But the Boston project was now well under way; other people were involved, and Ben no longer felt solely responsible. The plans had been approved and finalized, and ground had been broken. His role had become secondary. And just as he’d done when final exams were over, he took a week to simply breathe—to clear the low-priority papers off his desk, return e-mail and phone calls, sleep late, buy himself some new shoes, get a good haircut (not just a quickie from the barber in the basement of his office building). He called his mother, checked in on his brother, took his two prize hires out for a fancy lunch on Drone Coward’s dime, an occasion they used to announce that they were both taking jobs with rival firms. At night he ordered takeout and sat on the couch like any ordinary New Yorker, letting the laugh track from syndicated sitcoms wash over him like warm, sudsy bathwater. He watched SportsCenter. He read the Dining In section of the Times.
One evening, as he was clicking through channels, a wagging finger caught his eye. “Listen to what people tell you about themselves,” a self-help guru was saying. “If they tell you not to trust them, don’t. If they tell you they’re bad news, believe them. It’s human nature to want to think the best of others, but if you listen carefully, people will always tell you who they are.”
Ben turned off the TV and sat there, staring at his shadow reflected in the black screen. On some subterranean level below consciousness, his brain, ostensibly resting, began to generate data, sifting through unconnected moments—conversations, observations, gestures, and expressions he didn’t even know he’d been aware of—to build a hypothesis.
I was just out with a girlfriend. … There were no messages—nothing important—I erased all the calls. … She likes the country-bumpkin type … I’ll just be out for a few hours. … Honey, I picked up your dry cleaning … 210 It’s going to be so tedious. One obscure radio station after another. …
Do you think God is punishing us because we weren’t sure?
And other things: the phone calls with no one there. The silk-corded bag from a pricey lingerie shop Ben had glimpsed in the garbage, with a fleeting thought. Lingerie? When’s the last time she wore fancy lingerie?—he promptly dismissed it, his brain swimming with too many other details.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a memory floated up: the first time Claire had met his father. It had been a bitterly cold January weekend in upstate New York. Ben’s father, along with his current girlfriend, Paula, met Ben and Claire for lunch at a chain restaurant in the parking lot of a strip mall. After an hour and a half of mediocre food and strained conversation, the two men went to get the cars. “You’re in over your head, son,” his father said as he and Ben tramped through the snow. “If I were you I’d get out while you can.”
Though Ben was accustomed to these kinds of pronouncements from his father, this one caught him off guard. He’d thought they were all getting along pretty well, despite his father’s loutish insinuations about Claire’s previous boyfriends and the way he mocked her southern accent. “Why do you say that?” Ben said, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible.
“I just know. She’s a type. Can’t trust her.”
Ben laughed dryly. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“I guess I deserve that,” his father said. “But maybe that’s part of it. Takes one to know one.”
They trudged along in silence.
“Hope I’m wrong,” his father said when they reached the cars. “For your sake.”
“She’s nothing like you, you arrogant prick,” Ben had said.
It was the last time he spoke to his father for years. But as he let the pieces, fine as silt, sift through his brain now, a picture began to emerge, the way in a trick painting the background details settle into focus, becoming clearer than those in the foreground, forming an unexpected image—a picture composed of shadows, a wraith, perhaps, or a skull. And suddenly Ben’s confused, unanticipated emotions the night of the party—the rush of feeling for Alison, the swell of identification with her, and his own recoiling—began to make a horrible kind of sense.
That boy has a crush on you.
All your strays.
Claire and Charlie.
The night she spilled her wine in his lap and they disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Ben and Alison to make awkward small talk. What were they doing in the kitchen all that time?
The rift with Alison.
Was Ben losing his mind?
Was he making this up out of some kind of deep-rooted insecurity?
Ben wasn’t a particularly jealous person. He didn’t see the point. As a kid he’d witnessed his father’s rabid, hypocritical jealous rages at his mother, and they sickened him. Anyway, he was used to people being infatuated with Claire. She was eminently, as a boorish drunk at a party had told him one night, “fuckable.” He knew, also, that part of her craved the attention, but this had seemed innocuous to him, a quirk of her psychology that played itself out in harmless flirtations. To be desired was enough, Ben had thought; it fulfilled her need.
It never occurred to him that she might act on it.
All at once, jealousy took root in Ben’s stomach like a hardy, noxious flower.
Claire’s distractedness, her distance, even her compassion. She’d been unnaturally nice to him lately, both in and out of bed. There was a distance and a cover in that. Sex had never been the primary bond between them; though at first, like most couples, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, over the years their cohabitation had become so siblinglike that when they turned toward each other in the night it sometimes seemed almost inappropriate. Ben had always thought that their connection was based on a deeply felt, shared sense of irony, which tended to quash lust, a decidedly unironic feeling. To make mad love was to take it seriously, to admit to an earnest, naked need that the two of them didn’t often confess to. It helped when they were drunk, when self-consciousness was obliterated; after parties, late at night, they could be ravenous for each other.
But lately Claire had been approaching him with a disorienting sincerity—acting out, Ben thought now, a pantomime of desire. Was it pity sex? For the two of them to be ironic together meant that they shared a worldview; they were in sync. Her kindness to him now, on reflection, struck Ben as patronizing. Something was definitely going on. With a heavy heart, he realized he would have to find out what it was.
