Her career took off. Within four years she was making more than three times my salary, including the sporadic bonuses, and was welcomed into the minor circles of New York fashion society. She had her own bank account and spoiled our son, whose middle name was Todd.
I tore open the letter. I shouldn’t have. At any other time I wouldn’t have. But I was upset, and the size of the envelope was suspicious. I mean, why would anyone from our money managers’ office be sending a personal note to Corrine’s studio?
Dearest Corrine,
I’m sending you this letter because I can’t think of anything else to do. I know that those lunches we had probably didn’t mean anything to you. I know you just wanted to get a leg up on your finances. I wish I could have found something wrong with the way Frank is handling your money but really he’s following your advisor’s plan perfectly. The market is volatile but he’s kept to the program and has done better than many.
I’m glad you came to me because I treasure those lunches we had. It has been a long time since I’ve had such deep and truly meaningful talks with anyone, man or woman. When you told me about the cancer scare, and how brave you had been not telling anyone, I was moved. And when I found out that you read Márquez I was in heaven. He has always been my favorite author. So I guess this is a kind of selfish note. Corrine, I want to get to know you better. I need to have someone in my life that I can talk to. I’m not asking you for anything except a few hours now and then — to talk and listen.
I know how lonely and yet how committed you are. I’m in the same place in my life and I’d just like to be able to get together now and then.
I’m sending this snail mail to your studio so as not to cause trouble. If you don’t write back I’ll understand. I want you to know that I would never want to upset your life. I only think that maybe we have something we could share that would make our lives, certainly mine, better.
I missed my stop. The train was twelve stations past High Street when I looked up at a homeless woman staggering into the car.
I had read the letter at least twenty times. I had no idea who TB was, but then again, neither had I known about a cancer scare or that Corrine questioned how I took care of our money. I knew that she loved One Hundred Years of Solitude, but we had never talked about it because I couldn’t get past the first page.
She’d met with this guy more than once for lunch, and now he was, in a sly way, trying to build on their... intimacies. There was no mistaking his intentions, but I couldn’t blame him. Corrine had obviously sought him out and opened her heart to him.
There’s a small bar a few blocks from our upper-floor brownstone apartment. I stopped there and ordered a cognac. Somewhere after the seventh drink I found myself walking down the street with the same gait as the homeless woman who had made me aware of having missed my stop. She’d worn soiled tan pants, with a thick, dark green skirt over them, had a calico blanket draped around her shoulders, and was carrying at least a dozen plastic bags. She smelled of dust, I remember. That was what brought me out of my stunned reverie.
“Frank, where have you been?” Corrine asked as soon as I was in the door.
She was wrapped in the chiffon pink robe that she loved. It was sheer, and she was naked underneath. Corrine did Pilates and yoga and had a very nice figure at thirty-nine, thank you very much.
Even though I’d lost thirty pounds, I was still another forty overweight.
“Was it that you didn’t want me eating cereal?” I asked her. “You think I’m too fat?”
“Have you been drinking?”
“I never go to that bar on Montague,” I said. “I was walking by tonight, and I thought, hey, why not?”
“What’s wrong, Frank?” she asked. Placing her fingertips on both my shoulders, she stared into my eyes with real concern.
“I was thinking on the way here that men must fall in love with you all the time. You’re beautiful and very well known. And here I am a slouch who works in an office where most of the people don’t even know my name.”
“Come sit down, honey,” she said.
She led me to the jade-colored sofa in our den. It was a small room that we rarely used now that Mercury was grown up and off to college.
“Merc said that you wired him over seventeen hundred dollars,” she said, floundering for a way to keep my attention.
“Why don’t you call him Todd?”
“Because his name is Mercury. What’s wrong, Frank?”
“You know, Corr,” I said. “I was thinking that we hardly ever talk. I mean there’s people I see once a week at work who I know more about than I do about you. You work late. I leave early. Sometimes we don’t even eat together for weeks.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“No,” I said. “Not at all. Like, for instance, when was the last time you went to see a doctor?”
“My last checkup.”
“Did your cholesterol rise or maybe your blood pressure? Is that why you’re cutting down on carbs?”
“I’m fine.” She was looking at me as if I were a stranger, a potentially dangerous man she’d just met and had to tread cautiously around until she understood the territory — a man like my father, who might jump up and stab you in the back.
“You see?” I said. “I didn’t know that. You could have had any kind of thing wrong, and I wouldn’t know. And I didn’t ask because we hardly ever talk. I mean, how can you live with a man who doesn’t even ask about your health?”
“Why did you send all that money to Mercury?”
“He’s a good kid. I bet he was glad to get it.”
“I told him to give it back, all but the sixty he asked for.”
I looked right past her words and blinked once or twice.
“I feel kinda sick,” I said. “I think I’ll go to bed.”
In the morning I couldn’t sit up without the room spinning. Getting out of the bed was a comedy of wobbling knees and stiff ankles.
At the kitchen table I was trying to see straight, and Corrine was talking to me, though I missed most of what she said. I did understand that she would call work for me and that she had an appointment in the city. She seemed to be worried about me.
For some reason I resented the nicety.
I got to work at about three in the afternoon. I don’t know why I went in; nowhere else to go, I guess.
On the Walton, Barth, and Wright website, I searched for names that had the initials of a degenerative disease. I found Timothy Bell. Timothy was the vice president in charge of all personal investors. Bell was at least three rungs above our agent, Mark Delaney, the man who told us that Corrine’s income kept us above the cut at WBW. Timothy Bell was a smiling white face on an electronic résumé sheet that each of the vice presidents had. He was thirty-eight and had an MBA from Harvard. He was athletic too, the former captain of a rugby squad — rugby, not Ping-Pong.
I wondered if Corrine was somewhere fucking him right then. The letter had been traveling back and forth for over a month. I could tell that from the postmark. Maybe he called when she didn’t reply, or maybe she broke down and called him. I wasn’t worried about that though. Whether or not Corrine had fallen into Bell’s muscular arms wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that his letter was very convincing. He wanted to talk to her and read what she read. In their meetings, he must have looked into her dark brown eyes and seemed like he really wanted to know what was going on with her. She opened up to him, while we hadn’t really talked in years.