A Place I've Never Been (12 page)

The gentlemen in the cardigan sweaters gasped and did not exhale. When Theo caught it, it sank his hands. His cane rattled as it hit the floor.

“That's heavy,” Sylvia said, observing with satisfaction how the bowl had weighted Theo's arms down. “And where crystal is concerned, heavy is impressive.”

She took the bowl back from him and carried it to the counter. Mr. Sherman was mopping his brow. Theo looked at the floor, still surprised not to see shards of glass
around his feet.

Since no one else seemed to be volunteering, he bent over and picked up the cane.

“Four hundred and fifty-nine, with tax,” Mr. Sherman said, his voice still a bit shaky, and a look of relish came over Sylvia's face as she pulled out her checkbook to pay. Behind the counter, Theo could see Mr. Baker put his hand on his forehead and cast his eyes to the ceiling.

It seemed Sylvia had been looking a long time for something like this, something heavy enough to leave an impression, yet so fragile it could make you sorry.

They headed back out to the car.

“Where can we go now?” Sylvia asked, as she got in. “There must be someplace else to go.”

“Home,” Theo said. “It's almost time for my medicine.”

“Really? Oh. All right.” She pulled on her seat belt, inserted the car key in the ignition, and sat there.

For just a moment, but perceptibly, her face broke. She squeezed her eyes shut so tight the blue shadow on the lids cracked.

Almost as quickly she was back to normal again, and they were driving. “It's getting hotter,” Sylvia said. “Shall I put on the air?”

“Sure,” Theo said. He was thinking about the bowl, or more specifically, about how surprising its weight had been, pulling his hands down. For a while now he'd been worried about his mother, worried about what damage his illness might secretly be doing to her that of course she would never admit. On the surface things seemed all right. She
still broiled herself a skinned chicken breast for dinner every night, still swam a mile and a half a day, still kept used teabags wrapped in foil in the refrigerator. Yet she had also, at about three o'clock one morning, woken him up to tell him she was going to the twenty-four-hour supermarket, and was there anything he wanted. Then there was the gift shop: She had literally pitched that bowl toward him, pitched it like a ball, and as that great gleam of flight and potential regret came sailing his direction, it had occurred to him that she was trusting his two feeble hands, out of the whole world, to keep it from shattering. What was she trying to test? Was it his newly regained vision? Was it the assurance that he was there, alive, that he hadn't yet slipped past all her caring, a little lost boy in rhinestone-studded glasses? There are certain things you've already done before you even think how to do them—a child pulled from in front of a car, for instance, or the bowl, which Theo was holding before he could even begin to calculate its brief trajectory. It had pulled his arms down, and from that apish posture he'd looked at his mother, who smiled broadly, as if, in the war between heaviness and shattering, he'd just helped her win some small but sustaining victory.

When I arrived at my office that morning—the morning after Susan took me back—an old man and woman wearing wide-brimmed hats and sweatpants were peering at the little snapshots of houses pinned up in the window, discussing their prices in loud voices. There was nothing surprising in this, except that it was still spring, and the costume and demeanor of the couple emphatically suggested summer vacations. It was very early in the day as well as the season—not yet eight and not yet April. They had the look of people who never slept, people who propelled themselves through life on sheer adrenaline, and they also had the look of kindness and good intention gone awry which so often seems to motivate people like that.

I lingered for a few moments outside the office door before going in, so that I could hear their conversation. I had taken a lot of the snapshots myself, and written the descriptive tags underneath them, and I was curious which houses would pique their interest. At first, of course, they looked at the mansions—one of them, oceanfront with ten bathrooms and two pools, was listed for $10.5 million. “Can you imagine?” the wife said. “Mostly it's corporations that buy those,” the husband answered. Then their attentions shifted to some more moderately priced, but still expensive, contemporaries. “I don't know, it's like living on the starship
Enterprise
, if you ask me,” the wife said. “Personally, I never would get used to a house like that.” The husband chuckled. Then the wife's mouth opened and she said, “Will you look at this, Ed? Just look!” and pointed to a snapshot of a small, cedar-shingled house which I happened to know stood not five hundred feet from the office—$165,000, price negotiable. “It's adorable!” the wife said.
“It's just like the house in my dream!”

