The First Warm Evening of the Year (24 page)

As soon as I walked into the house, Walter shook my hand and squeezed my shoulder, said a robust hello, let out a quick laugh, held onto my hand a moment longer, and led me to the enclosed porch. Marian was already there, sitting in one of the soft chairs.

Eleanor came toward me and we hugged.

“Marian's told us,” she said, “at least a little bit. But Walter and I want to know everything.” She and Walter sat next to each other on the sofa, and even before Marian or I said another word, they were leaning toward us—it seemed like the entire room was leaning toward us.

“We're just going away.” Marian's face was flushed.

“Just like that?” Walter asked.

Eleanor had to ask a second time before Marian began to tell the tale of our past few days.

It was obvious that Walter and Eleanor were enjoying the story, the way they interrupted every few sentences with a rush of questions, and even interrupted each other. If I hadn't been so charmed by their exuberance I might have been alert to the tone in Marian's voice, the absence of enthusiasm when she said, “I mean, don't you think your excitement is a little over the top?” and the tension.

“Anything
but
,” Walter said.

Marian started to stand, stopped, and sat down again.

“If nothing else,” she said, “I think this is disrespectful.”

“To what?” Eleanor asked. “And to whom?”

“She's talking about Buddy,” I answered.

“I should say not,” Walter said.

“It feels a little like dancing on his grave.” Now Marian did get up and walk away from us. “We're going away for a few weeks,” she said, looking only at me. “It's not like we're . . .”

“Why not act like you're . . . ?” Eleanor said.

“I haven't even had sufficient time to absorb leaving Eliot,” Marian told her. “I think we're all just a little too—
festive
.”

“He was our son. We love him, too,” Walter said. “And we also love you. We've waited a long time for you to—” he looked over at Eleanor.

“To find someone.”

Marian turned to me. “Say something. And please don't be understanding.”

“Eleanor's right.”

“I can't help it. I know it's crazy.” Marian started to cry. “It's like you're going to for
get
him. It's just not fair.”

“Not fair?” Walter said.

“I mean, it's like you're sending me off, without asking for an explanation, or an apology.”

“You don't need to explain anything to us,” Eleanor said. “Or apologize.”

“And sometime from now,” Marian told her, “you're going to say, ‘How could she do that to our son? Going away like that?' ”

“We've been waiting for you to do this, and exactly this way.”

I went over to Marian, gave her my handkerchief, and put my arms around her. She laid her head on my shoulder, and leaned into my embrace.

“It's you and me now,” I whispered.

“I know that, but do
they
know that?”

“They know it.”

“I thought this was a good idea,” she said. “I really did want to go with you, and I really meant all the things I've said, but right now”—she raised her head toward Walter and Eleanor—“all I want is to say I'm sorry. To the two of you.” Now she raised her eyes to me. “And to Buddy. Tell me you're able to understand that?”

Marian held onto me for another moment, said, “It's like a second funeral.” She walked over to the chair where she'd been sitting, and sat down.

“You're asking if it's all right if you leave Buddy” Eleanor began.

“It's all right,” Walter finished for her. “It's time.”

“And it's that place. That
place
,” Marian said. “That fucking place. It's there. It's
always
going to be there.”

“That was a long time ago,” Eleanor told her.

It may have been a long time ago, but Buddy's cabin was still crowding Marian's interior landscape, her emotional landscape. That's what I would have told her, if we'd been alone.

Walter said, “It's been long enough.”

Marian leaned her head back and, letting out her breath, said, “I need to know that it really is all right with the two of you. I don't mean just for now. I mean, if I move away from here and you don't see me.”

“Because all means of travel and communication will leave with you?” Walter answered.

I sat on the arm of Marian's chair, put my hand on her shoulder. She put her hand over mine.

“Travel,” Marian repeated. “That's another thing . . .”

Walter sat forward. “It's time you got away from Shady Grove.”

“While I have a complete meltdown,” Marian said.

“It's not going away that worries you, is it?” Walter said.

Marian smiled at him. “It's what comes after. It's turning me into jelly.”

I thought it was time for me to say something. “More to the point, neither of us knows what comes after.” I was looking at Marian, but speaking to the Ballantines. “Where we'll be living for one thing. I'm selling my apartment.”

“And I'm selling the nursery,” Marian said. “And the house.”

“Then a meltdown is perfectly appropriate.” There was a tone of solace in Eleanor's voice. “But only for a little while.”

There would have been a time, and not long ago, when I would have recoiled from the familial presence in the room, and found it cloying. That afternoon, I was drawn to it, delighted to be a part of it: when Walter shook my hand and Eleanor gave me another hug and kissed me, when she said how she was proud of Marian, and how happy.

For this was an act of expiation. Marian breathing out, not only the remnants of her sadness, but her years with Eliot; and for a moment longer the levity remained, and then the laughter stopped and the smiles dissolved. Marian uncoiled her legs and sat low in her chair. Walter and Eleanor sank into the corners of the couch.

If this had been about extracting Buddy from the room it wasn't any longer. It was now about Eliot and our realization, if not in concert, certainly in consort, that another human being, another life, was involved.

Walter and Eleanor would be reminded of this night whenever they saw Eliot on a checkout line, or anytime they needed to go into his hardware store.

“And it would be so sad,” Eleanor said, “if seeing us reminds Eliot of Marian.”

Then no one spoke a word, and we stayed quiet for a little while to acknowledge Eliot and his abandonment. Until Marian cleared her throat, said, “I know Eliot well enough to know that he's going to be all right. He'll be fine.” And I felt all of my doubts sailing away.

I
was not going to spend the night with Marian in her house and sleep in her bed. We drove north for about an hour, and stayed at an inn off of a state road, one of those old Victorian houses.