Or would he? He’d never been good at confronting people; it was so much easier to let things unfold, give emotions time to dissipate. And wasn’t it more natural that way? When he’d asked too many questions as a child it usually ended with his mother in tears and his father storming off. Ben had constructed his entire adult life on the premise that people should behave courteously toward each other; in his view, the rules of decorum and the right to privacy were inviolable. He didn’t want people poking and prying in the stew of his mixed feelings. Who knew what might rise to the surface? Putting Claire on the spot might provoke the issue unnecessarily.
He took so much for granted with her. They got along beautifully day to day; they rarely fought, and when they did, it didn’t last long. Claire wasn’t necessarily easy to live with—she felt things deeply, acted impulsively; she could be arrogant in her opinions—but these things had never really bothered him. He admired the operatic scale of her emotions. If it was true that, over the years, the passion between them had tapered off, wasn’t that normal? Their relationship had grown into a different kind of love, stronger and more mature, a slow simmer rather than a consuming burn.
Maybe she was simply going through a phase, pulling back to focus on her book and other priorities. She was allowed to do that. They weren’t joined at the proverbial (or was that literal?) hip. Plenty of unconventional marriages survived, even flourished. Look at Bloomsbury —Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. And hadn’t he read somewhere that Margaret Drabble and Michael Holroyd lived in the same English cul-de-sac, married to each other but inhabiting separate houses, meeting in the afternoon for tea? He
and Claire didn’t have to live a conventional life, damn it; he loved her enough to respect her wishes for autonomy and freedom, even if—God forbid—it were sexual.
And if it wasn’t a phase, if she was genuinely pulling away? Well, he would find out soon enough.
THE FLOWER SHOP on Eighty-second and Columbus, a narrow space with painted brick walls, was one of Ben’s favorite places on the Upper West Side. It was hard to define what set it above ordinary florists—was it the Zen-like simplicity, rare outside SoHo, that showcased the beauty of individual blooms, or the bold colors and combinations, bunched beautifully in old-fashioned tin buckets along one wall, or the floor-to-ceiling display on the opposite wall of bright earthenware pots and exotic glass vases? Whatever the reason, Ben loved it. The florist was part of a neighborhood he’d carefully carved for himself out of the overwhelming variety available within the ten-block radius of his and Claire’s apartment. Ben’s world was composed of several good restaurants, a dependable dry cleaner and Vietnamese takeout, a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, two coffee shops, a tiny, ancient, used-book shop and a giant Barnes & Noble, and two gourmet grocery stores. If he didn’t have to go to work, Ben could imagine living out his life quite contentedly on this mile-long stretch.
Today he wanted something lush and elegant, a bouquet that would convey both congratulations and sincere, old-fashioned love. Claire was coming home. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, he thought, if they could both see this as a new beginning? Standing in the flower shop, looking around at the variety—you couldn’t go wrong, really, and anyway he’d ask Zoë, the owner, with whom he was on a first-name basis, for her opinion—he basked in the glow of possibility. He felt an odd, unfamiliar excitement, like the buzz of a new relationship. It was as if he and Claire had recently met and then she’d gone away on a long trip, and tonight she was coming back. Would he cook something, or should they go out? Maybe somewhere new, to surprise her—or perhaps it’d be best to stick with an old standard. He’d make several reservations, just to be sure.
He chose an eclectic mix of blue irises, yellow roses, white snapdragons, and purple tulips. “Gorgeous, perfect!” Zoë declared when he explained that Claire was coming home from her book tour. She wrapped the cut ends in a damp organic paper towel and then folded the flowers into a paper cone, as neatly as a midwife swaddling a baby. “Voilà,” she said, handing it to him with a flourish. “No woman would be able to resist.”
It was a sunny day, the first of the season warm enough for people to be out in shirtsleeves. And out they were, breathing in the spring air—parents with baby strollers, joggers in spandex, dogs. Leaving the flower shop Ben took off his jacket and slung it over one arm. He headed down Columbus Avenue, working his way toward Fairway at Seventy-fourth by zigzagging degrees—west on Eightieth to Amsterdam, south on Amsterdam to Seventy-ninth, west over to Broadway. At the entrance to the grocery store he grabbed a basket—carts were impossible on a Saturday; it’d take hours to get through—and roamed up and down the aisles in a sensory fugue. Kumquats, papaya, figs, arugula, kale, skate and salmon and whitefish salad, dark-roasted coffee beans … He put milk and fresh orange juice and whole grain bread and coffee into the basket. Yes, they’d go out to dinner, he decided; otherwise, with the flowers, there’d be too much to carry. The decision was a relief. He’d had a momentary flutter of anxiety imagining himself fussing over a salad and sea bass filets while Claire stood back with a glass of wine, watching him. Assessing.
