After You've Gone (17 page)

On the girl's pink, freckled face unspoken questions still appear, which Brendan is able to read. What kind of marriage do you have, Ms. Hallowell? Uh, open? What is he like? What is it like to be you?

Their marriage is not open—or not explicitly so, if at all. Like many highly educated, generally talkative people, Brendan and Tom do not talk easily about themselves, not personally, and not to each other—especially not to each other.

Brendan seriously doubts that Tom “sees” anyone else while she is away. High-minded, somewhat austere, Tom is also incredibly, unspeakably busy, always. A familiar successful-people marriage: his energy is drained, consumed in work, while Brendan's is not, or not quite. Conventionally enough, they make love on Saturday nights, and Brendan wistfully imagines Sunday afternoons in bed, long sweaty hours of love. But she imagines them with Tom; her fantasies still cluster around his known ugly-attractive face, his large, gnarled, dark, cumbersome body.

Even her fantasies of unknown men possibly to be encountered on her travels seem under scrutiny to look very much like Tom.

However, in Minneapolis, which is where she will be next week, there is someone whom she might possibly call. Or he could call her; her lectures are fairly widely publicized. He could read in a paper that she is coming, and somehow find out her hotel.

His name is Jack Bishop, and in Madison when they all were undergraduates a friend of Brendan's had a tremendous,
disastrous affair with Jack, at that time a lanky blond basketball star, not at all Brendan's type but extremely attractive, she thought. In the alumni magazine she has read that he is now a stockbroker in Minneapolis. She has never met a stockbroker.

Jack, a distinct possibility.

Four days from now until Minneapolis.

Above a vast white tundra of clouds, which are strangely, eerily uneven, heading into brilliant sunshine, going toward California, the plane could instead be going into outer space, so smooth and heavy is its passage, so smiling and prepared for anything are the crew. Or so Brendan imagines.

She is seated on the aisle, on the row just past the dividers that mark off first class. Thus, no one in front of her, and to her right two men who she perhaps unreasonably thinks are gay; in any case, they are quite absorbed in talking to each other. One of them does not seem well; he coughs a lot, his hands shake. The other is taking care. They do not in the least want to talk to Brendan, she feels.

That is quite all right with her, of course it is; generally she does not like to talk to strangers either. But the total ignoring of her by these two men is a little bothersome. Do they possibly assume that she is an anti-gay person? Do they automatically dismiss all almost middle-aged women? You are wrong about me, she would like to say to them. I am nice, I have a lot of gay friends, sometimes I even think I prefer gay men—except for sex, of course.

Resolutely looking past them, looking instead out the window and then down at the clouds, Brendan imagines spacemen,
astronauts stumbling around on some planet's uneven surface.

She herself is headed not for space, actually, but for Long Beach, California; she will change in San Francisco, but with no time to see the city, just a quick nervous change of planes. A pity: she has never been to San Francisco.

Heading for California, in her mind she is suddenly back in Boise, though, back to the previous night, which she clearly resees—so unhappily! She sees the curly-red-haired girl who walked with her back to her hotel, shaking hands in a formal way, good night, sees herself going into the lobby, with its heavy old oak bar. Alone at last, she then heard a good jazz-piano sound, old-fashioned music, somewhere between Count Basie and Fats Waller. And there in the bar was indeed an elderly black man (actually brown, a huge brown man, with enormous hands) seated at an ebony piano, pounding it out. Smiling to herself and thinking, Great, I could use another glass of wine, Brendan approached the fairly crowded bar. She was almost there, wording her order, white wine over ice, when literally at her elbow there appeared a large dark man. Not the one from her fantasies; this actual man was much handsomer, with fine dark eyes and interesting, jutting eyebrows. And he was saying, “Buy you a drink?”

And Brendan shrugged him off! Dear God, not even politely. Very coldly she said, “No, thank you, I don't drink.” (A clear lie: why else would she be heading so eagerly for the bar? Perrier drinkers wear quite different expressions, she is sure.) She then turned and headed for the elevator, hurrying like a schoolgirl, or some classically frustrated, quite deranged spinster lady.

