While I Was Gone (32 page)

“How fortunate for you,” I said at last.

Eli’s face changed quickly. He sat up straighter.

“You seem to think I took this lightly. Maybe you haven’t understood me. This…

event shaped my life. I loved Dana. I mourned her for years. And I’ve worked the rest of my life to assure that who I am has some meaning, some value beyond this part of my past. Look.” He hunched forward onto the table.

“Remember once, back then, when you and I talked about accepting what’s happened in the past? About the need to define oneself by what one gets up and does every day?”

I saw this suddenly, this discussion in the kitchen, the young Eli and me, sweet, stupid children, chopping onions and peppers and arguing, with tears streaming down our cheeks. But I remembered it differently. I remembered using these ideas to excuse myself for the pain I had caused the people I was closest to.

He was still talking.

“And I have lived my life that way, making sure every day”—he slapped the table twice, lightly—“of its usefulness, of its meaning. I wrecked one life, yes. Dana’s life. There’s nothing I can do now to change that. But I’ve given, I’m giving now, to thousands, to hundreds of thousands, of other lives.”

I had been made stupid by Eli’s confession, unable, really, to focus on any one idea, any one thing he was telling me. But now, oddly, thought came clear.

“Does Jean know about this?” I asked abruptly.

“About Dana?”

He shook his head.

“No. I saw no need to tell her. It has absolutely nothing to do with who I am now, with the person she married.

I was relieved somehow.

And then more confused.

“But… so why did you tell me?”

“You don’t understand?”

“No. No, I don’t at all.”

“Because you know me, Jo. Because by now you know me again, for who I’ve become. And you knew me then. Because you knew Dana.

Because you saw how agonized I was by her death. Because it was—it is—an opportunity for me to talk about this with someone I have found wise and sympathe ic. Completely balanced, actually, in the past. Because… well, as I said”—he dropped his head and smiled almost shyly—“it seemed nearly fated, that you should arrive in my life at this point, perhaps the one person, finally, to whom I could tell the whole story and put it behind me, once and for all. Because of what I’ve done with my life. What I’ve made of it after that…

episode.

Suddenly I was struck, irrelevantly, with the oddity of the phrase put it behind me. I was remembering Eli on the front porch the day the taxi took me away, the yawning doorway behind him. The cheese who stood alone.

“And what is it you expect me to do with this?” I asked, after a moment.

“Do,” “Yes ” I was angry suddenly. At last.

“How shall I live with it?”

“Well, I don’t expect you to turn me over to the police.”

So help me, I almost smiled back at him. Instead I asked, “Why not?”

He laughed. As though I were joking. And ignored the question.

“I

suppose it could be said that I need a kind of forgiveness from you.”

His face shifted.

“But I’m not sure even that’s right.

I’ve forgiven myself, after all, and as you once said, that seems the more important step. No, I think I’ve just felt a sense of our connection. Our connectedness, to get New Agey about it.”

“I see.”

He was looking at me now. Perhaps it was occurring to him for the first time that he might have made a mistake. But he must have imagined alternative responses from me when he thought about this encounter. He must have given me options in his mind—mustn’t he?—other than the one he was wishing for. t I think perhaps he hadn’t. At any rate, when he began again, his demeanor shifted. He leaned forward over the table. His hands came over into what might have been designated as my territory. Someone watching us from across the room would have thought the moment had finally arrived for him to start to make love to me.

“Do you remember saying to me once that you’d made an unforgivable mess of your life?” His voice was ragged with intimacy, sweet reason.

I didn’t answer right away, though I did remember. But I saw where he was going, the parallel between our lives, and I didn’t want to consent to it. He waited, watching me. Finally I said, “Yes, I think so. I know I felt I had once. Yes.”

“And that’s the point, isn’t it?” He smiled sadly.

“The unforgivable things we’ve done. We’ve all done, I suspect. Like Daniel’s notion of original sin, we’re all tainted. And the only way we can forgive ourselves is by redefining our lives. That’s what I’ve tried to do, Jo. That’s what I’ve done. I can honestly balance what I’ve accomplished against the harm I’ve done and say the one far outweighs the other. I grant there may be others who’ve done less harm, but nowhere near the good. Nowhere near.”

