The First Warm Evening of the Year (18 page)

Marian wanted to know if it felt like a jolt. A shock to the system? Buddy thought those were strong words for it, but there was a distinct moment of adjustment, or readjustment. She said sometimes she liked it when Buddy wasn't home when she came back, she liked coming back to an empty house. For a slow reentry. And would he prefer that she not be home?

Not ever. He said he wanted Marian to be there always; but after that night, whenever they took time off from each other, they called from the road on their way back home.

O
n the fourth day when Buddy hadn't phoned, Marian called Charlie. They drove up to the cabin early that same morning.

Sixteen

M
arian stood in front of the office window. Her head was down, the tip of her chin touched the top of her collar. She raised her eyes toward the photograph of Buddy and her leaning against a backhoe and laughing.

“Sometime I'll tell what we thought was so funny,” she said, in a way that made me look forward to that time.

She was still looking at the photograph while she said, “I'm not sure how I feel about your going up to his cabin. Not that I have any hold on the place, but I would have liked if you'd asked me, or if Walt and Ellie had. Or told me.”

“If I'd told you, what would you have said?”

“I don't know. What did you expect to find?”

“I just wanted to see the place for myself.”

Marian came around to the front of her desk. I'd been sitting in that uncomfortable wooden chair since I'd arrived, and only now did I get up. I was close enough to take her in my arms, which I was finding difficult not to do, and tell her that I understood what it meant to be married to Buddy.

Marian said, “And now if you don't mind . . .”

“Let's get away from here,” I told her. “Find some place where no one will recognize us. I'll buy you lunch, and we'll speak of nothing of any relevance.”

“Aren't you bored with me by now?” She was smiling when she said this.

We took Marian's car and drove away from town, on one of the county roads I was now familiar with.

We stopped at a store that sold prepared food. I bought a couple of sandwiches, two small bags of potato chips, and sodas. Marian drove another few miles until we came to a dirt road and followed it to a narrow wooden bridge by a waterfall. She stopped the car, lowered the windows, and cut the engine; although there was a cool breeze blowing, we kept the windows down so we could hear the sound of water rushing against the rocks.

I watched Marian as she looked out the car window.

I said, “Every time I'm with you you appear different to me. Not like you're a different person, or because of the clothes you're wearing or anything like that. It's looking into your face and recognizing your different expressions. I won't say I
understand
them, but I know them, and the changes in your voice when you speak. The way you sit straight up when you're unhappy with what we're talking about, sit low when there's more that you want to say.”

“I don't like when you say things like that.” She shook her head. “I
do
like it. And I have no idea what you think you're doing, and if you told me, I wouldn't believe you.” She turned to me. “Why won't you go away, please.” A moment later she said, “Only I'd probably miss you if you did, and if you came back, I'd only want you to go away again. So please don't say things like that to me.”

“So much for irrelevance.”

“You didn't really expect that, did you? Anyway, I wanted to show you this place. Buddy and I used to come here to get away from everything. This is where we convinced ourselves that”—she let out a soft breath—“that we could have whatever we wanted. Down there, sitting on those stones.” She looked over at me and said, “God, but we took our marriage seriously.
Ourselves
.
So
seriously. Very intense. Very high maintenance. That's what we wanted to get away from, really. We were too young to state it like that. But that's what it was about.”

“When you care about something and someone,” I said, “the way you two did—”

“It was work.
We
were hard work, and incredibly self-involved. I mean the both of us, as a couple. I was beginning to understand that, our last year together, and my opinion hasn't changed. It was the nature of our marriage. Maybe we'd have grown out of it, I don't know.” She turned to me. “I don't miss that part of it. I should say, I've
stopped
missing it. With all the other things I've felt since Buddy died and all the things I've missed, I've also felt released from the intensity. His intensity. Maybe that's why I'm—I'm afraid if we got involved, you and I, it would be the same thing. And I really don't know if I want to do that again.”

The sun was shining directly into our eyes, so we tilted the seats back, our faces parallel to each other, as though we were lying together on a couch, or in bed.

