Amherst (25 page)

“Lucky them,” says Peggy. “We don’t have any secrets anymore. Nothing’s hot.”

“I’ve been trying not to think that.”

“Oh, I’m most likely wrong. I’m fifty years old, and by the time you get to my age you learn to settle for less, I guess. I’ve seen too many passions cool. Nick being only the most recent.”

“How is it with you and Nick? Or would you rather not talk about it?”

“No, I’m fine talking about it. How is it with me and Nick?”

She wrinkles her brow and smiles at Alice.

“I’ll tell you, but first I have to ask you to tell me. How is it with
you
and Nick?”

“Me?”

Alice blushes a deep red, which says it all.

“Believe me, sweetheart,” says Peggy, “I know Nick well enough. He’s a very attractive man, and he’s free to do as he pleases. I just hope he hasn’t left too much of a mess behind him.”

“No, no, not at all,” says Alice. “I mean, there’s nothing, nothing at all. That is . . . oh God, I feel such a fool. I’m so embarrassed.”

She can feel tears pricking at her eyes.

“Hey, hey!” says Peggy. “No need for that. I’m not accusing you of anything. I just don’t want him hurting you, is all.”

“No, he hasn’t hurt me. He’s been lovely.”

Her face tells the story she can’t bring herself to tell.

“But you’ve gone and fallen for him,” says Peggy.

“Just a little,” says Alice. “Just the smallest bit. It’ll pass. I’m not usually such a fool.”

“No more of a fool than me. I fell for him.”

“Yes, I suppose you did.”

“I was crazy about him,” says Peggy. “He’s a beautiful man. He’s sensitive, he’s sexy, and he can actually read. What more could a girl ask? Okay, so he’s not faithful, he can’t help himself in that department, but that’s like inheriting money, you know? It’s no good keeping it all for yourself. You have to share.”

Alice watches her as she speaks and thinks how beautiful she is. No wonder Nick loved her.

“You really didn’t mind?”

“Yes, I minded. Of course I minded. But I could handle it. Why wouldn’t he want to fool around with twenty-year-olds? I’d do it myself, only I don’t get the offers.”

“So what made you break up?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes,” says Alice. “If it’s not too private.”

“Oh, I don’t mind telling you as far as that goes. But I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade. I don’t own Nick anymore. I’ve no call to go round telling other people what’s wrong with him.”

“Even so. I’d like to know.”

There’s almost no one else in the hotel’s dining room. Peggy has a Caesar salad and Alice has a bowl of soup, and they sit on at their table long after they’ve finished eating, and Peggy tells the story of her marriage.

“At first I thought it was the money that was the problem,” she says. “It usually is money that’s the problem. Nick never made much, and then his course was canceled, or not renewed, or whatever. I said to him that money shouldn’t be an issue because I had plenty, and what was I supposed to do with it? I’ll say this for Nick, he’s never really wanted stuff himself, smart clothes, fast cars, all of that. He’s some kind of ascetic, I guess. So it wasn’t the
money, and it wasn’t the affairs. It was something else that began to get to me.”

She’s gazing across the table, but for once her eyes are unseeing, her thoughts elsewhere.

“I remember,” she said, “sitting at dinner with him, at home, I guess, the house on Triangle Street. He was across the table from me, the way you are now. He wasn’t speaking. And suddenly I got this really strong sensation that a door had closed in him. So I said, ‘Nick, what is it?’ And he said, ‘What’s what?’ And I said, ‘You’re shutting me out.’ And he said, ‘I’m not shutting you out.’ And I said, ‘I feel like I can only get so far with you and no further.’ And he said, ‘How much further do you have to go?’ And I said, ‘All the way.’ And he said, ‘No one goes all the way. There are parts that are unreachable.’ ”

She shrugs, and spreads her hands in the air.

“That’s what he believes. He really does. He believes everyone’s alone.”

“Maybe he’s right,” says Alice.

“Maybe he is, but it began to get to me. You know he’s kind of antisocial? Maybe you don’t. He doesn’t like parties; he won’t go to them. I have to attend a lot of functions, one, two a week. He just wouldn’t do it. We had a few rows over that. Does that sound petty to you?”

“No,” says Alice.

“It got worse. He became more and more like a recluse. You know he loves Emily Dickinson? Have you worked out why?”

