All You Could Ask For A Novel - By Mike Greenberg Page 0,47
Marie said, “Katherine, can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” I said, though I didn’t care for the tone of her voice. She sounded apprehensive, and I was in no mood to have my blissful state interrupted.
“Why don’t you have a man in your life?”
My heartbeat, which had slowed in the serenity of the mountains, resumed its New York rate. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
“Who’s to say I don’t?”
“I know you don’t,” she said. “And I always wonder why.”
Absently, I started digging about for flat stones. I used to be pretty good at skipping stones on a lake when I was a camper, I was pretty sure I could still do it.
“You know, things just have a strange way of working out,” I said slowly. And then I decided to be honest with her, because it felt wrong to be dishonest in the presence of the lake and the mountain, so I said, “I tell myself that my career makes it impossible for me to carry on a real relationship. But that isn’t actually true. I could if the circumstances were right. I guess they just haven’t been for a very long time.”
“Were you ever married?” Marie asked.
“Nope.”
“Ever close?”
I stood up, five or six smooth stones in my hand. “What’s with the third degree?”
Marie held up her hands, as if to pacify me. “I’m sorry, Katherine. I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. It’s just that you told me we’re staying here until we figure out the meaning of life and that sounds pretty complicated. And while I know you really well, in some ways I don’t know you at all. For example, I didn’t know if you were divorced or anything.”
I guess I asked for this. “No, not divorced. Never married. Proposed to, once. Wasn’t the right man. Had the right man for a little while, then he decided I wasn’t the right woman and that was pretty much it for me.”
“You loved him?”
“Oh, god, yes.”
She smiled. “Now this is interesting,” she said. “He broke your heart?”
I tossed a stone. It skipped nicely across the top of the water. There was something very soothing about watching the ripples drift farther and farther away.
“Yes, he did,” I said, watching the water, my back to Marie. “He broke my heart.”
She paused. I could hear her breathing behind me.
“Go ahead and ask what happened,” I said. “I don’t mind telling you.”
And so she did, and I did. For the first time in the nearly twenty years since Phillip became Phil, I told someone besides a psychiatrist what happened, the insecurities and the lies and finally the night it ended. I never looked at Marie, I just kept skipping stones into the lake. When I was finished, I turned around and saw she had tears in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” she said softly.
“Yes,” I said. “It rather sucked.” I took a few steps toward her and dropped down onto a rock. I put my arm around her shoulders. “But wait,” I said, “I haven’t told you the best part yet.” Marie looked right into my eyes, and I said, “I haven’t told you his name.”
“He’s someone I know?”
“Yes.”
Now she sat straight up. “Do I know him well?”
“Not as well as I do.”
She leaned in close and put her hands on my knees. “Oh my god, Katherine, who is it?”
I smiled. “Phillip Rogers.”
It took a second. No one ever called him by his full name anymore, even me. Then she got it and her eyes bugged out so wide I thought they might pop out of her head. She was blinking crazily and nodding and shaking like I’d just told her she’d won the lottery.
“You’re talking about Phil?”
“That’s right.”
“Our CEO?”
“That’s right.”
“Pardon my language,” she said, “but are you shitting me?”
“I shit you not, my friend,” I said, and stood up and brushed the dirt from my butt. “I shit you not.”
Marie sat in silence for a while, and finally she said, “It must be so hard for you in the office every day.”
“Sometimes I think it’s too much,” I said. “Sometimes I think I need to leave. I almost have, several times. He’s moved mountains to keep me, I’m not exactly sure why. I’d like to think it’s because he believes he can’t afford to lose me, but sometimes I think what happened back then has something to do with it, like he can’t let go, or he feels guilty. Or a little bit of both.”