One night after I said I wanted ruby-red slippers like Dorothy’s, my father stayed up very late to glue red glitter onto a pair of ballerina shoes. In the morning the shoes were at the foot of my bed, twinkling like fire. They were very hard with glue and when I put them on they scratched my skin. I was enthralled with the love behind the effort, the sweat on his brow. I loved him even then as though he were already gone.
—I remember that day I met you, Eleanor said. At the office.
—I remember, too.
—You ate half of a grapefruit, cut into sections, with a spoon. I started doing that, too. Basically I wanted my father to see me eating grapefruit like that.
I nodded. I didn’t remember eating grapefruit in the office.
—When my mother was pregnant with Robbie, she found out from the doctor that he had a one-in-three chance of having trisomy twenty-one. And she didn’t tell my dad. Because she knew, or she thought, he would have made her get an abortion. When Robbie was born, that’s when he found out. When he saw his face as he came out of my mom’s stomach. That was the moment Dad left us, that was the moment we lost him. It wasn’t you. You’re nothing.
—Eleanor, I said, I’m sorry.
—Don’t tell me you’re sorry. You’re a piece of shit.
She transferred her weight from one foot to the other. She wiped her nose with the side of her arm.
—If you’re telling the truth, then you’re carrying my baby brother. His second chance.
It was hard to believe Vic had a child who could believe a thing like that. Eleanor had been brought up by a religious mother and a devout grandmother. Vic hadn’t been much for religion, though he took his wife to church every week. He christened his children. But the notion that Eleanor thought an unborn child might be her brother reincarnated was a bridge too far. On top of that, I wondered how she could be so sure that my fake pregnancy was a boy.
—And I’ll let you live until you give birth to him.
It was a ludicrous, medieval thing to say. I didn’t know how to respond. I wanted to laugh. I wanted her whole family out of my life.
—Please, Eleanor—
—Don’t say my name. I will cut your face. You don’t need your face to give birth. And if you’re lying, I’m going to kill you. I’m going to cut out your eyes!
Her eyes were so little. I was tired of being a sponge. I wanted to kill her for saying something so silly.
—Where’s the nearest supermarket? she said, as though she were asking for directions.
ONE TIME WITH BIG SKY there was a scare. We never used condoms. He always pulled out. He was good at it. There are men who don’t know when they are about to come, and those men shouldn’t be allowed to fuck. But Big Sky was careful and aware. This one time he was about to come at the same time that I was. And I didn’t want him to pull out and ruin mine. I was on top and I squeezed my knees into the sides of his waist and crushed myself onto his pelvis with all my weight. I could feel him bucking to get me off, but I kept my eyes closed and pinned myself down. It was like the time I rode a mechanical bull in Nashville. I just concentrated on becoming one with the thing beneath me. At last I went limp and he shoved me off. What the fuck, he said, are you fucking crazy?
And I thought, Am I? No, I decided, I was not. In fact, I believe that was the only time in lovemaking that I truly acted for myself.
He was in agony for the weeks that followed. I could tell that Sundays were the worst. Probably he and his wife and son would come back from a stroll around Central Park, eat a nice summer dinner on that impressive stone patio and, after putting the child to bed, the wife would retire to their bedroom with the book that everybody was reading and he would tarry downstairs, drink a Boddingtons. He would text me around eleven, just a question mark.
Once I waited until the following morning and typed only the letter N. And then, realizing he might think I meant Negative, I wrote another message to follow the first: Nyet.
We had the talk one weekday afternoon at Salumeria Rosi. I ordered prosciutto and bufala and, to fuck with him, I also ordered a pot of pickles. He said, Listen, if it’s. If you are. I’ll take care of everything, obviously.
To make sure I didn’t misunderstand, he said, I mean financially, the procedure. I’ll come with you, too, of course. If you need me.
I nodded. I loved that restaurant, the silken slices of prosciutto and the pillowy discs of mozzarella, but I didn’t have an appetite. I thought that if I swallowed the pickles, I’d throw them right back up. Then he really would have shit his pants.
My period finally came on a Sunday and even then I didn’t tell him I’d gotten it until Wednesday. When you’re in love with a married man, the truth is that you are in hate with a married man, and you have to take succor where you can find it.
THE SUPERMARKET I CHOSE WAS the Ralphs in Pacific Palisades. I liked it because it was easy to park there.
In the car Eleanor kept her gun pointed at my face the whole time. She told me she didn’t care about going to
