Man in the Dark (18 page)

A little.

I wasn’t planning to give you any details. Just the general drift.

That’s okay. It’s my fault. I’ve turned this into Truth Night at Castle Despair, and now that we’ve started, we might as well go all the way.

Onward, then?

Yes, keep telling the story.

So I had my good time, which wasn’t a good time at all, but after fifteen years of sleeping with the same woman I found it fascinating to touch another body, to feel flesh that was different from the flesh I knew. That was the discovery of that night. The novelty of being with another woman.

Did you feel guilty?

No. I considered it an experiment. A lesson learned, so to speak.

So my theory is right. If Grandma had been home in New York, you never would have paid that girl to sleep with you.

In that particular case, yes. But there was more to our downfall than infidelity, more to it than Sonia’s absences. I’ve thought about this for years, and the only half-reasonable explanation I’ve ever come up with is that there’s something wrong with me, a flaw in the mechanism, a damaged part gumming up the works. I’m not talking about moral weakness. I’m talking about my mind, my mental makeup. I’m somewhat better now, I think, the problem seemed to diminish as I grew older, but back then, at thirty-five, thirty-eight, forty, I walked around with a feeling that my life had never truly belonged to me, that I had never truly inhabited myself, that I had never been real. And because I wasn’t real, I didn’t understand the effect I had on others, the damage I could cause, the hurt I could inflict on the people who loved me. Sonia was my ground, my one solid connection to the world. Being with her made me better than I actually was—healthier, stronger, saner—and because we started living together when we were so young, the flaw was masked for all those years, and I assumed I was just like everyone else. But I wasn’t. The moment I began to wander away from her, the bandage dropped off my wound, and then the bleeding wouldn’t stop. I went after other women because I felt I’d missed out on something and had to make up for lost time. I’m talking about sex now, nothing but sex, but you can’t run around and act the way I did and expect your marriage to hold together. I deceived myself into thinking it would.

Don’t hate yourself so much, Grandpa. She took you back, remember?

I know . . . but all those wasted years. It makes me sick to think about them. My dumb-ass flings and dalliances. What did they add up to? A few cheap thrills, nothing of any importance—but there’s no question that they laid the groundwork for what happened next.

Oona McNally.

Sonia was so trusting, and I was so discreet, our life went on together without any crucial disturbances. She didn’t know, and I didn’t tell, and not for one second did I ever think of leaving her. Then, in nineteen seventy-four, I wrote a favorable review of a first novel by a young American author.
Anticipation
, by the aforementioned O.M. It was a startling book, I felt, highly original and written with great command, a strong, promising debut. I didn’t know anything about the writer—only that she was twenty-six years old and lived in New York. I read the book in galleys, and since galleys didn’t have author photos on them in the seventies, I didn’t even know what she looked like. About four months later, I went to a poetry reading at the Gotham Book Mart (without Sonia, who was at home with Miriam), and when the reading was over and we all started walking down the stairs, someone grabbed me by the arm. Oona McNally. She wanted to thank me for the nice review I’d given her novel. That was the extent of it, but I was so impressed by her looks—tall and lithe, an exquisite face, the second coming of Virginia Blaine—that I asked her out for a drink. How many times had I betrayed Sonia by then? Three or four one-night stands, and one mini-affair that lasted roughly two weeks. Not such a gruesome catalogue when compared to some men, but enough to have taught me that I was prepared to seize opportunities whenever they presented themselves. But this girl was different. You didn’t sleep with Oona McNally and say good-bye to her the next morning—you fell in love with her, you wanted her to be part of your life. I won’t bore you with the tawdry incidentals. The clandestine dinners, the long talks in out-of-the-way bars, the slow mutual seduction. She didn’t jump into my arms immediately. I had to go after her, win her confidence, persuade her that it was possible for a man to be in love with two women at the same time. I still had no intention of leaving Sonia, you understand. I wanted both of them. My wife of seventeen years, my comrade, my innermost heart, the mother of my only child—and this ferocious young woman with the burning intelligence, this new erotic charm, a woman I could finally share my work with and talk to about books and ideas. I began to resemble a character in a nineteenth-century novel: solid marriage in one box, lively mistress in another box, and I, the master magician, standing between them, with the skill and cunning never to open both boxes at the same time. For several months I managed to make it work, and I was no longer a mere magician, I was an aerialist as well, prancing along my high wire, shuttling between ecstasy and anguish every day, growing more and more certain that I would never fall.

