Do This For Me Read online

  He had been appalled the first time he saw himself on television. Hired a trainer and a nutritionist. Switched his thick plastic frames for contact lenses. Started dressing better.

  Red flags. Red flags and warning signs.

  I picked up my phone. “Let’s go, girls. We’re going to be late.”

  Aaron moved toward the car. “I’m coming with you.”

  I stared at him. “What makes you think that’s in any way an option?”

  “Raney, please. You can’t freeze me out like this.”

  Watch me, pal. I held the door open for Kate and Maisie, who hustled in without complaint. Aaron followed. As soon as he was inside, I slammed the door and tapped on the driver’s-side window. Jorge lowered it with a cheerful grin, which died when he saw my face.

  “Can you take the girls to school? I’ll find my own way to work.”

  He nodded, bewildered. I set off toward Vanderbilt Avenue.

  I heard a door slam, the car pull away. Then Aaron was beside me.

  “I’m due at PBS in an hour,” he said. “I need you to come with me.”

  I laughed.

  “Raney, listen.” His voice was tense, urgent. “I know we have a lot to talk about. I have so much to explain and make right. But I also have an emergency on my hands. I don’t know if you fully understand what you did yesterday, but things are bad. What you wrote is everywhere. And it’s not going away.”

  Rain was falling steadily. I pulled a newspaper out of my bag and held it over my head.

  “There’s a team of lawyers waiting to talk to me. They’re extremely interested in hearing more about my apparent involvement in a vast, right-wing conspiracy. Are you listening, Raney? You have to tell them it wasn’t me.”

  “I have to,” I said. “This is something I have to do.”

  “Honey, I’m pressed for time here, and you’re the only person who can—”

  “That’s an interesting approach, Aaron. You know how much I love it when men tell me what to do.”

  He hurried to keep up. “Dammit, Raney! I’m not some man—I’m your husband.”

  Not for long. We made it to Vanderbilt. No cabs in sight. I took a right, toward Atlantic.

  Aaron passed a hand over his face. He took a deep breath. “Let me try again. What happened yesterday, what I did to you…it was the worst. I’m the worst. When you called? It was like waking up from a dream. I was horrified by what I’d done. I’m a selfish, miserable bastard, and whatever I’m about to lose, it’s entirely my fault.”

  Sounded about right to me.

  “The hardest part? Knowing that I hurt you. It was the last thing in the world I meant to do. I wanted to talk to you, abase myself, try to make you feel better. But I was thousands of miles away, and I couldn’t get through to you. Finally I said, She’s angry. Give her some space. But when I landed, my phone didn’t work. Then, at baggage claim…clowns, Raney? They followed me through the airport. When I reached the parking lot, the car was gone. I managed to get a cab home, where I found the FOR SALE sign. And a completely empty house.”

  I crossed Dean Street, stomping through a wide black puddle.

  “I had to borrow money from the Kratensteins to pay for the cab, because my credit cards were declined. I used their phone to get in touch with Yael, who came and got me. On the way to his apartment, he told me what was happening online. I know you’re upset, you have every right to be, but…Jesus, Raney.”

  We reached Atlantic. Still no cabs. I headed toward Flatbush.

  “There I was, sitting on my assistant’s futon, staring at his laptop, surveying the ruins of my life. I’m reading the tweets, I’m reading the tweets about the tweets, the blog posts, the commentary. And yes, I am the worst husband in the entire world. But it’s also quite possible that you’ve completely destroyed my reputation. You need to make this right.”

  “Stop!” I shouted. “Stop talking!”

  He fell silent. A few passersby eyed me apprehensively.

  “I won my case, Aaron. Gaia Café. All counts. Total victory.”

  “Oh.” His expression changed from frustration to delight. “Oh! That’s great! I—”

  “I was so anxious yesterday morning. Desperate to talk to you. But I held off. ‘Be considerate,’ I told myself. ‘He’s exhausted.’ And all the while, you were…”

  He reached for me. I stepped back, wiping the tears away.

  “You were right, Aaron. I killed it. But you know what? It didn’t matter. Because I didn’t care.”

  He reached out again, and my anger flared up, hotter than ever. I pushed him away, hard.

  “You ruined it, Aaron! You ruined a really great day. And a really great marriage. How could you give up everything we had? Our past, our life, everything that’s ever happened to us.”

  “Don’t say that, Raney. We can—”

  “How many times? How many times have you been unfaithful to me?”

  He bowed his head. He couldn’t even look at me. “Once. This was the first—the only time.”

  I kept moving. He followed. “The first time. So you would have done it again.”

  He studied the ground as we walked. “I…I don’t know.”

  “Was she there when we spoke on the phone, Sunday afternoon?”

  “She was…downstairs. In the lobby.”

  “Was she there when you wrote to me? She must have been. When you sent that e-mail about San Francisco. The lights on the bridge. How we should visit. Was she sleeping? Was she sated?”

  He nodded miserably. I longed to hit him, scratch him. Make him hurt. I stepped into the street and looked up and down. Still no cabs. “Were you in bed with her when you wrote it?”

