A Small Indiscretion Page 8

  Fourteen

  THE DAY AFTER THE NIGHT I met the man with the crumbling tooth, I was sick with the worst hangover of my new drinking life. I forced myself to sit at my desk, typing the final revision of the costings for the bid, sneaking away again and again to the bathroom to be ill. The hangover never ebbed, even as the day did, even as the windows darkened and Malcolm looked over at me, pacing and glancing at his watch. Then I heard quick, light steps on the stairs and the door banged open and a woman stood in the doorway.

  It was the woman from the photograph on Malcolm’s desk—his wife, Louise. She struck me as less like a woman than a doll, carved in miniature. She had smooth, high cheekbones and small, perfect ears that dangled with diamonds. She had china-white skin and blue-gray eyes and short, shiny blond hair. She wore a blue velvet sequined dress that clung to her tiny waist and flared out at her ankles. On her feet were black patent-leather heels as high as any I had ever seen.

  I felt like a giant as I stepped toward her to offer a greeting. But she seemed not to have registered me standing there.

  “The engine’s smoking, Malcolm,” she said in a wild, accusatory voice. “I told you last week there was something wrong with the car. You never believe me when I tell you these things. You hardly listen when I speak to you.”

  She turned back toward the stairs. Malcolm raised his eyebrows at me.

  “Louise,” he said. “My wife.”

  He followed her down the stairs.

  I sat in my metal chair, the wind blown out of me. It was so undignified and unnecessary, the way married people behaved. The indiscriminate airing of grievances, the incessant flinging of blame and complaint. Of course, I had no idea back then what a marriage required. How the resentments and oversights and misunderstandings could pile up, sometimes moving ordinary kindness beyond reach. Love piled up, too, if you were lucky, but it seemed to be locked away in a separate compartment, sometimes unreachable when it was needed most.

  In ten minutes, Malcolm was back.

  “Is the car all right?” I said.

  “It was only a little engine oil,” he said, then he cleared his throat. “In any case, Louise wondered if you’d like to come along for a drink. Bit of a party we’re having over at the Photographers’ Gallery, where Patrick works.”

  His voice had halted a little before leaping over the name Patrick.

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked.

  “Our twentieth anniversary, actually.”

  I could not tell whether he wanted me to come or not. But he was already collecting my coat and holding it open for me. “Louise doesn’t like the idea of you here alone at the weekend. And don’t be put off by her, just now. It’s not that she doesn’t want to get to know you. It’s only the way she is about the car. Any sort of engine trouble puts her into a state.”

  I could have refused. I had been refusing Malcolm for weeks. The invitation had not come from him, though, and I found myself unwilling to turn Louise down. There was something else, too. I had begun to feel, as the afternoon wore on, that an alternative to sleeping off my hangover would be to drink it off. I could not very well go to the pub on my own, after the night before, and I was not so far gone as to drink alone in my room. A party, on the other hand, was ordained. A party might be a reasonable justification for putting off, for another day, the vow I had made that morning never to drink again.

  Malcolm slipped my coat over my shoulders and I followed him to their car. Louise sat in the front seat.

  “I’m so happy to finally meet you,” she said, turning and squeezing my hand, her small fingers feeling very cold over the hot tips of mine.

  IT WAS NOT just a few friends, as I’d imagined. It was a fancy cocktail party, and I was hideously underdressed. That was the first hardship. The second was that I was not immediately offered a drink. The third was Patrick—the first sight of him at the bar, the shock of him under my ribs. His dark suit and open collar. His lean body and long legs and long, thin hands. His narrow green eyes and dark, curly hair and marbled skin. His full pink lips. The way those lips moved suddenly into a smile when he saw us, and the way his body leapt into motion. How he rubbed his hands together when he reached us, as if now that we’d arrived, the fun could finally begin.

