Shadow Traffic (9 page)

Ultimately, after much agonizing, I decided to have an abortion, which happened a few days ago. I guess I'm not much of a Catholic after all. I'm telling you this without expecting or wanting any kind of reply simply because I think people ought to know that they can create life when they do (in your case it was apparently quite easy), and ought to know when they're involved, albeit indirectly, in decisions involving what happens to that life. Anyway, I won't bother you again. I've handled things very badly, although you did trick me along the way. Still, I hope one day you do find someone you can love and respect enough to marry and start a family of your own with. My church says, “Children
are the meaning of life.” T. S. Eliot says, “We had the experience but missed the meaning.”

Paulette

“She's lying, don't fall for it,” said Phil, who'd originally advised me not to go to London.

“How do you know that?” I said, waving the letter in my hand.

“All right, I don't know it, but she probably never got pregnant, and anyway you'll never know one way or the other. It sounds like a scam to me to guilt some money out of you.”

“She didn't ask for any money. She's the most honest woman I've ever known.”

“Then why would she write you? It might make some sense to write when she was pregnant and didn't know what to do. Why not write you then? By the way, if she had, what would you have done?”

“I don't know.”

“OK. But since she says she went ahead and got the abortion on her own, her only motive could be to hurt you, which she's already done, or to eventually get some money out of you.”

I listened, I nodded, but in the end I wrote Paulette a shortish letter expressing my sympathy and regret, and including a check for two hundred dollars, which I told her I'd heard from asking around should cover the operation.

A week or so later she returned my check, torn in half without comment. I still remember how I stared at it, stunned by my clear sense of the person it now revealed, a person I'd chosen to let go without knowing why, other than I judged myself incapable of handling the situation. Yes, I could have acted very differently. I had a job and some money and no dependents. I could have stayed longer, then offered to support her and live together in the States.

When you're young, you think most of what you want for yourself will eventually happen, as if some secret cosmic force is guiding you toward it. It's only much later that you discover you're not going to win the Nobel Prize, or become a multimillionaire, or live for the rest of time with the love of your life. I was young enough to believe in the possibility of that ultimately benign universe, but I was also an orphan who'd just lost his father, and I already wasn't so sure about having any guarantees. I only knew I hated the way things had turned out with Paulette. What force made me lie to her and walk away from someone I really wanted?

I began writing her, but my letters were never answered. The next thing I tried was the telephone. Fortunately, there was no caller ID then, and after a few days I was finally able to get her on the phone.

“It's me, Gerry,” I finally said.

There was a silence, which I quickly tried to fill by asking if she'd gotten my recent letters.

“I did get them,” she said tersely. “I got them but I don't know why you sent them.”

“I was hoping you'd forgive me, and would let me see you again. I think about you all the time. I …”

“Please don't say that.”

“I know I made a terrible mistake,” I said soberly.

“Kind of a revealing one, wouldn't you say?”

“I panicked, I admit, but this had never happened to me before.”

“You never took advantage of a girl before?”

“No, I meant I never loved one before. But it was just one mistake.”

“It may have been one mistake, but it had multiple consequences, so it really was probably more than one mistake.”

“What do you mean?” I blurted.

“You want me to rattle them all off? OK. You lied to me about living here. You lied about loving me. You deserted me in my hour of need, and as a result
I
panicked and did the last thing in the world I ever wanted to do, which has scarred me for the rest of my life. Does that answer your question sufficiently?”

“It's scarred me, too. I did lie about living in London and I did panic about calling you that day because I didn't want you to find out that I couldn't stay in London, but I didn't lie about loving you.” Then I told her she was the only person in the world I did love or would ever want to have a child with, realizing after I said it that it was true.

“It's too late, Gerry. It's much too late.”

“It doesn't have to be,” I protested.

“I'm sorry. I've made mistakes in this, too. Many mistakes. I forgive you for yours and I wish you well, but please respect what I need and don't call me again. Goodbye, Gerry,” she said in a tone just ambiguous enough to allow me to rationalize calling her again. In fact, I called her five more times in the next month. In each case I drank first, the last time quite a bit. Her response was always the same, except she ended the last call more quickly than she had the others, and yet enough of her normal self emerged in each conversation to make me yearn for her and to realize more acutely each time the immensity of my mistake.

There was only one thing left to do: go to London (without telling her) and propose to her. It would be difficult to arrange at my job and might get me fired, but I didn't hesitate. I didn't even tell Phil about it, knowing what he'd say anyway.

I remember that I didn't say a word to anyone during the
flight and barely looked out the window. I didn't read or watch either of the in-flight movies. I simply thought or, more accurately, let my mind run where it would. I did take three short naps. The first nap was dreamless, but in the next one I dreamed about making love to Paulette in my St. Louis apartment. She was trying to get pregnant and in the dream we somehow knew she had. That dream seemed straightforward enough to me, but it was followed by one during my last nap that was much more mysterious, in which I dreamed I was playing hide-and-seek with my father. It began in the country, or at least on land more rustic than the neighborhood I grew up in near St. Louis. We were laughing as I ran after him, but soon he was out of sight. I was running by myself, occasionally calling out his name, but now in a different setting, where it was twilight by a lake. I was feeling anxious as I turned a corner and saw a cave. Still, I ran into it calling his name. The cave seemed to expand as I ran through it, as if it were made of elastic. I ducked my head, crossed another dark passageway then saw him suddenly, in an illuminated corner. He was smiling as I ran to him. When we hugged, I seemed to disappear into him. He was left standing alone, yet I was happy to have merged with him.

