All You Could Ask For: A Novel Read online

  DEDICATION

  This book was written in memory of Heidi Armitage

  And it is dedicated to the best friends anyone could ever ask for:

  Stacy Steponate Greenberg, Jane Green, and Wendy Gardiner

  Now, and forevermore, Heidi’s Angels

  EPIGRAPH

  The thing is, to have a life before we die.

  It can be a real adventure having a life.

  John Irving, The World According to Garp

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part I

  Part II

  Heidi

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Mike Greenberg

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART I

  BROOKE

  WHOSE ASS IS THIS?

  It certainly isn’t mine.

  That’s what I was thinking as I looked. I mean really looked.

  I have a great ass. I’ve always had a great ass. I’ve known that since my freshman year at Colgate, when I pledged Tri-Delt and my first night I drank two plastic cupfuls of cherry punch with grain alcohol and allowed a cute Sigma Chi to kiss me while we danced. His name was Paul Didier and he had close-cropped auburn hair and blue eyes, and a general goofiness about him that didn’t seem quite as annoying drunk as it did sober the next day when he showed up at my dorm with a dozen roses. That was the end of him. Cute and goofy is fine for dancing and slightly sloppy kisses but no more, and certainly not for roses.

  When he saw the lack of excitement on my face for the flowers, I actually felt sorry for him. He looked like a puppy who’d peed in the house and wanted—really wanted—to go back in time and undo it. But, you know, dogs can’t clean up pee, just like goofy boys can’t pretend not to have bought you roses after one night of drunken smooching.

  “You know, I’m a freshman too,” he stumbled, looking more like the puppy every second, “and I don’t know anyone here. I’m from the Midwest, and you seemed like the coolest girl ever.”

  “Thank you,” I said, in the same tone you might use to chasten the puppy. “It just seems a little soon.”

  “I know,” he said, and started for the door, still holding the roses as he stepped outside. Then he turned back to me, squinting in the bright sunshine of a clear September morning. “You’ve got a great ass, Brooke. I really wanted to tell you that. I’m glad I did.”

  That appealed to me, as corny as it was. I waited an appropriate amount of time before I chased him into the courtyard and ripped the flowers away from behind him.

  “Where do you think you’re going with those?” I asked.

  The goofy grin reappeared, and he moved toward me tentatively. “Can I call you later?” he asked.

  “Yes, you may,” I said, and spun on my heel and marched away, knowing full well he was staring. I didn’t turn to see him though, no way. My mother raised me better than that.

  Back in my room, with the flowers tossed thoughtlessly on the bed, I lifted my Benetton sweater and stared behind me into the full-length mirror my druggy roommate had glued to the back of our door.

  He was right. I had a great ass.

  That was twenty years ago, and I’m not sure how closely I’ve checked out my ass since. I think through the rest of college I always thought of that cute puppy dog of a boy (whom I let kiss me two more times before I sent him on his way) and just knew my ass looked great. And then I met Scott, and from the first night we were together he has made me feel beautiful. He still does, too, even after the twins and the C-section, and all the dog poop and cat litter and stomach viruses and coffee breath and eye gunk and accidental farts that threaten to drain the romance from a marriage. He still always manages to wink at me at just the right moments.

  I love when he winks at me. When he winks, I’m his girlfriend again, the supercute debutante he fell so hard for that after our first date he, too, bought me a gift. Not a dozen roses but even cheesier: a calendar with photos of exotic locations on it, on which he had used a pale blue marker to write suggested plans for us on randomly selected dates.

  “Well, I guess this boy is finished,” my friend Charlotte said when I showed her the calendar.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and I guess I smiled more than I realized, because Charlotte smiled back and just like that, we both knew I was going to marry this one. And I did. And it was the best decision I ever made. And now he is turning forty years old and I’ve made another decision, only this one may be the worst of my life.