“Why?”

“He wants to be her. He identifies with her. He wants to be the myth and never be seen and have everyone talk about him. The only trouble is he’s not a genius, and he doesn’t write poetry.”

She puts her hand to her mouth and shoots Alice a guilty look.

“I’m being bitchy, aren’t I? You have to stop me.”

“I don’t want to stop you,” says Alice.

Everything Peggy is telling her about Nick she’s checking against her own experience of him. Some of it connects. Not all.

“I get what you say about him wanting to be a recluse. But I haven’t picked up that he thinks he’s a genius or wants to be a myth.”

“So maybe I’m wrong. All I can tell you is there’s some deep damage there, and he’s not letting anyone in for a look. He’s a wounded beast, and he creeps off to his lair to hide.”

Alice thinks of how Nick said to her, “We all live our lives in hiding.”

That connects.

“In the end I realized, or I thought I realized, Nick doesn’t want to live in the world. He’s more than antisocial, he’s antilife. I’m not antilife. I didn’t want to be sucked down into his lair. I didn’t want a solitary life. It may be shallow, but I like to be among people. I like parties. I like doing things to make the world just that bit better than it might otherwise be. Nick thought all my charities were basically a form of therapy for me. He never believed anything I did was worth the time or money beyond the feeling of worth it gave me. That’s because he doesn’t believe you can make the world any better. He’s a pessimist. He thinks our task is to accept and endure. So we had rows about that, big rows. I said he was ducking his responsibilities; he said I was kidding myself I made any difference. It went down from there. Then one day I said, ‘Are you coming to this dinner?’ I was chair of the governors, I had to make a speech, this was a big night for me. And he said no. He said, ‘That’s your life, not mine.’ So that was it. That’s when I knew it was over.”

“How did he take that?”

“I think he was relieved.”

“And after that,” says Alice, “you stopped having rows and got along just fine?”

“Of course. Sweet as pie.”

Alice thinks about Jack. How well they’ve got along since they broke up.

Peggy says, “Does any of that make sense to you?”

“Yes,” says Alice. “What you’re telling me is Nick doesn’t know how to love. Or can’t handle it. Or won’t.”

“You got it.”

“That’s a bummer.”

“Not for me,” says Peggy. “I’m out the other side. But you—you’ve gone and fallen for the jerk, haven’t you?”

Alice nods. She’s no longer blushing, no longer ashamed. They’ve both been in the same war zone.

“Not what I had planned, I can tell you,” she says.

“You’ve only had a few days. You’ll get over it.”

“Of course I will,” says Alice, “but you know what scares me? I’m scared I’ll go through the rest of my life thinking that he was the one that got away. That he was the real thing. That nothing else comes close.”

“Trust me,” says Peggy, “the guy’s a disaster.”

She gazes across the table at Alice with concern and sympathy in her eyes.

“You said he’s most likely gone to his cabin in Vermont,” says Alice.

“That’s my guess.”

“Could you tell me where it is?”

“So you can pay him a visit?”

“Maybe just one.”

“Isn’t that like the alcoholic who says, ‘Just one more drink’?”

“I can’t leave it like this,” says Alice. “He really will turn into a myth.”

“Keep away,” says Peggy. “I don’t want to be the one who drives you over the cliff.”

“I’m driving myself,” says Alice. “You can’t make my mistakes for me. I have to make them for myself.”

A long, intent look. Then Peggy takes a pen out of her bag and a little notebook and writes directions.

“There’s no address. You go up I-91 into Vermont, turn west onto Route 25, then north onto Kimball Hill Road. Five or six miles, and look out for his truck. It’ll take you three hours, maybe less. You have his cell? His phone’ll be off, but you can try.” She adds the number. “He’s not going to like it. The beast does not like being tracked to its lair.”

“The beast is going to have to deal with it,” says Alice. “If you start something, you have to finish it.”

•  •  •

But for all her brave words, Alice is afraid. If she goes chasing after Nick, what can she expect from him? They’ve said their good-byes. He owes her nothing. What is there left to say?

I’m hurting, Nick. Please make the hurting go away.

She leaves the house, walks up the road to the cemetery, wanting time to think. She sits on the grass by the railings round Emily’s grave, as if being so close will transmit to her some of the poet’s resilience. But the grass is damp and the grave is silent.

