Bird in Hand Read online

  He hired two new associates, fresh out of the M.I.T. graduate architecture program, who hadn’t yet been seduced by the boldfaced names on the Sloane Howard client list into bowdlerizing their talent. He wanted unconventional thinkers whose designs were so radical as to be unworkable, bold ideas that would inspire him to greatness. As it turned out, the boy he hired was smug and pompous, and the girl so dismissive of Ben’s peers at “Drone Coward,” as she and the boy quickly nicknamed the firm, that Ben felt duty-bound to stick up for the other partners, a position he’d never dreamed he’d find himself in. At one point Ben came across an e-mail the boy had sent the girl in which he complained about Ben’s pedestrian taste. Talk about biting the hand! But Ben didn’t say anything. He knew that the two of them would move on in a few months, and he was determined to extract what he could out of them before they left.

  The three of them stayed late into the night, took field trips to look at pioneering buildings, studied other architects’ models, sought inspiration in museums and theaters around the world. The design Ben submitted three months later was original but not radical: huge panes of glass sloping toward the water, creating the illusion of a continuous liquid surface, joining in a series of connected cubes, the largest of which contained a magnificent concert hall. When the design was picked as one of the four finalists, a Boston Globe headline asked, “Sloane Who?”

  The other finalists were suitably pedigreed: the best-known Boston firm, a major New York powerhouse, and a New Haven group fronted by a big-name guru. But to the surprise of virtually everyone, including Ben, the Sloane Howard design was chosen. “This structure will be a beacon of light and beauty,” declared Philippa Boyd, the eighty-three-year-old philanthropist whose name would be on the building, in her reedy, wavering voice at the press conference: “a clear symbol of hope on the harbor for the noblest aims of humanity.” A little overwrought, Ben reflected, standing behind her at the podium—but certainly preferable to “stylish.” He’d taken a huge risk on his vision, his dream—and now it looked like that risk was actually paying off.

  In the meantime he hadn’t been home much. He felt as if he were back in grad school, working on a term paper—the hours spent focusing on a single topic, trying to understand it, to create a thesis that would hold up under scrutiny from experts in the field. He didn’t think of eating until he was ravenous, and then he grabbed whatever was close by; he didn’t go to bed until his bones ached with fatigue, or until he realized he was reading the same sentence over and over because he was drifting in and out of sleep.

  Claire had been understanding—incredibly so, he thought. She’d always called herself “high maintenance,” though he wouldn’t have said that, necessarily. Anyway, he liked to take care of her; he took deep pleasure in it, a pleasure that only intensified as he got older without children. He needed some object for his paternal feelings, and they both agreed they didn’t have the lifestyle for a dog (though he would have liked a dog—he’d always wanted one, even as a kid, a Boston Terrier, maybe, or a beagle—a scrappy, energetic little beast). But lately he hadn’t had time to care for himself, much less anyone else, and though he’d expected Claire to complain about his late hours and inconsistent schedule and semipermanent state of distraction, she hadn’t said a word. In fact, lately she’d been surprisingly nurturing herself. She left notes on the counter about soup or a roasted chicken she’d picked up at Fairway for him and put in the fridge; he’d find PowerBars in his briefcase. When he called to say he’d be working late she always said she understood; she knew what a huge project it was. He showed her his designs, and she responded thoughtfully. She rubbed his shoulders in bed at night, brought him green tea to clear his head, retrieved his shirts from the dry cleaner without complaint.

  When Ben really thought about it—which, frankly, he didn’t often; he just didn’t have the time—there were things that gave him pause. The forced cheer in Claire’s voice, flight-attendant polite; the restless tapping of her fingers as they sat together late at night watching TV; the times he’d wake up at 3 a.m. to find her side of the bed empty, and would hear her out in the living room, pacing around. But surely these were normal responses to having a miscarriage. When Claire had gotten pregnant, Ben had envisioned a whole new life stretching ahead for them. Wasn’t this the reason for existence—this primal urge to reproduce, to care for young, to continue the species?