  “Raney…”

  “Where were you?” A woman pushing a stroller swathed in plastic turned to stare. I stared back, hard.

  “I was…I was at a desk. There was a desk in the room. I was there.”

  “Could you see her from where you were sitting?”

  “No.”

  “How far were you from the bed?”

  I was interrogating him. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t really want answers. I wanted to wake up from this nightmare.

  “Raney, this isn’t—”

  “How far from her were you when you were lying to me?” I shouted. “Lying about how much you missed me. Lying about how much you loved me.”

  “I wasn’t lying! Everything I wrote was true.”

  “Did you get back into bed after you sent the e-mail? Did you…” I couldn’t go on.

  “Raney, please,” he said softly. “This isn’t what we should be talking about.”

  “When did it happen, Aaron?” I was piteous, whimpering. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t stop. “When did you stop loving me?”

  “Oh, honey.” He reached for me again.

  I knocked his imploring hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

  We were facing off in the middle of the sidewalk. Waves of commuters broke around us with huffs and grimaces and little sidesteps of irritation.

  “I didn’t stop loving you. I couldn’t. I…screwed up. I really, really screwed up. Let’s back up, okay? Let’s…start over.”

  “Start over? We’re done.”

  I began walking again. So did he. “We’re not done. We’re going to figure out how to fix this. We’re going to talk it out, deal with our problems once and for all, and—”

  “Problems?” I stopped again. “We don’t have problems, plural. We have one problem, Aaron. You, cheating on me.”

  “What I did was wrong, Raney. It was awful.” He hesitated. “But—do you really think we’re fine? That things haven’t changed between us?”

  “Ohhh.” I nodded slowly. “I get it. You’re deflecting blame. You’re trying to shift the responsibility for this away f
rom yourself, and onto me.”

  “No! What I did was horrendous. But look at how you reacted, Raney. You went ballistic. That’s hardly the sign of a healthy relationship.”

  I stepped past a line of parked cars on Flatbush and raised my arm. “Do you know what I haven’t heard this morning, Aaron? Not through all your demands, your accusations and your self-pity? I haven’t heard an apology. Not one. This has been all about you.”

  A cab slowed down and pulled toward me. At last.

  “I tried to apologize!” he cried. “But you wouldn’t talk, and you wouldn’t listen, and…and you’re the one who made it all about me by going fucking nuclear on the Internet!”

  I opened the door of the cab and got in. He grabbed on to it.

  “Raney, please. We’ll talk about this, we’ll talk about everything. But right now I really need you to clear my name.”

  “You’re a talented guy. I’m sure you can handle it.” I yanked the door shut and leaned forward to direct the driver. That’s how I stayed, eyes to the front, on the edge of the seat, willing myself not to look out the window until we pulled away.

  SEVEN

  I didn’t want to go out that night, but my roommate insisted.

  “It’s the party of the year!” Leila cried.

  “It’s only September,” I pointed out.

  “You’re hopeless, Raney. You do know that, right?”

  I opened a book. She reached across my desk and slapped it shut.

  “You’re coming with me.” She looked me up and down. “And I’m dressing you.”

  Leila took me to a finals club—Harvard’s version of a fraternity, meaning the men were both drunk and pompous. She quickly disappeared with a guy she had a crush on, leaving me to wander through oak-paneled rooms full of people dancing and drinking and flirting. I felt so out of place.

  Someone caught up with me as I was hunting for my coat. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

  I straightened up. He had dark hair, glasses, a round, boyish face. He was wearing a green flannel shirt.

  “Do we…”

  “Know each other? Nope.” He smiled. His eyes were bright behind his glasses.

  Boys. They perplexed me. I had friends who were boys. We got along great, as pals. That was me—pal Raney. But romance, attraction, all that tender, sloppy stuff? So far it had been in short supply. An awkward date here, a fumbling encounter there. Suitors weren’t exactly lining up.

  Which was fine! I was in my sophomore year of college. I had important things to deal with. Internships and scholarships and student loans. Preparing for law school. Doing whatever I could to keep my fretful and increasingly frail grandmother from worrying about me too much.

  Better not to be distracted. Better to keep my head down. So I kept my head down.

  Now, my eyes strayed to the pile of coats.

  “I found something in the backyard,” the boy said. “Come look.”

  After an instant of silence, we started laughing at the same time. He clapped a palm to his forehead.

  “That came out so wrong. I’m not a murderer or a weirdo, I promise.” He paused. “Well, maybe a little bit of a weirdo.”

  There was a hole in one elbow of his shirt. His shoes were muddy. He didn’t belong here, either. But he didn’t seem bothered by that.

  “Come on!” he urged me. “Before it flies away.”

  He led me through the house and out the back door, past a crowd of smokers and a boy throwing up in the bushes. He knelt beside a large tree in a far corner of the yard. I crouched down as he pushed aside a few blades of grass. “Look.”

  I squinted. In the dim light from the house I could barely make it out.