  I got the idea from my girlfriend Ingrid, who is Swedish and beautiful and used to model. We were having coffee after tennis about a month ago when she slapped herself on the forehead.

  “Oh shits!” she said, in the Swedish accent that takes her from simply beautiful to out-of-control, even-I-can’t-stand-it-and-I’m-a-woman gorgeous. (Hers is the only house at which every dad in Greenwich insists on picking up his children after playdates. But she’s also very sweet and real, and less judgmental than any of the city-girls-turned-wealthy-housewives who mostly populate this town.)

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I told Stefan I would leave a check for him in the mailbox this morning,” she said. “I am completely forgot!” She started rustling through her bag. “I’m sorry, Brooke, I have to go right now.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said, and I did, in part because I had no choice—she had driven me and needed to take me home—and also because Stefan is my contractor, too, and I notice he spends a lot more time at Ingrid’s house than he does at mine. I have generally found that the best place to find a man who works with his hands is at the house of the prettiest blonde in the neighborhood.

  So we raced back to Ingrid’s, and she was adorably frazzled as she rushed to her sunny office over the garage and ransacked two drawers in search of her checkbook. That’s one of the reasons I like Ingrid: that builder would have waited patiently in her driveway until a week from Thursday if it meant he’d get one more smile from her in that perfect little tennis dress, but she was rushing about because she’s the only one who doesn’t realize that.

  “I’m be right back,” she said, and rushed past me out of the office and out the front door. I turned to follow, but something caught my eye before I did, a blur that raced past on the screen of Ingrid’s desktop. At first I wasn’t even sure what it was. Then I took a step closer and saw my dear friend fully naked. Just a flash, and then she was gone. And then she was back, and then gone again. It was a series of photos—nudes, tasteful and beautiful—running as a slideshow on the desktop. It was breathtaking, really, and only she could pull it off. No other woman I know could have a series of naked pictures of herself as her screen saver without coming off as pathetic, or at least narcissistic and sad. But with Ingrid, it just seemed beautiful, perhaps because she looked so beautiful. And, sitting there, I made the decision I am seriously questioning right now. For my beloved, romantic, successful husband’s fortieth birthday, I am giving him what every man wants. Naked pictures of his wife.

  SAMANTHA

  WHAT THE HELL IS this naked woman doing there?

  That was the first thought that went through my mind. But the strange part is how long it took any emotion to hit me. At first I was just puzzled, innocently so, as though finding nude photos in my husband’s e-mail was no different from finding a pair of socks in the refrigerator: What on earth could THOSE be doing there? It was several minutes before the significance struck me. This wasn’t like socks in the fridge. This was like lipstick on a collar, or an unrecognizable bra beneath the comforter. This was serious trouble.

  Maybe
it didn’t dawn on me quite so fast because I hadn’t had my coffee yet. Or because I was so surprised that I’d found my way into his mailbox at all. Or maybe it was simply because I was still very much in the warmth and glow that new brides feel; I had only been married for two days.

  When the urgency of the matter began to sink in, it settled slowly, the way you feel a fever coming on: first as just a dizzy spell, then gradually spreading as a tiny tingle beginning in my stomach, and then my legs, and ultimately all the way to my fingers and toes. And then I was freezing, which really sucked because I didn’t have anything at all warm to put on.

  I didn’t think I’d need it in Kauai.

  I went to the gorgeous master bath in our suite, this luxurious paradise we had checked into just the night before. The carpet was soft beneath my toes. It had felt so good when I kicked off my shoes after dinner, after the champagne, after the swans that swam past our perfect, candlelit table, and after the perfect little toast Robert had made: It’s finally just us.