  But Claire lost the baby. And things got complicated.

  He looked up at her now as she came into the bedroom, cradling the cordless phone against her cheek as Charlie told them more details about the accident. Ben caught her eye and she shook her head slowly.

  “So terrible,” she said. “I just can’t believe it.”

  Chapter Three

  December 2008

  Working on a freelance feature story the week after the dinner party in Rockwell, Claire conducted interviews and did research and had lunch with her editor, and the whole time she was thinking of the skin on Charlie’s arm, how it felt like the skin of an apricot, and how he smelled like the floor of a forest, pine needles and moss. She thought of his back, like a mountain lion’s, lean and sinuous, with a layer of muscle just under the skin. She was aware of her legs as they crossed under the table, the curve of her own neck, as if those body parts were new to her, not merely newly observed. Men on the street looked at her differently. Sitting on a bench in a small triangle of park on an unseasonably warm day she ate an orange, tearing at the fleshy pulp. The juice ran down her chin and she wiped her hand across her lips, covering a smile. She could feel the power of her desire, an almost palpable strength—the will to seduce and entice and invite.

  She thought about Charlie all the time, couldn’t stop thinking about him. Conversation with others was a time killer, a way to while away the hours until the two of them might, at last, be together. When her cell phone rang, her nerve endings jerked, as if connected to it by a thread. Her heart beat hard in her chest. She checked her e-mail and text messages constantly; sometimes he had just written, and when she responded he wrote back seconds later. The idea of him sitting in his office writing her was more intoxicating than alcohol.

  I have to see you, he wrote.

  When.

  Friday—didn’t B say he’d be away?

  Yes—a client in Boston.

  A’s taking the kids overnight to see a friend upstate. Can you meet?

  Yes.

  Where.

  I’ll find a place.

  Okay.

  I’ve never done this. Have you?

  No.

  Never felt like this before. Sorry—cliché.

  All the clichés are true. Nothing new to say.

  So say it anyway. It doesn’t have to be new.

  What did Pascal say? “There are reasons of the heart about which reason knows nothing. … ”

  In the dim lobby of the discreet Midtown hotel, the crowd around them blurred; only Charlie was in focus. “I got a room,” Claire said. He took a swallow of his Scotch and set it down. Claire tipped up her gin and tonic and finished it, the ice avalanching toward her mouth.

  He ran his finger along the hem of her short black skirt, brushing her thigh.

  The elevator was tiny, and it took forever, stopping at each floor, the doors sliding open silently, no one there. When it got to eleven they stepped out and made their way to the room. Charlie fumbled with the card and the door handle, but neither of them made a joke of it, as they might have done. Claire felt oddly detached, as if she were in a trance. In some clear corner of her brain she acknowledged that this might just be her conscience mounting an insanity defense, but she didn’t want to think, so she willed herself to stop.

  The hotel room was small and dark and stylish, a jewel box. Its one window had a postcard view of Broadway, miniature yellow cabs and neon lights and pedestrians. Claire sat on the chocolate brown velvet bedcover and smoothed it with her hand. Cold light on pale skin; no candles, no music. They were awkward with ea
ch other, not knowing how to begin. She looked at Charlie and started unbuttoning her blouse, and he came over to the bed and knelt beside her. He slipped his hand between her legs and pushed up her skirt. She leaned back with her eyes open, feeling his slippery fingers inside her, his breath hot on her thigh.

  Afterward, they took the elevator to the ground floor in silence. The hotel was busier than it had been earlier in the evening; the elevator stopped three times before they reached the lobby. Claire looked at Charlie, his cheeks flushed and hair still damp from the shower, and wondered if anyone could guess. Of course, she thought; people do this all the time, don’t they? Step across invisible lines, reach over and touch the forbidden. It was easier than she’d imagined.

  “I didn’t ask for this,” she whispered to Charlie, but of course she did, one way or another. What attracted her to Charlie was indefinable, a feeling in the pit of her stomach. She felt wild with him, spontaneous. But Charlie wasn’t inherently this way; if anything, he was more conventional than she was—leading a comfortable suburban life, shouldering the burdens of domestic responsibility without complaint. It was only the two of them together that felt unpredictable.

