If You Only Knew Page 11

  "It's the wine. When you were at wedding dress school--"

  "Parsons Institute of Design, thank you very much. The Juilliard of the design world."

  He raises an eyebrow. "When you were at Parsons, could you tell the great ones?"

  I smile. "I see your point. Yes. The great ones made you gasp at how beautiful their pieces were."

  "So just as it takes more than understanding how to sew to be a great designer, it takes more than knowing how to play to be a great performer. Evander is eleven years old, but already he plays with his whole self. Most of my students sit there like lumps with arms, but he becomes part of the piano. Did you see how he touched it when he was done?"

  "I did. Like it was his friend."

  Leo puts his feet on the coffee table. "Exactly." He finishes his wine and pours more, looks at my glass to see if I need a refill. I don't, since I haven't chugged mine quite as fast as he's done his. "Are you a great designer, Jenny?"

  "Come by my shop and see for yourself."

  "Maybe I will." His dog wanders over to him, curls his lip at me and sits at Leo's feet.

  "Did you visit your mom today?" It's Sunday, after all.

  "Yes." His smile drops so suddenly it's as if there's a different person in his place, and the...the tragedy there causes dread to flash through me.

  "How was that?"

  "It wasn't a good day," he says, stroking Loki's head and not looking at me. "She has dementia."

  "Oh, Leo, I'm sorry."

  He nods, his eyes still on the dog. "Thanks."

  "Do you have other family around?"

  "No. I'm the only one." He doesn't say anything for a minute, just takes a sip of wine, his long fingers cradling the glass with unconscious grace. "She went downhill pretty fast and had to move into a facility. And that was...tough."

  "What about your dad?"

  "Not in the picture."

  I've learned more about Leo in the past minute than I have in the past three weeks.

  He sighs. "So now I'm the keeper of the memories. My... Our family, the people who died... Most of the time, she forgets that they even lived. And when she forgets, it's like they're a little more gone." His eyes drop again to the dog, who looks up at him worshipfully.

  "I'm so sorry," I say again.

  He nods, then suddenly sits up, all interest and energy. "So! You're looking for a man, right?"

  "Um...well, yes. I mean, yes, I would love to be married again. And have kids."

  "Why?"

  "I just do, Leo." I hate that question. Because I believe in love. Because I never saw myself not having children.

  "So your sister's husband is cheating on her, your own husband dumped you, your mom's a lonely widow, but you believe in love with a capital L and hearts and butterflies."

  "Don't forget bluebirds and rainbows. And yes, I do. It's the cornerstone of my business."

  "I thought the cornerstone of your business would be bilking brides of every last dollar for a dress meant to make their friends jealous."

  "You'd be wrong."

  That smile flashes. "Want me to ask around? See if I can scare up a man for you?"

  "You're getting on my nerves now. And I don't need your help. Believe it or not, men like me, Leo."

  "Oh, yeah? Anyone promising?"

  "Yes. I have a date Tuesday, actually." Before she was dealing with all her own crap, Rachel had fixed me up with a divorced dad whose son goes to the same nursery school as my nieces.

  Leo sits back against the couch cushion. "Well. Make sure you report back to Uncle Leo. I want to hear all about it." He winks.

  For some reason, that stings. "Thanks for the wine."

  "You're welcome." He doesn't stand up.

  As I go through the little courtyard to my front steps, I can't help glancing in his window.

  He's still there on the couch, and gone is his irreverent, mischievous gleam. In its place is... Shit. Complete and utter loneliness. Someone should warn him, because it looks as if all the heartache in the world is written in the slant of his brows, the line of his mouth, the confusion in his eyes.

  Leo Killian needs to be loved.

  And there we go. As stupid a sentiment as exists in the universe. Leo has told me he's not interested in me. I'd be stupid not to believe him.

  But he likes you, says the little whiny voice in my head.

  Owen liked me, too, and we all know where that got me. Adam loves Rachel, and he's rubbing her heart on a cheese grater.

  And my father loved Mom. Her image of him is suspended in amber, where he can't be touched by reality.

  I wonder if it's time to tell my sister that, like her husband, our father was a cheater, too.

  Rachel

  It's not every day that I get checked for herpes. Nope. This is a first. No wonder I'm wearing new underwear.

  I seem to have become a stand-up comedian in my own head, ever since finding out that Adam is/was cheating on me. It beats hysteria and/or murder. Ba-dum-ching!

