Belong to Me: A Novel Read online

  At Lake’s encouraging, and it didn’t take much, I poured out my tale of woe—okay, not of woe exactly, but at least of embarrassment and dislocation—and her vehement, beautifully timed interjections of “Tell me you’re joking!” and “She did not!” were music to my ears. By the time I got to the air-bag story, I was well on my way to being head over heels in like with Lake, and, when I got to the line “Safety first!” the horror-struck expression on her face—jaw dropped, eyes widened, eyebrows leaping—cemented it.

  So that when the subject of The Women came up, when she brought the subject of The Women up, I thought at first I hadn’t heard her correctly. I’d fallen passionately in love with classic films when I was fourteen and saw The Philadelphia Story for the first time. That this woman had, during our first real conversation, mentioned a George Cukor film and that she’d done so wholly unprompted by me seemed too good to be true.

  This is how it went.

  She said, “What about the men? Are the men any better than the women?”

  I said, “Men? There are no men. You hear about them, but you never see them.”

  She said, “Ah, like in The Women.”

  I held my breath.

  “Over a hundred and thirty speaking roles,” she said, “and not a single man.”

  I stared at her. Spaghetti alla puttanesca, great listening ability, a sense of humor, and hair that looked nothing like a newscaster’s. All this and Cukor, too?

  Vinny called from the kitchen, and Lake stood up.

  “Wait,” I said, setting down my fork, “The Women. Best line.”

  She thought for about one and a half seconds before saying, “‘Any ladle’s sweet that dishes out some gravy.’”

  My cup ranneth over.

  While it was still running, about two minutes later, Piper walked in. Piper breezed in, with Kate hot on her heels, and even though I’d left the eighth grade behind years ago, I still wished Piper had shown up a few minutes earlier, back when I was sitting with a friend, deep in conversation, or maybe right at the moment when the entire bistro was reverberating with the friend’s Garbo-like laughter at an extremely witty remark I’d made. Really, when you encounter your nemesis, it’s nicer not to be adrift in the center of an empty restaurant, skating your fork across your nearly empty plate, entirely alone and with the scent of whore pasta reeking from your every pore.

  But when, despite my best efforts to avoid it, Piper caught sight of me, she suddenly didn’t look at all like a woman with the upper hand. For one thing, she blushed, the pale raspberry stain showing through her makeup and traveling into the irreproachable roots of her blond hair. And for another, her eyes took on a nervous, almost stricken look, like Tippi Hedren’s eyes when she first begins to think the birds are after her.

  I smiled my best bare minimum, only-just-qualifies-as-a-smile smile, then turned my attention to the inside of my handbag. Handbag rummaging is one of the lamer avoidance tactics, I know that, not nearly as impressive as turning your attention back to, say, the volume of untranslated Simone de Beauvoir lying open on the table before you, not even as impressive as flipping open your cell phone and dialing, but I’d forgotten my cell phone, couldn’t read French, and anyway, I figured that Piper would leap at any excuse not to approach me. So it was with surprise and a sinking heart that I heard her ladylike low-heeled shoes tap-tap-tapping their ladylike way across the hardwood floor in my direction.

  In order to put off the awkwardness as long as possible, I waited until the tapping had ceased completely to look up, with a startled expression that I hoped said, “Oh, my, I was so absorbed in my fascinating and very important rummaging that I’d forgotten you existed.”

  “Hi, there, Cornelia,” said Piper. I waited for the condescending gaze, the imperious, closed-mouth smirk, but Piper was still pink faced, and her smile was tentative, even shy. She looked a lot like what she could not possibly be: a person hoping to ingratiate herself to me.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She looked at my plate. “Did you enjoy your, um, your…”

  “Pasta,” I supplied. Did she think just saying the word would cause immediate, irreversible weight gain? “Yes. I did enjoy it. Thanks for asking.”

  “Listen, I was wondering.” Her pinkness intensified. Very soon, she would be magenta.

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering when a good time might be to catch your husband at home?”