And she lay there in her pretty bed, in her pretty room. All alone.

So dumb. Among other things, her automatic “intellectual” prejudice against handsome men is dumb. It is surely not his fault, that set of regular, harmonious features, any more than the opposite condition would be. He might even have been quite nice, and bright. And in any case their contact could well have been limited to one glass of wine. A half hour, twenty minutes. How silly she was, how wasteful!

And suddenly now, on the smoothly zooming plane, in the brilliant sunshine, seated next to the two men who don't want to talk to her, Brendan feels an almost intolerable wave of isolation. In a loud voice that seems not her own she asks the man next to her, “Do you live in San Francisco?”

He stares for a moment. He is large, with a strong, hawkish nose, and thinning pale brown hair. His skin is unhealthy, too pale. In a hesitant way he says “Yes,” and then—dutifully, incuriously—“Do you?”

“No, actually I live in Washington, D.C., and unfortunately I'm not even going to San Francisco but to Long Beach, of all places. Just changing planes, but I hope that someday—”

Bored with what she herself is saying, Brendan breaks off; she and the sick man stare at each other for a moment before he turns back to his friend, and Brendan desolately opens the paperback on her lap.

Very likely by mistake, Brendan has been given a suite in the hotel: two big rooms, an entrance hall, and a vast bathroom. An error: she is hardly big-time on the lecture circuit, not Gloria Steinem, God knows not Kissinger. Feeling that she
intrudes—or impersonates!—she walks about the elegantly underfurnished space; she opens drawers, examines a sheaf of notepapers on the desk, reads the lists of food and wine available from room service. She does not read the fire instructions: too frightening.

She rereads the room service menus, wondering what to have for breakfast.

It is four in the afternoon, California time, thus seven in Washington, D.C. Too early to call Tom; probably he would not be at home, and then after her lecture it will be too late. (Last night as she lay so alone in Boise, it was clearly too late for phone calls; Tom would have thought she was drunk—or worse, he would not have been home.)

On the other hand, Tom just might be there now, maybe on his way out to dinner somewhere, maybe Georgetown with some friends?

There are three phones in all, counting the one on the bathroom wall. It is hard to choose for a moment; then Brendan sits down on one of the stiff, chaste beds, and she dials.

For no reason, as she listens to the ringing phone she is breathless. She imagines her empty house, in Bethesda, until after what seemed many rings there is a click, and Tom's voice: a warm, familiar, welcoming
hello.
As though he had expected her to call.

“How did you know it was me?” she first asks (but should she have asked that?).

“I, uh, well, of course it was you. Who else?” Does he sound defensive, accused? She is not sure, but she thinks so.

Brightly she tells him, “You should be here. I have this suite, it's enormous, there must be some mistake.”

He laughs, his usual choppy laugh—but is he less friendly, now that he knows who she is? “You're nuts, you really are,” he tells her (not for the first time).

Brendan manages a laugh of her own. “Well, I suppose. But it is sort of much, this suite. And I do wish you were here.” Dear heaven, surely she is not going to cry?

“Well, it won't be long now. You come home Sunday?”

“No, Saturday. But before that Austin, and Minneapolis.”

A small pause before he asks, “It's going well?”

“Oh, I guess.” And, meaninglessly, “You know.”

The truth is that her lectures, that intense couple of hours on stage before all those people and lights, that time is much less real to Brendan than all the hours alone are, and God knows there are fewer hours of lecturing. Afterwards she is mostly tired, in an extreme, nerved-up way. She cannot, from here, imagine her normal life of work, and productive solitude. Her dinners and bed with Tom.

“Well, actually I'm meeting some people for dinner. In Georgetown. Clients,” Tom now says, adding unnecessarily, “It's later here.”

“Oh, I know! I just thought I might get you. And actually I'm meeting someone too. God, I just remembered!” Brendan has a dinner date with an old school friend and had almost forgotten; she had forgotten what city she was to meet Lois in (so unlike her—alarming, really). “Lois, you remember her from Madison?”

“Oh Lois, of course.” Is he being ironic? Does he in fact have no idea who Lois is, or did he once have an affair with Lois? Or possibly both: he went to bed with Lois and forgot all about it?

