Picture Perfect

  Besides, I had something that was going to completely take his mind off the movie. I couldn't be entirely sure yet, since I hadn't had time to go to a doctor, and I was only a week late. But still, I had a hunch. I had considered this over and over on the flight home, realizing that Alex was going to have a fit when I told him about the baby, but I'd worked out a dozen scenarios in my mind. In one, he just stood speechless. In another, I said that the best-laid plans don't always work the way you want. In a third, I patiently reminded him that he'd been the one who wanted to play with fire. All the scenes ended the same way, with us curled up together in the window seat, Alex's hand pressed against my stomach, as if he could help me to carry our child.

  I stared at my suitcase, deciding to leave it right there in the parlor, because after all I wasn't supposed to be lifting heavy things. With every step, I heard Alex testing another line, sometimes repeating it with the emphasis on different words: I made these wars for Egypt...She has robbed me of my sword.

  I smiled, thinking of Antony's crisis of masculinity, and then of the news I had for Alex. Drawing in a deep breath, I stepped across the threshold of the bedroom suite. "Hi," I said.

  Alex turned to me, his eyes black with anger. "She has robbed me," he said more slowly, "of my sword." He took two steps toward me, coming to stand perfectly still only inches away. "Well," he demanded, "I suppose you're going to try to explain."

  My mouth dropped open and my arms ached, waiting for a homecoming that did not materialize. "Itoldyou I'd be late," I said. "I called you as soon as I knew." Carefully edging past Alex, I slipped my coat onto a chair. "I thought you'd be happy that I made it home tonight."

  Alex spun me around by the shoulder. "Your plane wasn't late," he said. "I called the airport."

  "Of course it was," I snapped. "Whoever you talked to read the computer wrong. Why in God's name would I lie to you?"

  Alex's mouth tightened. "You tell me."

  I rubbed my temples, wondering what kind of stress Alex had to be under to dream up whatever wild schemes were running through his head. "I can't believe you checked up on me," I said.

  The corner of Alex's mouth tipped up. "Well," he said, "I don't trust you."

  The flat truth of his statement cut through my anger; the strain of a whole week of appearances caught up with me. My eyes filled with tears. This was not the evening I had planned; there would be no late-night snack in bed, no simple touches, no stunned wonder at the life we had created. I stared at Alex and wondered what had happened to the man I knew.

  As soon as the first tears ran down my cheeks, Alex started to smile. He grabbed my shoulders hard. "Which one is it, pichouette?"he said, his voice spilling like silk. "Did you come from some other man's bed? Someone you picked up in Chicago? Or were you just wandering the streets, holding on to your little week of glory, in case failure is catching?"

  I heard in his words how much he hated himself, and even as I was shaking my head I reached toward him, offering me, the only thing I had. Alex caught both of my wrists in one hand and punched me in the side, his chest heaving with the effort. I did not move; I did not even let myself breathe. I simply couldn't believe I was watching this happen, feeling it happen to me. No,I thought, but there weren't any words.

  When he pushed me away from him I hit the edge of a bookshelf, and as I fell to the ground a rain of hardcovers and glass paperweights followed. I scooted backward, trying to get away, but when he kicked me I took the blow in my abdomen, and then rolled to my other side. I covered my face and I tried to make myself as small as possible--so small that Alex would not see me, so small that I could forget myself.

  I knew that it was over only because I heard the sound of Alex's crying over the throb of my body. He touched my shoulder, and God help me, I turned toward him, burying my face against his chest and heaving with sobs, seeking comfort from the person who had caused the pain. He rocked me back and forth in his lap; he whispered that he was sorry.

  When there was nothing left inside me Alex stood up and went into the bathroom. He came back with a washcloth and wiped my face, my nose, my throat. He tucked me under the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. When he thought I was asleep he spoke again. "I didn't mean to," he murmured, and his raw voice cracked in the middle. He started to cry again; then he walked into the sitting room and put his fist through a wall.