  “Teo?” I was so taken off guard at the idea of her wanting to see Teo that for a second it seemed possible I had another husband, one Piper might more plausibly drop in on.

  “Teo. Yes.” She nodded. Then she took a deep breath, straightened her watch so that its face was precisely in the center of her wrist, and said, “I, well, I was hoping to discuss something with him, and I wasn’t sure, since he’s a physician, if he kept regular weekday hours or if he worked, um, evenings, or if maybe weekends were good. I just sort of thought if we had an appointment or, you know, set a date to talk, it might work well for, well, for all of us because, really, I hate the idea of interrupting your family time…”

  The woman was rambling. Actually, the woman was just this side of incoherent, and I realized how very much it must be costing her to ask a favor of a person whom she so disliked. I also toyed with the idea that maybe mixed up in all that stammering was a bit of guilt at having been consistently and unabashedly unfriendly to me. But possibly that was giving her too much credit. In any case, the rambling had to be stopped.

  “Piper,” I said sharply. She stopped talking. “Teo has tomorrow afternoon off. Why don’t you come then? Around four?”

  “Around four,” she repeated. “Around four sounds fine.” In a flash, an overbright smile materialized on her face. She cocked her head like a chickadee, chirped “Perfect!,” spun around, and walked briskly back to her table, where Kate’s round eyes had been peering at us over the top of a menu, watching the whole exchange.

  Piper seated herself, whipped open her napkin, and draped it over her lap. “Gosh, I feel like a salad,” she told Kate in the same chirpy voice. “Don’t you?”

  Of course she does, I thought to myself. Kate feels exactly like a salad because Kate is a fucking salad. And even though this insult was unspoken, meaningless, and directed at a person with whom I wasn’t even angry, it helped me get my bearings.

  As Lake handed me my check, I rolled my eyes toward the table, made an anguished face, and mouthed the word “Piper.”

  After an almost imperceptible lift of an eyebrow, Lake strode over to Piper’s table, smiled warmly at the two women, and said, “Hello. I’m Lake and I’ll be your server today.”

  “Lake,” said Piper, flapping her lashes. “Now, that’s a different name!”

  Lake swept her gaze around the restaurant, as though to make sure no one was listening. Then, in a loud, conspiratorial whisper, she replied, “Actually, it’s my middle name. My first name is ridiculous. Just god-awful. I don’t know what my parents were thinking.”

  “Oh, tell us what it is!” burbled Kate.

  “Yes, do.” Piper made it sound like a command.

  Lake didn’t pause to blink or swallow; the words slipped off her tongue as innocently as you please. “Piper,” she said, “can you imagine?” If Kate’s gasp hadn’t been so loud, my gasp would’ve echoed through the restaurant like thunder. Lake handed Piper the wine list. “Piper. Like ‘Viper’ with a P.”

  The next day turned out to be the first day of fall, one of my favorite days of the year. I’m not talking about the actual autumnal equinox, which had come and gone a week earlier and had felt pretty much like all the summer days preceding it. What I mean by the first day of fall is that day when you suddenly understand with your whole body that the season has changed. When the air feels snappier against your skin and the sky’s blueness turns wistful, and the humming of insects shifts pitch, and you just know like you know your own name that summer is over.

  I’d planned to do what I’d been
doing for over a month: set up housekeeping, a job I enjoy and prefer to do slowly and thoughtfully, a method that works only if you don’t mind living in disarray for a while, which Teo and I didn’t.

  A few days before, Teo had surprised me by bringing home six black-and-white photographs, matted and framed, the sort of photographs you know are exquisite before you have any idea what they’re of. My best friend Linny—who’d toyed with the notion of law school for a few years before rediscovering photography, an old passion—had taken them and sent them to me as a house-warming gift. Sent them from San Francisco, sadly enough, the city to which she and her boyfriend Hayes had relocated five months ago, despite my pleading, no-holds-barred pouting, and relentless warnings about gray skies and earthquakes. As I watched their car disappear into the distance, I suffered a kind of earthquake of my own, chandeliers swinging and paintings falling off the walls of my inner life.

