Bittersweet Page 5

  “I'm glad we're going out tonight,” she said, looking at him with the same wistful look she'd had in the market when she ran into Gail, but unlike Gail, Doug didn't see it. “I think we need a break, or some fun, or something.”

  “That's why I suggested dinner.” He smiled, and took his Bloody Mary into the bathroom with him to shower and change for dinner. He was back half an hour later, wearing gray slacks and a blazer, and a navy tie she had given him for Christmas. He looked very handsome, and they made a striking couple as they stopped on their way out, to say good-night to the children. And ten minutes later, they were at the restaurant, and on their way to a corner table.

  It was a pretty little restaurant, and they did a lot of business on the weekends. The food was good, and the atmosphere was cozy and romantic. It was just what they needed to repair the rift of the night before, and India smiled at him as the waiter poured a bottle of French wine, and Doug carefully sipped it and approved it.

  “So what did you do today?” Doug asked as he set down his glass. He knew before she said anything that her day would have revolved around the children.

  “I got a call from Raoul Lopez.” He looked momentarily surprised, and not particularly curious. The calls from her agent were rare these days, and usually unproductive. “He offered me a very interesting story in Korea.

  “That sounds like Raoul.” Doug looked amused, and in no way threatened by the information. “Where was the last place he tried to send you? Zimbabwe? You wonder why he bothers.”

  “He thought I might agree to do the story. It was for the Sunday Times Magazine, about an adoption racket that's murdering babies in Korea. But he thought it would take three or four weeks, and I told him I couldn't do it.”

  “Obviously. There's no way you could go to Korea, not even for three or four minutes.”

  “That's what I told him.” But she realized as she looked at Doug that she wanted him to thank her for not going. She wanted him to understand what she'd given up, and that she would have liked to do it. “He said he'd try again with something closer to home, like the piece in Harlem.”

  “Why don't you just take your name off their roster? That really makes more sense. There's no point leaving your name on and having him call you for stories you're not going to do anyway. I'm really surprised he still bothers to call you. Why does he?”

  “Because I'm good at what I do,” she said quietly, “and editors still ask for me, apparently. It's flattering, at least.” She was groping for something, asking him for something, and he wasn't getting the message from her. In this area at least, he never did. He missed it completely.

  “You never should have done that story in Harlem. It probably gave them the idea that you're still open to offers.” It was obvious to her as she listened to him that he wanted the door to her career closed even more firmly than it had been. And suddenly she was intrigued by the idea of opening it, just a crack, if she could find another assignment near home like the one she'd done in Harlem.

  “It was a great story. I'm glad I did it,” she said, as the waiter handed them the menus, but suddenly she wasn't hungry. She was upset again. He didn't seem to understand what she was feeling. But maybe she couldn't blame him. She wasn't even sure she understood it. Suddenly she was missing something she had given up, for all intents and purposes, fourteen years before, and she expected him to know that, without having explained it to him. “I wouldn't mind working again, just a little bit, if I could fit it into everything else I'm doing. I've never really thought about it for all these years. But I'm beginning to think I miss working.”

  “What brought that on?”

  “I'm not sure,” she said honestly. “I was talking to Gail yesterday and she was harping on me about wasted talent, and then Raoul called today, and that story sounded so enticing.” And their conversation the night before had added fuel to the fire, when he dismissed her career and her father's like just so much playtime. All of a sudden she felt as though she needed to validate her existence. Maybe Gail was right and all she had become was a maid, a short-order cook, and a chauffeur. Maybe it was time to drag out her old career and dust it off a little.

  “Gail always is a troublemaker, isn't she? …What about the sweetbreads?” As he had the night before, Doug was dismissing what she was saying, and it made India feel lonely as she looked at him over her menu.

