He was beaming.
“Well?” she demanded, so riled that she wanted to tell him to wipe that silly grin off his face.
“That was my idea, babe. Monica. Getting married. I told PP that since you and I were married, maybe Monica ought to get married, too. And he agreed.”
Pandy’s knees buckled. Overcome with a case of the dry heaves, she had to run into the bathroom.
When she came out, she tore into him like a madwoman.
Why was he doing this? Why was he messing with her career? Did he think she didn’t know what she was doing? Her tantrum ended with her screaming red-faced at the top of her lungs, “Keep your dirty mitts off Monica!”
The last thing she remembered before he walked out was the look on his face. It was blank, as if he no longer wished to know her.
He said: “No one ever speaks to me like that and gets away with it.”
Pandy called Henry in tears.
“I don’t understand what you’re so upset about,” Henry said sarcastically. “Just agree that Monica might get married in the next book. And when the next book comes along, you’ll see. You might not even be married by then. And then Monica can get divorced!”
She knew that Henry was only trying to make her feel better by making her laugh, but she was too angry to see the humor. “Actually, I don’t need to worry about it. Because there isn’t going to be another Monica book. This is the last one. When this one is finished, I’m going to write that literary novel I’ve always been talking about.”
She managed to spend another hour alone before she called Jonny twelve times on his cell phone. He finally answered, revealing that he was with one of his “buddies.” Pandy convinced him to come home and apologized profusely.
It took him three days to defrost. But he finally did, when she showed up at his restaurant with a peace offering: an ornate antique silver bottle stopper. He held it up briefly before returning it to its box, although not before catching the eye of the waitress who was passing by, and Pandy realized that she had miscalculated again. The silver stopper was the kind of thing she loved, but he had no use for. And even as she was buying it, she had recalled how he’d told her he hated old things; how antiques reminded him of the decrepit old people who’d surrounded him in the building he’d grown up in with his mother and grandmother—but she’d dismissed this and bought it anyway. It seemed to be some kind of metaphor for their relationship: In giving him the antique objet, she was trying to get him to accept a piece of her true self.
Or maybe the part of her he just didn’t seem to want to see.
And all of a sudden, that revolving top of fear was back, spinning in her head and keeping her awake at night. Her thoughts were a tsunami of what-ifs: What if Jonny had only married her for her money? What if Jonny kept asking for money? What if Jonny lost all their money, and they had to sell the loft? What if Jonny took all her money and left her for another woman?
She’d be ruined. Emotionally and financially. And there wouldn’t be a damn thing she could do about it, because she hadn’t made him sign a prenup. Not only had she not insisted on his signing this now very valuable-seeming piece of paper—she was too ashamed of her stupidity to tell anyone.
So she continued to tell herself that somehow, it would all be okay.
And for the next year, it was. On the surface, anyway. They still did the same things and saw the same people, but they seemed to see each other less and less. She didn’t wait up for him to come home anymore, and there would be days when they only saw each other for half an hour in the morning.
Jonny began spending more time in Vegas.
He came back for the holidays, though, and for some reason, he was in a terrific mood. He was convinced that the restaurant would be open soon. Pandy didn’t dare ask too many questions, not wanting to destroy what had now become a tenuous happiness that, like the old mirrored skating pond under her childhood Christmas tree, felt like it could fracture at any moment.
New Year’s passed. Pandy’s accountant called, mystified by how she’d been running through her money. She wasn’t exactly broke—after all, she still had her apartment—but she certainly didn’t have enough to take a chance on writing a literary book that might not sell.
She finished the edits on her third Monica book, and agreed to write a fourth. In a daze, she even agreed that Monica would get married in it.
“Well? Aren’t you happy?” Jonny demanded. “You’ve got another contract. And for even more money this time.” When she could only shrug sadly, he began scolding her: “You were certainly happy the last time. What is wrong with you?” And then he suggested she give him a blow job, reminding her that they hadn’t had sex for a while.
This was true. She discovered that now when he touched her, she froze. She could feel her vagina shut up tight, like the door of a safe slamming closed.
Jonny had finally managed to render her impotent over her own life. And being involved with Jonny meant that she had no control over her future.
The restaurant still hadn’t opened four months later, when Jonny began to be gone for two weeks at a time. To Vegas, he said. When Pandy found a plane ticket that showed he’d actually gone to LA instead, he laughed it off. “What’s the difference? I go to LA for meetings, and then I take a private plane to Vegas.”
“Whose plane?” Pandy asked, unable to believe that while he was jetting back and forth, she was stuck in the loft, trying to crank out a book in which she had absolutely no belief. To her, Monica’s getting married was a lie—just like her own marriage was a lie. And one to which she couldn’t seem to admit. When friends asked how things were going with Jonny, Pandy still told them they were going “great.”
Jonny asked for another hundred thousand dollars to finish construction.
Pandy told him that she couldn’t even think about it until she finished the fourth Monica book.
And then they had a terrible fight that ended with Jonny shouting, “The difference between you and me, babe, is that I’m a man. I don’t need anyone to hold my hand!” He stormed out to stay with another one of his seemingly endless string of “buddies”—who Pandy now suspected were other women.
It wasn’t until the week before Pandy’s birthday, when Jonny carelessly informed her that he’d be in Vegas, that she finally broke down and called Suzette.
Suzette told Pandy to get Jonny to a marriage counselor ASAP, and gave her a number.
Pandy agreed to give the shrink a try, but she had to admit she was terrified. She hated confrontation, especially when it meant she might be told a truth she wasn’t going to like. She was pretty sure if she asked Jonny to go to a counselor, he would ask for a divorce.
The thought made her feel sick. It was like the mirror under the Christmas tree had finally broken. And now it was in her stomach, the shards stabbing her insides like tiny butcher knives.
Jonny came home two days later from another trip to Vegas. Pandy tried to pretend that everything was the same: greeting him with enthusiasm, opening a bottle of wine and pouring out glasses. She tried not to react when, as usual, Jonny kissed her absentmindedly on the forehead. Mumbling something about work, he sat down in front of the TV with his laptop on his thighs. It wasn’t long before he got the inevitable phone call, the one that he always took in the bathroom because it was “business.”