The Wife Between Us(49)
“Ask him about our last cocktail party.” Distress makes my voice shrill. “You were there. Remember how the caterers showed up late and there wasn’t any Raveneau? That was Richard’s fault—he didn’t order it. It was never delivered!”
A taxi slows. Emma turns to me. “I was there. And I know the wine was delivered. I’m Richard’s assistant. Who do you think placed the order?”
This I never expected. She opens the door of the cab before I can recover.
“He blamed me,” I shout. “After the party, it got bad!”
“You really need help.” Emma slams the door shut.
I watch as the cab pulls Emma away from me.
I stand on the sidewalk outside her apartment, as I’ve done so many times before, but for the first time I truly wonder if everything Richard said about me is true. Am I crazy, like my mother, who battled mental illness her entire life—at times more successfully than others?
My nails are digging into my palms. I cannot stand the thought of them together tonight. She will tell him everything I’ve said. He’ll lift her legs over his and massage her feet and promise he will keep her safe. From me.
I hope she will listen. That she will believe me.
But Richard suspected I would try this, after all. He told her so.
I know my ex-husband better than anyone else. I should have remembered he also knows me.
It rained the morning of our wedding.
“That’s good luck,” my father would have said.
By the time I walked down the royal-blue silk runner spread on the grand patio of the resort, flanked by my mother and Aunt Charlotte, the sky had cleared. The sun caressed my bare arms. Waves provided a gentle melody.
I passed Sam and Josie and Marnie, seated in chairs tied with white silk bows, then Hillary and George and a few of Richard’s other partners. And up front, by the rose-draped archway, Maureen stood next to Richard in her capacity as maid of honor. She wore the glass-bead necklace I’d given her.
Richard watched me approach and I couldn’t stop beaming. His expression was intent; his eyes looked nearly black. After we joined hands and the minister pronounced us man and wife, I saw his lips tremble with emotion before he leaned down to kiss me.
The photographer captured the enchantment of the evening: Richard slipping a ring onto my finger, our embrace at the end of the ceremony, and our slow dance to “It Had to Be You.” The album I ordered contains a shot of Maureen straightening Richard’s bow tie, Sam raising her glass of champagne, my mother walking barefoot on the beach at sunset, and Aunt Charlotte hugging me good-bye at the end of the evening.
My life had been so filled with uncertainty and turmoil—with my parents’ divorce, my mother’s struggles, my father’s death, and, of course, the reason I’d fled my hometown—but on that night, my future seemed as straight and seamless as the blue silk runner that had led me to Richard.
The next day we flew to Antigua. We reclined in first class, and Richard ordered us both mimosas before the wheels ever left the ground. The nightmares I’d experienced never came to fruition.
It wasn’t flying I needed to fear.
Our honeymoon wasn’t documented in an album, but when I think back, that’s how I remember it, too: as a series of snapshots.
Richard cracking open my lobster and grinning suggestively as I sucked the sweet meat out of a claw.
The two of us getting a couple’s massage as we lay side by side on the beach.
Richard standing behind me, his hands on mine, as I helped release the sail on a catamaran we’d rented for the day.
Each night, our private butler drew us a bath perfumed with rose petals and rimmed with lit candles around the curved edge. Once, we crept down in the moonlight to the beach and, hidden amid the billowing curtains designed to block out the sun, we made love in a cabana. We soaked in our private Jacuzzi, sipped rum-spiked drinks by the infinity pool, and napped in a double hammock.
On our last full day Richard signed us up for scuba diving. We weren’t certified, but the resort staff told us that if we took a private lesson in the pool, we could do a shallow dive with an instructor.
I didn’t enjoy swimming, but I was all right in the placid, chlorinated water. Other guests splashed nearby, sunlight illuminated the surface just a few feet above my head, and the edge of the pool was merely a few strokes away.
I took a deep breath as we climbed into the motorboat and tried to make my voice sound calm and carefree. “How long will we be down?” I asked the instructor, Eric, a young guy on summer break from UC Santa Barbara.
“Forty-five minutes. Your tank has more oxygen that that, so we can push it a little if you want.”
I gave him a thumbs-up, but as we sped away from land, toward a hidden coral reef, pressure built in my chest. The heavy oxygen tank was strapped to my back, and fins pinched my feet.
I looked at the plastic face mask atop Richard’s head, feeling an identical one tugging the sensitive hairs at my temples. Eric cut the motor, and the silence felt as vast and absolute as the water surrounding us.
Eric jumped off the edge of the boat, pushing his shaggy hair out of his face after he surfaced in the water. “The reef’s about twenty yards away. Follow my fins.”
“Ready, baby?” Richard seemed so excited to see the blue-and-yellow angelfish, the rainbow-colored parrot fish, and the harmless sand sharks. He pulled down his mask. I tried to smile as I did the same, feeling the rubber seal tightening the skin around my eyes.