  That day’s tasks were supposed to be hanging Linny’s photographs and then sorting through the piles of graduate school applications (material culture, art history, decorative arts) that were beginning to take over my desk and the floor around it, but when I stepped outside to water my mums, which were thriving despite their inauspicious arrival, the first-true-fall-day feeling hit me, and I knew spending the morning indoors was impossible.

  If I’d been a runner, I would’ve run, but since just thinking about running causes me to pull several hamstrings at once, I threw on jeans and my obnoxiously bright, very complex-looking running shoes—which I bought because the irony of me in complex, obnoxiously bright running shoes pleased me—dragged my bike out of the garage, and took off.

  I rode for over two hours, first through our neighborhood, then through other neighborhoods, and then through a park full of squirrels and tattered sunlight. When I got back, I was red faced and starving and happy and ready to fall into the arms of my husband, which is exactly what I did. I fell, then let go of him, then whipped us up a pair of turkey club sandwiches, which we devoured like birds of prey.

  The glow from all of this was the kind that sticks with you for a while and that allows you to temporarily forget anything that might cause the glow to dim. It stuck with me for so long, in fact, that it wasn’t until I happened to glance at the clock as Teo and I were hanging Linny’s photos that Piper’s impending visit suddenly loomed up out of the glow, casting its tidy, Pilates-honed shadow over my home and its inhabitants: 3:45. Oof. I watched my husband blithely trying to drive hooks into the wall without destroying the plaster, touchingly oblivious to the blond freight train hurtling toward him.

  “Maybe she’s in love with you,” I mused.

  “Linny?” Teo mumbled around the hook he held between his teeth. “Of course she’s in love with me. Can you remember a time when Linny wasn’t in love with me?”

  “No,” I said. “Teo, that’s too high. How will anyone see it?”

  Teo took the hook out of his mouth and sighed. “Cornelia, as it is, every mirror in the house gives me an excellent view of my chest.”

  “It’s a nice chest,” I told him, even though I knew men didn’t come more flattery proof than Teo. He ignored me.

  “Could I possibly enjoy our artwork without getting down on my knees? Is that too much to ask?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Heightist.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a heightist. Don’t try to deny it either. And I was talking about Piper. Maybe Piper’s coming over to tell you she’s in love with you.”

  Teo shook his head. “No chance. If she were in love with me, she would have invited me to her house. That’s how it’s done around here. She would have waited until I was mowing the grass and then asked me over for a nice tall glass of lemonade.”

  “Don’t be crazy,” I scoffed, “Piper would never interrupt a man in the middle of lawn care.”

  Teo acknowledged the irrefutability of this with a shrug, then said, “But if she were in love with me, she’d probably leave her kids at home.” He nodded toward the window, and there they were, two generations of Truitts marching resolutely toward our front door, autumnal afternoon sunlight glancing off all three yellow heads.

  I sighed a full-body sigh. Teo turned to me, grinning, and teased, “Stiff upper lip!”

  “Easy for you to say,” I snapped. “And what does that even mean? Why upper lip? When people start to crack, their lower lip is the one that does all the moving, isn’t it? Their lower lip quivers, while their upper lip remains more or less motionless. And can a lip even be stiff? Either lip? That’s my question.” Teo still refused to view the Piper Posse’s rejection of me in a sufficiently serious light. I understood that this refusal arose out of his respect for my ability to handle my life, combined with his belief that, given time, I could thaw even the coldest shoulder, but with Piper standing on my very doorstep, I could have used a little more support.

  I opened the door. The two children stood on my doormat, shuffling and stamping. “Just like this,” the little boy was saying to his sister in a solemn voice, “so all the mud comes off.” They were holding hands. Great, I thought, they’re adorable. The fruit of Piper’s loins. I was ready for them to be Satan’s spawn—I was rooting for them to be Satan’s spawn—and they were adorable.

  “Hey, guys!” I said, crouching down. “I’m Cornelia. You’re doing such a nice job of wiping your feet.”