  Why did she want this? Why did she need it?

  Only two months ago, she had been pregnant. The miscarriage had been terrible, but when it was over she’d been strangely relieved. Ben was the one who had pushed for the baby—he wanted them to be a family, he’d said. She had gone along with it, but secretly she’d been ambivalent. Afraid of losing her autonomy, her ambition. Afraid of being a bad mother. Afraid of feeling trapped. When he asked, now—which he did every few weeks—and she said she wasn’t ready to try again; she didn’t know if she’d ever be ready, he half-nodded, chin up, like he was taking a blow without flinching. She knew that he would wait a while and try again. He believed his patience would trump her unreasonableness. What he didn’t know—and what she barely understood herself—was that she wanted to hurt him in small ways to toughen herself for hurting him worse.

  Standing outside by the revolving door, Claire wrapped her coat tightly around her, though it wasn’t cold.

  “How do you feel?” Charlie asked.

  “Crazy. Guilty. Do you feel guilty?”

  “This is between us. It has nothing to do with them.”

  But of course it had everything to do with them.

  Claire remembered falling in love with Ben—how unfettered they were, how young. Now she felt old and jaundiced. Cruel. She would have liked to talk to her best friend about it, but her best friend was Alison. She would have liked to talk to her husband, but that, too, was impossible. The only one she could talk to was Charlie, and he was as culpable as she was. They were bound together by deception, like two thieves on the run. Fleetingly she wondered if the passion she felt for him was merely a manifestation of her restlessness, if she had transferred the anxiety she felt about getting settled, stale, becoming her mother, perhaps, into this feeling propelling her into another kind of life, terrifyingly open-ended, the dissolution of everything good and proper and right.

  Chapter Four

  “Oh, Lord, Alison. How terrible,” her mother gasped when Alison called to tell her parents about the accident.

  “Yes,” she said grimly.

  “That poor family,” her mother said. “How awful. Just awful.”

  Alison could feel a surge of tears against the dam of her rib cage.

  “Are the police … Are you being charged with anything?” her father asked.

  “DWI. I was just barely over the legal limit.” Alison cringed at her own need to say this. “I’m not—technically at fault, apparently.”

  “Uhh,” her father said, as if he’d been hit in the stomach.

  “I really should have said something last night,” her mother said. “You were so rushed and harried on the phone. I just—I had a feeling. Call it mother’s intuition, I don’t know—I could tell something was going to happen. I was pacing around all night. Wasn’t I, Ed? Don’t you remember telling me to relax and sit down?”

  “I always tell you that,” Alison’s father said.

  “No, but this was different. I feel sick about it. I should have—could have—”

  “Mom, don’t,” Alison said. It was just like her mother to insist that her witchy powers might have saved the day.

  “Well, okay, but I regret not saying something. I knew you were in no state to be driving into New York by yourself. You seemed absolutely overwhelmed.”

  Did I? Alison wondered, unable, as usual, to connect her mother’s interpretation of her mental state with how she’d felt. She had certainly been harried when her mother called the night before, but only because she was trying to get out the door at the last minute. Or was her mother right? Was it something more?

  “Driving into the city by yourself on a rainy night—and to a party. You don’t even like to drive,” her mother fretted.

  “June, take it easy,” Alison’s father said. “It was a party for Claire’s book. Alison had to go.”

  “Well. Don’t even get me started on that book. It is a slap in the face to poor Lucinda, whether or not she realizes it. That girl should be ashamed of herself.”

  “June,” Alison’s father implored.

  Alison’s mother went on, ignoring him. Here it was, in a nutshell: their dynamic. “I have never, ever trusted Claire Ellis—there was always something devious about her. Why you’ve stayed friends with her, I’ll never understand. Haven’t I been saying that, Edward, for years?”