  “I think she's still sorry she gave up her career. She probably shouldn't have,” India added, ignoring his question about their dinner, and thinking that Gail probably wouldn't be having lunch with Dan Lewison if she had something else to do, but she said nothing to Doug about it. “I'm lucky. If I go back at some point, I can pick and choose what I do. I don't have to work full-time, or go all the way to Korea to do it.”

  “What are you saying to me?” He had ordered for both of them, and faced her squarely across the table, but he did not look pleased by what she was saying. “Are you telling me you want to go back to work, India? That's not possible and you know it.” He didn't even give her a chance to answer his question.

  “There's no reason why I couldn't do an occasional story, if it was local, is there?”

  “For what? Just to show off your photographs? Why would you want to do that?” He made it sound so vain, and so futile, that she was almost embarrassed by the suggestion. But something about the way he resisted it suddenly made her feel stubborn.

  “It's not a matter of showing off. It's about using a gift I have.” Gail had started it all the day before, with her pointed questions, and ever since, the ball had just kept rolling. And his resistance to it made it all seem that much more important.

  “If you're so anxious to use your ‘gift,’ “ he said in a mildly contemptuous tone, “use it on the children. You've always taken great pictures of them. Why can't that satisfy you, or is this one of Gail's crusades? Somehow I feel her hand in this, or is Raoul getting you all stirred up? He's just out to make a buck anyway. Let him do it using someone else. There are plenty of other photographers he can send to Korea.”

  “I'm sure he'll find one,” India said quietly as the pate they had ordered was put on the table. “I'm not saying I'm irreplaceable, I'm just saying the kids are getting older, and maybe once in a while I could do an assignment.” She was beginning to feel dogged about it.

  “We don't need the money, and Sam is only nine, for heaven's sake. India, the kids need you.”

  “I wasn't suggesting I leave them, Doug. I'm just saying it might be important to me.” And she wanted him to understand that. Only the day before she had told Gail how little she cared about having given up her career, and now, after listening to her and Raoul, and Doug belittling her the night before, suddenly it all mattered. But he refused to hear it.

  Why would it be important to you? That's what I don't understand. What's so important about taking pictures?” She felt as though she were trying to crawl up a glass mountain, and she was getting nowhere.

  “It's how I express myself. I'm good at it. I love it, that's all.”

  “I told you, then take pictures of the kids. Or do portraits of their friends, and give them to their parents. There's plenty you can do with a camera, without taking assignments.”

  “Maybe I'd like to do something important. Did that ever occur to you? Maybe I want to be sure my life has some meaning.”

  “Oh, for God's sake.” He put down his fork and looked at her with annoyance. “What on earth has gotten into you? It's Gail. I know it.”

  “It's not Gail,” she tried to defend herself, but was feeling hopeless, “it's about me. There has to be more meaning in life than cleaning up apple juice off the floor when the kids spill it.”

  “You sound just like Gail now,” he said, looking disgusted.

  “What if she's right, though? She's doing a lot of stupid things with her life, because she feels useless, and her life has no purpose. Maybe if she were doing something intelligent with herself, she wouldn't need to do other things that ar
e pointless.”

  “If you're trying to tell me she cheats on Jeff, I figured that out years ago. And if he's too blind to see it, it's his own fault. She runs after everything in pants in Westport. Is that what you're threatening me with? Is that what this is really about?” He looked furious with her as the waiter brought their main course. Their romantic night out was being wasted.

  “Of course not.” India was quick to reassure him. “I don't know what she does,” she lied to protect her friend, but Gail's indiscretions were irrelevant to them, and none of Doug's business. “I'm talking about me. I'm just saying that maybe I need more in my life than just you and the children. I had a great career before I gave it up, no matter how unimportant you seem to think it was, and maybe I can retrieve some small part of it now to broaden my horizons.”

  “You don't have time to broaden your horizons,” he said sensibly. “You're too busy with the children. Unless you want to start hiring baby-sitters constantly, or leaving them in day care. Is that what you have in mind, India? Because there's no other way for you to do it, and frankly I won't let you. You're their mother, and they need you.”