  He was not handsome—his face was too pale and his ears were too large and he was too thin—yet by the time he reached us, the lens through which I’d perceived the world of men had been altered. Malcolm, ten years Patrick’s senior, seemed no longer mature and distinguished, but staid and used up. Malcolm’s attentiveness was no longer comforting, but overbearing. His voice was too tender, his manner too hesitant, his face too square.

  Patrick said something to Louise about the food, which was being passed on trays by servers. Then he said something about the new installation on the far wall, photographs by a little-known but promising photographer—he grinned—Patrick himself. If he’d been not only charming but incontestably good-looking, perhaps he would have been better behaved. He might have been accustomed to his gifts, like old money is accustomed to wealth, and been modest and generous and less careless with others. He might not have been so set on extracting every ounce of pleasure for himself before the game was up.

  The gallery proper was upstairs. The party was being held in the café that made up the ground floor, transformed that evening with round tables and candles that softened the sparse white walls. I did not much like the look of Malcolm and Louise’s friends, especially the women. Their features and bodies seemed dragged down by effort and gravity. Louise, on the other hand, looked beautiful, and I was deeply envious of her dress and her shoes.

  Malcolm brought me a drink and told me I looked lovely. I did not, at all, believe him. My face felt crumpled and I had a terrible headache and I hated my cheap skirt and shoes. But I kept drinking, and after two glasses of champagne, I began to feel better. Malcolm and his friends seemed not so bad, and perhaps my outfit was all right, and I liked sitting on the bar stool, keeping an eye on Patrick.

  Then Patrick himself sat down beside me. He faced away from the bar, toward the room, so that in order to speak to him I had to shift around on my stool until my legs were stretched out beside his.

  “You must be bored silly,” he said. He did not ask me my name or offer his, and I assumed—correctly, it turned out—that he had been informed of my identity and he assumed I had been informed of his.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “The champagne helps.”

  “And how are you finding your stay here?”

  “I’m loving it.”

  “Good,” he said. “But you mustn’t spend all your time in London. You must see Ireland, too.”

  “You’re Irish?”

  “I am,” he said. “I come from Howth, in North County Dublin. I came here for university, initially. Then work. Malcolm has been good enough to give me a place to sleep.”

  I replied without thinking, and without checking myself. “And you’ve been good enough to sleep with his wife.”

  What had possessed me to speak so boldly? The champagne, which had seemed to reconstitute the drunkenness of the night before, and his knee touching my thigh, and an instinct I had about Patrick, that I would need to act boldly to win him. I would need to be not so much myself as the person I felt inside me who had so far not been unleashed.

  He grinned. “You’ve been apprised of that situation, have you?”

  “I have.”

  “Malcolm told you?”

  “He did.”

  “You two are on intimate terms, then, are you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He looked at me intently. “Well, it’s ancient history, that is. I suppose it was a mistake.”

  “Really? I don’t believe you.”

  “That it’s over or that it was a mistake?”

  “Both.”

  He laughed. “It’s true—I don’t really believe in mistakes. There’s only what you do, and what you don’t do, isn’t there? It was a mi
stake to the extent anything like that is a mistake. The before and after of it looking differently from each other. In any event, you can believe or not believe whatever you like.”

  “Thank you for your permission.”

  “You are very welcome, so you are. An odd pair, our Mr. and Mrs. Church. You’d have to feel a bit sorry for them, wouldn’t you? For Louise, at least. Beneath all her fierceness she’s a timid bird.”

  I said nothing. I was trying to work things out in my mind, to understand whether Patrick’s sentiment was sincere or condescending, and, more important, whether he was available to me or not. He was watching me closely, and for a moment it seemed he might lean in and kiss me. I felt that would be the right thing, for us to fall upon each other immediately.

  “Stand up a minute,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Stand up and let me look at you.”

  Did I hesitate? I don’t know. Probably I didn’t. I simply stood and presented myself to Patrick.

  “You are attractive, aren’t you?” he said, as I sat down again. He spoke as if my appearance were a difficult but unavoidable burden. I imagine it was a line he used with women, a line he’d perfected over the years. But I didn’t suspect that then, and it made an impression.