  “Thank you,” said the boy. The girl smiled shyly, then turned to bury her face in her mother’s legs.

  I stood up. “Hi, Piper,” I said, “come on in.”

  If I’d been expecting the Hitchcock victim who’d approached me at Vincente’s (and while I hadn’t been expecting her, exactly, I’ll admit I had been hoping for her), I’d have been disappointed. Chin lifted, eyes scornful, leather portfolio tucked under one arm, this was Piper in full Queen Bee mode, and, in her skinny, dark-wash jeans and black ballet flats, as stylish as I’d ever seen her.

  “Hello, hello,” she said airily. Then she turned to Teo. “Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me, Teo. I know how busy work must keep you.” She looked at the unpacked boxes in the corner and the empty picture hooks in the wall. “And it looks like you’ve still got plenty to do here, too!”

  “Yeah,” Teo said, smiling, “I guess we like to take our time.”

  “Would you like to sit down?” I asked. “Can I get you a drink or something? San Pellegrino? Cranberry juice?”

  “Oh, nothing, thanks.” Piper fished a Tupperware container and two tiny bottles of spring water out of her Coach tote and handed them to me. “Pretzels,” she explained. “Trans fat free. For Carter and Meredith. And water, but only if they ask.” She dropped her voice. “Meredith’s working on toilet learning.”

  I stared down at the pretzels and water, the phrase “toilet learning” buzzing around inside my head like a fly.

  Unexpectedly, Piper laughed a nervous, rippling laugh, a laugh that made her slick surfaces suddenly crackle like old porcelain. This was one tightly wound woman. “Oh, look at your face! Did you think I’d leave you without supplies?”

  “Are you—leaving?” I asked, bewildered.

  “We’ll just be in the next room,” she said, patting my arm consolingly and laughing the odd laugh again. “I need to speak to Teo privately. You don’t mind, do you?” Before I could answer, she reached into her tote again and pulled out a couple of books. “Would you mind pointing to each word as you read? Carter is this close to being reading ready. And no television, please. Oh, and no sweets!” She shook a finger at me, playfully.

  I was getting angrier at Piper by the second, but part of me watched her with a fascination that was almost admiring. Even as she pawned her children off on me as though I were the hired help, Piper’s perkiness was intensifying. As a matter of fact, her perkiness was getting downright creepy. It came to me: Doris Day. An evil Doris Day. And then, because I remembered that the real Doris Day has always struck me as evil, my next thought was simply Doris Day.
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br />   “Anything else?” I asked.

  Piper frowned and gazed skyward, thinking hard. Teo’s eyes met mine.

  “Hey, Piper,” he said, “you remind me of a friend of my sister’s from college. Did you go to Duke, by any chance?”

  Duke. The Harvard of the Atlantic Coast Conference. I could have kissed him. My husband, he insists on seeing me as a woman who doesn’t need rescuing (and he’s right most of the time), but he knows when to slip a girl a little help.

  “Duke?” said Piper, startled. “No. I went to Wake Forest, though, right down the road in Winston-Salem.” Then she added, quickly, “I considered Duke. Duke, UVA, or maybe an Ivy. But my dad grew up in Winston-Salem. He’s a Wake alum!”

  Not a Tarheel after all, but pretty darn close. In the brief lull that followed “He’s a Wake alum!” I let my smile spread slowly across my face.

  “So. You’re a Demon Deacon,” I said, drawing the words out. And though I’ve never been sure what a Demon Deacon is, at that moment, calling Piper one was so sweet, it felt almost like revenge.

  Piper and Teo were gone—behind the closed door of our den—for slightly less than fifteen minutes. The meeting’s brevity was a bit of a letdown, really. After so much buildup, I’d expected something bigger, longer, maybe along the lines of a UN summit. Besides, I’d been enjoying Piper’s kids, who’d spent the fourteen minutes first playing with an empty packing box, a game they christened Box, then carefully divvying up the pretzels into three tiny piles, one for each of us.

  “Some for Mommy?” Meredith had asked her brother.