If You Only Knew

Alas, money was no object. Seven muslin dresses and thousands of dollars later, she signed a contract saying yes, I could proceed with the actual dress. A sleeveless sheath dress with a crisscrossing tulle bodice, a belt made from Swarovski crystals that tied in the back with a long, floating tulle sash and a skirt that made her appear as if she were rising from a giant pile of white silk roses, each of the 278 flowers made by the hand of yours truly. It’s pretty. Of course it is.

All told, the dress will cost almost twenty grand.

“If I cut off the rosettes,” I say patiently, “I’ll have to make another skirt.”

She doesn’t bother looking up from her phone, which chimes with a text. “Oh, Christ, you gotta be kidding me! Mom? Mom!” the blushing bride roars. “Ma! Where the hell are you? Now Linley doesn’t want to be in the wedding, either! Those bitches! How dare they bail on me!”

One wonders.

A half hour later, it’s decided that yes, Kendall will get another skirt, made from tulle to match the bodice, and a full skirt with a sweep train that will trail out six feet behind her. I request payment in full plus aggravation pay—I call it an emergency alteration fee—and wait as her poor mother writes me out a check.

“You’ve been wonderful,” the mom says. “Kendall, hasn’t Jenny been wonderful?”

“What?” Kendall says, dragging her eyes off the phone. Her thumbs continue to tap out her message. “Who’s Jenny? Oh. Yeah. Sure.”

“She’ll make a beautiful bride,” I tell the mom.

“You’re very kind,” she says. “I’ll refer you to all my friends.”

“I really appreciate that.”

Granted, I’m used to badly behaved brides. It can be a stressful time. But believe it or not, even women like Kendall can morph into a sweetheart on the big day. Not always, but sometimes. And happily, most of my brides are much nicer.

The lobby doorman holds the door for me. I stash the dress back in the car and stretch my lower back.

The sky has cleared, the cherry trees are in bloom and I decide to take a walk through Central Park. I love the happy noise of the throngs—kids laughing and yelling, the blur of languages I don’t speak, a homeless man wishing everyone a blessed day, the thunk of bass music from an area where kids are doing backflips, entertaining the tourists.

The city has been my home since I was eighteen, and though I’ve only lived in COH a day, I feel as if I’ve been away for weeks.

Central Park is truly the crown jewel of the city, with its curving trails, the statues and flower beds awash in red tulips and yellow daffodils. People are out in droves—runners and parents and nannies and students. A lot of babies are being aired out today. I would pick that one, I think, eyeing a beautiful little boy with bushy black hair and enormous eyes. Or maybe that little girl in the purple windbreaker and red plaid skirt.

There’s a man sitting on a bench, reading. An actual book, too, not a phone. I can’t quite make out the title, but that doesn’t matter. He’s blond and wears glasses, and he has a scarf around his neck, but it’s not dreadfully self-conscious. He seems to be about forty. No wedding ring. Nice face.

I consider talking to him. What to say, though? “Hi! Want to father some kids?” seems a little blunt. I glance around, hoping for inspiration.

Oh.

I seem to have wandered all the way across the park to the East Side. Two blocks from my old place. Owen’s place, rather. Paging Dr. Freud…

I could visit them. You know…for self-torment purposes, in case my bride wasn’t difficult enough. I could ask to smell Natalia’s head. Maybe put her in my purse, which would easily fit a baby. I actually look to judge the baby-capacity of my bag. Yep. It could work. I’d make sure to move my sewing scissors first.

I turn around and face the scarf-wearing reader. “Hi. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t look up. New Yorkers.

“What are you reading?” I ask more loudly.

He raises his eyes to me. “I’m sorry, were you talking to me?” he asks with a nice smile.

“I was just wondering what you were reading.”

He holds the book up. “Lord of the Rings. My third or fourth time, actually. I’m sort of a geek about it.”

My wedding dress looks like Arwen’s when she finally sees Aragorn again. (Yes, yes, I’m referencing the movie, not the book. Sue me.) My nieces are our tiny flower girls, and Rachel wears pale green as my matron of honor. Mom has a boyfriend and doesn’t sob about Dad. For a wedding gift, I give him a first-printing edition of LOTR, and—

And my fiancé’s boyfriend sits down and kisses him. “Hi, darling, sorry I’m late. Brought you a cappuccino, though.”