I woke up amazed by my dream. In ten minutes we'd be landing at Heathrow. I remember I spent almost no time at all in my hotel, stopping only to brush or wash a few key places. Then I was out in the London dusk, where it was chilly and purplish gray. I had only her face in my mind as I set off toward her apartment. I remember passing by the street where we first met, then past the pub where we went shortly after meeting, and then, like a stop on a tour, the Japanese restaurant where I took her to dinner on Queensway Road. I'd retraced in my mind the route we took so many times (even before I made the decision to go back
to London) that I wasn't surprised that I only made one minor mistake before finding her place.

Except that it wasn't her place. She didn't answer her buzzer, which I tried intermittently for ten minutes or so. Finally someone asked me who I wished to see? It was a clear-eyed, dowdily dressed woman of fifty who identified herself as the building's manager.

“Paulette,” I said. “I came to see Paulette.”

“She moved out, I'm afraid.”

“What?”

“Yes, she cleared out two weeks ago.”

I looked at the buzzer and saw the name card had been replaced by that of a man (a man whose face I still sketchily recall, as I hung around after the landlady left, eventually knocked on the door, and looked into his uncomprehending eyes when he answered that he didn't know anyone named Paulette).

“Do you know where? Did she leave any forwarding address?” I asked the landlady.

She shook her head like a metronome. “I remember she said she was leaving London. I think she said she was going out of the country or maybe she said to the country. I really couldn't say. Out of London for sure, with no forwarding address, I'm afraid.”

Of course I tried the operator, but there was no listing for her in London or in a number of other towns I tried. It was years before the Internet, when you couldn't track people down and you had to rely instead on your memory and its infinite limitations.

It was, of course, obvious that she didn't want to see or hear from me again. There was no ambiguity now. Everything she said and did was honest and sincere. That was the shocking
beauty of it. I paid a lot of extra money to leave London the next day.

The old men in the pool are making noises—new, disturbingly high-pitched noises, like a cross between a violin and the whirring of mosquitoes. Maybe it's because it's raining now, and one can even hear some distant rumblings of thunder. In any case I start moving toward the hot tub, where Grandfather Pool has staked out his temporary home. Sitting there in the steamy part of the pool, his face seems slightly out of focus, as if I'm seeing it underwater. But I move toward it nonetheless, preferring the threat of his conversation to the reality of those weird, high-pitched noises from the old men in the kids' pool.

There are certain people you never recover completely from losing, and Paulette was one of mine. My father, of course, was another. Or maybe it's life itself we spend all our time trying to adapt to or recover from. And yet we do recover, partially, at least, as most of us choose to go on. Eventually I laughed again. I made progress in my work that brought me some satisfaction. I aged reasonably well. In time I went on to new women, a couple of whom even lived with me for a year or so. But it's also true I never got married or had a child, though these last few years I often find myself wishing I had. Those of us who can't love adults in a lasting way often turn toward children for their solace, and I wish now that I had acted on this tardy knowledge earlier. I think that even my father felt something like that in his decision to have a child, although I can't be sure.

I've entered the tub now where men shut their eyes to forget their lives for a while. I'm sitting opposite Grandfather Pool,
wondering if he still remembers my father, when he used to come here with me. In the dreamlike light of the pool, whose windows seem to turn the sunlight gray, I can almost see my father's face in his. I wouldn't mind if he talked now, but Grandfather Pool is being as quiet as an angel. Perhaps there'll be no old-man talk today, after all, though I wouldn't really mind if there were. No, I really wouldn't mind that at all.

Although he was now taking Memo on a regular basis it was sometimes hard to remember the moment when he'd decided to become a member. He did remember how he'd first learned about it. It was through an ad in a literary quarterly, of all places, called
The Galaxy Review
. “Is Your Memory a Fiction?” the headline of the ad said, which both amused and intrigued him, as if memory were somehow a literary concept. He also remembered much more clearly, of course, since he'd been taking Memo, being late for the first meeting and taking a cab to get there, as he would again tonight. The organization's headquarters were on the third floor of a handsome brownstone on Beekman Place, near the East River. He couldn't help but be impressed by the spacious building the first time he saw it, but he was also disconcerted by the slightly disapproving stares of the initiates as he hunted for a seat.

“Excuse me, Sir,” said Dr. Rossi, from the podium, a tall, extraordinarily pale-skinned man. “Are you Andrew Zorn?”

“Yes, I am. I'm sorry I'm late.”

“Please sit down, Mr. Zorn. We're about to embark on a great
adventure and there isn't a moment to lose.” Dr. Rossi had waited a moment then extended his arms in his black suit like the wings of a giant black bird. “Welcome co-pioneers,” he'd said, addressing the audience of about fifty. “Project Memo is indeed a great adventure as well as a unique one. It's an adventure that's grounded in firm science, but also promises to take us closer to the metaphysical center of things than man may ever have been before. In exchange for this adventure, this great gift, we ask only three things of you. The first is complete confidentiality, of course, which means not only absolutely no discussion about the project with anyone outside this room but also no recording or note taking. Once you fully experience Memo, taking notes will be a superfluous activity anyway. Second, we ask that you be punctual. We're always here on time, so you should be too. Punctuality is a golden rule of the organization. (Andrew remembered with great clarity nodding to reemphasize his regret for his tardiness.) Third, if you ever feel any anxiety or doubt about what happens here we ask that you come to us first to discuss it. In other words, trust us in all things regarding the organization. Remember, we're the only experts in this field, and we also have the assistance of first rate doctors and lawyers so we know how to help and protect you,” he added with a slight smile.