  WHEN THE BLEEDING STARTED LAST NIGHT, I TOLD MYSELF THAT IT was just my period, and I squeezed my eyes shut and whispered the sentence like a prayer until I believed it was true. And it might have been: I knew nothing about miscarriage, but I wasn't in much pain--although that could have been because I had simply gone numb.

  I allowed myself to think of what might have been a baby only once, when it wasn't even light outside this morning. I decided not to tell Alex. There was no need; he felt awful enough. When he woke up, he lifted the sheets and looked at the swelling marks on my arms and the purple bruise on my stomach. "Don't," I told him softly, touching his cheek, and I watched him leave for the studio under the burden of his own guilt.

  But now he was home again, and we were supposed to go out to a premiere. I turned to Alex, lying on the bed beside me where he had fallen asleep after Ophelia left, his arm possessively draped over my waist. Very gently I lifted his hand, slipping out from underneath him, and I walked into the adjoining sitting room.

  I had cleaned up the books and the paperweights this morning, but I could still see them splayed across the hardwood floor. Mindlessly I sat down on a love seat and picked up the television remote control, switching on the power. On the screen were two misshapen animals, a cartoon. One was beating the other over the head with an anvil. The second one smiled, and then his body shattered and fell away, leaving only a skeleton.

  So,I thought,it is like this everywhere.

  Alex came out a few minutes later and sat down beside me. He kissed me so sweetly that I pictured my heart like that cartoon animal, falling away to leave an aching core. "Will you go with me?" he asked.

  I nodded; I would walk across hot coals and breathe fire if Alex wanted me to. I would give up my soul. I loved him.

  It's hard for you to understand, but I knew it wouldn't happen a second time, because I realized that I was partially at fault. It was my job to keep Alex happy; that was what my vows had amounted to over a year ago. But I had done something wrong, something that upset the balance and pushed him over the edge. I would find out what that was, so he would never feel that way again, so it would never come to this.

  Alex pulled me into the bedroom and helped me into a skintight black dress that was cut out at the shoulders but covered virtually every other part of my body from my neck to my ankles. "You look beautiful," he said, leading me to a mirror.

  I stared at my bare feet, my twitching hands, and at Alex's eyes, which still looked so wounded. You could not see the bruises on me at all. "Yes," I said. "This is fine."

  We arrived at the premiere with twenty other chauffeured cars, and we waited in turn to pull up to the spot where everyone was getting out. Fans and paparazzi had formed two lines leading to the door of the theater, and a couple of reporters were positioned right at the curb, so that their voice-overs could catch the moment the celebrities stepped from their cars.

  It was nothing new; Alex and I had been to many premieres in the past year. He stepped out of the car first, tall and striking in a crisp white shirt and tie. He waved to the crowd, and the sun caught his wedding band, shooting off a bright ray that temporarily blinded me. Then he gently helped me out of the back seat, anchoring his arm around my side, careful to let his hand rest lower on my hip than usual, where it wouldn't hurt.

  It was common procedure to stand there for a moment like a reigning king and queen, so that people could take their pictures and cheer and get a good long look. The entertainment reporter beside me was practically yelling over the crowd that was roaring Alex's name. "Here's Alex Rivers and his wife, Cassandra. Rumor has it thatAntony and Cleopatr
a , Alex Rivers's new film, is in dire straits," she said. "But as you can see, his fans have no doubt that whatever problems the production's run into, Alex will find a way to iron them out." She threw a meaningful glance back over her shoulder, meant to be caught by the camera. "It seems," she said, "that everything Alex Rivers touches turns to gold."

  Alex guided me forward, his hand light and gentle on my back. I took one last look at that reporter, and then I threw back my head and laughed.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I heard his footsteps coming up the stairs of the apartment, and now fully awake, I jumped up from the bed where I had been taking a nap. With my heart lodged at the base of my throat I smoothed the comforter, erasing the pressed image of my body so that he would never know.