“Have a nice day,” I say, but they’re busy kissing.

It only takes me two minutes to get to Owen’s place. I still have the code to the building, but I buzz 15A just the same. “It’s Jenny,” I say, cringing a little.

“Jenny! How wonderful!” comes Ana-Sofia’s voice.

Five minutes later, I’m sitting in my former living room, holding my former husband’s child, accepting a cup of coffee from his current wife, who’s back in her regular clothes. It’s been thirteen days, after all. Why go through all that mushy belly stuff when you’re clearly on Darwin’s list of favorite children?

“Do you remember Jenny?” Owen asks, smiling down at his daughter. “She helped you into this world.”

“She’s incredibly beautiful,” I say honestly. Not a pore to be seen. Rosebud mouth, full, lovely cheeks. “She looks like—” you, I was about to say, but I clear my throat. “Like Ana-Sofia.” I smile at my replacement.

“Thank God for small favors,” Owen says, leaning over my shoulder to stroke his daughter’s cheek with one finger.

She doesn’t. She looks just like Owen, the same shock of black hair, the same sweet eyes, and I remember in a furnace-blast of embarrassment how I used to look at Owen when he was asleep and picture our children.

Funny how I didn’t think this was going to be so hard.

There’s a flash. Ana-Sofia has taken my picture. I imagine Ana-Sofia showing it to Natalia someday. There’s poor Aunt Jenny, just before she went crazy. We should visit her in the asylum this week. “I’ll send it to you, yes?” she asks.

“Sure,” I say. Who wouldn’t want a picture of her ex and his baby and her doleful self, after all? Maybe I’ll blow it up and hang it over my couch. “So I just wanted to stop by. I had a fitting a couple blocks from here, but I should head home. Still have lots of unpacking to do.”

“We can’t wait to see the new place,” Ana-Sofia says, taking the warm little baby from my arms. It’s all I can do not to grab the baby back. “And we’re so excited about the grand opening of Bliss!”

The thing is, she’s sincere. I want so much to hate her—to hate them both—but they’re just too fucking nice.

“I can’t wait, either,” I say in that oh-so-jolly voice I adopt around them. I wonder if there are any escort services in COH.

I should really get out of this friendship, I think as I walk back across the park to the garage where I parked. I know hanging around Owen and Ana-Sofia isn’t doing me any favors.

It’s just that when Owen broke my heart, he also begged me to stay friends with him, saying he couldn’t picture life without me, that ever since we’d met, I’d been incredibly important to him, and even if we weren’t working out (news to me), it would kill him if this was the end.

I’m still not sure if that was kind or incredibly selfish of him. I’ve been going with kind.

I moved out of our apartment the day after Owen told me he didn’t want to stay married, and it felt like I’d slept through the apocalypse. The air had seemed too heavy to breathe, and panic had flashed through me in razor-wire slices. How can I do this? How can I do this? How can we be apart? How can he not want me anymore? What the fuck went on here? Where was I when it all went to hell?

The only island on the horizon had been the idea that the following week, I’d be having lunch with him.

You may think I’m quite an ass for hanging around, hoping for a few kind words. I understand. I feel that way myself quite often. The thing is, there will be a lot of kind words. Let’s not even bring up the great food those two always have on hand.

Owen still asks about my work. He loves my sister and nieces and mother. He thinks I’m pretty and funny and smart. He admires my creativity. We have a similar sense of humor. Conversation comes easily, and since the day I met him, and even through our quickie divorce and his marriage, I have yet to go three days without hearing from him. Even when he’s been in a third-world country with Doctors Without Borders. Even now.

So. Being Owen’s ex-wife is still better than any relationship I’ve ever had, except for one—when I was his actual wife.

It’s not just his job—Dr. Perfect of the Great Hands and Compassionate Heart. It’s not just his looks, which sure don’t hurt. I always had a thing for Ken Wantanabe, after all.

It’s all those things and just how golden he is. How privileged I felt as the chosen one, Owen Takahashi’s wife.

In most marriages, lust and love become tempered by normalcy. If you hear your husband farting in the bathroom seconds before he emerges and asks if you want to fool around, you generally don’t want to fool around. You might, after a few minutes, but you have to forgive your husband for…well, for being human. For eating a bean burrito. After all, you ate the bean burrito, too.