  She had, in fact, been saying it for years. Perhaps in part because they were so much alike, June and Claire had never liked each other. Claire thought that Alison’s mother was a self-absorbed drama queen; her mother thought that Claire was up to no good. Of course, they were both right. What Alison resisted in her mother—the arrogance of her opinions, the calculated impulsiveness, the stubborn refusal to abide by others’ conventions, her narcissistic charm—she had always admired in Claire, in whom these traits were manifested as sly subversion.

  “Alison,” her father broke in. His voice was grave. “What can we do?”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” she said numbly.

  “How is Charlie handling all this?” her mother asked.

  “Fine. I mean, he’s been … helpful. He took the kids out for the morning.”

  “How are Annie and Noah?”

  “Why are you crying, Mommy?” Annie had wanted to know, standing next to the bed, her voice already, first thing in the morning, a needling, needy whine. Alison knew that her daughter’s concern was all about her own fear and discomfort, and she’d had to fight the urge to turn away. Instead, she pulled her close, under the covers. (Sometimes, Alison was aware, she expressed the strongest affection for her children when she was least sure of her own response.) Annie had stiffened against Alison’s embrace, pulling away to peer in her face. “Your eyes are all puffy, Mommy,” she’d said, her face scrunched in alarm.

  “They know I was in an accident,” Alison said now. “Not the rest.”

  “How are you going to tell them?”

  “She doesn’t have to tell them,” her father said, at the same time that Alison said, “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, Alison.” Her mother sighed. “We should fly up there. You’re in no shape to handle the kids right now. And as long as I’m being honest here I should tell you that I don’t like that babysitter of yours—what’s her name, Roberta.”

  “Dolores.”

  “Dolores. She’s snippy with me whenever I call there, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t give you all my messages, either. I get the distinct impression that she is not nurturing to those children.”

  Alison closed her eyes and shifted the cordless phone to her other ear, as if it might also somehow shift the topic. It was true that Dolores, a former English nanny who for mysterious reasons had been reduced to babysitting by the hour, was imperious and controlling, but Alison didn’t know what to do about it. Frankly, she
was intimidated. And she didn’t want to think about that right now. She took a deep breath, calibrating words and tone in her head, and then said, “Mom, I appreciate the offer, but I think we’re okay.”

  “Honey, you’re not okay. You’re not okay at all,” her mother said.

  Alison had been a curious child. When she was ten or eleven she would read her mother’s correspondence and her friends’ diaries as well as eavesdrop on conversations for a mention of her name. She wanted to learn who she was, reflected in the eyes of others. And then something happened: one day when she was in the eighth grade she read one supposed friend’s note to another in school—Alison G. wears such weird clothes—with the scrawled reply, Yeah, and she’s not as pretty as she thinks she is—and Alison took the words to heart. I wear weird clothes and I’m not as pretty as I think I am. After that she stopped wanting to know.

  “You’re right. I’m not okay,” she said now.

  Her mother was full of questions: How fast was the other car going? Was it a licensed vehicle? Was the road wet? Was Alison speeding? What in the world was that mother thinking, in this day and age, having the child on her lap?

  After Alison hung up the phone she felt raw and light-headed. She’d been crying on and off for hours, but now her eyes were dry. It reminded her of how she’d felt after Annie’s birth: drained, bloodless, almost transparent, as if her body were little more than the empty husk of a cocoon.

  WHEN SHE HEARD the knock at the back door, Alison was standing in the kitchen looking around at the detritus of Charlie’s effort to feed the kids breakfast—half-crushed Cheerios scattered across the floor, spilled milk on the table, the plastic jug open on the counter with its plug missing, sections of the Friday Times in piles, an apple with two small bites already turning brown on a chair. The coffeemaker was on, but the carafe was empty. She could hear Charlie and the kids in the playroom.

  Somehow Alison had never gotten used to this. When she was with the kids, she was constantly picking up—wiping countertops, sweeping the floor, loading the dishwasher, folding mounds of laundry. Charlie just—played. And she came in later and cleaned up the mess.