  HE SHOWED ME his photographs hanging on the gallery walls. They were black-and-white images with blurred backgrounds, each with a single swipe of color painted by hand. He told me the series made use of an effect called solarization, which was the process of reexposing photographic paper in the darkroom. Areas that had been exposed the least in the original print were affected the most during reexposure. Silver outlines emerged, and light and dark were reversed.

  “I’ve seen a photograph like this,” I said. “At the office. On Malcolm’s desk.”

  He smiled. “I took that years ago, when I was an art student.”

  He described each image for me, speaking with authority, pointing out how the foreground was transposed against the background, and how solarization, along with the swipe of color, called the subject’s integrity into question, creating what he called dissonance. I didn’t really understand what he meant, and I’m not sure he did, either. If I met him for the first time now, I’d challenge him. I’d think him pretentious. But I didn’t do either then.

  Late in the night, he sat down at the piano. I don’t remember what song he played, but I remember Louise watching him, how bright her eyes were and how flushed her cheeks as she smiled. She looked across the room at me, still smiling, and I felt as if I had seen into her soul. I did not know what I was seeing then, but I imagine I do now. Not dashed hopes so much as helpless want. Want like a small dirty creature, waiting all the years of her marriage for a sign. Patrick was not the sign; she herself was, her own blue dress, her tiny waist, her small, round breasts. And her want was not for dogged faithfulness—and not even for love—but for unfamiliar flesh, for bone against her own bone.

  THE END OF the evening at the gallery was like my dream of the library cards last summer. I could borrow Patrick for a little while, but I would not be the one to keep him. He was waylaid by Louise, and I by Malcolm, who’d made an elegant toast to Louise early in the evening, then proceeded to get so drunk he shed his usual restraint. Each time he approached me, he was more demonstrative. He took my hand. He whispered in my ear. He once slipped his arm around my waist and tried to embrace me. I was embarrassed. I was afraid Louise would see us, and I would be blamed.

  When the evening ended, I found myself outside with Louise and Malcolm under a city sky lit by a bright round moon. Patrick appeared in their car. Louise insisted on dropping me at Victoria on the way home. Patrick drove, since Malcolm was too drunk. Louise sat up front with Patrick and I sat in back with Malcolm. He had to be laid down, so that his head was nearly in my lap and one of his arms was draped over my legs. I was terrified Louise would look back and see us in this position. Or worse, Patrick would. But neither of them did. They were alone together, and I was alone with Malcolm, and I was pierced with indignation and jealousy.

  When we reached Victoria, it was Patrick who walked me up the front steps of the boardinghouse. He held the door open for me, and I thought that was going to be the end of it. But he said quietly, “Come to the gallery, won’t you? Come tomorrow afternoon.”

  Fifteen

  SAY IT, I tell myself.

  Say it, even if it’s not the only name that matters.

  Emme.

  One syllable.

  Like the letter M.

  She worked out well enough, last summer, as a tenant and assistant. She was smart, and she listened well, and she was efficient. Every morning I gave her a list, and by evening she had it all done. She didn’t ask many questions. She figured things out on her own. She didn’t seem to have many plans, besides yoga classes, and I felt a little sorry for her. I began to ask her to babysit now and then, in the evenings. She seemed happy to do it. She came to the house on time. It was always clean when your father and I returned from dinner or a movie, and Clara and Polly were always asleep in their beds. They had a pet name for her, Emme-and-Emme, and they liked her accent and her long hair and her exotic clothes. They liked that she taught them to play card games—gin, gin rummy, even hearts. Her moods were unpredictable, though. Mornings, she could be quiet and subdued, then by late afternoon, she was often radiant and expansive. Sometimes she retreated again by evening, and as the summer progressed, I began to feel a nameless discomfort when I headed home and left her alone.