You discover his irritating habits. He uses your shampoo and doesn’t mention when it’s gone. He leaves his workout clothes in a sweaty pile in the bathroom. When his parents visit, he runs out to the package store around the corner to buy his dad’s favorite beer, even though you reminded him yesterday to pick it up, and that errand takes him ten times as long as it should, and you have to text him twice to say Where the hell are you? Your mother wants to know why I’m not pregnant yet! and he doesn’t respond, claiming not to have received that text when he finally walks in the door.

Maybe he grunts at you when he comes in home from work, but he gets down on all fours and croons to the dog for ten minutes, using that special voice that sounds vaguely familiar because he used to use it for you.

Maybe he’s just boring, and you sit across the table from him night after night as he drones on and on about the tuna sandwich he had at lunch, amazed that this man is the reason you didn’t go into the Peace Corps.

Yeah. But it was never like that with Owen and me. I’m serious.

If he was sick, which hardly ever happened, he insisted on staying in the guest room—and using the guest bathroom. I’d make him soup and he’d accept it, but the man is a doctor, and the last thing he wanted to do was spread germs. A day or two later, he’d emerge, clean and showered, and he’d apologize for his downtime, and then make me dinner.

But if I was sick…oh, happy day! I loved being sick. And here’s a secret. In the five years Owen and I were married, I was never once sick. Just don’t tell him that.

I admit, I was feeling a little neglected one night. I’d made a really nice dinner, but he was late coming home from rebuilding children’s faces, so I could hardly complain, could I? As the risotto coagulated on the stove, I waited. He texted that he’d be half an hour late. After half an hour, he texted again. So sorry. Closer to 8. At 8:30 p.m., he came through the door. I pretended not to mind, but I’d had this fabulous call—Bride magazine was featuring one of my dresses on the cover, and I’d been saving the news all day long, because I wanted to tell him in person.

So I poured the wine and Owen and I sat down—I’d set the table beautifully—and we ate the now-gelatinous and slimy risotto, which Owen proclaimed delicious. He was late, he explained, because he’d had to rebuild a child’s nose in a particularly difficult surgery, and he’d wanted to stay until the little guy woke up from anesthesia, and then the little guy wanted to play Pokémon with Owen, and he just couldn’t say no, and the parents were crying with amazement that their son was once again so beautiful and would no longer have to endure the stares and cruelty of the unkind, and the horrible fire that took the kid’s nose could now be a memory and not a flashback every time the kid thought about, touched, saw or had someone look at his face.

The cover of Bride now seemed pretty unimportant.

“Is something wrong, darling?” Owen finally asked.

And because I couldn’t say I’m tired of you being so damn perfect, especially when I made risotto! I said, “No, no.” Pause. “I’m not feeling that great. I’m sorry, babe.”

“Oh, no! I’m sorry! And here I’ve been going on so long! What’s the matter, honey?”

I spewed out a few made-up symptoms—aches, some chills, a sore head—feeling perversely happy with my lie and my husband’s subsequent guilt and attention. He tucked me into bed, found a movie I loved, then went to clean up the kitchen. “I’m running out for a few minutes,” he called. “You need anything?”

“No,” I said, immediately peeved once again. Stupid hospital.

But he returned fifteen minutes later with a pint of the notoriously hard-to-find Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Brittle ice cream. My favorite. “I thought this might be the best medicine,” he said with that sweet smile. Then he lay on the bed next to me as I ate straight from the carton. Later, we held hands. There was no guest-room sleeping for me, no sir. Owen wanted to be close, in case I needed him. He stroked my hair as I fell asleep, told me he loved me.

And he did. But he never needed me. I didn’t complete him. He felt we both deserved more.

All those other marriages—those imperfect marriages with their smelly bathrooms—had something ours didn’t. That moment when you’ve had the worst day ever, and you come home, and you can’t go one more step without a long, hard hug from your spouse. Only they have the arms that will do. Only they really understand.

I don’t think Owen ever had a day when his life was in the shitter. When we met, he was already a star resident, on his way to greatness. And when I had a crappy day, when someone shot down my work, or when a buyer treated me like an assembly-line worker, when a bride had a tantrum because I had done exactly what she asked, I felt as if my complaints were petty and unimportant. After all, I still had my nose, didn’t I?

