The Most Dangerous Thing (5 page)

Chapter Five

“W
hat’s
the point of this charade?” Karl asks Gwen the morning after Go-Go’s funeral as
she arrives with only minutes to spare before Annabelle awakens and comes down
to breakfast.

The question catches her short, her mind snagging
on his choice of word,
charade
. What, exactly, is a
charade? Where is the pretense? She puzzles through this as she sets breakfast
in motion. She isn’t pretending to Annabelle that she spends the nights here.
Her daughter knows that Gwen is staying at her grandfather’s house while he
heals, but that she still wants to be here for meals, bedtime, and
off-to-school. The charade, to use Karl’s word, is pretending that the household
will return to normal after her father’s situation has been normalized.

Charade
.
The mothers had played charades that night, first with their
husbands, then alone after the men left. How innocent they had seemed in the
candlelit living room, making the familiar, exaggerated gestures. Paging
through a book, running a movie camera, flipping channels. She and Sean had
watched them from the steps, feeling more akin to them than they did to the
others by that point. They—well, she—honestly believed that they would get
married, that they would one day be a couple among other couples, laughing
and clowning. They—again, maybe just she—had been preternaturally attracted
to adulthood, eager for it, in a way that Tim, Mickey, and Go-Go weren’t.
They were the normal ones, trying to grow up, be typical
teenagers.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she says, trying to
be careful with Karl’s feelings but also her words. She doesn’t want to be drawn
into making promises she can’t keep. But his eyes are sad and hurt. He clearly
wants to ask other, softer, more vulnerable questions.
Why
did she leave? Doesn’t she love him? Doesn’t she want to be with him?
But these are not the kind of questions that Karl will ask out loud because Karl
does not know the answers and Karl never admits he doesn’t have answers. “That’s
a surgeon’s personality,” her father, Karl’s onetime professor, told Gwen early
in their courtship. “He’s used to being in charge, having authority.” Like most
people in love, she ignored any observation that didn’t serve her vision of her
romance.

“Aren’t you running late? Go save lives,” she says
now, not meaning to be cruel, only factual. But Karl takes offense.

“It’s not—” he begins, then stops because Annabelle
has entered the kitchen, frowning at the morning, slow and cranky, quite unlike
both of them. Gwen is a morning person, while Karl, like many hyperachievers,
permits himself no more than four or five hours of sleep.

Annabelle, by contrast, is a night owl who fights
bedtime and treats morning as a personal offense. Another reason for Gwen to be
here for bedtime every night. Karl would never have the patience to cajole
Annabelle through her nighttime routine. There are circles under Annabelle’s
eyes, bigger and darker than usual. Gwen wonders if Karl knows that Annabelle
sometimes creeps down to the kitchen with the earbuds from her little MP3 player
and then watches the television on the counter, standing all the while. Once
Gwen found her with her chin resting on the counter, asleep on her feet, while
an infomercial touted the miracle of mineral makeup. She wonders at the secrets
of her daughter’s DNA. Were her parents night owls? How had they coped? Given
the remote orphanage where Annabelle spent the first eleven months of her life,
her parents were almost certainly farmers. Did they frown at sunrise, did they
stay up late, despite knowing the price they would pay come morning? Did they
abandon their daughter to strike out for the city, find a life that suited them
better?

“Good morning, sweet pea.”

“Peas are not sweet,” she says. Then: “Can I have
pancakes?”

“We’re a little pressed for time. But we can have
them this weekend. I thought you could come over to Poppa’s, have a
sleepover?”

“You should check with me—” Karl begins, but
Annabelle is already lighting up. “Can I have the princess room?”

“Of course,” Gwen says. The princess room is
nothing more than Gwen’s childhood room, virtually untouched since she left for
college. If her mother had lived—but her mother did not live.

“You didn’t ask me,” Karl says in a low voice after
she sends Annabelle back upstairs to put on real pants. She was trying to coast
by with her pajama bottoms. Plaid, they would have fooled her father. This is
another reason why Gwen has to come by every morning; Annabelle gets too much by
Karl. Their daughter is the one person impervious to his surgical authority and
expectations.

