Anyway, there didn’t seem much else for it so I clumsily applied a modest faceful of products I was able to identify. The greige shift dress and matching cropped jacket were not what I would have chosen myself but a set of cherry-red lips cheered up my visage enormously. I never would have thought to wear cherry-red lipstick in my old life. I forced a smile and to my utter amazement I had to admit that, despite the tragedy of it all, if I removed my critical eye and ignored the fact that I didn’t look like me, the woman I did look like was not half bad.
Something, though, was still not quite right. Something apart from the fact that my hair was blonde on the good side of my head but dark both at the roots and on the other side. Ty already had me booked in with the new Frederic Fekkai, whoever that was. Could it be my eyebrows? They had definitely seen better days … I obviously plucked them a lot more than I used to and they were growing back quite oddly. I leaned in closer for further inspection and so did my mirror image, but up close she looked even less like me than before.
I was puzzled. But she was not. I was horrified but she was not. I was scared, but she was not. No matter what my inner emotion, she remained glassily smooth.
I burst out of the bathroom, my hands flapping in front of me in terror. I was going to end up in a wheelchair after all. I was paralysed!
‘I can’t move!’ I cried. ‘Look! I can’t move!’
Marco was standing there, signing some forms with Signora Marinello and Ty.
‘You’re moving pretty well if you ask me,’ he said, and despite my panic I couldn’t help but notice that his eyes were running over me in a way that should have made me feel disgusted right there in front of my alleged fiancé but did not.
‘Thank God you’re here,’ I said. ‘I can’t move my face, Marco. What’s wrong with me? What’s the matter?’
He handed Signora Marinello the paperwork, sat me on the bed then ran those long lean fingers across my cheeks, around my eyes, along my hairline.
‘Very nice,’ Marco said. ‘I’d say it was Bill Howard up on East 73rd. He does the best work in town.’
‘The best work?’ I echoed.
‘Botox,’ Marco said. ‘He’s just plumped out your eyes and filled in your frown lines. Don’t worry. He’s done a great job.’
‘I’ve been Botox-ed?’
‘Everybody on the Upper East Side has been Botox-ed, Connie. You look good. In fact, you look great.’
His hand was still on my chin. I could barely concentrate on the shock of what he’d just told me. I’d always looked down my naturally well-proportioned nose at the nippers and tuckers and plumpers and suckers of the world, and now I was one?
‘Come along MC,’ Ty said, perhaps picking up on whatever danced in the air between Marco and me. ‘The car is waiting.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve discovered a last-minute cure for my taste problem then,’ I said and to my astonishment my voice sounded all husky and Kathleen Turner-ish.
‘No,’ Marco said and he smiled at me, such a rare and blinding vision I just about jumped into his arms at the sight of it. ‘But if I do you’ll be the first to know. Make sure to keep in touch. I don’t generally get to enjoy normal conversations with my patients.’
I stood up and our eyes lingered on each other in a decidedly non-doctor-patient fashion.
‘The car, MC,’ Ty reminded me edgily and I can’t say I blamed him. The room hung hot and heavy with my slatternly lust.
‘Good luck, Constanzia,’ Marco said and he took my hand in his, then leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, his lips soft and perfectly moist on my skin. I closed my eyes and imagined the smell of him, which was quite glorious, so glorious in fact that I forgot to open my eyes again and it wasn’t until Signora Marinello and Ty both coughed loudly that I remembered where I was and let Marco go.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Don’t be,’ he answered and he was gone.
Well, you can only imagine the awkward moment that blossomed after that little exchange. I blushed to the roots of my roots as I pretended to look for things that I might have forgotten while Ty burbled details of our cats I wouldn’t have thought anyone but a veterinary gynaecologist would care to hear.
Finally, when there was truly nothing to do but leave, Signora Marinello was strangely subdued, shy almost, as she held me at arm’s length and studied me with her earnest brown eyes.