  I hustle the girls into the minivan and drive to nursery school, saying goodbye with fast hugs. This, of course, is the day that everyone wants to talk to me. Four or five mothers stand in a well-dressed knot outside the doors, and I have to weave between them.

  "Rachel, come to Blessed Bean with us," Elle says. She's wearing a top so tight it's a wonder she can draw breath to speak.

  "Yeah, Rachel. You never come," Claudia says, twisting her most recent diamond ring.

  "I'm sorry. I have an errand to run," I say.

  "Meeting someone?" Mean Debbie suggests slyly. She gives me an arch look. "So dressed up, Rachel."

  Yes, I have dressed up. To make a good impression on my syphilis or chlamydia or whatever I may have. Hi! Take it easy on me, because as you can see from this adorable dress, I'm supernice!

  "I gotta run, too," Kathleen says, though technically they haven't invited her to go out for coffee. She's older than the rest of us, and the one time she did come along, she ordered a full breakfast, while Claudia, Debbie and Elle watched with the same horrified fascination as if she'd been shooting heroin. Ba-dum-ching! "Come on, Rach, we can walk to our cars together." When we're a safe distance away, she whispers, "Everything okay?"

  "Mmm-hmm. Thanks for asking, though." I can't look at her, because I can feel tears rising behind my eyes, and if I see any kindness in her expression, I'm likely to fall apart, which would make Mean Debbie and Claudia and Elle incredibly excited.

  "Give me a call later if you want," Kathleen says. "I'm gonna just come out and say this. I hate those bitches back there. You're the only genuine person I've met since we moved here, and I'd love to be friends if you're as nice as you seem."

  My mouth falls open. "Oh, Kathleen! Thank you. I feel the same way. I mean...they're not really that bad. But you seem really nice, too." My cheeks prickle with a blush, but it's wonderfully awkward.

  In a flash, I see her coming over to my house, sitting in the kitchen, eating those lemon cookies I baked last night. "Do you want to-- Oh, wait. I really do have an errand. Maybe..."

  "Another time, then?"

  "Yeah. Absolutely." I hesitate, then force out the words. "I have some personal things going on. It might be a while, but I'd really like to get to know you better." It's mortifying. I hate being shy. I hate it.

  "Great. I mean, shit on the personal things, but let me know if I can help." She smiles then gets into her minivan, which is cluttered and filthy and smells like boy.

  "Thank you," I say. "Thanks." I swallow hard and get into my car.

  A few minutes later, I'm standing at the receptionist's window at my doctor's office. "Rachel Carver to see Dr. Ramanian," I say.

  "Insurance card, please," drones the extremely young woman. She looks as if death by boredom is imminent. I hand over my card. She glances at it and types. And types. And types. "What is the reason for your visit?"

  Horror flashes like weak lightning. Do I have to actually say this out loud? "Um...a checkup?"
/>
  "You just had a checkup four months ago," she says, staring at her computer screen.

  I bite my lip. "I...I know. I need another one. I have an appointment."

  "Well, your insurance isn't gonna cover this. Are you sick?" Her voice is all too loud. My face feels as if it's bubbling, I'm blushing so hard.

  "Um..."

  My husband is cheating on me. I need to make sure he didn't give me anything.

  "Hello? I need to fill in this form." She looks so bored. And beautiful. And so damn young, chewing on her gum, all those silver bracelets, a Chinese character tattoo on her hand...

  "It's none of your business," I say in a hard voice. "I'll tell the doctor. I have an appointment, so just get me in there."

  Wow. This new Rachel...she kind of kicks ass.

  The girl is not impressed. "Fine. Have a seat."

  Like all doctors' offices, this one features uncomfortable chairs with itchy upholstery, travel magazines and outdated editions of Entertainment Weekly. I pick up an issue of something and pretend to read, but my heart is thudding.

  Napoleon Bonaparte died of syphilis, didn't he? Or was that Al Capone? Or both?

  Good God. What if I have something? It's utterly surreal. Adam, too, is being tested, but somehow, I doubt he's suffering the way I am. In fact, I picture him going into his doctor's office saying, "Here for another screen, dude! Been fucking around on my wife, and, boy, is this other woman hot!" and the doctor says, "Yeah, you go, Adam, you da man!" and they high-five and--

  "Rachel? Oh, it is you! How are you?"

