Here and Gone(23)

She got drunk on their first date. Half a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc before she left her apartment to meet him. For the nerves, she told herself. At some point in the evening, she’d had to excuse herself and go to the restaurant’s bathroom to throw up. The next morning she awoke in her own bed with a thunderous hangover and sickly, greasy shame.

That’s that, she thought. I blew it. She was surprised, then, that Patrick called in the afternoon and asked when he could see her again.

Four months later, he proposed, and she accepted, knowing even as they embraced that it was madness. She caught the first glimpse of his true nature a week after that when he arranged an introduction to his parents at their Upper West Side apartment.

Patrick came out to her loft in Brooklyn that evening, let himself in with the key she had given him. Audra remained behind the folding screen that separated her bed from the rest of the place, her clothes hung on rails or folded in wire baskets. She had no money for real furniture. Her nerves had jangled all afternoon in anticipation of the dinner. Would his parents approve? After all, they were from old money, while Audra’s mother came from the wilds of Pennsylvania, her father from Ohio, neither of them with a college education. Patrick’s parents would smell the poor on her and take their son aside, tell him he could do better.

She had chosen her clothes carefully. With three good dresses to her name, four decent pairs of shoes, and only a scattering of costume jewelry, there hadn’t been a huge range to choose from, but still, she had given it much consideration.

Audra trembled as she stepped around the screen, doing her best to move with the elegance that she had always felt eluded her.

Patrick stood quite still in the center of the room, staring, his face blank.

When she could stand it no longer, she asked, ‘Well? Do I pass?’

Another pause, and Patrick said, ‘No.’

Audra felt something crack inside.

‘Do you have something else?’ he asked, flexing his hands, his face hardening.

‘I like this,’ she said. ‘I like the color, it’s a good fit, and—’

‘Audra, you know how important tonight is to me,’ he said, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. ‘Now, what else have you got?’

She was about to argue, but something in his voice warned her against it. ‘Come and look,’ she said.

Patrick followed her to the sleeping area on the other side of the screen, and the two dresses still on the rack. She lifted them from the rail, held each in turn against her body.

‘I’ve seen these before,’ he said. ‘You wear these all the time.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Audra said, ‘I don’t have the money to spend on clothes. I make the best of what I have.’

Patrick looked at his watch, a chunky Breitling tonight, and said, ‘There’s no time to buy anything else. Jesus, Audra, you knew how much I wanted to impress them. And I have to take you looking like that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, holding back tears. ‘We can cancel, say I’m sick.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said, and her teeth clicked together as she closed her mouth. ‘Come on, we’ll be late.’

He hailed a cab outside, and they did not speak for the entire journey into Manhattan. She stood on the sidewalk while he paid the driver, facing the end of the block, watching the trees of Central Park sway in the evening breeze. Patrick took her arm, led her to the stone steps of his parents’ building.

As they rode the elevator up to the penthouse, he leaned in and whispered, ‘Don’t drink too much. Don’t make a fool of me.’

In the end, the evening wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Patrick turned on his charm in the way that he always did, and his mother gushed over Audra, how pretty she was, and didn’t she dress well? And the ring – just beautiful, where’s it from? How much did it cost? Oh, and you’re Irish too? Where are your people from?

Audra made the one glass of wine last all night, barely wetted her lips with it, while Patrick and his mother emptied two bottles between them.

Patrick’s father – Patrick Senior – drank only water, barely spoke through the evening, offering only a few disjointed comments here and there. Instead, his mother Margaret steered the conversation between occasional barks at the help. And how Patrick gazed at his mother. For a moment, Audra wished he would stare at her like that, but she found the idea too uncomfortable to let it linger in her mind for long.

Afterward, Patrick brought Audra back to his apartment – he had never spent the night at her place – and led her straight to his bedroom. He took her with such force that she had to bite her knuckle to stifle a cry. When he was done, sweating and breathless, he rolled off and held her hand.

‘You did well tonight,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

While he slept, Audra decided to call off the engagement. Just walk away. She hated the hard bead of self-doubt that he had found in her and worked so skillfully. A lifetime of that? No thank you.

She spent the next fortnight trying to figure out a way to break it off, to find the right moment, the right place. But Patrick was so charming and kind those two weeks that thoughts of splitting went to the back of her mind. And then she realized her period was late, and there was no further thought given to leaving.

Almost twelve years between there and here, her bed in a Brooklyn studio gone, a bunk in an Arizona cell in its place.