He has shared with this woman a thousand hopes and aspirations, small triumphs, bitter disappointments. He has laughed with her and cried with her, fought with her, hated her, loved her again, abjured her, adored her again. When Jenny was born... oh dear God... and the obstetrician told him Helen had gone into shock... no, dear God... and he might... he might... he might lose her, he prayed long into the night to a deity he had not acknowledged since he was eighteen. He knows every facet of this woman’s mind, every nuance of her body. He has savored each forever, and has never tired of either. He still believes she is the most beautiful woman he has ever known.
Then why, he wonders.
Why?
It is raining on Sunday morning.
Annie wants to go to a movie.
“That’s what you do when it rains,” she says and shrugs in perfect logic.
Together, she and Helen go into the kitchen to call the movie houses in Vineyard Haven. David is playing chess with Jenny in the living room. She is a whiz at the game he taught her when she was Annie’s age, and she plays with intense concentration, forcing him into moves that enforce and encourage her master plan, all the while keeping up a running conversation, much as her mother does when administering her fifty magic strokes each night.
“Check,” she says. “If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell Mom or Annie?”
“I promise.”
“Especially Annie.”
“Yes, darling, I promise.”
Jenny lowers her voice. On her sweet solemn face, there is a look of such trust that he wants to hug her close and tell her he would never betray a secret of hers as long as he can draw breath. Blue eyes wide, she leans over the chessboard and whispers, “Brucie loves me.”
“Who’s Brucie?” he whispers back.
“Di Angelo. Next door.”
She gestures with her head.
“How do you know?”
“He gave me a ring,” she whispers, and pulls from under her T-shirt a tiny gold band on a golden chain. “You know what else?” she whispers, quickly sliding the ring out of sight again.
“What else?” he whispers.
“I love him, too.”
“That’s nice,” he says.
“Yes,” she says, and nods happily. “Your move, Dad.”
The sun is shining when they come out of the theater at a quarter past three. His plane will be leaving at six-fifteen this evening, and will get into LaGuardia at seven twenty-nine.
“Why don’t you go back tomorrow morning instead?” Jenny asks.
“Cause that would be a hardship,” Annie says. “Besides, Dad’ll be here forever next weekend.”
They are taking a last long walk up the beach before it’s time to head to the airport. He and Helen are holding hands. The girls are running up the beach ahead of them, circling back occasionally to hug them both around the legs, skipping off again, skirting like sandpipers the waves that gently rush the shore.
“Right, Dad?” Annie says, turning to look back at him.
“Right, honey,” he says, and squeezes Helen’s hand.
“Forever, right?”
“Forever,” he says.
Annie leaps over someone’s abandoned sand castle, lands flat-footed and crouched on the other side of it.
“Boop!” she says.
And in that moment, he decides to end whatever this thing with Kate might be.
He is in the study reading when the doorman buzzes upstairs at five minutes to nine that night. Puzzled, he pads barefoot through the apartment to the receiver hanging just inside the front door.
“Hello?” he says.
“Dr. Chapman?”
“Yes?”
“Pizza delivery.”
“I didn’t order any pizza,” he says.
“Young lady says thees pizza for you.”
“Oh. Yes, I... yes, send it right up.”
She is wearing black shorts, a red T-shirt, a red beret, red socks and black high-topped thick-soled shoes that look like combat boots. She does indeed look like someone who could be delivering a pizza, which she is in fact doing. From the looks of the carton, it is a good-sized one.
“I got half cheese and half pepperoni,” she says, “I hope that’s okay. Are you hungry?”
“No, I ate a little while ago.”
“I’m starved,” she says. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“The plane was late.”
“I’m glad you’re here. Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
“Kate...” he starts.
“Before I die?” she says and moves into his arms.
He kisses her, and then breaks away gently but almost at once, fearful that somehow Helen, all the way up there in Massachusetts, will know there’s another woman in their apartment, will know he has just kissed a woman who’s brought him a pizza at nine o’clock at night, will know this is the woman, the girl, he’s been sleeping with, talk about euphemisms, and that she is here in their apartment right this very minute, now, dressed like a delivery person in a red beret and combat boots. As he takes the pizza carton from her and carries it into the kitchen he fully expects the phone will ring and Helen will yell, “Who’s that with you, you bastard?”
But, of course, the phone doesn’t ring.
“Nice,” she says, looking around.
“Thank you,” he says.
He is still very nervous. More than nervous. Apprehensive. Frightened that Luis... was it Luis at the door when he got back from dinner tonight? If it was Luis who passed her in, will he remember that this is the same girl who left a washed and ironed handkerchief downstairs two weeks ago, have they been sleeping together for only two weeks? But, of course, the handkerchief was in an envelope, so he wouldn’t have known it was a handkerchief, as if that makes any difference, sly Luis with his big macho Hispanic grin and virtual wink, clever Luis who accepted the “leetle” package from a beautiful redheaded girl at eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning two weeks ago, but this is now nine o’clock this Sunday night, and Mrs. Chapman is enjoying the seashore up there in Massachusetts, verdad, señor? Will Luis remember? If it is Luis downstairs? Will Luis remember — and destroy him even after he has ended it? But, of course, he hasn’t ended it yet. Not quite yet. He has only decided to end it.
“We should put it in the oven,” Kate says.
She seems blithely, and somehow infuriatingly, unaware of his discomfort. Doesn’t she know that Helen has a nose like a beagle and that the perfume she’s wearing, while admittedly seductive though inappropriate to the delivery boy guise, is the sort that will permeate upholstery and drapes and be sniffed in an instant when Helen and the children walk through the front door on the fifteenth of September, which is when the lease on the Vineyard house runs out? Bending from the waist like the dancer she is, she slips the pizza carton into the oven, turns to smile at him, and blows a kiss on the air.
“Kate,” he says, “we have to talk.”
“Sure,” she says, and familiarly adjusts the dial on the oven, as if she has warmed pizzas in this oven in this kitchen forever, as if this is her kitchen, in fact. “But aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
“Of course,” he says, but he is thinking he wants to get this over with, talk to her, tell her it’s over, eat the goddamn pizza, get rid of the carton, end it. As he leads her into the living room, she looks around appraisingly, studying the paintings on the wall, and the silk flower arrangement on the hall table, and the furniture, and the small piece of sculpture he and Helen brought back from their trip to India three years ago, her green eyes roaming, “Nice,” she says again, and sits on the couch facing the bar unit, crossing her long legs in the short black shorts and the incongruous combat boots. She knows her legs are gorgeous...