The Senator's Wife (28 page)

Nathan said, “And if you ever need anything in the evenings, I could help too. It's just I'm trying to finish this book. But I'm free then, and if I can be of service . . .” He bowed slightly, his hand reaching up to support the curve of the baby.

“Wait a sec,” Meri said. “I get first dibs on any extra time.”

Nathan laughed, but Delia, looking at the younger woman, thought it was possible she wasn't joking at all.

“Let me take you to meet your hosts,” she said, and turned to try to spot Gail or Bob. The crowd on the porch had thinned a bit, so they went inside, and yes, there was Bob, only slightly less fat than Gail, in front of a painting.

In his rushing voice, Bob was explaining the artist's technique to two seemingly interested guests—the layers, the sanding down, the layers again. When he paused for air, Delia interrupted and introduced Meri and Nathan. Nathan immediately began to ask more questions about the work.

Delia took the opportunity to move away. Though she liked Bob, she'd heard the lecture, about this painting and many of the others, about the beers, about his garden, more than once. He loved his life, he loved to talk about every aspect of it. Admirable, but often hard to take, she thought. She stopped to talk to a few more old friends and then got into a long conversation with a woman she'd never met before, about O. J. Simpson and race relations.

When she looked around again a little while later, she saw the party was thinning out, that most of the younger couples had left, and now even the old ones were gathering purses and shawls. The student helpers were moving through the rooms clearing, carrying trays of glasses, some still half filled.

Delia found Gail in the kitchen and said good-bye, wished her a wonderful summer. They embraced, and when they stepped back, Delia saw that Gail's eyes were full of tears. But then, Gail's eyes were often full of tears. It didn't mean much of anything.

Delia walked slowly back down Dumbarton, savoring the anticipation of her arrival home, of Tom's voice welcoming her. The lights were coming on in the houses up and down the street. The moon was low to the east, low and orange and fat through the trees, though there was still an astonishing, almost navy blue high in the sky.
Summer,
she thought.

Her own windows were dark, though Meri and Nathan had turned the porch light on. Inside, it was silent, and she assumed Tom must still be napping, but when she opened the door to his room, he called to her, a soft sound.

“You're awake?” she asked.

“Uh. Ah pee.” I peed.

“You remembered! Good. Do you want anything from the kitchen?”

“Nhaa. Khaah.” Come. He patted the bed next to him. He'd left room for her, Delia saw. She went over to that side of the bed and sat, then swung her legs up and leaned back against the pillows.

“Tahk,” he said. Talk.

“What about? The party?” she asked.

“Uh.”

“Well. The party,” she said. “Would you like the list of who's still extant, among those you used to know?”

“Unh!” he said. She could see his smile.

“Let's see. Well, Stan and Petra were there. She still wears those Marimekko dresses. The tent effect.” He laughed, a light, hoarse sound. “I wonder where she gets them anymore? Remember them? You used to say they made you dizzy, those wild prints. She's shriveled up to nothing now, though. She's more or less the tent
pole.
Remember how fat and jolly she used to be?” Delia sighed. And she went on, calling up the names: Peggy Williams, whose husband Rudy had died. Ed and Bettie Friedman, whom they always called Bed and Ettie, after a slip of the tongue Delia had committed a few times. “They've signed up for that retirement community.”

She talked about the new people she'd met, the array of Bob's beers, “everything either brown or black, and simply not potable, it seems to me. Like drinking mud.”

He had his good arm around her shoulders and she was leaned against him. She could feel his heart, its sturdy beat, under her head. Now his weak hand reached up and rested on her breast—her old drooping breast.

Delia shuddered with longing, and turned to him. They lay back, she curled along his side, and held each other. After a while, she could hear that he was asleep again. Even then she lay by him for a long time. The moon had risen above the roofline of the house next door, and its light lay across Delia's and Tom's legs, their stick legs, she thought. It crept higher and higher.

When it reached her chest, she got up. She stepped quietly into the hallway, leaving the door open behind her. As she was climbing the stairs she could feel her heart thudding slowly. This is it, she was thinking. The new adventure of her life, which would be, too, its final chapter. She had thought there would be no such event, that she'd have to hold on to life by charm, by effort. And she could have done that. It was her understanding, after all, that life was a matter of effort, renewed every day. She stopped on the landing of the stairs where the side window showed her again the moon, the enchanted summer night.