  My heart sinks. It's Mrs. Donovan, who lived next door to us when I was a kid. It's not that I don't like her; it's just that I'm here for such nasty purposes. I try to get up, but she's standing too close, and I don't want to knock her over. "Mrs. Donovan! Hi." I smile up at her, sort of, and squeeze her free hand. The other holds her cane and a huge quilted purse that looks like it could hold an eight-year-old child.

  "How are those beautiful girls of yours?" she asks.

  "They're great," I tell her. "Want to see a picture?" I pull out my phone, but she waves it away.

  "I hate those cell phone thingies," she says. "Do you have a real photo?"

  "I don't. I'm sorry."

  "Why are you here, dear? You're not sick, are you?"

  I better not be. "Oh, just a checkup. How about you?"

  "I have the worst itching!" she crows. "And discharge! In the strangest place, too!"

  Oh, God. Maybe she has an STD, too. I try to keep my face from morphing into a silent scream of horror, but I have no idea if it's working.

  "Look," she says, pulling up her World's Best Grandma T-shirt. "Look at my belly button. See that oozing?"

  I try not to gag. First of all, it's a wrinkly, elephantine stomach, and it's about an inch from my face. Secondly, she's got such an outie that it looks like a snout, like some sort of alien pig baby is trying to push its way out of her.

  And yes, there's discharge.

  "I've been using these hemorrhoid wipes on it," she continues in that blithely unselfconscious way old people sometimes have when discussing hideous medical issues. "But it's just getting worse. It's thicker now, and if I squeeze--"

  "Rachel Carver?" A nurse opens the door and I fly across the room.

  "Good luck, Mrs. Donovan!" I call over my shoulder.

  A few minutes later, I'm in my johnny coat, waiting for the doctor to come in. I shaved my legs for this appointment. Definitely want to make a good impression as a cuckolded wife. I've seen Dr. Ramanian for about ten years. I feel like we're almost friends, in that sense that she's seen parts of me I've never seen, knew about my struggles to get pregnant and came to see the girls when they were in the hospital, just because she's nice. I always wanted to ask her out for coffee or a drink, but that effortless way some people (like Jenny) have of making friends has always eluded me, and now the window has shut. I can't just say, "Hey, about nine, ten years ago, I meant to ask you if you wanted to be friends, but I couldn't get the words out. How about now? Does now work?"

  A brisk knock comes on the door. "Come in," I say.

  "Hello, Rachel," she says, walking in, eyes on my chart. "How are you?"

  "Fine, thanks, how are you?" I answer automatically.

  "Very good. What can I do for you today?"

  I practiced what I'd say in the car ride over here, but my heart pounds against my ribs like a bird trying to get out of a house. I clear my throat. "I seem to need an STD panel," I manage to say, and I don't cry, though my freshly shaven and moisturized legs are shaking.

  Dr. Ramanian's face changes, melting in sympathy. Not really a mystery who cheated, I guess. "All right, then," she says. "Let's check you out."

  So I scootch onto the exam table and let her probe my cervix and try to breathe deeply. I'm brave, after all. I had triplets. During my infertility workups, I've been probed and prodded and squished a hundred times.

  There never was anything wrong with me, by the way. Adam has a low sperm count. Yet I was the one who had to take fertility drugs so the swimmers he did have had a better chance to home in on something.

  Dr. Ramanian is fast and gentle and tells me to sit up. She draws blood herself, and gives me a cup to pee in. "It won't take long to get the results," she says. "I'll call you myself."

  "Thank you," I say briskly, all New Rachel as I pull on my clothes without even waiting for her to leave. "I appreciate that."

  Because Old Rachel really couldn't take this. Old Rachel would be sobbing on this woman's shoulder.

  New Rachel is thinking about how satisfying it would be to kill her husband right about now.

  Jenny

  When I was eleven and Rachel was fourteen, our father was shot and killed when two teenagers robbed the Auto-Mart.

  Dad's guilty pleasure was those nasty frozen drinks guaranteed to rot your teeth. Hey. Gotta relax somehow, right? We always got a kick out of it, our father, the high priest of flossing, stopping in a 7-Eleven or a Stewart's for a drink made of sugar, corn syrup and God knows what else.

