Part 25 (1/2)
”Where is he now?”
”Took the kids to visit his parents in Florida.”
”What was the issue?”
”How can you even ask me that?”
”I just mean, was there...something else?”
Elle shrugged, and Meredith noticed her upper arms had grown thin. As if to emphasize this, Elle lit a cigarette.
”I guess there's always something else going on in situations like this. The question is whether or not that something else is the symptom of the problem or the cause.”
”But, Elle babe, listen, are you sure?”
”Sure about what?”
”That he was, you know, that there was someone else.” The words felt thick in Meredith's mouth.
Elle fiddled with her sungla.s.ses but did not take them off.
”Not him, Mere. Me.”
Meredith often ducked out of wedding receptions, and this one was no exception.
Three hours into the party she found herself leaning against a pillar in a vacant banquet hall of the hotel, watching waiters set up folding chairs for an event the following morning. Her body throbbed pleasantly with the effects of dancing. She sipped a soda with lime.
She had to admit it had been the very best kind of wedding. The kind where the bride and groom were young, beautiful and flushed with good intentions. Now all they had to do was go forth and produce more people like themselves-handsome, well-loved children of privilege, who would in turn create more immaculately happy people just like their parents and so on for generations until the whole world was awash in thousands of clean-living, prosperous, symmetrically featured couples and their laughing blond children throwing Frisbees in parks and shopping for old-fas.h.i.+oned ice-cream makers at Williams-Sonoma. Meredith, who never wasted time fantasizing about her own wedding (after she turned thirty the thought of gauzy veils and seash.e.l.l table centerpieces embarra.s.sed her), was suddenly overtaken by sadness that she would never be a bride like the bride she had seen tonight-twenty-eight and beaming in the presence of her sane and married parents.
Meredith watched the opera singer who'd performed two arias earlier in the evening folding up her music stand. A fastidious--looking switch of a woman, she wore her hair coiled on top of her head with ribbons like a demiG.o.ddess. Just before she left the room she gave Meredith a nod good night. Something about the exchange reminded Meredith of that fundamental rule of humanity: that no matter how impenetrable and well-appointed people might seem on the surface, beneath the waxed brows and bleached teeth they were just like you. A total mess.
”A perfect wedding,” said a man's voice.
She turned to see him-Dr. Joe, standing with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his trousers, smiling as if it were the most normal thing in the world for her to keep b.u.mping into her gynecologist in different countries. For some inexplicable reason, she was not surprised.
”You know it's rude to read people's minds.”
”Really?” he said.
”Yes. It's like any other superpower. There are rules. Manners.” She looked at his cuff links. They were silver. A very silvery silver.
”Like what?”
”Like...for example, Superman. He had X-ray vision but he never would have let Lois know that he knew, you know, what she looked like...underneath...” Oh G.o.d, what was she trying to say? This was ridiculous. What was he doing here anyway?
Joe stepped forward and slipped his hand under her elbow. ”Why are you avoiding me?” he said.
”Avoiding you? Last time I checked it was a good idea for single girls to stay away from married men.”
”My wife died over two years ago.”
Meredith was momentarily abashed. ”What's with the ring, then?”
Joe looked at his hand as if he had just noticed the narrow white-gold band he wore on his third finger. ”She died of cancer two and a half years ago, and my daughter gets upset if I take it off. She wears her mother's engagement ring. It's sort of symbolic, I guess. Half the time I just forget it's there.”
Meredith paused, coughed, examined the rounded toes of her sensible black pumps. ”Your daughter. How old is she?”
”Livvy is eighteen. She goes to university in the fall.”
He reached into his breast pocket, pulled a photo from his wallet and handed it to Meredith. It was a school portrait of a dark-haired girl with a secret smile. Her hair was brushed forward in front of her shoulders, like a curtain. The girl from the drugstore.
”We adopted her when she was six months old,” Joe explained. ”She's not smiling there because she still had her braces on. They make them in rainbow colours now. It's supposed to be fun, but it just makes kids even more self-conscious. I keep meaning to get a more recent photo.”
His face relaxed into a smile. He bent down and removed a piece of confetti from her forehead. He smelled deliciously clean, like cotton bedsheets and lemon balm.
”Don't you want to know how I found you here?” he said.
Her face turned hot and p.r.i.c.kly. Found? Did he really say found? Found implied he had looked, which implied that he liked her. Not just liked her but like-liked her.
”How?”
”I had to fly here to treat a patient. A mutual acquaintance,” he said with the look of someone trying to say something without actually saying it. ”And when your mother told me you were going to be in Florence at a wedding at the Savoy, I decided to drop by.”
”You talked to my mother?”
”I thought that's where you were living. I got her number through the production office on the film set.”
”They just gave it out to you?”
”Not exactly. I had to pretend to be your brother.”
”Oh. Weird.”
”Sorry. It just seemed at the time to be the least, uh, lascivious-sounding of all the possible excuses I could give. And I was getting a bit worried after you didn't return any of my messages.”
”You left me messages? When?”
”Dozens!” He coughed. ”Well, several anyway. Certainly a few. A few sounds better, doesn't it? Let's say I left you a few messages. After that...altercation on the movie set, and you losing your job...” He rubbed a hand over his face. ”Meredith, I felt terrible. I really did.”
”So did I.”
”I bet you did.”
”Uh-huh. So bad I didn't leave the flat or check my messages for more than a week.”
”That explains it. I'm so sorry.”
”Has anyone ever told you that you apologize a lot for a man?”
He laughed. ”Really, Meredith, I just can't stand the thought of making you suffer.”