I wanted to tell her it was my dream house too, my dream house first, to beg her not to buy it. But I held back. I reminded myself I already had a house. I reminded myself I had a wife, a dog.

Ed took off his glasses and peered skeptically at the picture. “It doesn't look too bad,” he said. “Still, something must be wrong with it. The price is just too low.”

“It's the house in my dream, Ed! The one I dreamed about! I swear it is!”

“I told you, Grace-Anne, the last thing I need is a handyman's special. These are my retirement years.”

“But how can you know it needs work? We haven't even seen it! Can't we just look at it? Please?”

“Let's have breakfast and talk it over.”

“O.K., O.K. No point in getting overeager, right?” They headed toward the coffee shop across the street, and I leaned back against the window.

It was just an ordinary house, the plainest of houses. And yet, as I unlocked the office door to let myself in, I found myself swearing I'd burn it down before I'd let that couple take possession of it. Love can push you to all sorts of unlikely threats.

What had happened was this: The night before, I had gone back to my wife after three months of living with a man. I was thirty-two years old, and more than anything in the world, I wanted things to slow, slow down.

It was a quiet morning. We live year-round in a resort town, and except for the summer months, not a whole lot goes on here. Next week things would start gearing up
for the Memorial Day closings—my wife Susan's law firm was already frantic with work—but for the moment I was in a lull. It was still early—not even the receptionist had come in yet—so I sat at my desk, and looked at the one picture I kept there, of Susan running on the beach with our golden retriever, Charlotte. Susan held out a tennis ball in the picture, toward which Charlotte, barely out of puppyhood, was inclining her head. And of course I remembered that even now Susan didn't know the extent to which Charlotte was wound up in all of it.

Around nine forty-five I called Ted at the Elegant Canine. I was halfway through dialing before I realized that it was probably improper for me to be doing this, now that I'd officially gone back to Susan, that Susan, if she knew I was calling him, would more than likely have sent me packing—our reconciliation was that fragile. One of her conditions for taking me back was that I not see, not even speak to, Ted, and in my shame I'd agreed. Nonetheless, here I was, listening as the phone rang. His boss, Patricia, answered. In the background was the usual cacophony of yelps and barks.

“I don't have much time,” Ted said, when he picked up a few seconds later. “I have Mrs. Morrison's poodle to blow-dry.”

“I didn't mean to bother you,” I said. “I just wondered how you were doing.”

“Fine,” Ted said. “How are you doing?”

“Oh, O.K.”

“How did things go with Susan last night?”

“O.K.”

“Just O.K.?”

“Well—it felt so good to be home again—in my own bed, with Susan and Charlotte—”
I closed my eyes and pressed the bridge of my nose with my fingers. “Anyway,” I said, “it's not fair of me to impose all of this on you. Not fair at all. I mean, here I am, back with Susan, leaving you—”

“Don't worry about it.”

“I do worry about it. I do.”

There was a barely muffled canine scream in the background, and then I could hear Patricia calling for Ted.

“I have to go, Paul—”

“I guess I just wanted to say I miss you. There, I've said it. There's nothing to do about it, but I wanted to say it, because it's what I feel.”

“I miss you too, Paul, but listen, I have to go—”

“Wait, wait. There's something I have to tell you.”

“What?”

“There was a couple today. Outside the office. They were looking at our house.”

“Paul—”

“I don't know what I'd do if they bought it.”

“Paul,” Ted said, “it's not our house. It never was.”

“No, I guess it wasn't.” Again I squeezed the bridge of my nose. I could hear the barking in the background grow louder, but this time Ted didn't tell me he had to go.

“Ted?”

“What?”

“Would you mind if I called you tomorrow?”

“You can call me whenever you want.”

“Thanks,” I said, and then he said a quick good-bye, and all the dogs were gone.

