Outside is a tiled courtyard with a marble statue of what he assumes is a woman rendered in an abstract manner embedded in the center of a round shallow pool with a fountain. Flowers that resemble lotuses but aren’t drift slowly across the surface like small abandoned boats. He realizes the petals form a further layer of mosaic. So this is how his wife makes stone breathe. Then he reads the Sunday New York Times front page twice. The script is glutinous, indecipherable. He pours another scotch and dials Sam Goldberg’s private emergency cell line.
“The WMD negotiations? You’re still there?” Sam doesn’t wait for a response.
“I’m at lunch with a client, Bernie. Can I get back to you?” “Chloe says she’s divorcing me,” Bernie begins.
“I’m representing her, yes.” Sam sounds equitable, even expansive.
“You’re my best friend,” Bernie reminds him.
“I love you both. She came to me first. I’ll call you back.” The phone goes still in his hand, which feels suddenly numb. He remembers that his hospital is now simply part of 250 small medical facilities owned by a corporation based in Baltimore. He is merely one of 12,500 doctors they choose to employ.
Bernie climbs the wooden stairs to their bedroom. Chloe is placing shoes in an enormous cardboard box. “Imelda Marcos had fewer shoes,” he notes. He’s wondered about her shoe accumulation, the pumps and stilettos and platforms, how odd for a woman who habitually wears sandals or is barefoot.
“Won’t you need a porter or two?”
“My job is over. The chauffeuring. The scheduling. Tennis lessons and matches. Music classes. Not to mention the soccer practices and interminable play-offs. The surfboard transportation logistics. Piano recitals. Ballet productions. The play dates,” Chloe pauses. She reaches for something in a drawer on the far side of the closet. She withdraws a package of cigarettes. She lights one and faces him.
“Listen. It begins in pre-school. These kids don’t play. They have auditions. If they pass, if they get a call back, a sort of nanny-chaperoned courtship ensues. It’s loathsome.” She expels smoke. “Later, it’s worse.”
He hasn’t seen her with a cigarette since Ion and Gnat first went to nursery school. The fumes are infiltrating the room, further irritating his contacts. Bob Dylan is whining off-key and out of time, contaminating the air, now on an auditory level. It should be labeled a posthumous rather than live performance, he decides. He shuts off the switch.
“I didn’t know you still smoked,” Bernie said. “Or that you hated the children’s activities.”
“Soccer did me in. Soccer, for Christ’s sake. How does soccer figure? When did that make your short list? How many professional soccer stars has La Jolla produced? It’s just crap.” Chloe is vehement.
“We accepted division of labor as a viable vestigial tradition. But you could have refused,” Bernie counters.
“You can’t say no to soccer. It’s the new measure of motherhood. It’s the fucking gold standard. I sat in parking lots between chauffeuring, feeling like Shiva with her arms amputated.” Chloe finishes her cigarette. She uses a yellow shoe with a red flower at the toe for an ashtray.
“Let’s have a drink downstairs,” Bernie suggests. His voice is reasonable. He is able to produce this effect by pretending he is someone else entirely, a concierge or a waiter. “I’m finishing the Laphroaig.”
Chloe consults her watch. It’s the Piaget he gave her when their son entered college. His wife shrugs, the kimono sleeves drifting briefly from her sides like twin cranes skimming an inlet, hunting.
“One drink,” she assents.
They sit in the kitchen. He considers the Westec buy-out. For two decades, he entered the hospital each morning and paused in a gesture of respect near walls engraved with the names of doctors who had achieved their 20, 25 and 30 year status. Next year, he would have had his own 20-year service plaque installed. Chloe has already arranged the catering. He would be permanently mounted beside Milstein and Kim, McKenzie, Fuentes and Weintraub. They were there when Northern San Diego Children’s Clinic was built, the landscaping just put in, the first Bougainvillea and Hibiscus bushes growing against still dusty cinder blocks. Chloe planted pink and white Camellias the next year. Then Wisteria and Roses.
Bernie realizes the kitchen floor is actually a composition of hand-painted tiles, purple and blue Irises and Violets. The stems and leaves are a raised green enamel suggesting channels and veins. So this is how she prepares their meals, barefoot, standing on a version of cool garden. He finds cheese and fruit in the refrigerator and bagels in the cabinet. A china platter with ornate silver handles he vividly recalls packing in plastic wrap and hauling in a special crate on a plane sits between them. Where were they returning from? Portugal? Prague? Chloe averts her eyes.
“I love California Lent. It comes the spring you’re fifteen and lasts the rest of your life.” She looks tired.
“Just gain a few pounds and let’s stay married.” Bernie spreads cream cheese on a bagel. It’s stale. Chloe smokes another cigarette.
“I’m leaving a few pounds early. I’m one of the last original wives. Do you realize that?” Chloe asks. “ I’m forty-six. Let’s just skip menopause and the obligatory trophy wife syndrome. We did our jobs. Now the task is finished.”
“We had a deal. We agreed to be post-modern,” Bernie points out. “No empires with historically disastrous ends. No mistresses with unnecessary dangerous complications. No tax fraud. No start-ups or IPOs. Just us, with plausible defendable borders.”
“We did that. You built the clinic. I did this.” Chloe indicates the formal dining room with her fingers, and by extension, he surmises, the entire house and grounds, courtyards, swimming pool and tennis court, gazebos and rose gardens.
“You saw it as a job?” Bernie is amazed.
“It was a performance art piece. Remember when Book Club discovered one man shows? Spalding Gray. Laurie Anderson. We went with the Weintraubs on opening night, remember?”
Bernie Roth thinks for a moment. Then he says, “No.”
“It was the hospital benefit that year. A bit arty for you. We went backstage.
“Elaine had Laurie Anderson’s entire tour profile. We realized we were earning more than she was. We had our own multi-million dollar performance art pieces. We just had smaller venues and a limited audience. Elaine Weintraub, the original wife. Before the current version. The ex-TV late night weather girl? The anorexic redhead with the room temperature IQ? Jesus. Elaine Weintraub was my best friend. You don’t even remember her.” Chloe finishes her scotch.
“Our marriage was an art piece, a performance?” Bernie is incredulous.
“The four piece choreography. The lessons. Sports and tutors. Surfing and swim meets. The theme birthday party extravaganzas. Christ. Not to mention the gardeners I bailed out of jail. The maids with alcoholic boyfriends. Their secret abortions. The relentless complications. The emergency loans. It was 24/7 for 20 years. And I’m not getting a plaque either.” Chloe stares at the table. Bernie pours more scotch.
Outside is sunlight that surprises him with its nuances, its fluid avenues of yellows that are not solid at all, but tentative and in curious transition. Streaks like gold threads waver across the surface of the fountain, a filigree embossing the koi. Bernie thinks of brass bells and abruptly senses a clash in the air. So this is the sound of a day being sliced in half.
“I walk through this house and it’s like being trapped in a postcard.” Chloe indicates the living room table, a square of inlaid mahogany completely covered with framed photographs. She picks them up, one by one. “Agra. Bali. Rome. Luxor. Maui. Everyone holding hands and smiling. It’s a laminated version of reality.”