After a pause, I said, “But it wasn’t exactly penance, was it? I mean, you loved the work.”

He shook his head.

“I don’t see the relevance of that, honestly.”

I wanted to leave. I was frightened of him, I realized.

Not of his doing anything to me, I knew he wouldn’t. But of his apparent need to persuade me of his point of view. It seemed he wouldn’t let me go until he had.

He was waiting, watching me. At last I said, “I don’t think it suffices to forgive yourself.”

He lifted his hand.

“Who, then? I can hardly get Dana to forgive me.”

This more than anything, this casual near joke of everything that had happened—everything he’d done—shocked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. I slid sideways, out of the booth. I’d kept my coat with me when I arrived, and now I was grateful for that. I picked it up.

“I

don’t know.”

I walked quickly across the room. I turned at the doorway just as I reached it, and I saw he was standing now, too, throwing bills down on the table. His eyes met mine, and I felt a reason less panic.

In the lobby, I started toward the glass doors, toward the doorman and the people moving under the warm lights of the marquee. But nearly simultaneously, I realized that this was a kind of trap, I’d be standing there waiting for the valet to bring my car. Waiting for Eli.

Instead, then, I moved into a group of people standing by the bank of elevators, and when one of the mirror-paneled doors opened almost immediately, I hurtled forward ahead of the others. The elevator operator smiled warmly at us as we assumed our places and gave our floor numbers. Someone else said four, so I did too. When he opened the doors and called the number, I stepped off with the pregnant mother and little girl who belonged there. I took a few steps behind them down the hall. Then I stopped. They went on, but I turned and came back to the door I’d noticed opposite the elevators, the door marked

STAIRS.

The insunt I opened it, the plush murmurous world of the hotel’s life fell away. The floor was painted concrete, the rails were iron pipe.

A cold fluorescent light fell evenly, harshly, over everything. I stood next to the closed door, listening to the rise and fall of my breath, the blood thudding in my ears and my chest. I was alone.

I stood there for a while—I’m not sure how long—and then I heard someone enter the stairwell high above me, the quick, gritty tap of shoes on stone as he—she?—started down. I opened the door again to the carpeted hallway of the fourth floor, and slowly I walked around, pretending I had a purpose, a destination. I came to a seating area in the corridor and stood looking out the windows there at the massive trees in the Public Garden, the lights twinkling through them. I kept seeing Eli’s face, hearing his pleading, reasoning voice. I kept pushing away the image of Dana, Dana as I remembered finding her. And now this new version of her, too, stepping forward to offer comfort and being struck, over and over. I heard myself make a noise, and sat down, quickly, trying to gather myself. A couple came out of one of the rooms down the hall and walked past me to the elevators, talking in low voices.

A few minutes later, I followed them. They’d already disappeared.

I pushed the down button. There was a mirror on the wall behind me.

I turned and looked at myself in it. I was haggard, white. I looked away. When the elevator doors opened, I stepped in.

Getting the car from the valet brought me back sharply to myself, made me feel aware of my own stupidity. My cupidity. My vanity. For what had I said when I took the stub from him earlier?

“I’m not sure how long I’ll be, exactly. I may stay the night.”

“It’s possible that I’ll be spending the night.”

“It’s possible that I’ll start an affair tonight with Eli Mayhew.”

His cheerful innocence now was a rebuke to me, “Decided not to stay, huh?”

“No,” I said. And I stepped back into the glass vestibule to wait for the car, every few moments glancing into the lobby, then out to the pavement, watching for Eli.

It was such a relief to me—first to be closed in alone in the car, then to get onto Route 2 and be headed out of Boston, then to feel the silent dark of the countryside surround me—that I was well past Lincoln before I felt the weight of all that had happened.

Somewhere after the sign to Walden Pond, I pulled off the highway, onto a dark lane. I parked at its edge. As soon as I turned off the engine, I burst into ragged weeping.