Three months before, things had been simpler. There was Susan, and me, and Charlotte. Charlotte was starting to smell, and the monthly ordeal of bathing her was getting to be too much for both of us, and anyway, Susan reasoned, now that she'd finally paid off the last of her law school loans, we really did have the right to hire someone to bathe our dog. (We were both raised in penny-pinching families; even in relative affluence, we had no cleaning woman, no gardener. I mowed our lawn.) And so, on a drab Wednesday morning before work, I bundled Charlotte into the car and drove her over to the Elegant Canine. There, among the fake emerald collars, the squeaky toys in the shape of mice and hamburgers, the rawhide bones and shoes and pizzas, was Ted. He had wheat-colored hair and green eyes, and he smiled at me in a frank and unwavering way I found difficult to turn away from. I smiled back, left Charlotte in his capable-seeming hands and headed off to work. The morning proceeded lazily. At noon I drove back to fetch Charlotte, and found her looking golden and glorious, leashed to a small post in a waiting area just to the side of the main desk. Through the door behind the desk I saw a very wet Pekingese being shampooed in a tub and a West Highland white terrier sitting alertly on a metal table, a chain around its neck. I rang a bell, and Ted emerged, waving to me with an arm around which a large bloody bandage had been carefully wrapped.

“My God,” I said. “Was it—”

“I'm afraid so,” Ted said. “You say she's never been to a groomer's?”

“I assure you, never in her entire life—we've left her alone with small children—our friends joke that she could be a babysitter—” I turned to Charlotte, who looked up at me,
panting in that retriever way. “What got into you?” I said, rather hesitantly. And even more hesitantly: “Bad, bad dog—”

“Don't worry about it,” Ted said, laughing. “It's happened before and it'll happen again.”

“I am so sorry. I am just so—sorry. I had no idea, really.”

“Look, it's an occupational hazard. Anyway we're great at first aid around here.”

He smiled again, and, calmed for the moment, I smiled back. “I just can't imagine what got into her. She's supposed to go to the vet next week, so I'll ask him what he thinks.”

“Well, Charlotte's a sweetheart,” Ted said. “After our initial hostilities, we got to be great friends, right, Charlotte?” He ruffled the top of her head, and she looked up at him adoringly. We were both looking at Charlotte. Then we were looking at each other. Ted raised his eyebrows. I flushed. The look went on just a beat too long, before I turned away, and he was totaling the bill.

Afterwards, at home, I told Susan about it, and she got into a state. “What if he sues?” she said, running her left hand nervously through her hair. She had taken her shoes off; the heels of her panty hose were black with the dye from her shoes.

“Susan, he's not going to sue. He's a very nice kid, very friendly.”

I put my arms around her, but she pushed me away. “Was he the boss?” she said. “You said someone else was the boss.”

“Yes, a woman.”

“Oh, great. Women are much more vicious than men, Paul, believe me. Especially professional women. He's perfectly friendly and wants to forget it, but for all we know
she's been dreaming about going on
People's Court
her whole life.” She hit the palm of her hand against her forehead.

“Susan,” I said, “I really don't think—”

“Did you give him anything?”

“Give him anything?”

“You know, a tip. Something.”

“No.”

“Jesus, hasn't being married to a lawyer all these years taught you anything?” She sat down and stood up again. “All right, all right, here's what we're going to do. I want you to have a bottle of champagne sent over to the guy. With an apology, a note. Marcia Grossman did that after she hit that tree, and it worked wonders.” She blew out breath. “I don't see what else we
can
do at this point, except wait, and hope—”

“Susan, I really think you're making too much of all this. This isn't New York City, after all, and really, he didn't seem to mind at all—”

“Paul, honey, please trust me. You've always been very naive about these things. Just send the champagne, all right?”

Her voice had reached an unendurable pitch of annoyance. I stood up. She looked at me guardedly. It was the beginning of a familiar fight between us—in her anxiety, she'd say something to imply, not so subtly, how much more she understood about the world than I did, and in response I would stalk off, insulted and pouty. But this time I did not stalk off—I just stood there—and Susan, closing her eyes in a manner which suggested profound regret at having acted rashly, said in a very soft voice, “I don't mean to yell. It's just that you know how insecure I get about things like this, and really, it'll make me feel
so much better to know we've done something. So send the champagne for my sake, O.K.?” Suddenly she was small and vulnerable, a little girl victimized by her own anxieties. It was a transformation she made easily, and often used to explain her entire life.