Our room was on the top floor. Flowered wallpaper, four-poster bed, thick mattress on which Marian and I lay together, her head resting on my shoulder. I inhaled the fragrance of her hair with unabashed pleasure, recalling those clandestine moments when a breeze brought the suggestion of a scent. When I imagined the taste of her mouth on mine. Tonight, I felt the tug of Marian's flesh when she moved, the texture of her skin and its deep warmth. When she put my hand to her lips, I remembered the afternoons when I wanted nothing more than that.

The window was raised, and the breeze had that new warmth that lets you know spring has arrived at last.

Marian said, “Tell me what you're thinking about right now.”

“That I've been wanting to be like this with you since the day we met.”

“How could you want something like that? No one can be that sure.”

“That's what I was thinking.”

“Now? Or when me met?”

“Have you any idea what you're talking about?”

She pulled me closer to her and breathed, “I would like to forget everything that ever happened to either of us before tonight.” She rolled to the far side of the bed. “You weren't supposed to be like this.”

“How was I supposed to be?”

“You weren't supposed to be the way we wanted you to be. Laura and I.”

“Wanted me to be?”

“It's not important. Not tonight.”

I leaned my body into hers. She tucked the curve of her hip into the flat part of my hip. We spoke to each other not in soft, uncertain tones but with the assuredness of old friends, the way we'd always spoken to each other since that time outside Laura's house, and now like declared lovers, uncomplicated and without metaphor.

Marian reached around and put her hand on my chest.

“Tell me you really thought this was the way it was supposed to happen,” she said.

“Nothing ever happens the way it's supposed to happen.”

“You had to come to Shady Grove to find that out?”

I put my arm around her waist and rested my hand on top of her thigh.

I told her, “I want to believe time starts now.”

Marian said, “I want to believe you.” She turned around. We kissed a strong, full-mouth kiss.

We made slow, careful love, like two strangers; the first awkward moment we'd had together, and the most self-conscious. And like first-time sex with anyone, at least anyone you love, it was doomed to disappoint. We didn't care, and we lay together in that creaking bed, laughing at ourselves. Then in the middle of the night, we made love a second time and all caution vanished.

We didn't get much sleep after that, lying in the dark, not saying much, and when we did speak it was just the smallest of talk, we were both too wound up.

About two hours before sunrise I sat up in bed.

“Come on,” I said. “We're leaving.”

Marian lay on her side, propped on her elbow.

“You're not making sense.”

“We might as well go now.”

She didn't move. “It's late. Where are we going?”

I was out of bed by now.

“We'll just get there early, that's all.” I started getting dressed.

“What about the room?”

“It's paid for.”

“I meant— Are we coming back?”

“You can sleep on the drive up.” I tossed her jeans over to her.

Her hair was all tousled, and she didn't do it much good tousling it even more, as though that might clear her head and help her make sense of what I was doing, but at least she stopped asking questions and started to get dressed.

Twenty-two

I
t wasn't that I knew for certain I could find the place in the dark, but most of the drive was straight on the Thruway. Marian slept in the car, slouched in the front seat, her head tilted to the side. There were a few times when I wasn't sure if I'd made the right choice, if I knew Marian as well as I thought I did, if this was the proper thing to do. But whenever I looked over, there she was, there was Marian, and I would think: You never thought it would happen and it's happening . . . And I started humming deep in my throat.

By the time I reached our exit and came to the hard part, it was dawn and all I had to do was follow the sun to the long driveway through the woods, the open field and the yellow clapboard house, where sunlight refracted through heavy dew, dotting the ground with spectrums of moist color.

It was too soon to come to any conclusions. I had loved my friend Laura, and my allegiance to her, sworn on duplicity, had been long forgotten and required no forgiveness, but was this her gesture of redemption? Bringing me to where I would meet Marian? Did she know this day would happen—did she possess that kind of intuition? Was it what she'd wanted? Did Buddy see God in the petal of a flower? Was the randomness he loved as simple as a four-leaf clover, and as magnificent? Was I doing no more than trying to shake Marian loose from Eliot and Shady Grove, or was this what love was like? And, as Marian might say, drawing a circle in the air, was
this
a part of
that
?

When I stopped the car, Marian opened her eyes, yawned, and squinted into the sunrise.

“Where are we?” Her voice was thick with sleep.

“We're here.”

“Where's here?”

“Don't you recognize it?”

She sat up.

“Are we lost?”

“We're early. But it's okay. A man named Aubrey lives here. He knows we're coming.”

“What time is it?”

I got out, walked around the car, and opened the passenger door.

“I want to show you something.” I took her hand and helped her out.

We followed the path past the guesthouse with the cedar shakes, and a few yards farther around the back of the main house to the wooden dock, the boathouse, and the lake.

Marian stared across the water at the small island, where the gazebo caught some of the early light. She looked back at me, and then turned and looked over her shoulder at the house.

“I know where I am,” she said.

“You know where you
were
,” I told her.

“What are you talking about? Geoffrey, I know this place.”

“It isn't here.” I saw the tears build in her eyes. “That place that you hate,” I said, “is gone. It no longer exists.”

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, looked again at the boathouse and the dock, and across the lake, then walked away. I stayed behind, watching her do a slow circle around the house, and, I assumed, behind to the guesthouse, built with wood from Buddy's cabin.

I could hear the soft shush her shoes made as she walked through the damp grass.

When she came back, Marian was looking at me in a way that I had trouble reading. As she came closer, I could see her lips moving, but I did not hear what she was saying.

She stopped a few feet from me, still looking around.

The wind rippled across the water. A stand of trees with their new growth of leaves swayed and bowed.

Marian put her arm around my waist, I put my arm around hers. She lifted her face to mine, and said, “It's time to get moving.”