‘Don’t be frightened, Constanzia,’ she said. ‘Will all be okay. You’ll see. But remember your brain she is not better yet. You need your friends. Your real friends.’ She said this last in a whisper, which I took to mean that she did not count Ty among my real friends (which was fine by me, as I didn’t either). In fact, the only reason I was going with him was because nobody else had offered to take me anywhere. And because of the bracelet which Fleur had looked up on the Internet and said cost $4000.
‘You know where to find me if you need me, Constanzia,’ Signora Marinello whispered into my ear, pulling me into her warm doughy body. ‘I will always be here. Don’t forget. If you need me, just come find me.’
I hated those Park Avenue cats on sight. They were both fat and fluffy with floppy undercarriages that looked as though someone had unzipped them and taken the stuffing out. Cay-Cay — or was it Happy? I had no way of telling the snooty little creatures apart — actually arched her back and yowled at me when I stepped into the entrance hall of Ty’s 12th-floor corner apartment.
The place was enormous. Frankly, I felt like arching my back and yowling a little myself. You could have fitted Tom’s and my old apartment in the entry foyer. It was scarily spacious, with a hallway and bedrooms off to the left and a light-filled living room to the right. I followed Ty in that direction, trying to keep my jaw from dropping on the ground at the sight of his super-deluxe gourmet kitchen gleaming with stainless-steel bench-tops and sparkling with every appliance known to mankind — including a fully plumbed-in commercial coffee machine. It was the sort of kitchen someone like me might have dreamed of but never in a million years expect to have. I was staggered.
The rest of the apartment was just as impressive. A tastefully planted terrace ran the length of the living and dining areas … you could look out French doors to Park Avenue from behind the kitchen bench. The whole place was sleek and uncluttered and screamed style and good taste and huge expense. It took me a while to realise, though, that everything was beige and I mean everything: walls, parquet floors, drapes, sofas, flower arrangements, lampshades, you name it, even the books on the book shelves all seemed to have beige spines. The cats were beige. The expensive-looking art on the wall was beige. Frankly, I thought it could have done with a splash of colour but what did I know?
I collapsed into a stylishly upright armchair and slipped off my high heels, stretching out my legs and wriggling my toes on the Persian rug underneath the coffee table. I could barely believe that I lived there. When Ty took my bag away and disappeared back down the hall with it I sat like a stunned mullet in my chair, just wondering what the hell was going to happen next. I looked around the vast perfectly decorated space for any signs that I might have had a hand in it but there was nothing of me in the room at all. It was too tasteful for that. Then Ty bustled back, rubbing his hands together. He settled himself on the stylishly upright sofa, removed a cushion from behind his back and placed it neatly at the opposite end, then patted the seat beside him, indicating that Cay-Cay or Happy should jump up, which one of them did, curling into a ball and eyeing me beadily. Then he picked up a remote control and the room was suddenly filled with sound, which also sounded beige. I was pretty sure I still liked Madonna and Ricky Martin but clearly Ty was more of an elevator music guy.
Anyway, it was surreal. We sat there, he and I, in our $3-million-plus apartment looking for all the world just like any other well-to-do New York couple enjoying a peaceful afternoon in the home we had painstakingly perfected. If aliens had landed in our living room they would have thought us the luckiest people alive.
Who wouldn’t want a life like that? Park Avenue address, priceless art, beautiful jewellery. I could have woken up to a much worse scenario, put it that way, so rather than excusing myself politely and running into the street screaming, which was one of my options at around that point, I just wriggled my toes in that rug and stayed put. While it seemed strange, it didn’t seem stranger than anything else. And, looking back, that whole post-hospital period had a certain dream-like quality to it. I knew I was awake and in the real world but it was almost as though I was applying the rules of a dream world: not questioning anything, letting whatever happened happen, no matter how weird. Do you know what I mean when I talk about the rules of a dream world? In a dream you never stop to question Bruce Springsteen’s appearance at your lavish wedding to George Clooney in the foothills of Nepal, do you? You never rise up and wonder why 2000 one-armed unicyclists are all eating Hungarian goulash. You don’t slap Johnny Depp’s hand away from your breast and extract your tongue from his mouth to say, ‘Stop that right now. I’m a happily married woman, Johnny. Behave yourself.’ No, you just sit back and see what happens.