“When you described your relationship with your girlfriend, remember? After you left, I thought about how easy you made it sound. How light and easy it was for the both of you. I envied that. I wanted that. To skim across the emotional surface without all that monitoring, without the fear, I suppose it's fear, that you're cheating on the depth of it. Not feeling it deeply enough.”

“Also the fear of losing the person you love.”

“You made it sound very inviting. Inviting,” she said, “and fun.”

“That wasn't my intention.”

“You can't help it. It's what you do for a living, isn't it. Making things sound inviting and fun.”

I thought she was making a joke.

“I'm quite serious,” she said. “You make it sound very appealing. I wouldn't mind a relationship like that.”

“You already have one.”

“Then why isn't it fun?” Marian rested her hand on top of mine. “Do you miss her? Do you miss your girlfriend?”

I said I didn't.

“Didn't it make you sad? To break up with her?”

“I didn't feel anything. It was like it never happened. After three years and I don't think either of us felt much remorse. But I was terrified and exhilarated, and I felt like I was upside down. What I'd done was contrary to most everything I've ever done leading up to that day, and yet it felt right. Incontrovertible. And, at the same time, I had no clue as to what was going to happen to me or what I expected to happen. All I thought was: What the hell have you done? And all I felt was liberated.”

Our heads were close enough for me to smell Marian's hair, feel the warmth of her body.

“I was on my way to my apartment to tell my brother, but I never got the chance. Instead, I get to tell you, which only seems right, since my breaking up with Rita had little to do with her, and everything to do with you.”

“Don't.”

“After I left Shady Grove,” I said, “the
first
time, all the things that had been important to me felt superficial and unsatisfying. I knew what was lacking—what
I
lacked. It wasn't a
relationship
I was leaving when Rita and I broke up. There was no relationship to leave. We were just two people who happened to get along a little more than just well enough, and spent time together with absolutely nothing at risk, nothing to regret. In the end, there was no heartbreak. It wasn't even Rita who I'd broken up with. You might say I'd broken up with the way I was going about my life and all the things that had held my little world together. I could no longer tolerate what
you
say you find so appealing.”

She sat up, took our sandwiches out of the bag, and told me to stop talking and eat.

We ate in the car, and listened to the rush of water, and by the time we finished, the inside of the car was hot from the sun and our bodies. Marian opened the door, brushed stray bread crumbs off her lap, stepped outside, and walked over to the side of the bridge, She stood with her back against the railing and called to me: “It's really nice over here.” I was already out of the car.

“We both knew that we were attracted to each other that first time,” I told her. “And we both knew how inconvenient that was. But I liked the idea of being attracted to you. Now it's more than just the idea.”

“And it's still inconvenient,” she said.

“It's the feeling that matters.”

“There's a lot about me you wouldn't like.”

“That's not going to work. Saying things to try and keep me back on my heels.”

“So what?”

I enjoyed hearing the sound of resignation in her voice, and I laughed, not only because of that, but because all the things we'd ever started out talking about always led back to this conversation and it never seemed inappropriate; just as nothing else between us ever seemed inappropriate. I turned to look at her. I just wanted to see her standing next me.

She unbuttoned her coat and let it fall open.

“You must have felt
some
thing for her,” she said. “For Rita.”

“Or else my telling you it's the feeling that matters can't be trusted?”

“I'm just curious.”

“I liked Rita very much, but there wasn't any passion. We never argued, never disagreed, not about anything important. In fact, there was nothing of any real importance to anything. Don't you think that's odd?”

“Unsatisfying, really.”

“It made me angry. That's mostly what I was feeling after I walked away from her. Not angry at Rita, definitely not Rita. I
liked
Rita. But I was angry at those three years. It was a waste of time.”

“Only if there was something else you thought you should have been doing.”

“Then it was even more of a waste of time because I never gave it that much thought.”

“Then you were in the right relationship. For that time.”

“Just like you and Eliot.” I stood close to her and spoke in my most professional voice, the one that made things sound so damned inviting: “Skimming the emotional surface is fun only if you both want the same thing.”

“Ahh, the perfect world,” she said. “And you're welcome to it.”