I told myself that it was good, keeping things in perspective. In order to have interesting things to talk about with my husband, the heroic saver of faces, the smiter of deformities, the changer of lives, I’d listen to TED Talks on my computer while I worked. I’d read important novels. Listen to NPR in order to have interesting things to contribute to our dinner conversations.

But I never let myself have regular feelings when I was with Owen. I was almost afraid to bitch about Marie, the mean and less-talented designer who trashed me to our coworkers after Vera told me my work was “glorious.” When a homeless man peed himself on the subway, and I only noticed because it leaked into my own seat, it was such a sad and horrifying occurrence that I wept as I gave him all the money in my wallet to the disapproving stares of my fellow riders. I cried all the way home and took a forty-five-minute shower. Threw that skirt in the trash and triple bagged it. It was one of my favorites.

But I didn’t tell Owen. He’d just returned from Sri Lanka, fixing faces marred by war, after all. My brush with the homeless man…pah. It was nothing compared to what Owen had seen. So I kept that, and all the other little vagaries and irritations of life, to myself.

There’s that saying—true love makes you a better person. I thought at the time that this was my evolution into a better person. What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t better; I was just less me. I wanted to vent about Marie and her petty little pecks. I wanted to be consoled about sitting in someone else’s urine.

But it was nothing compared to what Owen dealt with every day.

And so Owen and I had a very happy marriage, a seamless relationship of mutual affection, love, interesting conversations and enjoyable trips. When I felt the need to be human, I faked a mild virus, and Owen would attend to me as he might a patient, and I felt more special and loved than at any other time in our years together.

We were happy.

Except I saw it, that slow erosion of love. Of interest. Of that delight that Owen used to feel toward me, from the very first day we met, that incredibly flattering sense that Owen believed I was the most charming, adorable person he’d ever encountered. For a year, maybe two, I saw Owen’s love flickering, like electricity during a thunderstorm. He was never cruel, never impatient. He was simply leaving me, a surgical centimeter at a time.

I don’t think he was consciously aware of it, but I saw it, and I fought it, believe me. Tried to rock his world in bed, though sex had always been lovely and comfortable and intimate. After reading an article in Cosmo, I talked dirty to him one night as we were making love—dropped the f-bomb, as instructed. He pulled back and said, “What did you just say?” looking as stunned as if I’d just slit his throat.

I invited our friends over more frequently to show Owen that we were the couple to be, that we had this great life, of course we did, we were having a wine-tasting dinner! See? I tried to book a vacation, but Owen said he couldn’t take the time. I booked a weekend in Maine instead, so we could walk on the stony beaches and take a boat ride to the Cranberry Islands, so we could get sloppy eating lobster and laugh and hold hands and sleep late. But Owen had an emergency surgery that day—a little girl shot in the face—and he had to stay the entire weekend at the hospital.

So, in all honesty, I wasn’t all that surprised when he came home that fateful night and told me he wasn’t living the life he felt he was meant for. That though he loved me, he couldn’t help feeling a little…empty…lately. It wasn’t my fault, of course. It was just a feeling that his destiny lay elsewhere.

I knew it was coming. It didn’t make it any easier.

Is there anything more humiliating than begging someone to stay with you? To keep loving you? The answer is no. I begged anyway. For five solid hours, I begged and sobbed and shouted. He couldn’t leave me. He was everything to me. Please, everything should just go back to how it was when we were happy.

But he was resolute. “You’re my best friend,” he said, and there were tears in his eyes. “Jenny, I’m so, so sorry. I hate doing this, but I feel like I have to. The same way I knew I had to go to medical school, even though my dad wanted so much for me to be a lawyer. It’s not you. It’s just… I have to.”

It’s not you. The stupidest line in the history of lines.

I moved out the next day. Of course it was me.

Three months later, Owen proved that fact by meeting Ana-Sofia. We were having our weekly lunch, and he hadn’t said anything. I just knew. I could tell, because I recognized the look on his face; he used to look at me that way. “So you’ve met someone,” I said.

He hesitated.

“Please be honest, Owen.”

“Yes,” he said. “I think I have.”

A month later, he introduced me to Ana-Sofia, whose first words to me were, “Owen has sung your praises for so long! I’ve been dying to meet you.” She hugged me. I hugged her back.