But for all the reasons Gwen can list for being
here every morning and evening, none really matters. She’s here because she
cannot bear being away from her daughter. Yet she has chosen to be away from her
daughter. No, she doesn’t understand it herself.

“I know we have no formal arrangement—” Karl
continues.

“Yet.”

“But you didn’t ask me if you could have Annabelle
this weekend.”

“I don’t have to,” Gwen says, putting bread in the
toaster, getting out the cinnamon sugar that Annabelle likes. It comes in a
plastic yellow sifter shaped like a bear, a relic of Gwen’s childhood. Her own
did not survive, but she bought this one at an antique store, laughing at
herself for paying seven dollars for a piece of plastic that used to cost less
than two—and was filled with cinnamon sugar.

“If you are serious about this—”

“I am serious. Serious as a heart attack, as they
say in your world. But then, my world doesn’t have metaphors or similes about
what matters because, as you so often remind me, nothing matters in my
world.”

“I never—”

“Always,” she says. She is aware that she is
interrupting him, aware that she is enjoying it a little too much. “You
always
let me know how trivial my life is. Not in
words. Through your lack of words, your lack of questions, your inability to
feign interest. By your silence, you let me know every day that what I do and
who I am is of absolutely no interest to you.”

Annabelle has returned and is standing in the
doorway, regarding them. She is bright, exceptionally bright, although no child
could be expected to compete with the brainiac powers of Karl Flores. Still, she
is probably aware of more than they want her to be. Gwen hopes those dark
circles aren’t from lying awake, worrying. When she first started out testing
the idea of leaving Karl, trying it on in front of her friends, as she might
have asked them about a particularly bold fashion choice or luxury purchase, the
litany of questions had been consistent:
Did he cheat? Is
he abusive? Is he an addict? Has he lied to you about important
things?
When Gwen said no, everyone said: “You should stay together
for Annabelle’s sake.” Karl said the same thing. No one understands that she
could leave for Annabelle’s sake. She likes to think her mother would have, if
she had lived. But if her mother had lived, would Gwen have chosen the men she
has chosen? Certainly, she never would have married Stephen. Ironically, her
mother’s death probably drove her into that doomed, ridiculous marriage.

“You’ll be late, Daddy,” Annabelle says. Ah, she
wants to defuse the bomb, ticking away, separate them now so they might choose
to be together later. So that Gwen might choose. Karl has made it clear that he
has no desire to divorce her. But not because he loves her, only because he
can’t stand to lose at anything.

“Will the film crew be there today?” Gwen asks,
taking in her husband’s suit, one of his nicest, and the bright blue shirt that
flatters his dark complexion.

“Only for—I’m not sure what you call them. No
interviews, but walking, sitting in meetings. Establishing shots? Something like
that. I wish I hadn’t said yes.”

Under her breath: “But you always do.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” She turns back to the task of fixing
Annabelle’s breakfast, as if it requires great concentration to butter toast and
sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar, pour a glass of juice. But it works. When
she looks up, he’s gone.

Friends have pointed out to Gwen that it is
hypocritical of her to complain about the constant media demands on her husband,
given that she was a journalist who met him on assignment. She knew of him, of
course. Dr. Karl Flores had been famous for a long time, more than fifteen
years, when they met. He became famous for performing heart surgery on infants,
working with tiny instruments of his own design, precious things that appeared
to be plundered from a doll’s hospital.

Plenty of surgeons do what Karl does, with just as
good results. But few have Karl’s charisma, and no matter how the world changes,
some aspect of his life always seems to be in sync with the zeitgeist. Gwen met
him when he was in handsome-surgeon mode. Never married, he was the subject of
much gossip. But the ordinary truth was that he worked too much and had no taste
for a playboy lifestyle because it would have undercut his good-guy image, which
he enjoyed mightily. His self-knowledge on this topic was his saving grace. “I
like the attention,” he told Gwen on their third interview, which somehow
mutated into their first date, upending her professional life when she failed to
reveal this fact to her bosses before her article ran. “Not because I’m
egotistical but because I can use it.”

