Autobiography of Us (24 page)

October 3, 1973

Dear Alex,

I happened to read in the paper not long after we moved about a group of soldiers killed by their own platoon.
A tragic miscalculation
, the paper called it. You can imagine what I saw next: Oliver Hinden’s name, listed beside ten others. My mother told me later he was buried in name only, the coffin empty save a lone handkerchief—filthy, it must be believed, flown clear back from Vietnam. It seems Oliver’s lieutenant spotted the handkerchief on the ground not far from the explosion and sent it back to Dr. Hinden with a letter explaining that his son, Oliver, had been brave. That he had died an honorable death.

We are all allowed our stories—is that it?

October 10, 1973

Dear Alex,

My mother grew up with a fear of things disappearing. She watched her father disappear. She watched the life she had been born into vanish through the front door. She watched her mother disappear, my grandmother in later years sliding into a sadness from which I was led to understand she never emerged. She lived a life that stopped looking anything like the one she’d been promised, and so she left it: She
got out
.

Call it poor timing. Call it bad luck. Point being, it was not as she had imagined. She had certain expectations and they were not met. She loved the piano. She might, I believe, have played. She might have traveled the world like Henry Girard. I believe she thought she would. And yet she ended up living a life not so dissimilar from the one she left—standing on the outside, looking in. Or perhaps she was inside, looking out.

We must try twice as hard, she said. We must do our very best.

October 15, 1973

Dear Alex,

There are days I wish for catastrophe. Some natural disaster: a tornado, an earthquake, anything to bring the everyday to a halt. The boys howl. They throw their food; they destroy whatever is in reach. Lucas puts his hands into everything: He’s at that age where he needs to touch the entire city, hold it in his hands. He flings himself at the world as though daring himself to die, and there are times I think I will simply turn away. Close my eyes, leave them both to certain destruction.

I would like the world to stop for a moment, that’s all. For the din of the everyday to grind to a stop. I would like to speak into the emptiness of disaster. To speak my mind. To know someone—anyone—is listening.

IT couldn’t have been more than a week or two after I returned from Pasadena that Paul appeared in the doorway one night—drawn, no doubt, by my desk light, the sight of it at that hour unusual. I slipped the letter I’d been writing into a book and pretended not to notice him at first, casually unpinning my braid.

“Still up?”

I half-turned in the chair. “I haven’t been sleeping well.” I reached for my brush and started pulling it through my hair.

“Poor thing,” he said, his voice softer. “You’ve had a month, haven’t you.”

“I’ll be alright.”

“There are pills for that, you know. The sleeping part.”

“I’d rather not, thanks.”

I said it sharply but he only shrugged, rattling the ice in his glass. “Suit yourself.” He stood leaned up against the door frame, gleaming hair studiously mussed, that fine nose silhouetted by the hallway light. I thought, as I did whenever I saw him from across the room, that he was an exceptionally handsome man. A man you might spot on the street and smile at just because. “Poor Eloise,” he said finally. “Poor old girl. Shame we didn’t make a point of spending more time with her, in the end. I would have liked to have known her better. She had a way about her, didn’t she?”

“Panache.”

“What’s that?”

I shook my head. “I wish I had too. Known her better.”

He smiled his golden smile. “Family.”

“Tricky.”

“Speaking of.” He let out a sigh. “Bitsy’s gotten a bee in her bonnet about us coming out to the country house one of these weekends. The woman’s relentless. I know the boys love it out there, but, Christ, it’s a haul.” Another sigh. “Not to mention they’ve got me working like a dog on this new deal. Another late Saturday, I’m afraid. And there’s a good chance they’ll need me in on Sunday as well.” A pause. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped in pitch. “I haven’t been a very good husband lately, have I.”

I glanced at him quickly, but his face revealed nothing. “You’ve done alright,” I said carefully.

“
Alright.
” He clapped his hand to his heart.

I kept brushing, turning back to the mirror. “I meant to tell you … I ran into an old friend when I was back home. Alex? Alexandra. Carrington—well, Lowell these days. I’m sure I’ve mentioned her.”

“Mmm.” He frowned. “Can’t recall.”

“No?” My voice shook slightly and I jerked the brush through the ends of my hair. “God, this humidity.”