And that’s how it’s been. I want to get away from them. I want to be close to them. I love them. I hate them. I feel hateful that I have to love them, and I guiltily love that I hate them. I vow to be busy the next time they call.

My phone rings as I pull up onto Magnolia Avenue. “Hi, it’s Ana-Sofia! Jenny, I’m so distracted, I completely forgot to ask you. I have tickets for the Alexander McQueen exhibit, and you were the first person I thought of! Would you like to go?”

That exhibit has been sold out for months. Of course she has tickets.

“Yeah, I’d love to,” I say. “Thanks, Ana!”

“Wonderful! I’ll email you details. Bye!”

I take a deep breath and get out of the car.

Leo is once again in the lounge chair. He seems sound asleep. I can tell he got up at some point, though, because he’s wearing a dark gray suit, white shirt, a striped tie. His arms are folded tight across his chest, and there’s a slight frown on his face. The wind, which has gotten nearly cold, ruffles his hair. Beside him is a bouquet of flowers.

He looks…sad. No, not sad. Lost, as if he forgot he was supposed to go to a party and just gave up, found this chair and hunkered down for the night. A well-dressed homeless man and his mangy dog.

I wonder if I should wake him.

Instead, I go inside, lugging Kendall’s dress with me. A second later, I come out again with the red plaid blanket Andreas gave me for Christmas—cashmere…it pays to have friends with exquisite taste—and open the gate.

Loki growls. I ignore him; he’s not terribly big, and he doesn’t look as if he could spring to his master’s defense without a trampoline. Indeed, his lip curls back, but the rest of him remains lying on his pillow bed.

Trying not to indulge in too much gooey tenderness—after all, I’ve known Leo for all of twenty-seven hours—I spread the blanket over him, then go back up the steps to my new home, put Pandora on Kelly Clarkson and start unpacking.

* * *

A FEW HOURS later, there’s a knock on the door. It’s Leo, holding my blanket in one hand, the bouquet of flowers in the other. “Is this yours?” he asks, lifting the blanket.

“Yes. You looked cold.”

“I was fine.”

“You’re welcome.” I give him a pointed look and take the blanket.

“Thank you.”

We look at each other for a minute. “Come on in,” I offer, and he does. “I was going to ask you to come up anyway. The living room light doesn’t work.” It’s a gorgeous fixture, authentic Victorian, I think, ivory with a leaf pattern embossed into it.

“What the hell are you listening to?”

“This? This is Toby Keith.” Leo stares at me like I’m an exhibit at the zoo. Right. He’s a pianist or a musician or a snob. “Who are the flowers for?”

“Oh. Uh, my mother. She didn’t like them.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“She decided she didn’t like orange.”

“Ah.” I wait for him to offer me the flowers. He doesn’t. “How about fixing that light, Leo?”

He sits on the couch, puts the flowers down and takes a bottle of beer out of his suit pocket, pops the top off with the opener on his key chain and sits back, putting his feet on the coffee table. “Have you tried changing the lightbulb?”

“Make yourself at home. And yes. It’s not the lightbulb.”

“Sounds like the switch is broken. Maybe a problem with the wiring. Good thing there’s a lot of natural light in here.”

“Still, it would be even better if the super would fix my light. I believe you are the super, Leo?”

“I am. But I’m not that good at fixing stuff. I got this job because of my looks.” He smiles.

“Well, then, since you’re inept, would you call an electrician for me?” I ask.

“I’ll make it my life’s new mission. Can it wait till tomorrow, or are baby sea otters dying because your light won’t go on?”

I sigh with exaggerated patience. “It can wait till tomorrow.”

He takes another drink. It’s an IPA, which I quite like.

“Bring me a beer next time,” I say.

“Buy your own beer.” He smiles as he says it, and damn, he’s just too adorable. “How’s your sister?”

Right. I sigh and sit down. “She’s… I don’t know.” I grab a throw pillow and smoosh it against my stomach. Rachel had texted me a picture of the girls earlier, all of them on the slide at the park. No note. “She says she’s good.”

“But she’s not good?” Leo says.

I pause. He was awfully nice last night. Caught Rachel, scooped her up in his arms and set her on this very couch. As I was saying, “Rachel? Rach? Rachel!” in a panicked voice, he got a damp dishcloth and put it on her forehead, then stuck around to see if she was okay. I guess he has a right to ask.