn’t answered.

Whatever the telegram said, it wasn’t good.

She thought about leaving the telegram behind in the apartment. But what kind of person had the willpower to leave an envelope like this—a telegram just screamed urgency—unopened?

She opened it by the front door. It said:

bq.
MEREDITH
STOP
I CAN’T
LIVE
WITHOUT
YOU
STOP

WILL
YOU
MARRY
ME?
STOP

FREDDY

She read it again, then a third time, her heart lifting like a balloon. She jumped up and down and whooped. She was laughing and crying and thinking,
Goddamn it, someone should be here,
but no, this was better somehow. He’d surprised her, really shocked her, snatched her from despair, saved her from going to Nantucket, and, most likely, doing something regrettable.

This was the right thing. This was absolutely the only thing. There was no decision. The answer was yes.

There had only been one bump in the road before Meredith and Freddy got married, and that arrived in the form of Connie’s own shotgun wedding, which was thrown together in December once Connie learned she was pregnant.

Meredith had been the maid of honor. She wore a red velvet cocktail dress, red stiletto heels, and Annabeth Martin’s diamond engagement ring. She and Freddy were living together in the sublet apartment; Meredith was in the throes of her first year of teaching at Gompers. Meredith knew she would see Toby at the wedding, but she was ready for him.