  The retail space next to the Salvaged Light had been vacant for half a year, then the FOR LEASE sign disappeared, and one morning last July, Emme pointed out that a new sign had finally gone up, THE GREEN UNDERTHING: LINGERIE WITH A CONSCIENCE. The day after that, she told me she’d just introduced herself to the owner, Michael Moss, whom she described as “a lovely man.”

  “What is ‘lingerie with a conscience,’ exactly?” I asked her.

  “Environmentally correct lingerie,” she said. “Chemises. Camisoles. Teddies. Bras. Panties. All in hemp, silk and bamboo. Never cotton.”

  “Why not cotton?”

  “According to Michael, cotton lacks a conscience. Cotton production requires massive pesticide use. Developing countries account for less than thirty percent of global pesticide consumption, yet the bulk of pesticide poisonings occur in the developing world.”

  “It sounds a little like a marketing gimmick.”

  “Not to me,” Emme said.

  Was there something off about her? Her eyes seemed glassy, and her manner too bright. Had she been getting high with Michael Moss next door?

  I walked over a day later to introduce myself. He was very good-looking. He also had a ring on his finger. To me, he seemed like just the sort of man who would be attracted to Emme. But what did I mean by that? Every man was that sort of man.

  A week later, I stopped at the store on my day off and found him leaning back in a chair with his feet up on the dining room table, beneath the chandelier display. Emme was wearing a skirt and cowboy boots, and she was sitting on the table with her knees pulled up, offering him what I imagined was quite a display of her own.

  Then, on Tuesday morning, I saw him leaving the store just as I was arriving. To me it was unseemly—the two of them together. I wanted to tell her to stay away from him, and him to stay away from her. But who was I to say so? It was none of my business with whom either of them spent their nights.

  WHEN I LEFT home this morning, there were gray clouds in a pale-blue sky and a feeling of impending rain. I drove out of the city to Gold Hill to collect the girls. I was early, so I parked in the little shopping center and got a cup of coffee at the neighborhood café. I had brought along a couple of magazines and a book in a tote bag I’d grabbed from the hall closet. The tote bag was one you’d decorated for us some long-ago anniversary. It had a child’s drawing of an oddly intricate human heart ironed on it and words written across the top: Mom and Dad: I love you. From Robbie.

 
Mom and Dad. Words you’ve strung together, without thinking, all your life.

  On the other hand, I didn’t string those words together about my own parents for the more than twenty years after my father left. Then, last fall, the phrase returned to the lexicon of my life.

  “My mom and dad are here helping out,” I’d say to people, feeling like a child telling a hopeful fib. But it wasn’t a fib. They were indeed here, together, and they took care of things while Jonathan and I shuttled between the hospital and the Mermaid Inn. My father walked the dogs. My mother took the girls shopping for school clothes. My father took it upon himself to pack up your apartment in Berkeley. He assessed the damage of the flood at the Salvaged Light and hung a sign on the door announcing that the store was closed for remodeling. Then he appointed himself investigator of your accident.

  We knew that sometime that night, after Emme came to dinner and made a scene, you climbed into the passenger seat of her car. We knew she was the driver at the time of the accident. We knew she had a valid New York State driver’s license. We knew she was interviewed by the police, and that she rode to a hospital in Santa Cruz in an ambulance, and that she passed the sobriety test. We knew she was released with barely a scratch—and after that, she disappeared.

  My father made some calls and scoured the web. He found a few dated photos of her online as a hand model but none of those leads pointed us anywhere useful. The modeling agency she worked for in New York provided an address in Manhattan, different from the address on her driver’s license, but she hadn’t resided in either location for years. The emails we sent to the address the agency provided us bounced back. She seemed to have willfully dismantled herself, then vanished.

  We didn’t press you to tell us what happened that night. It was clear, when you emerged from the coma, that you had no memory of it, so we simply chose not to speak of it. In the end, I was the one who told my father to give up the search; I didn’t see a good reason for trying anymore to find her.