“Tom! Listen to me!” He set his coffee cup on the counter and kept walking. She waited until he had reached the doorway before she called after him. “I think we should take a break from each other for a while.”
That got his attention. She saw the way his shoulder muscles tensed, and he halted in the doorway. She watched him make a slow and dramatic turn. He was stalling for time, giving himself a chance to think of a response. She knew all his gestures and habits as if they were her own.
“Are you sleeping with someone else?” he asked.
Jennifer recognized the tactic. He was putting her on the defensive. She stared back at him, refusing to rise to the bait. When he came slowly back into the kitchen, holding her eyes with his, she began to tense. Her fingers tightened around the warm coffee cup.
“Right? Is this what all this oblique talk is about?” He had reached the table, but he didn’t sit down. She knew he liked to hover over people.
“Our relationship isn’t going anywhere,” she told him.
“Don’t give me that shit! Who is it? One of those assholes from the foundation? Handingham, right?”
“David?” She looked up at Tom, startled by his guess. “You think I’d be interested in David?” Now she was offended.
“He’s your boss, isn’t he? He’s got the power around that place.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. You think I’d have an affair with David Handingham just because he’s the president of the board?”
“You wouldn’t be the first woman to fuck her way up the ladder.”
“Tom, that’s disgusting! I can’t believe you’d think that. Sometimes I don’t think you know me at all.”
“Sometimes I think you’re right.” He sat down across from her.
She realized he was upset, and that pleased her. She looked away again, back through the kitchen window. It was suddenly much brighter. The sun had reached the street and was shining off the frozen snow, and Jennifer stared hard at the gleaming surface until her eyes hurt.
“Okay, let’s talk about this later.” He glanced at the clock, then over at Jennifer. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
She wanted to say no, but that would be unfair to Tom, and unfair to herself. She had already invested over six months in their relationship.
“I’ll be here,” she told him.
Tom nodded, then sighed. “Okay,” he said, tapping the table and pulling himself up. “I’ll call before four. We’re having dinner, right?” When she nodded yes, he said quickly, “I’ll make the reservations.”
Jennifer knew this was an effort to appease her. She was always the one who made their dinner reservations, who wrote the thank-you notes, who did all the little housewifely chores.
Tom walked into the bedroom to dress. She got more coffee and sat by the windows and watched the winter sun grow brighter.
When Tom came back into the kitchen, he was dressed in the clothes he had left in her closet—the blue cords, his thick walking shoes, the beautiful red sweater she had given him for his thirtieth birthday. He was wearing his parka and carried a briefcase full of files. When he kissed her cheek, she could smell his aftershave lotion, his hair shampoo, and she wanted to make love to him there on the kitchen floor but didn’t have the courage to tell him so.
She didn’t move. She sat perfectly still at the kitchen table and watched the sun and the snow. She didn’t have the strength to get up and get dressed.
She would go back to bed, she thought. She would curl down deep into the blankets and sleep. She would stay there safe and warm in the dark shadows until she discovered what was going wrong in her life.
CHAPTER FIVE
JENNIFER LOOKED AT THE elephants, the herd of mammoths that dominated the museum’s African Hill, as she waited for Tom. It was Tom who insisted that they meet for a drink in such an out of the way place. These days his job consisted mostly of prosecuting drug dealers, and shortly before they began to date, someone had tried to kill him. Now he carried a gun and didn’t like being seen with her. It was silly of him to worry, she thought. If drug dealers wanted to blow him or her away, they would. They controlled the city as far as she could see.
Jennifer stopped at the Gemsbok display and studied the pattern-faced Kalahari Desert animals. In the Museum of Natural History’s magnificent diorama, they looked almost real. Then she thought: they were real once, roaming the great savannahs. She almost felt as if she could step behind the thick glass and walk through the long grass and acacia trees into the heat and heart of Africa. She wished she were in Africa. She wished she were anywhere but in New York City on a cold, snowy Friday afternoon waiting for her tardy lover.
She stepped up to another diorama, this one a cluster of hippopotamuses, sitatunga, and waterbucks, and saw that the sign said the animals were all gathered at the edge of one of the small rivers that formed the network of the Nile. The animals were standing in the thick grass and umbrella sedge. Jennifer stared at the posed figures; although she’d never studied anything about Africa, she felt something was wrong with the scene. Then she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the bubbled glass. She had come directly from work and was wearing her corporate uniform: a tailored, heavy gray suit with a white silk blouse and the string of pearls Tom had given her for Christmas, their first Christmas together. She raised her hand to touch the pearls and felt a warm tear on her cheek. This was wrong. Why was she crying? She quickly brushed it away, thinking, I can’t look like this. I can’t be crying when he arrives.
Turning from the Nile River diorama to go find the women’s room, she found herself in Tom’s arms.
“Hi, sweetheart, sorry I’m late. It’s snowing. The whole damn city is gridlocked.” He stood shaking wet snow off his shoulders and from his thick black hair.
“That’s all right,” she said, relieved that he didn’t seem to notice her tears. “I just arrived myself.”
“Well, you look great!” He turned his full attention on her, stepping closer to kiss her on her cheek. “Look, it’s freezing outside. Is there someplace here where we can get a drink? Or at least some coffee?”
“Yes, there’s a bar under the great blue whale on the first floor. But come with me first; let’s look around. I haven’t been in this museum in ages.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Oh, let’s just wander. We’ll take the elevator to the third floor, then walk down.” Directing their tour gave her the sense of being in control. That was her problem with Tom. When she was with him, she always felt manipulated. Now she just wanted to make him do what she said, to prove to herself that she could control him when she needed to.
On the top floor, they stepped off the elevator and saw a sign for a new exhibition.
“‘Bright Dreams, Bright Vision,’” Tom read. “What’s that?”
“I have no idea,” Jennifer answered. They pushed through the glass gallery door and stepped into the dark interior.
“Oh, great,” he said, reading the first exhibit sign. “‘Prehistoric Man.’ Just what I thought when I woke up this morning: ‘I wish I knew a lot more about prehistoric man.’”
“I want to see this exhibition, Tom!” Her voice rose sharply.
“Okay,” he whispered, “okay.” He touched her arm. “Easy.”
Jennifer turned away, embarrassed by her outburst, but the gallery was nearly deserted. She noticed an older woman with a cane, a few mothers with babies in strollers, and two female guards in blue uniforms standing together at the entrance.
“Hey, look!” Tom pointed at the display in the center of the room.
The focus of the diorama was the model of a prehistoric hut, built of mammoth bone, tusks, and leather. The jawbones of the mammoths were turned upside down and fitted into each other like a puzzle to form a twelve-foot circle. The arching roof was made with dozens of huge, curving tusks, over which animal skins were tied to form a cover.