“Hang on,” he said, putting his drink down and crossing the room. “Let me give it a whirl. Come on, it’s only fair. Give me a chance to claw my way up out of
alright.
” He took the brush from my hand. I don’t know that he’d touched me in months by then, our only contact the occasional kiss dropped on my cheek on his way out the door for the benefit of the boys. “Go on.” He placed the brush lightly on top of my head and began to pull down.

“I invited her out, that’s all.” I sat very still. Of course the human body is built for affection: all those millions of nerve endings clustered up against the skin, a network of underground receptors waiting for someone’s hand to run down your arm. I must have been starved for it by then. Those nerves suddenly clanging. “Not that I imagine she’ll ever take me up on it. We’re not even particularly good friends anymore. Or we haven’t been for ages now, not since we were—
ow
.”

“Sorry,” he said absently. “Knot.”

“Anyway, I haven’t thought about her for years.” I began to wish I hadn’t said anything, though I’m sure I felt a certain pleasure at letting him know I was not without secrets of my own, that I had had a life before him, a past about which he after all knew very little. “We bumped into each other in the market, and she mentioned something about wanting to see the city. She has two little girls, twins. Matthew’s age.”

“You haven’t been in touch?”

“Not since I left Pasadena. Or—before that, I should say. We had a kind of misunderstanding.”

“Who was he?”

“What?”

“You went after the same man—admit it.” His voice sounded amused. “That’s the only kind of misunderstanding between girlfriends
I
know of that lasts this long.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I have to say, I rather like thinking of you with a crush,” he said happily. “There’s something charming about the whole thing. A certain—”

“That’s enough.”

“Alright,” he said, sounding hurt. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

I was silent a moment. “It’s a long story.”

“I happen to have all night.”

“I’m tired, and really, it—
Paul!
” I turned, and he dropped the brush.

“Done!” he said, holding up his hands. “I surrender. Wave the white flag.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and shook it at me. “Sorry—today was absolute hell. Should have known I couldn’t be trusted with a blunt instrument in my hand.” He picked up his drink and turned on his heel, heading for the door. “I’ll just leave you be.”

I stayed where I was, my scalp smarting. “You’re going to bed?”

“In a bit.”

“
Your
bed.”

He pivoted slowly. “Yes,” he said warily.

“Of course you are.”

“Rebecca—”

“Good night.”

“We don’t have to do this.”

“What?”

“What’s wrong?” He was looking at me strangely.

“What did you just say?”

“I asked if I’d see you at breakfast. What is it?” Now he looked concerned. “You’ve gone white as a sheet.”

“Nothing.” I tried to smile. “Yes, I’ll be up early.”

He stood there straddling the doorway in his easy way, one foot in and one foot out. He reminded me at times of the lion I’d taken Matthew to see one afternoon at the Bronx Zoo, a tawny majestic beast who sat blinking in the shade of an artificial cliff. There was something terribly depressing about the whole thing—the fake rocks peeling onto the asphalt, the way the glare of the afternoon sun reflected across the surface of the small pool, the attempt at trees. But the lion didn’t seem to care. He blinked his golden eyes as though nothing lay beyond his own regal head, those enormous paws crossed daintily in front of him. “Funny business, don’t you think?”

“What’s that?”

“You never mentioning her before. A friend as close as all that,” he said thoughtfully. “This Alex.”

I turned back to the mirror again. “I suppose she never came up.”

“She certainly didn’t.” He stood there a moment longer. I could see him watching me in the reflection, his expression—as it often was—bewildered, as though he had come home from work to find a stranger wandering through the rooms, folding blankets and feeding his children dinner, wiping their mouths clean. But then over the years we had become little more than that, really, two strangers who lived side by side and in the way of strangers continued to say nothing of what mattered. It must sound terrible to you, but at the time I believed my situation something closer to normal, one of those hard facts of adulthood we all grow, however unwillingly, to accept. The truth is that marriages involve all kinds of arrangements. You’d be surprised what people put up with.