But no—that wasn’t going to happen. Only a moment ago he’d been filled with giddy anticipation. He deftly made his way to the shortest line—cash only, mostly baskets—and paid up, adding a Swiss candy bar to his purchase at the last minute. As he left Fairway with his mesh bag, he glanced at his watch: eleven-forty-five. Her plane would land at two. There was plenty of time to tidy up the apartment and send a few e-mails for work. Beyond that, the weekend stretched ahead lazily, full of expectation and promise. Claire was coming home.
IN HIS DRESSER drawer, as he was putting away his clothes, Ben came across two pairs of Claire’s underwear folded inadvertently in a stack of his T-shirts. White with blue flowers. Little girl underwear. She always wore cotton bras and socks and underwear, cotton T-shirts to bed. Once, early on, he had given her a short silk nightgown, pale blue. She wore it a couple of times, and then she tucked it away. Looking around, he found it now in a pile of clothes on a high shelf in the bedroom closet, along with a bulky wool sweater she’d bought with him on a trip to Scotland, two of his old button-downs she used to wear around the house on weekends, the Barbour jacket he’d gotten her in London. She had been self-conscious about wearing it at first; it was brand-new, and they’re supposed to look lived in. Ben took it down and fingered the thick oilskin. It was perfect now, just the way you’d want it. He put it back on the shelf and closed the closet door.
BEN WAS STILL at his laptop, answering one final e-mail, when he heard Claire’s key in the lock. According to the tiny clock on his monitor it was 2:51—just about the time he’d figured it would be, given the cab ride from the airport. Quickly he pressed send later and stood up.
He had arranged the flowers in a Simon Pearce vase on the coffee table in the living room. He’d deliberated over whether to unwrap them—would it be nicer for her to open the package herself? In the end he decided it would be better to come upon them lush and blooming, a visual expression of domestic tranquility.
Claire stepped into the apartment, jangling her keys, balancing a bag on each shoulder and trailing a roller suitcase.
“She’s home!” Ben said, leaping to the door to help her, holding it open as she rolled across the threshold. “Is there anything else?” He peered into the hall.
“This is it,” she said, setting the keys on the side table and letting the bags drop to the floor. “God I’m glad to be here.”
Ben stepped forward and put his arms around her, leaning in to kiss her. She stiffened slightly, and then, as if realizing she was being impolite, relaxed into his embrace.
“I missed you, babe,” he said.
“Me, too,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder.
“You must be exhausted.”
“I am. I could sleep for days.”
Turning away, she bent down to gather her bags. For a moment they argued over who would carry them into the bedroom—“Stop, let me do that”; “Don’t be silly, I’m fine.” Then she gave up and let him, following him through the apartment to the back, passing the flowers on the coffee table without comment.
“I got those at Fleur,” he said in the wake of her silence, then immediately regretted it. He felt like an awkward teenage boy on a first date, trying too hard to impress.
“What?”
“Oh—nothing.”
She stopped and looked around, her gaze eventually resting on the flowers. She went over and touched an open yellow rose with the tip of a finger, then crouched down to smell it. “These are lovely,” she said, looking up at him. “For me?”
“Of course.”
“That’s sweet,” she murmured. Something about her tone made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. She was talking to him the way you might talk to a sick child or a very old person, with a mixture of condescension and something else—pity?
“I thought they’d brighten up the place,” he said briskly, depositing the bags in a heap on the bedroom floor.
“Umm,” she said, stretching her arms over her head. She went to the window and looked out.
There it was again—that awkwardness. He didn’t know what to say, and she didn’t seem particularly concerned about filling the silence.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” he asked.
“I’m fine. Well, maybe some water,” she said, still facing the window.
He went into the kitchen, got down two glasses, took a liter of Poland Spring out of the fridge, considered slicing a lemon: no. Too fussy. He filled the glasses, splashing water across the counter and onto the floor. Chri
st. His hands were shaking. What the fuck? He mopped up the mess, wiped the bottoms of the glasses, and brought them out to the living room, offering her one. She took a long sip.
“The place looks good.”
“Maria came yesterday. She said she wanted it to look extra nice for you, ‘mi bella señora,’” he said, imitating Maria’s melodious voice.
Claire smiled. “How sweet.” That word again! “Any mail worth bothering with?”
“I put a pile on your desk. Some invitations. A letter from some southern writers’ conference, asking you to be on a panel. I threw out the junk. Paid the bills.”
“Kept the engine running.”
“I guess. Luckily it’s not a very big engine.”
“Well. Thank you.”
He nodded, shrugged. What else would he have done?
“How’s the Boston project?”
“It’s going pretty well. Of course there are a million complications.”
“Of course.”
Small talk, chatter chatter. Why did it feel like such an effort? Claire stood at the window with her water glass, tapping the side with a finger. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. Ben could feel the tapping on his spine, hear it inside his head. TAP TAP TAP. He thought he might go crazy with the tapping.
He couldn’t stand it anymore. “Tell me what’s going on,” he said suddenly.
She turned around. He could see that she wasn’t sure she’d heard what she thought she’d heard—what he had implied. That something was going on, and he knew enough about it—how much?—to ask. A range of responses flickered across her features. “What do you mean?” she said.
“You seem uncomfortable.”
She smiled. He could see the veins in her neck, visible from the effort. “I’m just really tired. I need a good long rest. Then I’ll be right as rain.”