And then?

December nineteen seventy-four, two days after Christmas.

You fell.

I fell. Sonia did a Schubert recital at the Ninety-second Street Y that night, and when she came home she told me she knew.

How did she find out?

She wouldn’t say. But all her facts were correct, and I saw no point in denying them. The thing I remember best about that conversation was how composed she was—at least until the end, when she stopped talking. She didn’t cry or shout, she didn’t carry on, she didn’t punch me or throw things across the room. You have to choose, she said. I’m willing to forgive you, but you have to go to that girl right now and break it off. I don’t know what will happen to us, I don’t know if we’ll ever be the same again. Right now, I feel as if you’ve stabbed me in the chest and ripped out my heart. You’ve killed me, August. You’re looking at a dead woman, and the only reason I’m going to pretend to be alive is because Miriam needs her mother. I’ve always loved you, I’ve always thought you were a man with a great soul, but it turns out that you’re just another lying shit. How could you have done it, August? . . . Her voice broke then, and she put her face in her hands and started crying. I sat down beside her on the sofa and put my arm around her shoulder, but she pushed me away. Don’t touch me, she said. Don’t come near me until you’ve talked to that girl. If you don’t come back tonight, don’t bother to come back at all—not ever.

Did you come back?

I’m afraid not.

This is getting rather grim, isn’t it?

I’ll stop if you want me to. We could always talk about something else.

No, keep going. But let’s skip ahead, all right? You don’t have to tell me about your marriage to Oona. I know you loved her, I know you had a stormy time of it, and I know she left you for that German painter. Klaus Something.

Bremen.

Klaus Bremen. I know how hard it was for you, I know you went through a really bad period.

The alcohol period. Primarily scotch, single-malt scotch.

And you don’t have to talk about your troubles with my mother. She’s already told me about them. They’re finished, and there’s no reason to go over them again, is there?

If you say so.

The only thing I want to hear about is how you and Grandma got back together.

This is all about her, isn’t it?

It has to be. Because she’s the one who isn’t here anymore.

Nine years apart. But I never turned against her. Regret and remorse, self-contempt, the corrosive poison of uncertainty, those were the things that undermined my years with Oona. Sonia was too much a part of me, and even after the divorce, she was still there, still talking to me in my head—the ever-present absent one, as I sometimes call her now. We were in contact, of course, we had to be because of Miriam, the logistics of shared custody, the weekend arrangements, the summer holidays, the high school and college events, and as we slowly adjusted to our new circumstances, I felt her anger against me turn to a kind of pity. Poor August, the champion of fools. She had men. That goes without saying,
n’est-ce pas
? She was only forty when I walked out on her, still radiant, still the same shining girl she’d always been, and one of her entanglements became quite serious, I think, although your mother probably knows more about it than I do. When Oona waltzed off with her German painter, I was shattered. Your tactful reference to
a bad period
doesn’t begin to describe how bad it was. I’m not going to delve into those days now, I promise, but even then, at a time when I was absolutely alone, it never occurred to me to reach out to Sonia. That was nineteen eighty-one. In nineteen eighty-two, a couple of months before your parents’ wedding, she wrote me a letter. Not about us, but about your mother, worried that Miriam was too young to be rushing into marriage, that she was about to make the same mistake we did in our early twenties. Very prescient, of course, but your grandmother always had a nose for such things. I wrote back and said she was probably right, but even if she was right, there was nothing we could do about it. You can’t meddle with other people’s feelings, least of all your own child’s, and the truth is that kids learn nothing from their parents’ mistakes. We have to leave them alone and let them thrash out into the world to make their own mistakes. That was my answer, and then I concluded the letter with a rather trite remark: The only thing we can do is hope for the best. On the day of the wedding, Sonia walked up to me and said: I’m hoping for the best. If I had to pinpoint the moment when our reconciliation began, I would choose that one, the moment when your grandmother said those words to me. It was an important day for both of us—our daughter’s wedding—and there was a lot of emotion in the air—happiness, anxiety, nostalgia, a whole range of feeling—and neither one of us was in a mood for bearing grudges. I was still a wreck at that point, by no means fully recovered from the Oona debacle, but Sonia was going through a hard time as well. She’d retired from singing earlier that year, and as I later found out from your mother (Sonia never shared any secrets with me about her private life), she had recently parted ways with a man. So, on top of everything else, we were both at a low ebb that day, and seeing each other somehow had a consoling effect. Two veterans who’d fought in the same war, watching their child march off to a new war of her own. We danced together, we talked about the old days, and for a few moments we even held hands. Then the party was over, and everyone went home, but I remember thinking when I was back in New York that being with her that day was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time. I never made a conscious decision about it, but one morning about a month later, I woke up and realized that I wanted to see her again. No, more than that. I wanted to win her back. I knew my chances were probably nil, but I also knew that I had to give it a try. So I called.