She phones Jack. She’s tapped his name before she can stop to consider the cost. When he picks up, she hears the buzz of voices in the background.

“Where are you?”

“Alice?” She can hear him moving away from the noise. “I’m in the pub.”

“Can you talk?”

“Yes. Are you okay?”

“Not really. Nick’s buggered off. I’m feeling a bit blue. I need your advice.”

“Try me.”

“Should I go after him?”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. I just feel terrible. Like it hasn’t properly ended.”

“Oh. That.”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, Alice. You do sound low. What a bummer.”

She hears someone calling to him, a shrill woman’s voice. “Jack! Come back!” She hears Jack say, “Won’t be a mo.”

“Who was that?”

“One of my colleagues.”

“I should let you go.”

“So where’s he buggered off to?”

“Somewhere in Vermont. A cabin in the woods.”

“All by himself?”

“As far as I know.”

“And you want to show up at his cabin and say what, exactly?”

“I know. It’s stupid and pointless.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s act three. You want your final act.”

“Something like that.” She realizes as she speaks that it’s exactly like that. She doesn’t want any particular outcome, just a proper sense that things have run their course. “But this is real life, Jack. It’s not a story.”

“Stories are real life. If they’re any good.”

“So you think I should go?”

“Go, girl. Do it. Act Three: A Cabin in the Woods.”

She feels herself smiling.

“You’re kind of brilliant, Jack. How do you always know the right thing to say?”

“We’ll see about that. Let me know how it goes.”

“I’ll be home soon. Will you be down in Sussex at all?”

“Half-term. See you then.”

Again the distant cry: “Jack! Jack, come back!”

Over there in England he says, “Coming!” And to Alice in New England, “I’d better go.”

Alone that evening in her borrowed room Alice does what she swore she would never do. She goes onto Facebook and stalks Jack. She finds a picture he’s posted of a crowd of teachers at the opening of his school. Standing right behind him, one hand touching his shoulder, there’s a young woman with a mass of curly brown hair. She’s smiling too much.

21

A thick mist lies over the interstate all the way into Vermont, through Brattleboro and Bellows Falls. As Alice follows the route north into this featureless white world, her courage ebbs away and she tells herself she’s a fool. What does she expect Nick to say? How can there be any other outcome but humiliation? But just past Hanover the mist clears, and she finds herself dazzled by color: reds and purples and oranges splashed with abandon as in a child’s painting, against a backdrop of tawny yellow and dark umber. This is the famous New England fall, in the second week of October, no relation to the tasteful modulations of an English autumn. Her spirits rise. Her speed increases. What does it matter how Nick responds? This is for her. What right has he to sidle away into myth?

Face the music, Nick. Finish the dance.

Just before Bradford she takes the junction at Route 25 and drives northwest up the Waits River Road. The blazing woods fall away, and she follows the river through straw-colored farmland. Slow out of the little town of West Topsham, hunting for the right
turn into the hills. Back into the trees, the road climbing, the forest closing in: and there it is, Kimball Hill Road.

These are remote parts. Hard for anyone raised in a crowded little island to credit how empty America can be. Mile follows mile with no visible habitation. Tracks lead off into the trees; there may be dwellings up there, who can tell? The people who choose to live in these woods are not neighborly types.

She’s down to twenty miles an hour, crawling along the road, afraid to miss her destination. She passes a cabin set back from the road, but it’s closed up, there’s no vehicle pulled alongside. A mile or two on and there’s another cabin, this time with smoke leaking out of the cinder-block chimney. She’s driven by when she looks in the mirror and sees the red Dodge truck parked on the far side.

A cabin of weathered planks, roofed in shingle, sitting on an apron of dirt up a rise from the road. Behind it, like embracing arms, the woods stand guard. It’s small, surely no more than a single room, with a rain barrel to the side of the narrow door. No light shows in the windows.

Alice reverses and turns off the road. She half expects the door to open, but there’s no sign of life. She gets out of her car and looks more closely at the red truck. It’s Nick’s, no question. Why hasn’t he heard her arrival? With her engine switched off, the silence is startling. Perhaps he’s asleep.

She hesitates before the cabin door. Now that she’s here, her presence feels clumsier than she had intended. But what can she say? I happened to be passing by?