“Oh, you use your powers for good,” she said,
laughing.

“Yes,” he said, laughing yet earnest. On the first
night they spent together—which happened to be the next night—they watched a
movie on cable, a wonderfully campy affair in which a doctor, asked during a
deposition if he had a god complex, replied: “I am God.” Oh, how they
laughed.

Oh, how true it was.

Karl is a surgeon. Karl is handsome. Karl goes to
third world countries on his “vacations” and makes miracles. Five years ago, as
the subject of immigration heated up, Karl revealed that he had entered the
country illegally as a child, obtaining citizenship status under the
Reagan-sanctioned amnesty of 1986. He testified before Congress. He wrote op-eds
for the
New York Times,
although with considerable
help from Gwen, who made his language less pedantic and high-handed. Karl may
not have a god complex, exactly, but he has a touch of Zeus in him, flinging his
words like thunderbolts. He wrote a memoir, this time with the help of a
not-so-ghostly ghost. The memoir led to a cable television show, and while it
wasn’t a huge hit, it scored solidly in the ratings, renewed year after year.
Every journalist who wrote about the show seemed obligated to include the detail
that it was the rare case where a Hollywood actor wasn’t quite as good-looking
as the real person he portrayed.

Seven years ago, when they started the process that
would bring Annabelle into their household, Gwen thought, hoped, prayed that a
child would change the balance in their lives, that their professional selves
would recede somewhat. She was right, and yet she was wrong. Karl adores
Annabelle, despite initially resisting Gwen’s choice of China. Why not his
native Guatemala? (Gwen claimed she feared that country’s bureaucracy, but the
truth was she couldn’t bear to have a daughter who would be like Karl, but not
her.) What about Zimbabwe, where he had performed yet another surgery? He wanted
to find the child that needed them most, he wanted to save someone. But Gwen
understood that a child would save her. If they had a child, at least one person
would find her essential.

“How was the freel?” Annabelle asks, mouth full of
toast.

“The what?”

“You said you were going”—she swallows—“to a
funeral yesterday. For your friend.”

“Oh. It was very sad. It’s always sad when people
die. But I saw some old friends.”

“Your best friends?” Annabelle is entranced with
the idea of best friends. Since entering kindergarten this year, she has had no
fewer than five. She tries them on like hats. She has a heartless quality.
Nature or nurture? Gwen or Karl?

“Yes, I guess so.” Does Gwen really want to affirm
Annabelle’s belief that best friends are interchangeable, disposable, that they
come and go like trends? “We were best friends until high school, when we went
to different schools.” True, but a lie. She was suggesting to Annabelle that the
different schools changed the nature of their relationship. But Gwen and Mickey
had never attended the same school, and their friendship was irrevocably broken
before they started high school.

“Who’s your best friend now?” Annabelle asks her
mother.

“Miss Margery, I suppose,” Gwen says, although she
considers all her female friends equally close. Which is to say—not very. But
Margery is the one she would call if there were major trouble. She’s the one she
called the night she decided she wanted a trial separation from Karl.

“Did he cheat on you?” Margery asked. Everyone
starts there. Everyone expects it. He’s too damn handsome. Gwen’s looks are
holding up well, and Karl is ten years older, yet it’s clear that everyone
thinks she’s competing above her weight class.

“No, not really.”

“Not really?”

“A woman’s after him, but he really doesn’t get it.
I mean, he has no clue. He’s pretty naive that way.”

“How do you know, then?”

“He’s so naive that he showed me her e-mails
because he thinks they’re funny. He’s, like, ‘She’s such a good writer. You
should hire her, give her a column.’ I had to explain to Karl that women don’t
write funny, flirtatious e-mails about being newly single to their old
boyfriends in order to get the attention of their editor wives.”

“Someone from high school?”

“College.”

“Had they seen each other recently? At a reunion?
Did he e-mail her first?”