Marian might not have been able to keep me on my heels, but she did have the ability to make me have a clearer read on what she was telling me. At that moment I felt, and not for the first time with her, that slight shifts were taking place between us, between what I thought was happening and what she was going to tell me was happening.

“I wouldn't mind being sad about something besides Laura and Buddy,” she said, and gave the waterfall a passing glance. “And now I have to get back to work.” She did not sound enthusiastic. “But I want to see you again before you leave town.”

M
arian drove us back to the nursery. Cars crowded the parking lot, all the place could tolerate; customers were scurrying past the large wooden tables of perennials and annuals; some were pulling little wagons loaded with pots and soil; others walked in slow, contained strides, as though they were in a botanical garden on this early afternoon. A couple of men were in serious discussion with one of Marian's people as they approached the arbor. Two women wearing red bandannas were struggling with a spruce that was too big for them. The constant and busy hum of locomotion was everywhere. While a few more cars pulled in and jockeyed for space, I couldn't help but think of the awakening of bees from dormant hives and butterflies from cocoons, early and eager to join the season.

We walked to my car at the front of the lot. Marian put her hands in her pockets and kicked at the gravel with the tip of her shoe.

She said, “Listen, Geoffrey: I love living in that house. I love seeing photographs of Buddy on the walls and the gardens we built. I love that it reminds me of him, who he was and how he thought. His confidence, his arrogance. For a long time I thought it was his arrogance that killed him, and mine that allowed it. I wish I could have sat out there with him and waited for the fish to bite and heard the poetry of randomness. Most of all, I wish I hadn't been so stubborn about going up to the damn place.” She took a breath and let out a shallow sigh. “Now I'm in a relationship with someone who is so goddamned reliable and predictable that I can look at my watch and tell you where he is and where he'll be two hours from now and the day after tomorrow. I like that. No surprises. Nothing unexpected. This is what I want. Wanted.
Want
. I've had enough of all that other stuff. I know a little about passion, and you aren't missing anything.” She tilted her head and frowned at me. “And that's so much B.S., how can you stand it?” She straightened up and walked away. “I'll call you,” she said over her shoulder. “We'll talk. Okay?” A throwaway line, cuing her exit.

T
he following afternoon, I was sitting outside on Laura's front steps wondering how long ago it had been since I'd broken up with Rita. How long since I'd come to Shady Grove, or read a newspaper, or heard any news about the world.

Time had lost its application, and that was all right with me. I enjoyed this lack of context, and might have continued enjoying it for the rest of the afternoon, except for Eliot walking up the sidewalk, baseball cap on his head, a button-down oxford blue shirt open at the collar, hands in his pockets. He was smiling at me, taking a moment before he approached the house.

I said hello and smiled back at him.

He said he was just taking a break from work, and thought he'd stop by and say hello to Simon. When I told him Simon had gone back to New York, Eliot said, “Oh,” his voice soft and hollow. He sat on the bottom step, took off his cap, and scratched the top of his head. He didn't say anything, but I recognized the look on his face; it was the same one I'd been seeing every time we met, on the street after I first got to town when he came here the other day and stood on this same porch, an umbrella in his hand. I might have been willing to assure him, again, that I'd be gone in another day, and didn't plan on coming back, if I hadn't been listening for Marian's phone call, wanting her to give me a reason not to go. I turned my head to look into the house, when I turned back, I was thinking, what else can I say, what can I tell him that's more to the point than words of assurance? Only, I didn't want to tell Eliot anything.

Eliot was staring behind my head like one of those dolls made of balsa wood and rice paper—the cut of his clothes, the angle of his body. If I'd tapped his shoulder he'd have crumbled backward, if a wind came up he'd have blown away. I was thinking that the right words from me, or the wrong ones, and he would break apart and scatter, but I was protecting him, monitoring what I said whenever I was with him, never unaware that I was a threat to him and his happiness. And I hesitated before I spoke, girding myself, taking a slow ten count to consider what I was going to say, hoping that Eliot would hear it for what it was, for what I wanted it to be.