  “I understand that, but I managed the story in Harlem without shortchanging them. I could do others like it.”

  “I doubt that. And I just don't see the sense in it. You did all that, you had some fun, and you grew up. You can't go back to all that now. You're not a kid in your twenties with no responsibilities. You're a grown woman with a family and a husband.”

  “I don't see why one has to preclude the other, as long as I keep my priorities straight. You and the kids come first, the rest would have to work around you.”

  “You know, sitting here listening to you, I'm beginning to wonder about your priorities. What you're saying to me sounds incredibly selfish. All you want to do is have a good time, like your little friend, who's running around cheating on her husband because her kids bore her. Is that it? Do we bore you?” He looked highly insulted, and very angry. She had disrupted his whole evening. But he was threatening her self-esteem, and her future.

  “Of course you don't bore me. And I'm not Gail.”

  “What the hell is she after anyway?” He was cutting his steak viciously as he asked her. “She can't be that oversexed. What is she trying to do, just embarrass her husband?”

  “I don't think so. I think she's lonely and dissatisfied, and I feel sorry for her. I'm not telling you what she does is right, Doug. I think she's panicked. She's forty-eight years old, she gave up a terrific career, and she can't see anything in her future except car pools. You don't know what that's like. You have a career. You never gave up anything. You just added to it.”

  “Is that how you feel? The way Gail does?” He actually looked worried.

  “Not really. I'm a lot happier than she is. But I think about my future too. What happens when the kids are gone? What do I do then? Run around taking pictures of kids I don't know in the playground?”

  “You can figure that one out later. You'll have kids at home for the next nine years. That's plenty of time to figure out a game plan. Maybe we'll move back to the city, and you can go to museums.” That was it? All of it? Museums? The thought of it made her shiver. She wanted a lot more than that in her future. From that standpoint, Gail was absolutely right. And in nine years, India wanted to be doing a lot more than killing time. But in nine years it would be that much harder to get back into a career, if Doug would even let her. And it didn't sound like it from what he was saying. “The kids are much too young for you to be thinking about this now. Maybe you could get a job in a gallery or something, once they grow up. Why worry about it?”

  “And do what? Look at the photographs other people took, when I could have done it better? You're right, I'm busy now. But what about later?” In the past twenty-four hours, the whole question had come into sharper focus for her.

  “Don't borrow problems. And stop listening to that woman. I told you, she's a troublemaker. She's unhappy, and angry, and she's just looking to cause trouble.”

  “She doesn't know what she's looking for,” India said sadly. “She's looking for love, because Jeff doesn't excite her.” It was probably too much to admit to him, she realized, but since he seemed to know about her wandering anyway, it didn't seem to make much difference.

  “It's ridiculous to be looking for love at our age,” Doug said sternly, taking a sip of his wine, and glaring at his wife across the table. “What the hell is she thinking?”

  “I don't think she's really wrong, I just think she's going about it the wrong way,” India said calmly. “She says she's depressed about never being in love again. I guess she and Jeff aren't crazy about each other.”

  “Who is, after twenty years of marriage?” he said, looking annoyed again. What India had just said sounded ridiculous to him. “You can't expect to feel at forty-five or fifty the way you did at twenty.”

  “No, but you can feel other things. If you're lucky, maybe even more than you felt in the beginning.”

  “That's a lot of romantic nonsense, India, and you know it,” he said firmly, as she listened to him with a growing sense of panic.

  “Do you think it's nonsense to still be in love with your spouse after fifteen or twenty years?” India couldn't believe what she was hearing.

  “I don't think anyone is ‘in love’ anymore by then. And no one with any sense expects to be either.”

  “What can you expect?” India asked in a strangled voice, as she set her glass down on the table and looked at her husband.

  “Companionship, decency, respect, someone to take care of the kids. Someone you can rely on. That's about all anyone should expect from marriage.”

  “You can get a maid, or a dog, to provide the same things for you.”

