I turn over, cupping your face in both hands, committing your features to memory, as if forgetting them would ever be possible. The subtle cleft at the base of your chin, the crease between your brows that never quite disappears, even when you laugh, the small crescent-shaped scar at the corner of your eye, the result of a childhood fall from a swing. All of it seared on my memory even now, the loss still so raw, it stings.
You cover my hand with yours and the crease between your brows deepens. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say softly. “I’m just . . . memorizing your face. In case.”
“In case . . . what?”
I shrug and reach for the sheet, pulling it up over my shoulders. “I just can’t believe I’m here. That we’re here—together. It feels like a dream.”
“It is a dream,” you murmur, your voice still thick from sleep. “One I’ve had more times than I can count. Only this time, you didn’t disappear when I opened my eyes.”
You kiss me then, a kiss full of tenderness and wonder. But it turns into something else for me, something fierce and fearful. I cling to you, desperate to prove to myself that it’s real, that we’re real.
We make love again, more slowly this time, exploring tender topography missed in our first frenzied joining. We cherish each other, every touch and taste and murmur. We whisper promises as the afternoon ebbs into evening. Words like forever and tomorrow and always. And we mean them when we say them. Or at least I do. Because I haven’t begun to think any of it through. What it will mean. What it will cost. Where it all might lead.
In the days that follow, we spend every moment we can steal together. I invent outings with girlfriends I haven’t seen in months, purchase tickets for concerts I don’t attend, invent shopping excursions for clothes I neither need nor want, all to create plausible alibis for my increasingly frequent absences from home. When Cee-Cee assumes I’ve begun shopping for my trousseau, I don’t correct her. I nod and smile, all while trying to work out how to extricate myself from my engagement. Because I will extricate myself. Just as soon as Teddy and his father return from their latest trip to wherever the horses are running this week. For now, though, my time is my own, and it’s easy to put those plans off and just enjoy these sweet stolen moments with you.
I try to be at the apartment as often as I can when you come home from work. I use the key I keep secreted in my compact to let myself in, and pretend to ignore the looks I sometimes get from the woman who lives across the hall. The look that says, “I know what you’re up to, popping in and out in the middle of the day.” I suppose she does, but it’s nothing to me. She’s not likely to be part of my father’s circle.
I play at cooking now and then, to surprise you, but I’m not very good at it. That’s what comes of having people do for you your whole life. Still, you never complain. We eat together in your tiny kitchen and listen to the news on the radio, keeping careful track of events in Europe and Britain. We do the dishes when we’re through, side by side, like proper newlyweds. But we aren’t proper newlyweds. We aren’t proper anything. And when the dishes are finally put away and the news program ends, I must gather my hat and gloves and kiss you goodbye.
And rehearse a new alibi on the way home.
It’s getting harder and harder to leave you, to return to my cold life and my cold family. I’m still wearing Teddy’s ring, the symbol of my broken promise. Except that I haven’t broken it yet, not officially—not at all, actually—and Cee-Cee has begun to harangue me about setting a date. Teddy, on the other hand, seems in no great hurry to get down the aisle. His telegrams come infrequently and are blessedly brief when they do, perfunctory and almost comically polite.
Perhaps there’s a woman like me somewhere, who keeps a key hidden in her compact and slips in and out of his life when she can manage it. I certainly wouldn’t begrudge him if there were. Not that he’s ever been particularly discreet about such things. Nor, as a man, is discretion demanded.
I keep hoping he’ll be the one to break it off, that he’ll find someone he prefers or simply acknowledge that we’ll never be happy together, but why would he? He loses nothing by marrying me. I, on the other hand, will lose everything. And so I must be the one to end it. And I will.
The how is the thing. And the when.
Forever, and Other Lies
（pgs. 50–56）
November 20, 1941
New York, New York
Teddy has come home.
We’ve seen each other twice. Both occasions were awkward, since he seemed even less eager to see me than I was to see him. I’ve realized, to my relief, that he won’t put up much of a fight when I tell him I’ve changed my mind. It’s my father’s wrath I fear. I need to be with you like I need my next breath, but the thought of defying my father terrifies me.
And so I do nothing.
You’re growing impatient, starting to lose faith in me. You haven’t said so directly, but I’m aware of a growing friction between us, offhand remarks, sullen silences when Teddy’s name unavoidably comes up. You don’t understand my reticence. I don’t blame you. I barely understand it myself, except to say I’m afraid.
And then one afternoon—you remember it, I’m sure—it all spills out.
We’ve spent an especially passionate afternoon together, but it’s time for me to leave. There’s a dinner later—one you’ll attend as a guest of my father—and I’ll need time to dress. Teddy will be there, too, with me on his arm. It won’t be the first time you and I have had to navigate such an evening. We’ve managed it before. But you’ve been brooding all afternoon and I sense a storm gathering as I collect my clothes and begin to dress.
You’re still in bed, propped up on one elbow, watching me in the mirror with a sulky frown.
“I’m sorry,” I say to your reflection. “I know tonight will be awkward.”
“Is that what you think? That it will be awkward? Watching the woman I love—the woman I’ve just made love to—hanging on the arm of another man, fielding questions about her upcoming wedding?”
I turn from the mirror and face you. “I know, Hemi. I do. And I promise—”
“Don’t.” You throw off the sheets and sit up, reaching for your trousers. “Don’t promise me anything, Belle. We both know they’re just words. But tonight is the last time. I’m done with whatever game it is you’re playing.”
Your words pierce me like darts. I’ve been expecting something, but not this. “You think I enjoy having to pretend you’re just some stranger in my father’s house? To smile my most charming smile and ask if you need your drink refreshed? I’ll remind you that you lied to me to gain access to my father. Now you’ve gotten exactly what you want and it’s my fault.”
“Don’t make this about me, Belle. You know I’d walk away from all that without batting an eye.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
“Why should I, when you won’t? You’ve given up exactly nothing for me.”
“It isn’t that simple, Hemi. You know it isn’t.”