  It was April, and I was on sabbatical from UCLA, but Alex didn't like the idea of my having nothing to do. He'd told me that more than once, sometimes teasing, sometimes so seriously that I wouldlook for things to do to keep busy: dipping already clean crystal chandeliers, taking an aerobics class I hated, redecorating the apartment, which had been beautifully furnished to begin with. The truth was that the past year had been draining, between making full professor at the university and balancing those commitments with scattered lectures about the hand, which was currently on display at a museum in London. This month I had simply been looking forward to resting.

  But I didn't want to upset Alex, either.

  I stood up and ran my hand over my hair, making sure that none of it had slipped out of its barrette while I was asleep. My pulse began to race and I counted off the seconds until Alex would throw open the door. Frantically I looked around for something that would make me look like I had been working, finally seizing a pad and a pencil. I sat down at the escritoire and mapped the first thing that came to mind: a linear tree of man's evolution.

  One minute passed; two. I pushed back the chair and willed myself to cross the room and open the door. My face was flushed by the time I twisted the doorknob, and I flinched a little, not knowing what to expect on the other side.

  There were curtains, fluttering in the waves of heat. Mrs. Alvarez had opened the windows before she left to go to Trancas Market. But it was dead silent in the house, which meant she hadn't come back yet.

  I walked down the stairs and opened the front door, peeking my head outside. I called out, waiting for an answer, and I checked the bathrooms and the study and the porch before I realized that I was nervous over nothing. I had only imagined the footsteps. Alex had not come home at all.

  YOU KNOW, FOR SIX MONTHS AFTER THAT FIRST TIME, ALEX WAS THE model husband. He never failed to ask me what was going on at the university; he built me my own laboratory on the grounds of the house as a birthday present; he commissioned an artist to paint my likeness and he hung it in his study across from his desk, where he said he could always keep his eyes on me. When I gave lectures about my hand, he attended and clapped more loudly than anyone else; for a few months, he even hired a completely unnecessary secretary to record my speaking engagements and to organize the tear sheets about my discovery into some sort of scrapbook. At night he touched me reverently, and he held me very close when he slept, as if he still thought I might run away.

  If anything, it brought us closer. I know you don't understand, and I can't explain any better than this: I loved Alex so much that it was easier to let him hurt me than to watch him hurt himself. Physical pain was nothing compared to seeing the look that shuttered Alex's eyes when he couldn't live up to his own expectations.

  I was not afraid of Alex, because I understood him. I tried to keep everything steady and smooth at home, as if that might give him a baseline from which to work. Sometimes that backfired--it gave him an excuse to explode. When I moved a pile of scripts so that his desk could be dusted, he yelled at me for over an hour. But he didn't touch me, not in anger, not for a while.

  He was filmingInsufficient Grounds --a movie I knew nothing about because I hadn't had time to read the script--the second time it happened. We had been staying at the apartment because I was having the walls repapered, and it was easier to just sleep there than to make the trip to supervise every morning. Alex came home around dinnertime, when Mrs. Alvarez had already laid out the meal and gone to her son's for the weekend.

  I was standing in front of the table when I heard John drive up outside. Checking last-minute details, I stretched my hand out toward Alex's place setting and realigned the knife, fork, and spoon, so that the edges all were level.

  "Hi," Alex said, coming up behind me to slip his arms around my waist. He smelled of the cold cream used to take off makeup at the end of the day. He was still wearing his sunglasses. "What's for dinner?"

  I turned in his arms. "What did you want?"

  Alex smiled. "You have toask ?" He lazily started unbuttoning my shirt. "Aren't you hot?"

  "No," I laughed. "I'mhungry ." I lifted the cover from a serving platter, letting the smell of fresh-steamed snow peas and kung pao chicken tantalize Alex. "Why don't you get undressed?"

  Alex started downstairs toward the bedroom and I spooned rice and chicken and vegetables onto our plates. I sat patiently with my napkin in my lap until Alex returned, now wearing shorts and a pale blue pocket T-shirt that took on the color of his eyes. "You seen my sneakers,pichouette ?" he asked.