But now, she thought, now to have this unexpected, almost last-minute gift, this unlooked-for return to her of all that she had loved most—it was almost too much. A cloud skiddered across the golden moon. The crickets called to one another. She turned away, and continued up the stairs in the dark.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Meri, July 3, 1994

M
ERI GOT TO
pick the restaurant, and at breakfast she told Nathan she'd meet him at Tony's, the pizza place.

“Tony's?” Nathan had asked. “Are you sure? Not someplace fancier, to celebrate?” He picked up his briefcase. He was about to leave for his office.

“It's the lowlife I miss,” she said, which was true. The ordinary times, the smallest freedoms, without Asa. Tony's was dark, it smelled of beer. The TV over the bar always had a game on. She and Nathan had met there a few times before she knew she was pregnant, and the thought of its cheesy darkness appealed to her now.

As the day progressed, though, she grew more anxious. No surprises there—she was full of anxiety about everything to do with Asa, and this would be her first time leaving him with anyone else. She nursed him as long as she could beforehand, jiggling him awake every time he fell back from her.

She had to make several trips across the porch to Delia's house with stuff she thought it would be possible Asa would need in her absence. She brought over what she knew was a ridiculous number of Pampers and a bottle of milk she'd expressed. She'd brought over the Snugli, the bassinet—which he was sleeping in—towels to mop up spit-ups, a music box that sometimes seemed to soothe him if he was upset. She'd written a page of notes on various aspects of his routines that she handed over to Delia.

After she'd sat in the car a minute, she abruptly turned the engine off and went back to knock on Delia's door, to tell her that sometimes Asa seemed to be waking when he wasn't, and that she should wait, maybe one or two minutes, if he fussed lightly, to see if he'd drop back off.

Delia had been patient and apparently receptive to all this, for which Meri was grateful.

And now she sat having a beer. The occasional beer or glass of wine was okay, the doctor had said, so she was sipping this one slowly, making it last. Nathan was, as ever, a little late. The TV over the bar was tuned to the brilliant green of a baseball game. It was the Red Sox, Meri noted. Nathan would want to check the score, and then he'd want to sit on the side of the booth with its back to the screen so his attention wouldn't drift that way.

When Nathan came in, he looked for a moment like a tall, pretty stranger. She hadn't seen him outside of the house for weeks, she realized. He was
new
to her suddenly in this place. New, and attractive. She waved.

He took long strides over to her, his briefcase, which hung by a strap from his shoulder, bouncing against his side. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Jerry caught me just as I was closing my office door to leave.” He kissed her, bringing a pocket of warm air down around her—he'd ridden his bike here—and then he slid into the booth opposite her.

“He had pressing world news, no doubt.”

“Yep, more about Sarajevo. It's as if he doesn't believe anyone else knows how to read the paper. He has to catch you up on everything. I was rude.”

He waved to Tony, behind the bar, and pointed to Meri's glass. Then he turned to Meri and sat back.
“So,”
he said. “Asa's settled in with the surrogate grandparents?”

“It seems so.”

“This is a milestone, Meri.” He leaned forward and took her hands.

“Believe me, I know.”

“And you look beautiful.”

She shrugged.

“I mean it.”

“Thank you,” she said. She slipped her hand out from under his and lifted her beer mug. “This is a milestone too.” She held it up. “My first.”

He congratulated her. Tony came over with Nathan's beer and took their pizza order while he was there—sausage and onion.

“How was the writing today?” she asked after Tony had left.

“Good, I think. I've started on Mayleen's kids, the way things fell apart for them.” Mayleen was one of the people he'd interviewed many times over for his book. She was a single mother who'd been part of several federal poverty projects in Chicago in the sixties, none of which had been able to improve her life in any lasting way.

They talked about the chapter, what he hoped to show with it, what details he would need to include. DeShawn's conviction for assault, Aaron's slide into addiction and his hope for the methadone program he was in.

“It's such a sad story,” she said. “Doesn't it depress you?”

