All that mattered was that I had to win.
3
I sat at the dining room table next to a half glass of chardonnay, waiting for Paul to come home. The day’s mail littered the table’s smooth walnut finish. I had opened the bills and flipped through the catalogs, had read all the mail except for the letter that mattered. I wasn’t ready just yet. I took a sip of wine, the crystal goblet knife-thin at the edge. The wine was cold, too chilled even to taste.
I looked around the room that Paul, a forensic architect, had designed. The walls were painted a slate gray with a creamy molding, harmonizing with a gray and burgundy Tabriz. Against the far wall was a walnut sideboard that had been in the Hamilton family since the Triassic, and above it hung a watercolor of a still life. I was beginning to wonder if the furnishings were compatible in a way that Paul and I could never be.
The unopened letter was from my doctor. The envelope had a linen texture, its color was a stark, cool white. It made an almost luminous oblong on the table as twilight fell and the room darkened. I didn’t get up to turn on a light, though. There was nothing I really wanted to see.
I took another sip of wine and rolled it around on my tongue. It was developing a taste as it warmed up, it was too young. Paul had taught me what “young” meant as applied to the taste of wine, as he had taught me many other things you couldn’t learn on a stool in a butcher shop. We’d been together for five years but were no closer to marriage than our fifth date. It was my reluctance; trying to build a practice, I had postponed the decision. Now it was upon us, and we were in trouble.
ALEXANDER EHRLMANN, M.D. I had almost forgotten about it during the trial, then Sullivan heated up. Dr. Ehrlmann had been one of the messages on my voice mail, but I hadn’t had time to return the call. Hadn’t made time to return it. Didn’t know what to do with what he would tell me.
Most of all, I didn’t know what to tell Paul, who was God-knows-where, way past dinnertime. I no longer felt like celebrating. I felt like sitting and drinking, so when he came in he’d feel guilty about being late on my big night. Then I wanted to open the envelope, throw it in his face, and make him feel guilty about that, too. But I knew I would do none of these things. I had kept it to myself since the initial finding, grown used to the idea. Accepted it, prepared myself to talk about it. If it turned out to be bad news, that is.
Maybe it would be good news.
My gaze fell on the unopened envelope. It challenged me to turn it over, like the last down card in a poker hand. Could be the worst news you ever had, could be the best. Come on, big shot, you’re a player, turn it over. Play.
I took a last swig of wine and didn’t care that it was underage. I picked up the envelope and inserted a taupe-polished thumbnail under the back flap. It only took a second to read. It would take longer than that to understand. Suddenly I heard Paul’s Cherokee rumbling onto the gravel driveway. I put the letter back in the envelope and slipped it into the stack of catalogs.
In a minute Paul opened the front door and set down beside it whatever he was carrying. A tube of blueprints, a briefcase. Paul placed things down with care, he moved things aside to make room for other things. I used to watch him play chess with his father; they both handled the wooden chesspieces as if they would explode if dropped.
“Rita?” Paul called out. “Where are you?” He came into the dining room and turned on the sleek halogen light, then dimmed it when I shielded my eyes. “What’s the matter, did you lose?”
Yes. “No.”
He walked to the end of the table, his mouth a small circle of concern. It was his strongest feature, full and sweet, and then his eyes, a deep blue behind rimless glasses. An intelligent face with a strong chin, framed by sandy brown hair. And longish sideburns, at my request.
“I’m surprised you’re home,” he said. “I thought you’d be working late.”
“Why would I do that? I worked all day, all month.”
“But you have the deposition tomorrow in Dad’s case.”
“I get to eat, don’t I? I thought we could go out to dinner. Maybe to Carolina’s for a Caesar salad. And puffy rolls and butter shaped like flowers.”
He sighed. “Sorry, honey. I ate already.”
“Where?”
“On the road.” He eased into a captain’s chair and crossed his legs. Long, thin legs, with nicely defined knees. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I love you.”
He smiled faintly. “I love you, too.”
“Do you?”
“Of course. What’s gotten into you?”
I almost laughed out loud, but it wasn’t funny. “A virus, actually. HPV. Not HIV, HPV. Human papilloma-virus. It’s a whole different thing.”
His smile faded. “Are you serious?”
“It’s highly contagious. Some people even get warts, of all things. I don’t have that strain, thank God. There are lots of strains, apparently. I know all about it, now that I have it for sure.”
“Is this a joke? Rita?” He paled under the tan he got visiting job sites. Looking up at buildings, figuring out why concrete cracked or glass panes popped out.
“Dr. Ehrlmann can’t tell for sure when I was infected because the virus can remain inactive for months or years. Even ten years, in rare cases.”
“A virus?”
“There’s no real treatment. Ehrlmann tells me that 10 percent of his patients have it. It showed up in my last Pap test, then they retested for it.”
“Are you okay? Are you sick?”
“I’m fine, but it’s a risk factor for cervical cancer, so Ehrlmann says I’ll have to have three Paps a year instead of one. He’ll monitor it. I’ll be fine.”
He raked a slim hand through his hair and it flopped back into place. “Can I do anything?”
You already did, handsome. “Now that I have it, you probably do, too. But there’s no risk factor in men, or the risk is so low it’s insignificant.”
“Risk factor for what?”
“Penile cancer.”
“What did you say?” He swallowed hard, which I enjoyed. His Adam’s apple went up and down like a little elevator.
“Penile cancer. Cancer of the penis,” I said, at risk of putting too fine a point on it.
His forehead dropped into his hands.
“It’s not going to fall off, Paul.”
He shook his head in the cup of his hands. I guessed he was mulling over the falling-off part. Clunk.
“You okay?” I asked him.
He looked up and laughed, his face flushed. “Me? Oh, I’m just peachy.” He reached across the table and grabbed my glass of wine. “May I?”
“Be my guest, but it’s jailbait.”
Paul downed the wine without noticing its youth. “You can make jokes about anything.”
Almost anything. “People who have HPV generally don’t know they have it. So they don’t know if they pass it on.”
“How do they get it?”
Did he really not know? If so, I hesitated to say it, because that would make it real. “It’s sexually transmitted,” I said anyway.
“Like gonorrhea?”
“Right, like gonorrhea, from the good old days when STDs didn’t kill you. So there’s only one outstanding question, as I see it. Where did we get a sexually transmitted disease when I have never been unfaithful to you?”
He set the empty glass down and his face fell, collapsing into deep lines around the mouth and eyes. Lines formed by forty-odd years of laughter and sorrow, both fraudulent and authentic. “What are you saying?” he asked, his tone quiet.
Watch the cards, not the player. “I’m asking you if you’re having an affair. I want you to tell me the truth.”
His mouth fell open and he was speechless. It reminded me of myself standing in front of Judge Kroungold. Suddenly I realized what had pissed my father off about my fake mourning in court. I had cheated. It wasn’t a bluff, it was a cheat. A fine line, and I hadn’t seen it. Had Paul cheated? Had he crossed the line, too?