Anyway, there was a part of me that was glad for the separation, the feeling of lines drawn through our lives, of lines within lines. It was the same part of me that had preferred to bury my nose in books all those years ago, the part that stood in Mr. Percy’s classroom and lost myself in the complicated mechanics of a frog’s digestive tract—the part that can still, to this day, simply drift, my mind slipping out of the present with the greatest of ease. It has always been in my nature to find ways of blocking things out, I mean, of losing myself in something other, a movie or a memory, surprised to recognize when I snap out of my reverie that the world waiting beyond the cover of the book or the door to the theater remains, of course, the strangest world of all.

* * *

I meant what I said to Paul: I would not have been surprised if I never heard from Alex again. But when the phone rang one afternoon a few weeks after I returned, I knew who it was before she said her name.

“Rebecca? Is that you?”

I sank down into the armchair in the living room. Through the window, the sky burned a clear, cloudless blue.
“
Hello, there.”

“If I’m calling at a bad time—”

“Not at all.” I cleared my throat. “I’m just catching up on a few things. Gladys took the boys to the park—the sun’s finally shining for a change.”

“Sounds divine,” she groaned. “It’s raining cats and dogs here. The twins aren’t even pretending to eat their lunch. Not that I blame them. I got it into my head to try stewed prunes.”

“Prunes,” I said stupidly. “What a good idea.”

“Don’t. Do yourself a favor and just don’t. No,” she said sharply. “Do
not
.”

“I’m sorry—”

“No, not you. Emily,
enough!
I swear, if I have to—” There was the faraway noise of a scuffle, a squeal. I heard Alex saying,
No, no, absolutely no
. Something clattered against the phone.

I waited. “I could call you back later, if that’s more convenient?”

“No, I’m here, I’m here. Sorry. They just lose it this time of day. The witching hour, for Christ’s sake. Me and my two little witches. They’ll only sit still if they’ve got something in their mouths. American. The sliced kind, in plastic?”

She seemed to be waiting. “Sorry?”

“Cheese. The boys. Do they like it? It’s all they’ll eat. I’m up to my eyeballs in it.”

“They’re very good about their vegetables, actually. They like carrots. Matthew loves peas.”

“Peas! Christ. You ought to be on a poster or something.”

“Well,” I said. “Thanks, I guess.”

There was a brief silence.

“Look, I’m calling for completely selfish reasons. Escape,” she said. “Mine.”

I surprised myself by laughing. “Is it that bad?”

“I need a vacation.” Her voice over the telephone was even deeper than I remembered, full of that old movie star’s huskiness. “Just a few days. If the invitation still stands?”

“You’re saying—” I stopped. “Here, you mean.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Not at all.” I cleared my throat. “We’d love to have you. We could set something up for the New Year? January looks more or less clear—”

“Actually,” she interrupted, “I was thinking sooner rather than later. I’m in a bit of a pickle, you see. It’s nothing. The tiniest thing.”

“Is everything alright?”

“Alright?” She repeated the word carefully, as though it were a word from an unfamiliar language. “Sure it is. Or it will be, anyway.” The telephone wire crackled loudly. “It’s just that I was thinking, you know, maybe end-of-next-week sooner. Is that too soon?”

I traced the outline of a lone cloud against the window with my finger, waiting until I closed the circle to answer. “Why not,” I said finally. “End of the next week sounds exactly right.”

* * *

The radiators, I remember, had gone haywire that afternoon. Heat hissed through the apartment, filling the rooms with a dry desert heat. I got into the shower after hanging up the phone and stood running cold water down my shoulders for what must have been the better part of an hour. When I finally stepped out, wrapping myself up in my bathrobe, I went into the guest bedroom and pushed one of the tall windows open, the air outside wonderfully cool. I took a cigarette from a pack tucked into the bureau full of Paul’s things and lit it, sitting against the window ledge, my feet propped up against a chair. Oh, they knew just about everything they do now about smoking back then, and I was against it as a rule, but I didn’t see the harm in one every now and again. I’d come to love the ritual of it—the weight of the silver lighter in my hand, the end of the cigarette tapped against the sill, the crackle of the paper burning as I inhaled. Besides, there was the odd pleasure of going through Paul’s drawers, opening the half-full packs—all different brands, I noticed, an assortment of Dunhills and Lucky Strikes
,
skinny black Gauloises.