Garden of Lies Read Free Page B

whole other world!
    Beside her, an arm around her shoulders giving her support, was a man. Why, it was Mr.
    Rosenthal himself, the boss of the whole bank! She felt alternately hot and cold, alarmed and
    thrilled. She thought she’d seen him looking at her, though he’d never actually spoken to her. The
    other girls gossiped about him over coffee and sandwiches at the luncheonette—his wife had died
    more than twenty years ago, leaving no children, and they all wondered why he hadn’t married
    again. She’d thought perhaps other women were too much in awe of him to get close. Sylvie
    recalled how intimidating he always looked, striding through to his office, his suits always
    perfectly pressed, gold cuff links winking at monogrammed cuffs, issuing orders in a quiet but
    commanding tone.
    But here he didn’t seem at all frightening. She saw kind blue eyes caught in a fine net of
    wrinkles, older than she would have guessed, at least fifty, silver-blond hair so fine the white
    ridge of his scalp gleamed through it. He was taking her to the hospital, he’d told her. To her
    mother. Hearing him, Sylvie could feel the calm strength radiating from him, flowing into her.
    Then, afterwards, taking care of Mama’s hospital bill, making all the funeral arrangements,
    then looking after her when she was so sick she couldn’t get out of bed. Never once, not once,
    being forward, trying to take advantage, until he’d asked her to marry him. Him wanting to marry
    her, oh the miracle of it! She’d done nothing to deserve it.
    And, oh God, look how she had repaid him.
    [9] The memory of Nikos chafed like a pebble in a shoe. For a whole year, each morning when
    she woke up, it was there, sometimes more irritating and sometimes less, but always there. It
    lodged in her throat when she tried to eat. It tormented her sleep. It mocked her fierce yearning
    that the baby growing inside her would look like Gerald.
    Sylvie laced her fingers over the hard mound of her belly. The tightness was beginning to
    subside, and the pain. If only, she cried to herself, I could have gotten pregnant before Nikos, then
    I would be sure.
    It wasn’t for lack of trying, God knew. Taking her temperature every morning and marking it
    on the chart Gerald kept by the bed—three years of that! And those visits to the doctor! Lying
    there spread out like a chicken to be gutted. Cold steel probing inside her until she’d wanted to
    scream. And then being told there was nothing wrong. Give it time. What did doctors know?
    She’d wept seeing the disappointment in Gerald’s face each month when her period came.
    Why couldn’t she give him just this one thing? Look at the glorious new life he’d given her.
    Not her fault, three different Park Avenue specialists had told her; but Sylvie knew better.
    She felt sure she could get pregnant if only she could find a way not to hate having sex with
    him.
    How could she feel this way? Why? What husband in the whole world was ever more kind and
    generous?
    Yet the memory of their wedding night, seeing him naked for the first time, still made her
    cringe. In his crisp, hand-tailored suits he’d looked large, prosperous. Naked, his belly a sagging
    pouch, he looked old, grotesque almost. And he had breasts, breasts like a girl’s! To this day,
    Sylvie felt revulsion when he lowered himself on her, no matter how many million times she told
    herself she loved him and he loved her. His doughy belly pressing against her, making her gasp
    for breath, his thing inching its way into her. Then such grunting and heaving, as if he were in
    pain. It’ll get better, she’d told herself over and over, it has to. It’s only because we’re not used to
    each other.
    But when he announced his desire by taking off his pajamas and folding them at the foot of the
    bed, after eight years her flesh still shrank.
    And then Nikos …
    [10] A flare of pain in her abdomen jerked Sylvie from her reverie. She twisted in the back seat
    of the