  Ours was the textbook disaster wedding, for two reasons. One was my father’s money. The other was the election. Taken in order: (1) My dad didn’t approve of Robert because he’s fourteen years older than me, and (2) Robert’s career required that, at the time of our whirlwind courtship and wedding, we spend every waking moment talking to people we have never met and feigning interest in every word they said. That seemed all right to me, even if it wasn’t so exciting, because at least it suggested Robert believed in something. My father didn’t believe in anything aside from money, and thus he wasn’t going to allow me to marry an older man, whom I’d met on an elevator three months before, without a prenuptial agreement. And the thing about that was Robert had no problem with it at all; he was understanding and mature. “If I were your father I would feel exactly the same way,” he told me.

  That’s why I married him. Because he says things that grown men say.

  It was me that got angry with my father, who has never approved of my lifestyle, my love of sports, of being outside, camping, hiking. He’s never understood why I don’t care about the only thing that matters to him in the world, which is his money.

  “One time, when I was eleven years old,” he told me, “I lost my baseball glove. I left it in the park and when I went back to look for it, it was gone. I was afraid to go home, I was afraid to tell my father I lost my glove. Because I had an appreciation for the value of the glove, but my actions seemed to demonstrate that I did not, and I knew how disappointed my father would be in me.”

  I couldn’t resist. “It’s hard going through life with your father disappointed in you, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Don’t be fresh.”

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “What happened with what?”

  “With the baseball glove,” I said. “What happened when you eventually told your father?”

  My dad waved his hand in the dismissive way that only he can. “Nothing, really.”

  “Nothing happened?” I asked.

  “Not really, no.”

  I shook my head. “Then what is the point of the story?”

  “Every story does not have to have a point, young lady,” my father said. “I only want for you to be happy. But as your father it’s my job to keep you from making the biggest mistake of your life.”

  Just what every girl dreams of hearing on her wedding day.

  The thing is, it wasn’t a mistake. Robert is different from any boy I’ve ever known, beginning with the fact that he isn’t a boy. He’s a man. He’s the district attorney of Los Angeles County, California. He puts bad guys in jail; how could you have more of a man’s job than that?

  We met in Sacramento, when I was in town for a friend’s wedding. I was stepping toward the elevator in my hotel when I noticed an attractive older man staring at me. He was wearing a blue, pinstriped suit and a navy tie, something a leading man would have worn in a movie in the forties. But there was something soft about his eyes, no matter how hard his clothes were. I let the elevator go and just stood there, without pressing the button for another.

  It didn’t take him long. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

  I waited. I think I smiled.

  “Listen,” he said, moving slowly toward me, “I don’t mean to bother you, but I have had a great day. I mean a really great day. And I just can’t fathom going up to my room right now by myself and sitting there and watching television. I know you don’t know me, but I’m a nice person and you look like a nice person too. I would love to buy you a drink and just sit and talk. We can talk about anything you want, anything in the world you’re interested in. You have my word of honor as a gentleman, which I am, and a Boy Scout, which I never was but that’s only because I couldn’t rub two sticks together and make a fire, that I won’t try anything. We can go anywhere you want and talk about anything you want.”

  He paused a moment to catch his breath, then finished: “I suppose this is a very long way of saying: Hello, my name is Robert, can I buy you a drink?”

  Three months later I had left my job, given up my apartment in New York, moved into his house in the Valley, and we were engaged. And we were preparing for an election.

  The reason he had had a really great day that night by the elevator was that the state leaders of his party wanted him to run for lieutenant governor. (I have to admit, I didn’t even know that was something you ran for, I just thought the governor chose a running mate, like a vice president. You learn something new every day.) The next two months were a blur, an endless whirl of cocktail parties and handshakes and conversations behind closed doors. When it was over and we’d won, neither of us had the energy to plan a wedding.

  “Let’s just do it this weekend,” Robert said, in a giant, empty hotel ballroom, hours after the cheering and the music had faded and the only sound was the industrial brooms sweeping away the confetti. “We’ll do it quietly, at the house. We’ll throw a party in a few weeks if you want but let’s just do it now. I want so badly to be married to you.”