Also, I was tired. So tired. That first day, deposited neatly in that stylish sea of beige, I felt a weariness so deep in my bones it frightened me. My eyelids felt like lead weights that lowered themselves in slow motion to my cheeks. Lifting them was an effort almost beyond me. Sleep seemed too small a solution to that sort of exhaustion. I felt like I needed to discover a whole different method of relief. Also, I didn’t know where my bed was but I did know that when I found it, I did not want to share it with Ty, no matter how high the thread count on the linen. This was a biggie. He was a nice enough man, if you liked that sort of thing. He was certainly generous and kind and understanding — if slightly handicapped by the broom handle stuck up his ass — and I didn’t mind staying at his house but I did not want his doughy flesh rubbing up and down against me. Yet when I sorted through the filing cabinet in my exhausted mind, the folder marked ‘Ways To Tell The Fiancé You Didn’t Know You Had That You Don’t Want To Sleep With Him’ was empty. The whole drawer, in fact, appeared to have been ransacked. But I was a person in need of a good long lie-down so I just had to deal with it.
‘Ty, I don’t like your cats,’ I said, ‘and I’m not going to sleep with you. Also I think you should paint at least one wall in here a pumpkin colour. Mango even.’
There was a long silence. His feelings were hurt, I could see that, but I was too tired to care. I just didn’t have the energy to dress things up the way I used to.
‘You don’t like the cats?’ He resorted to a sad sort of baby-ish voice. ‘But MC, they’re our little darlings.’
The one that wasn’t already on the sofa walked past me, its tail held haughtily upright, its hip swinging to brush my knee with its butt. I considered reaching out to give it a good tug but didn’t want to expend the energy.
‘I don’t know how things are going to work out,’ I said. ‘It’s all pretty strange, you have to admit, and I’m just not sure of … anything. Except, you know, I might actually be more of a tropical fish person. Anyway, I just need to find a way to get through the next little while until my taste comes back. If this is weird I’m sorry, Ty. But it’ll all be okay when my taste comes back.’
Ty flinched at this, his lips pursing and giving his mouth a look not unlike the asshole of one of his cats.
‘Yes, well, I can’t say your Dr Scarpa has been particularly helpful on that front,’ he said dryly. ‘It’s not like we’re just dealing with anybody’s taste after all. You’re MC Conlan of the New York Times, for heaven’s sake. People would kill for that job.’
I must have looked alarmed because he quickly clarified that I was not one of those people.
‘You got it fair and square, MC, by being the best placed person for the job. Paris put in a good word, of course she did, that’s how it works, you know that, and I did my bit too. Well, Toby’s an old friend. I was able to help you both out. It’s just a shame that Dr Scarpa doesn’t seem to take your taste as seriously as everyone else. But I’ve been talking to Dr Foster, MC, and she says she can clear her schedule and give you a couple of hours a day for the next two weeks at least. She thinks your memory issues may be some sort of dissociative symptom of post-traumatic stress syndrome, and, well, when you think about it half the damn country has post-traumatic stress syndrome these days so why shouldn’t you? And the taste, MC, well, Dr Foster thinks that might be part of it. She thinks she can help you get it back and you’re right, that’s what we must work towards. You must get it back.’
I agreed with him on that one but there were still a few gaps in need of filling.
‘Who is Dr Foster?’ I asked him.
‘Your therapist, darling. She’s worked wonders with you, truly she has. Wonders.’
I was in therapy?
‘And on the other matter,’ he cleared his throat, ‘the question of the sleeping arrangements, you have your own room, MC. You’ve always had your own room, the master bedroom with French doors to the terrace. I’m in the guest room past the library. I don’t expect that to change at all.’
We had a library?
‘We can go back to our Wednesday evening arrangement whenever you are ready, MC. Sevruga caviar, the Krug Clos du Mesnil and …’ he blushed and gave a little cough, ‘you know. As always.’
Well, this was some kind of engagement. ‘We don’t sleep together?’ Not that I wanted to, you understand, but I was quite interested in knowing why I didn’t. ‘Except on a Wednesday?’