  On the night of July 11, Dad decided he had to have a Green Watermelon Brain Freeze, his favorite flavor. The video surveillance showed him at the self-serve slushie counter, filling a barrel-sized foam cup. At the same time he was thus engrossed, two boys came in, nylon stockings over their faces. Jittery, nervous, druggies...the worst kind of criminal. They pointed a gun at the clerk and ordered him to open the safe.

  My father capped his drink, still oblivious, and reached for his wallet, his last act on this earth, because that was when the clerk reached for his own shotgun, the kids fired, the clerk fired, and Dad, who stood there with his hands up, was dead.

  The whole thing took less than fifteen seconds. I know, because when I turned eighteen, I got the video from the police. It wasn't gruesome; Dad just fell back, out of the screen except for his shoes. I don't know what I was hoping the video would show me, but I felt compelled to see everything that happened.

  Until three months before that horrible day, my life had been charmed.

  My parents were wonderfully safe and normal. Dad loved being a dentist, and Mom taught art therapy at a nursing home. Part-time work for Mom, the perfect kind of job for her, a little artsy, a little holy, with just enough hours that she could do something unrelated to us girls while still going all-out for the title of mother of the year. She came to every recital, every concert, every horse show. She baked cookies, came up with themes for our birthday parties, gave out the best candy at Halloween--as well as a toothbrush, of course. Mom French-braided our hair, baked chocolate chip cookies from scratch and put in the requisite hours volunteering in our schools.

  Every once in a while, she'd give us a little flash of adventure--careening too fast into the driveway, making us scream with fear and delight, or, if Dad was at a dentists' convention, letting us have ice-cream sundaes for dinner and telling us we didn't even have to brush afterward (though Rachel did, for the record).

/>   We assumed all families were like ours. Our parents were happily--very happily--married, our house was big but not fancy, Dad made enough that we were quite comfortable, though not rich. We didn't own a horse, but we took riding lessons. There was a new car every five years or so. We took vacations each summer, renting a house on a lake in New Hampshire or visiting the Grand Canyon. We went to the movies together and played board games--bored games, I used to call them, quite delighted with my sophisticated wit.

  Mom and Dad made adult life look incredibly desirable, and both Rachel and I couldn't wait to grow up. On date nights, which happened every weekend, Mom wore a dress and panty hose, heels and perfume. They went to benefit balls and country-club dances and dinner parties at their friends' homes, and when it was their turn to host, Rachel and I would take coats and serve hors d'oeuvres and spy from the stairs landing before going upstairs to watch TV.

  Mom was great.

  But Dad was better.

  He was, I realize now, incredibly good-looking. But dads are dads; of course we thought he was handsome. As I got older, I noticed women talking to him, laughing, laying a hand on his arm or chatting to him for too long after he'd cleaned their teeth. Kids skipped into his office and ran up to him at school events to show him a loose tooth or just to say hi. He played golf with his buddies once in a while, went to a Yankees game once a year with his brother, but really, he was all about Mom and Rachel and me. His girls. He adored us.

  Mom was a really good mother. Dad was perfect.

  Sometimes, Rachel or I would walk in on our parents kissing in the kitchen, a sight that Rachel adored and I pretended to find disgusting. It seemed to me that Mom was lucky to be married to the great man, the guy who made people love going to the dentist, the best father, the nicest person in the world. It was never the other way around.

  Weekends were spent taking hikes along the Hudson, Sunday-night pizza at Louie's. At bedtime, Dad would sit in the chair between Rachel's and my beds and tell us long, absurd stories about renegade cats, or child armies defeating evil giants through cunning and homemade weapons. On Sunday mornings, he'd make chocolate chip pancakes, so long as we brushed extra long afterward.

  Sometimes, I'd go to his office after school, skipping down the hall, the sound of drilling not at all disturbing to me. His staff was all women, and they seemed to swell with love, seeing Dad scoop up his daughters and introduce us to his patients. Dad would always have time to examine our teeth and give us the grave news: "It seems like I'll have to pull all your teeth, little girl. Every single one is black and rotten. Don't your parents make you brush?" He let Rachel and me pick out the posters that he tacked to the ceiling above the exam chairs--a kitten dangling from a branch with the caption Hang In There! or the unicorn standing under a rainbow and the words Don't Stop Believing! There was a treasure chest filled with little toys for kids once they'd endured their checkup, and Rachel and I got to pick out the loot.