  He has an amazing ability to be sensible and romantic in the same conversation. I’d never met a man who could be either one of those, much less both. How could I not marry him?

  So I did.

  My father insisted on flying out, so he did.

  And his girlfriend insisted on serving lunch, so a caterer did.

  And Robert’s office sent flowers and the governor sent champagne and two local television stations sent reporters and cameras. I guess it was not the way most girls envision their wedding day, but to tell the truth I never really envisioned mine at all. In fact, this was probably the best way for me to get married. I think if there were three hundred people in a church and I was wearing a colossal white dress with a veil and a train and flowers and attendants and trumpets and all the other things, I would just burst out hysterically laughing. It’s just so not me.

  Anyway, that is what Robert meant when he said, “It’s finally just us,” over dinner last night. Then he carried me over the threshold into this sumptuous suite, and he took my clothes off slowly in the pitch blackness with the sound of waves breaking on the beach just outside, and we made love standing up and then again lying down, and when it was done we snuggled in the soft carpeting and I could feel his heart beating against my chest, and as it slowed and his breathing steadied I thought to myself: For the first time in my life, everything seems as though it is the way it is supposed to be.

  Then it was eight o’clock this morning and Robert was wide-awake. He wakes up filled with energy; this morning I felt his energy pressing against my thigh, so we made love again, quickly this time, and then he was off to a massage while I lounged for a while before calling room service and asking for coffee and granola and yogurt. I had my own spa appointment to look forward to, and then we were taking our first scuba lesson in the afternoon. I wasn’t even thinking about my little game when I sat down at the desk and opened Robert’s laptop; it was just by f
orce of habit that I typed those three words.

  You see, Robert’s laptop has two separate means of entry. The first offers access to only the standard functions: Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, a variety of games. Then there is a portal that requires special clearance, and Robert has told me for as long as I’ve known him that among the documents he signed upon being appointed to his office was one affirming that he will never, under any circumstances, allow unauthorized access to persons without clearance, regardless of his relationship to them. I laughed when he first told me about it, and said, “Reminds me of Al Pacino telling Diane Keaton not to ask about his business.” But Robert didn’t laugh. I left it alone.

  So, every morning since I moved to L.A., the first thing I do is take one shot at accessing the portal. I’ve seen him do it, from across a room, and I’m almost certain I’ve counted thirteen keystrokes. It’s hard to be certain because he flies through so quickly, but I’m pretty sure it’s thirteen. So, every morning, before breakfast, I take that one try at cracking the code. (I need to explain that I really, truly was not suspicious, nor did I doubt Robert’s character in any way. This was just a game I began as a lark and then became accustomed to playing every morning. Once I typed in the wrong password, the computer blocked access to the portal for thirty minutes and automatically opened the screen saver, which was a picture of Magic Johnson shooting a hook shot against the Celtics. Robert loves the Lakers. He was born and raised in Los Angeles and doesn’t care much about football or baseball or any sport except basketball and, specifically, the subset of basketball that is the Lakers. So, every morning I pour myself coffee and toss a handful of granola into a bowl, cover it with yogurt and some berries, and then I sit at the desk and say good morning to Magic. It’s fun. And it’s harmless. Or it was, until this morning in Hawaii.)

  I long ago decided his password had to be related to the Lakers, so every morning I try some combination of Lakers names that require thirteen letters: KobeMagicWest; MagicJohnson1; Worthy&Jabaar; PhilIsAGenius; LakersForever. None of them worked and I never expected them to. That’s the thing: I really never cared what might be behind that locked door. Until this morning in my bridal suite in Kauai, with the palm trees swaying and the parrots chatting, and the surf and sea and a masseuse awaiting, when in the midst of all my bliss a funny thought entered my mind. I counted the letters in my head; four, then five, then four. It added up to thirteen, and it was just too funny not to try. So, with the innocence only possible in the soul of a newlywed, I took a sip of my coffee and entered the password that unlocked my husband’s secrets.