‘Conflicting schedules, darling.’ He was squirming. ‘Your work load. My allergies. We just decided it would be better that way.’
Take away our flawless home, our gorgeous clothes and our successful careers and we really were a very odd couple.
‘So, finally I get to see where you live,’ my mother said as she stepped across the threshold the next day. ‘Nice colour. It’s so fresh.’ She looking approvingly around the living room and kitchen, adding: ‘So plain. Your father always wants everything so bright and cheerful. It drives me crazy.’
My father, as far as I knew, had never had an opinion on interior décor in his whole entire life. In fact, if you got him out of the apartment and asked him what colour the walls were, I doubt he would have been able to tell you.
‘So, do you remember anything yet?’ she asked, settling herself on the sofa (which might have looked fabulous but was actually a bitch to sit on). ‘Other than your fancy Park Avenue address, of course. You don’t seem to have forgotten that. You don’t remember leaving your husband, breaking his heart, ruining your mother’s life?’
I felt an anger surge through me then as I looked at her trying to wriggle into a comfortable position, her eyes taking in every detail, no doubt totting up a running total in her head and calculating how much I wasn’t worth it. Why the hell was she so mean and why the hell did I put up with it?
‘You know what,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you here if you’re going to talk to me like that.’
Her jaw dropped in amazement. ‘Like what? I can’t remind you what you did, how you embarrassed me and your father? I couldn’t look Father Francis in the eye for a year after you left poor Tommy. It was a disgrace. And I’ll talk to you any way I want. I’m your mother. Unless you’ve forgotten that too.’
I stopped myself from going there because had I been able to choose whom I remembered, I couldn’t swear she’d make the cut. ‘Mom, you never even liked poor Tommy,’ I said instead. ‘You used to introduce him as “the dishwasher who stole my daughter”.’
‘Well, that was before he was on the Food Network,’ she answered, her eyes gleaming like nuggets of coal at my audacity. ‘I guess I just never got to see his good side, what with you nagging at him all the time.’
This stopped me in my tracks. Did I nag at Tom? I didn’t think so. I did whatever he told me to do most of the time. I was the peacekeeper, the pacifier, the good girl who would do almost anything to avoi
d a confrontation. Jesus, I even let him hijack my dreams, turn them into his. Chez Panisse for our honeymoon — what a crock. I couldn’t make Tom do a goddamn thing. I never had been able to, had hardly bothered trying. And sitting there with my mother’s sparkling eyes challenging me unblinkingly across the foreign floor of my alleged home, I realised that the well of self-doubt into which she had dipped for so long had finally dried up. And that nagging was not my problem. Being bullied was my problem.
‘So nice of you to drop by,’ I said, suddenly standing up and gesturing toward the hall. ‘Next time we’ll have cake.’
There was a moment when I thought she was maybe going to sit her ground, refuse to move, but she thought better of it, standing up and straightening her sweater.
‘You’ve always had a mean streak, Mary-Constance,’ she said. ‘But who knew Woody Allen would bring it out in you? I never liked him, you know. I never knew what Mia saw in him. After Sinatra, what a choice. Those beady little eyes, that whiny little voice.’
‘See you later, Mom,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take a nap now.’
‘And for such a fancy building your doorman looks cheap,’ she told me as I opened the door to the apartment for her. ‘That suit! And the hair growing out his ears must be an inch long.’
‘Say hi to Pop for me,’ I told her and then I closed the door, resting my forehead against the cool smooth surface.
‘So, that went well,’ Ty said, emerging warily from his end of the apartment.
‘You think?’
‘Well, at least you finally gave her our address, MC. Usually you insist on meeting her someplace else. Dr Foster will have more to say on the matter, I’m sure, darling. Tea? Lapsang Souchong?’
Twelve
Actually, when it came to hot drinks I preferred coffee but it turned out Ty didn’t like using his fancy Italian coffee machine. It made too much of a mess, he said. To be honest, he seemed kind of fussy on the cleaning front: snatching away my glass before I could set it on the table, obsessively removing cat hair with one of those sticky brush things, rearranging his very deliberate collection of magazines on the coffee table if you were so presumptuous as to flick through one.