“Sweetie,” Tom now says, “I'm sorry, but I do have to go. So, I'll see you Sunday.”

“Saturday.”

“Oh, right. Well, see you then.”

“See you.”

…

Lois is blond and thin and tanned and—closely inspected as they exchange the ritual kiss—a little wrinkled; but she is a welcome distraction from that less than satisfactory conversation with Tom (who was he expecting to call? Why can't he remember what day she is coming home?).

In any case, Lois is extremely fit, and initially more interested in Brendan's suite than in Brendan. And this is just as well, Brendan thinks; she has been made aware by Lois's smart, well-fitted pants that she herself has gained more than a couple of pounds on this trip, a predictable hazard of travel, self-improvement articles to the contrary notwithstanding.

“Well, they really did well by you! I'm so pleased. I personally think Long Beach is really great.” Lois beams.

“Yes, a suite to myself. I think they must have confused me with someone else, or something. I mean, no one ever—”

“So interesting that you should say that.” Frowning in a serious way, Lois perches on the edge of a chair, clasping tidy knees. “I was just reading an article about successful people, so-called high achievers, and it said a lot of them feel like impostors. Someone else has done their work, they think.” Lois smiles understandingly, forgivingly.

“But I'm not—”

“But you are! You see? You're living proof.” Lois laughs again, very happily.

Feeling scolded, Brendan manages a good-sport smile.

And, having been once struck, that note between them continues through their hurried meal together in the hotel's coffee shop—the dining room is closed for repairs, no time to go anywhere else, which again seems somehow Brendan's fault, along with being famous and overweight (Lois the scold has even mentioned the extra pounds).

Lois, recently divorced, is having the most wonderful time of her whole, entire life, she confides over dinner: her salad, Brendan's grilled cheese sandwich. At some point (rather late, it retrospectively occurs to Brendan) Lois asks, “You're still married to Tom?”

“Yes, still married.”

Another point for Lois, who is out there discovering or being discovered by a whole new wonderful breed of men.

And as they part, Lois off to her “date,” Brendan to her lecture, Brendan concedes that Lois won their entire encounter. However, it is also true that Lois was trying, competing very hard, whereas Brendan was not, not trying or competing, really, at all. And what was it all about? Brendan wonders. Aren't women supposed to be nicer to each other these days? To be less rather than more competitive? In a discouraged way she decides that in some instances, at least, the grounds for competition have simply shifted, if ever so slightly.

This sentence sounds and resounds in Brendan's sleepless mind as she lies in state in her oversized empty suite. Next to her bedroom there is a large terrace of some sort, seemingly roofed in tin. A heavy rain that started up some time ago now thuds arhythmically, loud on the tin. Why am I doing this? Brendan furiously, silently demands of herself.

This tour has nothing to do with my work, she thinks. I am like a traveling salesperson. I am a traveling salesperson, the product being myself.

And with the dreadful, authoritative, false clarity of all insomniac hours, she further thinks, What looked from a distance like freedom and success has become another version of
acquiescence. I didn't have to agree to a lecture tour. It is not fun, and I am not learning anything of much use—only not to do it again.

At breakfast, in Brendan's hotel in Austin, Texas, the air in the dining room is heavy with cigar smoke, thick and stale and inescapable. She is the only woman eating alone in the room, she notes, also noting that the men present are not in the least interested in her as a woman. They all are absorbed in their own jovial conversations, sucking on their cigars or cigarettes. The other women, in their groups, seem almost as alien as the men do: women in business suits and ruffled or bowed silk blouses, with sleek tidy hair. Women as businesslike as the men are. Impossible to deduce any personal data about them from their looks. Are they married? Do they have lovers? Do they travel much—enjoy traveling?

As a novelty, or perhaps from some dutiful when-in-Rome feeling, Brendan has ordered grits and “homemade” sausages for breakfast; looking down at them now, she wonders why. The cigar smoke has taken her appetite. Well, good, she thinks as she lays her fork aside. In Minneapolis I'll be a little thinner.