We Are Water. Wally Lamb
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on viveca.com. But I remember what it’s like to live a nickel-and-dime life. To count on waitressing tips—a couple of pounds of change per shift, plus dollar bills and the occasional five or ten. I doubt Hector would be putting on that gray doorman’s uniform and standing in the lobby every Saturday and Sunday if he didn’t need the extra income. Still, he’s always so good-natured. Hector may be the most noncynical New Yorker I’ve met in the four years I’ve lived here … Unless it’s an act. Maybe that big, warm smile of his hides his resentment. “The service people aren’t your friends,” Viveca warned me once, shortly after I moved in here. “Nor do they want to be. Be respectful of that.”
One time? This was shortly after I began staying at Viveca’s but before we started sleeping together. A customer at viveca c—an investment banker—had just bought one of my pieces for thirty thousand dollars, and I was feeling so flush and free that I opened a window and tossed out a hundred-dollar bill. I watched it flutter end over end toward the street below, then looked away before it landed. I didn’t want to see anyone scrambling after it, or worse, two people fighting over it. I just wanted to imagine someone with a hard life happening by and getting a nice surprise. Picking it up and being on their way, a little less burdened because of that unexpected hundred-dollar bill.
I sit down at the table, unpeel a banana, and eat it while I work on the Sudoku puzzle I ripped out of yesterday’s paper. The Esclusivo Magnifica plays its little snatch of classical music, signaling that the coffee’s ready. I get up, grab a mug, pour, sip. Back in Connecticut, when Orion and I were first married, I’d reuse tea bags to economize. At the grocery store, I would buy whatever coffee was on sale that week: the store brand or Yuban or Chock full o’Nuts. Chock full o’Nuts is that heavenly coffee. Better coffee a millionaire’s money can’t buy. Ha! Guess again. This coffee from our high-priced machine is bracing and delicious. So shut up and enjoy it, Annie. You can’t have it both ways—live like this and resent it at the same time. Stop being such a goddamned hypocrite.
I give up on the Sudoku puzzle; this one’s too hard and I’m not that good at them in the first place. In fact, I stink. Numbers, logic: that’s never been my strong suit. On TV, Mario Cuomo’s son—the cute one, not the politician—is reading the news. I’m getting a yogurt out of the fridge when I hear him say something about Cape Cod. I look up. They’re showing footage of great white sharks cruising the water. Has Orion heard about this? He loves swimming in the ocean. I’d better call him. Mario’s son says that the Cape’s merchants and innkeepers are worried that this last hurrah of the tourist season will take a major hit during what’s already been an off year because of the bad economy.
You’ve reached the voice mail of Dr. Orion Oh …
I don’t get it. Why hasn’t he changed his greeting yet? Orion left his practice at the university over a month ago, opting for early retirement—something I still don’t understand. Why would a workaholic do that so abruptly? And why, all of a sudden, does he want to sell the house after he was so adamant during the divorce negotiations about not selling it? About staying put whether I’d left or not.
If this is an emergency, please call …
I was shocked when Orion took Viveca up on her offer to use her beach house for his Cape Cod getaway. He’d refused at first, but then he changed his mind. Why? Whatever’s going on with him, I don’t think he’s shared it with the kids. I talked to all three of them this week, and none of them voiced any worry about their father. Has he met someone? No, that can’t be it. If he had, Marissa would have wormed it out of him and called me. Andrew and Ariane can keep a secret but not their little sister.
There’s a long, long beep, which means he hasn’t been picking up his messages. “Hey, there. It’s me,” I say. “Have you left for the Cape yet? I just wanted to tell you, in case you haven’t heard, that they’ve been spotting sharks up there. Be careful, okay? I hope you’re well. Call me.”
Marissa’s probably right. I should learn how to text-message. “Daddy hardly ever answers the phone, Mom. But whenever I text him, he texts me right back,” she told me yesterday. Well, good for her, but I’d prefer to talk to her father—to hear it in his voice that he’s doing okay. Or not. When you’ve been married to someone for as long as Orion and I were, you can hear in a conversation if something’s wrong—not so much in what’s said as the way it’s said. The inflections, the hesitations …
Is it the wedding? The fact that it will be in Three Rivers? Is that what’s bothering him? I didn’t want to not invite Orion. It’s doubtful that Andrew’s coming, but both of our girls will be there, and I know he’d like to see them. And Donald and Mimsy are driving up from Pennsylvania; Orion’s always liked my brother and his wife and he hasn’t seen them in ages. Still, I don’t want him to feel that he has to attend. Yesterday, Viveca’s assistant e-mailed me the list of who’s coming and who’s declined and apparently Orion hasn’t sent in his response card yet … I was delighted, though, to see Mr. Agnello’s name on the list. I want to introduce Viveca to the man who validated my artistic efforts all those years ago when I was struggling against self-doubt, wondering if I should stop kidding myself and just give up. Mr. Agnello must be in his nineties by now. He and I have exchanged Christmas cards for twenty-something years, and when I didn’t get a card back from him this past Christmas, I was worried that he might have …
Is it because I’m marrying a woman? Is that why Orion hasn’t responded? He’s never been homophobic, but maybe this strikes too close to home. Bruises his male ego. That time when we met with the lawyers to negotiate the terms of the divorce, he’d already been drinking. I could smell it. And it wasn’t exactly the cocktail hour; it was 11:00 A.M. I’d wanted to say something to him about it after we left, but I didn’t. I was still trying to figure out what the new rules were about such things, now that we were almost divorced. The other day, I tried imagining what it would be like if the shoe was on the other foot—if he had left me for a man. It was a ridiculous exercise: picturing two hairy-chested men in bed with each other, one of them Orion. LOL, as Marissa would put it. LMFAO.
The truth, whether Orion believes it or not, is that I hadn’t left him for Viveca. I’d left him for New York—for the opportunities it offered me, creatively and commercially. What developed between Viveca and me had been unplanned, unpremeditated …
My “defection,” Orion had called it on that awful Sunday back in Connecticut when I finally admitted that Viveca and I had become involved, that I’d fallen in love with her. I was “a Judas,” he said. I could get my own goddamned ride back to the train station, because he sure as hell wasn’t taking me there. He was through with being “a fucking sap.” I’d had to hire a cab to New Haven, and on the train ride back to the city, I’d kept replaying our argument. If I was Judas, then that made him Jesus Christ, right? Well, maybe he should come down from his cross and take some of the responsibility for the fact that our marriage had failed. Which of us had practically raised Andrew and the girls single-handedly all those years when he’d leave for work early and come home late? Sit in his office all day and into the evening, counseling college kids about their problems? What about my problems? What about the fact that I felt frustrated and neglected all those years while he was playing savior to those troubled students of his and then coming home and feeling sorry for himself because of the toll they took? Drinking his beers and falling asleep by nine when I still had laundry to fold and put away, and three school lunches to make for the next morning, before I could go down to my gloomy little studio and grab a measly hour or two for my work.
Thank god the bitterness has subsided on both our parts. We have our kids to thank for that and our mutual investment in their lives, our shared worries about their unhappiness and their safety: Ariane’s failed romances, our worries about where Andrew’s military career might take him, where Marissa’s impetuousness might take her. Our concern for our kids’ well-being binds us despite our divorce. Will always bind us. And he’s come around, made an effort with Viveca despite the fact that I can tell he doesn’t like her … Whether Viveca understands it or not, I still care about Orion, which