  I furrowed my brow, trying to remember where they were. At some point over the course of the day, I had noticed them, tangled with the brushes and tubs and paste of the wallpaperers.

  "Oh!" I exclaimed, remembering. "They're on the porch."

  The porch at the apartment was really a lanai that overlooked the beach-level deck. We kept our plants out there, and a very ugly cigar store Indian statue that Alex could not remember acquiring. Alex walked to the sliding doors and stepped outside, locating his sneakers and slipping them on his feet.

  Immediately he shook them off again, cursing a violent streak in French. He lifted one to his nose and grimaced, hurled it as far as he could into the living room. It hit the new white silk wallpaper, leaving a dark muddy patch.

  Very deliberately, Alex closed the sliding door and then walked around the apartment, shutting the windows I had opened to let in the ocean breeze. When he had sealed us off from everyone outside, he started to speak. "Some goddamned cat peed in them," he said. "What I want to know is what they were doing out there in the first place."

  I put down my fork on the edge of the plate, careful not to make the slightest noise. "You left them out there?" I suggested.

  "You were here all fucking day!" Alex yelled. "It never crossed your mind to bring them inside?"

  I didn't understand why this was a crisis. I knew that Alex had another pair of sneakers, older ones, downstairs in his closet. At the house there were at least three more pairs. Unsure of what exactly he wanted to hear, I stared down at my plate, at the cooling chicken.

  Alex grabbed my chin and forced it up. "Lookat me when I'm talking to you," he said. Then he grasped my shoulders and shoved me sideways, toppling the chair so that I lay sprawled half beneath it.

  I closed my eyes and curled up, waiting for what was going to happen, but instead I heard the key turning in the front door. "Where are you going?" I whispered, so quietly that I didn't think Alex would hear me.

  "For a run," he said tersely.

  I struggled to a sitting position. "You don't have your shoes," I said.

  "I'd noticed," Alex said, and he slammed the door shut behind him.

  I sat for a few moments with my knees huddled to my chest, and then I stood up and began to clear away the plates. I left Alex's in the microwave, but I scraped mine into the trash. Then I walked around opening the windows that Alex had closed. I listened to the drifting sounds of dogs barking at the incoming tide, of a volleyball game in progress. I waited to hear Alex running back to me. I convinced myself that nothing had happened, so that when he returned, there would be nothing to forgive.

  HERB SILVER HANDED ME A SECOND GLASS OF CHAMPAGNE
. HE STOOD with me in a corner of the crowded lobby, popping little rolled pigs-in-blankets into his mouth. "You know," he said, "Alex gets these just for me. Because he knows I won't eat those fancy schmancy oysters and puffy things."

  "Quiches," I said.

  "Whatever." He slung a beefy arm around my shoulders. "Take deep breaths, hon. He'll be back soon."

  I smiled apologetically, wishing I weren't so obvious. I enjoyed Herb's company, and I appreciated Alex's making sure I was being taken care of, but I would much rather have been with Alex himself. And I would have been, if we were attending a premiere of anything that wasn't his own film. Tonight, though, he had obligations and interviews to complete; people he needed to talk to about the financing of his next picture. I would only get in the way. Craning my neck, I tried to catch a glimpse of him through the milling throng of well-wishers.

  Alex was nowhere to be found. Resigned, I turned to Herb. He was actually here with Ophelia, not because he was her agent but because he wasn't about to turn down the pleasure of escorting a pretty woman to a media event. I had asked him as a personal favor, just as I had asked Alex if he could wrangle an invitation for her. I noticed her across the room, wearing one of my dresses, talking to an actor on the verge of breaking into the big time.

  "Ophelia looks like she's having fun," I said, picking up the thread of the conversation.

  Herb shrugged. "Ophelia could have fun at a funeral if it was packed with industry people." His face blanched, as if he just realized that he'd insulted my friend. "I don't mean anything by that,bubbelah ," he said. "It's just that Ophelia is nothing like you."