“Well, sure.” He shrugged. “But it's odd. Writing about it is so interesting to me that, in another way, it doesn't. When I think of it humanly, of course, God, I feel horrible. For her. For them. For this country. But when I'm writing about it, I feel like I'm making
use
of it somehow. Do you know what I mean? Redeeming their lives, a little.”

“I think I do, yes.”

“So it's pleasurable.” He shrugged. “That's a rotten thing to say, but true.”

“No, I understand.” They sat for a moment.

He reached over and cupped her elbow where it sat on the table. “And your day? How?”

“More of the same. Eat. Sleep. Cry. Poop. Throw up. Oh! But I expressed milk for the first time today—
that
was exciting. Kind of like being a Holstein, I suppose.”

He laughed. “That was for our esteemed sitters to use?”

“If they have to, yep. I nursed him right before I left, too, so I'm not sure they will.” Even talking about it, Meri could feel her breasts get heavy, and she thought, abruptly, of the night when Nathan hadn't wanted her, the last time she'd nursed Asa in front of him.

“Was Tom there when you dropped him off?” They'd seen Tom only briefly, as he came and went with the driver Delia had hired to take him to the rehab center. Nathan had tried to talk to him once. He'd been shocked at Tom's limitations.

“Yes.”

“How did he seem?”

“No different.” She thought about it. “Well, that's not true. He was interested in the baby. That was sweet, really.” He had gotten up when she brought Asa in, and bent over his bassinet to look at him.

They sat for a moment. Nathan turned to watch the game. Tony came with the pizza and their plates, and each of them took a piece and started to eat.

“Do you think Delia should have taken him in?” Meri asked when her mouth was a little less full.

“Who? Asa?”

“No.” She made a face: don't be silly. “Tom.”

“Tom? How could she not?”

“Oh, I don't know. Maybe just what the daughter said. What's-hername. Nancy. That it wasn't her duty to. Her obligation.”

“But Delia feels it was, so that's that.” He took another bite.

“But maybe it's more insidious than that,” she said.

“How ‘insidious’?”

She set her pizza down. “Do I mean invidious?”

“I don't know. Do you?”

She thought a moment, and shrugged. She said, “What I mean is just, maybe there's something Delia likes about having him in her clutches. Weakened, as he is.”

“Christ, Meri. What an ugly thought.”

“But perhaps true. The truth is ugly sometimes.”

“And sometimes not.” He took another slice of pizza, the mozzarella pulling into long threads as he picked it up. Just before he bit into it, he said, “You're just jealous.”

“Jealous! Of what?”

She had to wait for a moment until he swallowed. “You wanted her all to yourself,” he said.

Could that be true? She had wanted something from Delia, she knew that, but she wasn't sure Nathan was right. He was nodding his head emphatically, though.

Meri chose to ignore him. “Anyway, I don't mean she wanted this consciously,” Meri said. “But look.” She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “Look: he leaves her, years ago, for another woman. Other women. She still loves him. Throughout.”

“According to you.”

Meri sat back, silent for a few seconds, feeling the pinch of shame, of anxiety she always felt when she thought of how she'd learned the elements of Delia and Tom's story. Then she said, “No, remember? That's what Nancy thought too.”

He waved his hand. Okay.

“Anyway, now she has him back, under her wing, in her house, in her charge, and he can go no more a roving.”

“This would be, I think, so unconscious as to be irrelevant.”

“I don't know.” Meri picked up her pizza slice again. “Haven't you read
Jane Eyre
?”

“Nope. I saw the movie though. But I don't remember much. Just, George C. Scott seemed like he was playing Patton all over again.”

“This is a pathetic answer from a supposedly educated person.”

Nathan chewed and lifted his eyebrows.

“See, in
Jane Eyre,
the
book,
” she said, “our heroine, madly in love with the difficult, the inaccessible—because, in this case,
married
—Rochester, is finally able to live happily ever after with him once he's maimed. Once he's brought low. In the same fire which conveniently kills his wife.”

“So?”

“So, it's a theme, in literature about women.”

“That they like their men
maimed
?”

“Well, I think it's about equality, actually. That is to say,” she raised her finger, “in an era when women's lives were terribly constricted, maybe a man whose life was constricted too was more a soul mate, or something like that.”

“So I should be watching my back, is that the message?”

