Chapter 3
My office was a small suite of rooms on the eighteenth floor of a building in downtown Boston.
My desk had just a few items in front of me: framed photographs of my family, me and Caitlin from our Harvard days, another of Granny Annie at her birthday last year, her Chanel sunglasses on the top of her head, and holding up a glass of champagne, Mom standing behind her, her hands on her shoulders, their shared blue eyes sparkling as Granny Annie had just said something which had made Mom laugh.
I braced myself and called Milhouse. Amazingly, he picked up. Mil was often busy – much of how he spent his free time was mysterious to me, but wasn’t an air of mystery what makes couples work? That, and not being in each other’s pockets.
Be cool, I told myself. Approach this like any other business deal…
which essentially was what marriage was, basically.
We weren’t one of those couples who hung off each other and finished each other’s sentences or ordered desserts with one spoon or hyperventilated on absences of more than ten minutes, but we were an example of a more modern and rational form of love.
‘Hello?’ Milhouse sounded a little irritated. ‘Kerry-Anne?’
‘Hi, Mil, how’s it going?’
‘Fine. I guess. Busy. You?’
‘Couldn’t be better.’ I kept my voice bright and light, as you would with a new client.
Yes, that’s what he was. A potential client who I liked.
Loved. And this client loved me. After all, he’d told me he did.
One time. When he was a little inebriated at his father’s seventieth birthday at their house in Cape Cod.
And his father had been awful to him, which he usually was, and poor Milhouse told me I was the only person he could rely on, and the only person who’d never let him down.
He just wasn’t the romantic sort. He was practical, and perhaps a little traumatised by parents who saw withholding love as a requisite to bringing up self-sufficient children.
I felt nervous all of a sudden. ‘We’ve been invited for dinner at Patrick and Rosie’s on Saturday. Remember, I told you?’
‘I’m going to have to drop that. I’ve Brad’s bachelor party. Count me out. And just a lot to do… like, a lot. Work. Commitments. Dad’s being weird again. He’s changed his will, apparently. So, yes, a lot.’
‘It sounds stressful.’ Soothing and bolstering Milhouse was part of my USP in this relationship. He needed it because he was saddled with a father who just wasn’t interested in him and I always tried to make allowances for poor Mil and his awful dad.
‘It is stressful and talking about it makes everything even more stressful. I’ve too much to do.’ He paused. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I’ll explain everything next week… or—’
‘I won the award for best small business elevation company, whatever that means.’
‘I heard. Congratulations.’ He sounded flat. ‘Don’t become too successful, will you?’
‘I promise, I’ll start making mistakes.’ I thought of Fancy Plants and how I felt I’d taken my eye off the ball and had lost out on any potential investment.
‘I’ll need to win an award next,’ he said, grimly. ‘But it’s easy to win them when it’s your own company, I suppose. It’s just you. I’m in a big organisation, personalised success is less visible…’ He seemed to be talking more to himself so I didn’t answer.
‘What are you doing now? Meetings?’
‘I have a physio appointment for my shoulder. It’s put me out of playing tennis.’
I focused and went for it. ‘Mil, did you hear about Mitzi Callaghan’s daughter…’
‘Oh God. What’s she done now?’
‘Getting married.’
‘And what’s that got to do with me?’
‘Nothing. I just thought you’d be interested.’
‘Well, I’m not.’
‘Okay…’ I took a huge breath. ‘Well, I am. And do you know why? Because I would like to be married.’
There was silence on the end of the line. Oh for God’s sake. I was in it now.
‘Do you love me, Mil?’ Please, no more silence. If there was, I was ready to go to the nearest bar and drink until I fell off the bar stool, or went back on carbs, whichever was the more effective to make me feel even crappier.
‘Of course I do, Kerry-Anne.’ Oh, thank God. Better yet, he kept talking. ‘You’re the most interesting woman I know.’
I didn’t like to point out that the women in his inner circle consisted of his sister whose self-diagnosed food intolerances were her entire personality, and his mother who once talked at me for two hours and forty-five minutes about the shade of beige she was thinking of painting her bedroom and dressing room suite.
‘That’s sweet,’ I murmured to him, telling myself to keep my head in the game.
‘Being with you means that I don’t have to work as hard because you’re the one booking the restaurants and planning things.
’ He gave a laugh. ‘Other women want everything done for them. And you’re not demanding.
You don’t ask me where I’ve been, where I’m going.
And it’s like I don’t have to work hard with you.
You just accept me as I am and don’t bother me. ’
He was speaking the truth; I didn’t bother him for anything.
Nor did I expect presents. Last Christmas Eve, Milhouse rang from Bloomingdale’s and asked if I wanted anything.
So of course I said no and he sounded hugely relieved.
‘Presents are overrated,’ he said, later.
‘So why were you in Bloomingdale’s then?
’ I asked, but he said something about just walking past and being lured in by festive music.
Neither did I ever ask where he was going and what he was doing because I didn’t want to pry and always hoped that he’d tell me anyway, which he never did.
But that was okay, wasn’t it? Weren’t couples meant to have their own lives?
‘I have been thinking about it,’ said Milhouse. ‘Dad said it was about time…’
‘Well… perhaps we should?’ I ventured, encouraged. ‘You know, get married?’
This wasn’t exactly the kind of romance in novels. It was like a business deal. Mom, I reminded myself, would be happy.
‘Yeah. Why not?’
And then silence.
‘So… we’re engaged?’ I tried to coax a little bit more from him.
‘Yeah… as long as you don’t, you know, tie me down.’ He laughed. ‘Dad always says a real man is one who isn’t tied down.’
‘Of course I wouldn’t. I mean, who wants to be tied down?’
‘Well, not me. Look, we can thrash out other stipulations later. But what about that as an opening deal?’
Other stipulations? ‘Okay!’ Somehow I still managed to sound cheerful. ‘I look forward to hearing your other stipulations,’ I said formally, as though it really was a business deal.
He laughed. ‘Good girl.’
Good girl? Jesus. I managed not to respond.
‘It will be great,’ I said, instead. ‘We’re good together.’
‘And apart.’ He laughed again. ‘We’ll need a prenup, obviously. My lawyers will talk to yours. And… a ring? Do you want one?’
‘I suppose…’
‘I’ll ask Mom to see if there is one hanging around in the vault. Will that do?’
I felt a shot of something which I remembered feeling. Since Caitlin had died, I hadn’t been the same, and I just wanted to get back to the old me, the one who wouldn’t have accepted these marital crumbs, but what worried me most was that I’d always be this pushover.
‘Look, gotta go. Speak later, Kerry-Anne.’
‘Get the rest of those stipulations down on paper,’ I said. ‘Perhaps put them on a PowerPoint?’
He didn’t laugh at this.
‘Whatever. Bye, Kerry-Anne.’
And he was gone.