  “What do you think one should expect? Hearts and flowers and valentines? You know better than that, India. Don't tell me you believe in all that. If you do, I'll know you've been spending a lot more time talking to Gail than you ever told me.”

  “I'm not expecting miracles, Doug. But I sure want more than just ‘someone to rely on,’ and you should want a lot more than just ‘someone to take care of the children.’ Is that all our marriage means to you?” They were rapidly getting down to specifics.

  “We have something that's worked damn well for seventeen years, and it'll continue working, if you don't start rocking the boat too hard, with careers, and assignments and trips to Korea, and a lot of crap about ‘being in love’ after seventeen years. I don't think anyone is capable of that, and I don't think anyone has a right to expect it.” She felt as though she had been slapped as she looked at him, and was horrified by what he was saying.

  “As a matter of fact, Doug, I do expect it. I always have, and I had no idea you didn't. I expect you to be ‘in love’ with me till the day you die, or there's no point in our marriage. Just as I'm in love with you, and always have been. Why do you think I stick around? Because our life is so exciting? It isn't. It's about as mundane as it gets, as boring as it can be at times, but I stick around because I love you.”

  “Well, that's good to hear. I was beginning to wonder. But I don't think anyone should have a lot of crazy illusions about romance at this point. Being married to someone just isn't romantic.”

  “Why not?” She decided to go for broke. He had already shattered most of her dreams in one night, why not push it all the way? What difference did it make now? “It could be, couldn't it? Maybe people don't try hard enough, or spend enough time realizing how lucky they are to have each other. Maybe if Jeff spent more time doing that, maybe then Gail wouldn't be running all over the state having lunch and God knows what else with other people's husbands.”

  “I'm sure that has to do with her integrity and morality more than any failure on his part.”

  “Don't be so sure. Maybe he's just plain stupid,” India snapped at him.

  “No, she is, to have a lot of girlish illusions about romance and ? love you's' at this point. India, th
at's bullshit, and you know it.”

  She was silent for a long moment and then nodded. She was afraid that if she spoke at all, she would burst into tears, or just get up and walk out, but she didn't. She sat there until they finished the meal, making small talk with him. She had heard enough that night to last her for a lifetime. In a single evening, he had challenged everything she believed, and smashed all her dreams about what marriage meant to him, and more importantly, what she did. She was someone he could rely on, who took care of his children. And all she could think of on the way home was that maybe she should call Raoul and take the assignment in Korea. But no matter how angry she was at him, or how disappointed she was by what he'd said, she wouldn't do that to her children.

  “I had a nice time tonight,” he said as they drove into their driveway, and she tried not to think of the knot in her stomach. “I'm glad we got the career issue behind us. I think you understand now how I feel about it. I think you should call Raoul next week and take your name off their roster.” It was as though, having expressed himself, he now expected her to simply carry out his orders. The oracle had spoken. She had never known him to be like this before, but she had never challenged him on it in fourteen years either.

  “I know how you feel about a lot of things,” she said softly, as they sat in the car for a minute, and he turned the lights off.

  “Don't be silly about that nonsense Gail filled your head with, India. It's a lot of garbage she throws around to excuse her own behavior, and if she can get you riled up about it too, all the better. Stay away from her. She just upsets you.” But Gail hadn't. He had. He had said things she knew would trouble her for years, and she would never forget them. He wasn't in love with her, if he ever had been. In his opinion, love was something for fools and children. “We all have to grow up sooner or later,” he said, opening the car door and looking over his shoulder at her. “The trouble is, Gail didn't.”

  “No, but you did,” India said miserably, and just as he hadn't the night before, or that night in the restaurant, he didn't get it. In a single night, he had put their marriage on the line, tossed her career out the window like so much fluff, and essentially told her he didn't love her, or at least wasn't in love with her. And in light of that, she didn't know what to think or feel now, or how to go on as they were before, unaffected by it.