“Nah. It's different times for us. We have different ways of being a couple. We're more on an equal footing. We're
pals
.” This was true, she thought. “I suppose that's the good news and the bad news. The ‘for better or worse.’ ”

“How could it be bad? How could it be ‘worse’?”

“Well, it's not bad, I guess. But it is different.”

“Different from . . . ?”

“Well, from Delia, and Tom, for instance. Their sort of old-fashioned and kind of unequal
romance
of a marriage.”

“Is that how you see it?” he asked. He seemed genuinely curious.

“Yes. That's
their
good news and bad news.”

“Bad because unequal?”

“Right. And good, or maybe good, because more romantic. I don't know.” She looked at Nathan. “Though to be quite old-fashioned myself, I
do
feel the odd pang now when you walk out the door to go to real life. The wish to maim.” She grinned.

He snorted. “It's not very
real,
holed up in my office all day every day.”

“You bump into people. You bump into Jerry. I even envy you that. You talk about the world.”

“I have to get this done this summer, hon.” There was apology in his voice, but a little edginess too.

“I know. But we need to figure things out for the fall better. Because I need to go back to work then or a) I'll lose this job, this job that I really, really like, and b) I'll go crazy. And then you really will need to watch your back.”

And so they started to speak again of Asa, and of his care and Nathan's fall schedule and their options, something they'd danced around before. This time, though, they divided up chores. Nathan would call the day-care office at the college and see if faculty kids had any preference. If so, she would do the research on day-care places by phone and schedule a visit to each.

They finished the pizza. Nathan turned around again to watch the game for a few minutes. “Shit,” he said, and turned back.

Meri had another infinitesimal sip of her beer and set her mug down. “It's the ruination of a perfectly good love affair,” she announced.

“What? Asa?”

“No!” She stared at him. “No. Delia, Tom. You thought I meant
us
?” “I thought maybe you were teasing about us.”

“No. We're still having our affair. Sort of.” She looked at him. “Aren't we?”

“I'd like to resume it, anyway.”

“Would you?” she said.

“I've been thinking about you all day.” His face had changed, sobered.

“Between thinking about Mayleen and the boys. And Sarajevo.”

“All day.” He smiled. “Dirty thoughts.”

“Because we were going out for pizza tonight?”

“Because I miss you. I miss us. I miss making love to you.”

She looked away. This was fraught for her. It made her sad.

After a few seconds he reached over and took her hands again. “I'm sorry for whatever was hurtful to you when I didn't want to.”

She didn't answer for a moment. For a moment she didn't know how she wanted to answer. Then she looked up at him and said, “So how did you get over that?”

He visibly relaxed. He grinned. “I got just a
little
more desperate.”

“Ah, I like a desperate man,” she said, smiling back.

“I'll get the check.”

They came out together into the dark parking lot. Nathan had his arm around Meri's shoulders. His body pressed against her side. They walked back to the car, and he let her in—he would come home on his bike. He tossed his briefcase into the backseat.

Leaning over the open window as she started the engine, he said, “This was fun. May I call you?”

“I'll think about it,” she said as haughtily as she could, and drove away, out of the lot.

The streets in this part of town were hardly lighted at all, so she could barely see Nathan when he appeared in the rearview mirror. He was only a vague shape on his bicycle.

He pulled up beside her at the second light, breathing hard. “Hey,” he said. “Hey baby. Hey mama.”

She pretended disdain. The light turned green and she gunned the car. She could see him in the mirror better now, his white shirt rocking back and forth as his body moved, standing on the pedals.
Nathan.

He caught up to her at the next light just as it turned green. “I'm coming for you,” he called. Meri felt as excited, as free as she had when she and Nathan were first sleeping together, in Coleman.

She laughed and hit the gas so hard the tires squealed as she pulled away.

They teased each other this way through three more traffic lights. And then there was a long stretch of road that didn't have any. She watched the white shirt grow smaller in the mirror.

She had to go slowly again on Main Street, stopping at the signs and the one long light, and as she turned onto the dark of Dumbarton Street, she thought she saw Nathan a block or two back, catching up. She turned into their driveway and cut the engine by the house. She got out of the car and leaned against it, waiting for him. And after a moment there he was, turning into the driveway too.