  “It’s…a bug,” I said.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  I gave him a sideways glance. Where I came from, people didn’t sit around admiring bugs. They reached for a rolled-up newspaper. Was this guy joking? No, he seemed entirely earnest.

  So he really was a weirdo.

  I bent closer, to be polite. The thing was large and shiny black. It had bright-orange markings on its back that reminded me of a tie-dyed T-shirt, and orange blobs on its antennae.

  Actually, it was kind of beautiful.

  “It’s an American burying beetle,” he said. “They’re carnivorous—I think it’s going at a piece of hamburger right now. I have no idea what it’s doing here—its closest habitat is western Mass.”

  He explained its markings, how it flew, how it fought and mated and why it was endangered. He spoke in a low voice, as if he didn’t want to disturb it.

  He watched the insect. I watched him. I liked his glasses and his too-big shirt. I liked his sincerity. He was the very opposite of the cool, ironic kids who surrounded me every day.

  Eventually we stood up. He frowned and pressed gently at a spot on the tree.

  “Someone drove a nail in here. Maybe they were trying to get syrup.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Sure. It’s a sugar maple.”

  Syrup comes from trees? I probably would have realized that if I’d thought about it for half a second, but I never had. To cover up my city-girl ignorance, I quickly pointed at another tree. “What’s that?”

  “An English oak,” he replied.

  “And that one?”

  “An elm.”

  We made a game of it, going around the yard, me pointing, him answering. He was shy about it, a little abashed—but he always knew the answer.

  “What’s that?”

  “A rhododendron.”

  “What about that?”

  “Japanese knotweed. An invasive species.” He glanced at the house. “Like the jokers who hang out here.”

  It wasn’t much of a game, because he knew everything.

  “What’s that?”

  “A sparrow. No, wait. A wren.”

  I pointed at the sky. “That?”

  “Ursa Major.”

  Under a bush. “That?”

  “Dog shit.”

  I laughed. “That?”

  “A beer can,” he said. “Pabst Blue Ribbon.”

  We circled back to the sugar maple. I was so impressed. “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “I grew up not too far from here. And this is what I study. The natural sciences. Insects.”

  I nodded at the beetle, which was still scrabbling quietly in the dirt. “Are you going to rescue this guy?”

  “Nah. Why interrupt a good meal?”

  I had nothing else to say, and my awkwardness returned full force. What was going to happen? Should I say something? Should I go?

  I should probably go.

  “You study at Widener, right?” he said. “In the big reading room?”

  “All the time. I’ve never seen you there.”

  “Yeah, well.” He smiled. “You don’t look up much.”

  More awkward silence. The smokers let out a shout of laughter.

  “What do we do now?” I asked at last.

  “Get married,” he said.

  “What?”

  He grinned, raising his hands helplessly. “Sorry. I should have told you. When two people come across an American burying beetle eating trash in the backyard during a stupid party? They’re linked for life.”

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “Is that right?”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it. But we don’t have to get married right away. We can get a drink first.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” I said.

  He smiled at me. “I’m Aaron, by the way.”

  I smiled back. “I’m Raney.”

  * * *

  —

  It was past ten by the time I stepped out of the elevator on forty-five. I’m usually one of the first partners
to arrive each day, greeted only by cleaners and the occasional associate, wan and itchy eyed after pulling an all-nighter. But that morning, the secretaries were already at their stations. Paralegals were hurrying through the halls. My partners were shouting, laughing and bargaining behind their closed doors.

  People greeted me briefly, eyes averted. They must know, I thought. I wasn’t surprised. I’d long ago recognized the futility of trying to keep anything a secret around here.

  Renfield was on the phone when I breezed past her desk. Inside my office, I dropped my bag. The rain had stopped, but fog hung low over the park.

  Renfield clomped in with a revised draft of yesterday’s brief, a stack of mail and a fluffy white towel. She stood behind me and dried my hair as I went through everything.

  I finished and gestured to a chair. She sat down.

  I said, “What do you do when you feel sad?”

  “Steal a copy of The Thorn Birds and reread all the carnal passages,” she replied.

  “You steal a copy?”

  “Yep.”

  “Every time?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why not keep one at home?”

  “Tried it,” she said. “Doesn’t have the same effect.”

  I mulled that over. “What do you think normal people do when they feel sad?”

  She puffed out her cheeks. “Damned if I know.”

  “Find out for me, will you?”

  She made a note in her steno pad, hauled herself upright and left.

  I got to work. I conferenced. I called. I read and wrote. I met with my team and congratulated them on Gaia Café. I reviewed the settlement agreement I’d asked Jisun to draft the day before. Paralegals came and went.

  It was an ordinary day, full and productive. The kind of day I loved. But I felt lifeless. The world had drained of color.

  At one thirty, the phone rang. I glanced at the display. It was Aaron.

  Renfield answered. She was brusque, businesslike. Love for her bloomed in my heart.

  Line one started blinking. I thought about ignoring it, but that felt like an admission of defeat. So I picked up. “I see you got your phone back.”