Just like that? You just picked up the phone and called?

Not without trepidation. Not without a lump in my throat and a knot in my stomach. It was an exact reprise of the first time I’d called her—twenty-seven years before. I was twenty again, a jittery, lovesick juvenile plucking up his courage to call his dream girl and ask her out on a date. I must have stared at the phone for ten minutes, but when I dialed the number at last, Sonia wasn’t in. The answering machine clicked on, and I was so rattled by the sound of her voice that I hung up. Relax, I said to myself, you’re behaving like an idiot, so I dialed the number again and left a message. Nothing elaborate. Just that I wanted to talk to her about something, that I hoped she was well, and that I would be in all day.

Did she call back—or did you have to try again?

She called. But that didn’t prove anything. She had no idea what I wanted to talk about. For all she knew, it might have been about Miriam—or some trivial, practical matter. In any case, her voice sounded calm, a little reserved, but with no edge to it. I told her that I’d been thinking about her and wanted to know how she was. Hanging in there, she said, or words to that effect. It was good to see you at the wedding, I said. Yes, she answered, it was a remarkable day, she’d had a wonderful time. Back and forth we went, a bit tentatively on both sides, polite and cautious, not daring to say much of anything. Then I popped the question: would she have dinner with me one night that week.
Dinner?
As she repeated the word, I could hear the disbelief in her voice. There was a long pause after that, and then she said she wasn’t sure, she’d have to think it over. I didn’t insist. The important thing was not to come on too strong. I knew her too well, and if I started to push, the odds were that she’d start pushing back. That’s how we left it. I told her to take care of herself and said good-bye.

Not such a promising start.

No. But it could have been worse. She hadn’t turned down the invitation, she just didn’t know if she should accept it or not. Half an hour later, the phone rang again. Of course I’ll have dinner with you, Sonia said. She apologized for having hesitated, but I’d caught her with her guard down, and she’d been entirely flustered. So we made our dinner date, and that was the beginning of a long and delicate dance, a minuet of desire, fear, and surrender that went on for more than eighteen months. It took that much time before we started living together, but even though we made it through another twenty-one years, Sonia refused to marry me again. I don’t know if you were aware of that. Your grandmother and I lived in sin until the day she died. Marriage would have jinxed us, she said. We’d tried it once, and look what happened to us, so why not take another approach? After struggling so hard to get her back, I was happy to abide by her rules. I proposed to her every year on her birthday, but those declarations were no more than encrypted messages, a sign that she could trust me again, that she could go on trusting me for the duration. There was so much I never understood about her, so much she didn’t understand about herself. That second courtship was a tough business, a man wooing his ex-wife, and the ex-wife playing hard to get, not giving an inch, not knowing what she wanted, going back and forth between temptation and revulsion until she finally gave in. It took half a year before we wound up in bed. The first time we made love, she laughed when it was over, collapsing into one of those crazy giggling jags of hers that went on so long I began to grow frightened. The second time we made love, she cried, sobbing into the pillow for more than an hour. So many things had changed for her. Her voice had lost the indefinable quality that had made it her voice, that fragile, crystalline ache of unbridled feeling, the hidden god who had spoken through her—all that was gone now, and she knew it, but giving up her career had been a difficult blow, and she was still coming to terms with it. She taught now, giving private singing lessons in her apartment, and there were many days when she had no interest in seeing me. Other days, she would call in a fit of desperation: Come now, I have to see you now. We were lovers again, probably closer to each other than we’d ever been the first time around, but she wanted to keep our lives separate. I wanted more, but she wouldn’t give in. That was the line she wouldn’t cross and then, after a year and a half, something happened, and it all suddenly changed.