I don’t know how long I sat there. I stopped crying several times and then started again. I thought of Dana, of the noise of my breath leaking wetly from her cheek where Eli had sliced her open. I thought of my blindness, the shameful vanity that had brought me to Boston today, that had tricked me, exposed me. I thought of how Eli had counted on me, of how he had been so sure I would forgive him. My mouth tasted bitter and tired. I blew my nose over and over, I darkened tissue after tissue with my eye makeup. I thought of Eli’s false words, he hit her, he had said. Liar! Fucking liar. I thought of Dana as I’d found her, of the bloody flaps of fabric and skin at the torn edges of each wound, of the drying blood on the dirty soles of her bare white feet. I thought of the weight of her body when I tried to carry her with me.

A car turned off the road and drove slowly toward me.

Instead of passing by, though, it pulled up behind me, its beams lighting the inside of my car, showing me my frightened eyes in the rearview mirror. Eli! I thought, and panicked. I heard his car door slam, the slow, heavy footsteps on gravel. I was fumbling for my keys, trying to start the car, to loosen the steering wheel lock, when he tapped on my window. The engine caught with a sharp whine of protest, and I was starting to shift when he bent down.

It wasn’t Eli. It was a policeman. Young, hatted, his white face just inches from me, he frowned at me through the dirty glass.

DANIEL MUST HAVE HEARD THE CAR CRUNCHING ON THE FROzen ruts of the driveway, or seen the lights skittering over the bare trees and the barn, for he came to the kitchen door to greet me, his glasses in one hand. His face lifted in surprise and pleasure as he stepped back to let me in.

“Hey, I didn’t expect to see you for hours. If at all tonight. What happened?” And then he noticed I’d been crying and moved toward me.

“What’s wrong?”

I stood utterly still for a moment, I was so glad to be here—home-but also so ashamed, so conscious that what came next would change everything. Then I said, “Well, see, Daniel, the thing is, I went to Boston….” I took a breath.

“The real reason I went to Boston was to meet Eli Mayhew.” And watched as his eager, loving expression was utterly transformed.

I SAID EARLIER THAT RUNNING AWAY FROM MY FIRST MARriage was unique in my life, that it was hard for me to recognize or remember myself as I was then because the behavior was so foreign to me.

But that was not, strictly, true. I ran away once as a girl, too, at perhaps eight or nine. I didn’t get far, but if intentions had been wings, I would have landed in Florida, in Brigadoon. In never-never land. As it was, I made several mistakes and was easily retrieved. The primary one was stealing my brother Fred’s cowboy boots.

I’d long coveted them. They were red, with white appliques stitched on them—crescent moons and stars. From the moment he’d unwrapped them the Christmas before, I felt that if there were any justice, any fairness in the world, I would have known about the existence of these boots. I would have asked for them for myself.

They would be mine, not his. Now, on this dusty summer afternoon, I sneaked into Fred’s room and found them in his closet. I carried them to the front porch. I pulled them on and set out on my journey, down to the corner and left onto the street that became the road that led out of town, the place where all the journeys I’d ever known began The boots swam freely around my feet as I walked. It was a hot day, my feet were damp with sweat. Within the equivalent of a few city blocks, I had blisters on both heels. At a point shortly after that, I took the boots off and left them in the tall grass that grew by the road. Invent on, barefoot, slowed by pebbles and glass. I was hobbling and miserable when a neighbor saw me from her car and stopped.

“Dearie,” she called.

“You’ve headed the wrong way!”

I let her ulk me into the car, I consented to let her drive me home.

But nearly as soon as we started back, I burst into tears—at the thought of my failure, at my barefoot shame. At the enormity of my sin in stealing my brother’s boots, at the fear of being punished.

By the time we got home, I was inconsolable, so inconsolable that there was only sympathy for my bleeding bare feet, for my hysteria, for my having been—as they understood it—lost.

And what triggered that flight? What was the itch that time? This, My older brother had told me—it seems to me only a few days before, but it might have been weeks, or even months—about my father’s previous life, his first marriage. I don’t know why he chose the moment.

Some smugness on my part he wanted to pierce. Some casual remark that seemed to claim ownership of our parents’ history. Some minor offense to him. At any rate, he told. Cruelly, harshly, the correction being to my stupidity for not having known earlier—though how could I? no one had even hinted at it—that our father had had another wife, another whole existence, before he met our mother, before we were born. That if things had been as he first planned them, we never tould have been born, there would have been other children living in our house, with another mother, with different rules, different notions of what was imporunt in life.