Five Days (37 page)

I now wanted to be furious, to turn my grief into pure undistilled rage. But I've never been able to do anger at such a vehement level. More tellingly, this was a man I was certain that I loved – and who'd shown me, in turn, the most extraordinary love. So there was just the most profound sense of loss. And of hurt.

The room seemed to grow darker. I felt completely immobile. The fact that he had also left his new jacket and glasses behind – he couldn't have been more absolute about divesting himself of the man he had decided to transform himself into, and return to the self and the life he didn't want. A stunned rationality had taken hold of me – which I knew would soon be overtaken by even more acute grief as the reality of what had just happened truly gained purchase.

Bing
.

Oh my God. A text! He's texting me. Telling me he's made the mistake of his life, and is en route back to me right now.

I scrambled for the phone. There was a text. It was from Lucy. I felt myself get shaky again. Tears welling up in my eyes. A cry working its way up my throat. So much for that alleged moment of clinical calm. I wiped my eyes and peered at the screen.

Just wanted to check in and get an update. You have me guessing! The apartment is yours when you want it. See you tomorrow. I am so envious. And that's from only surmising what your news is! Love – Lucy

Before I could break down again I dialed her number. Lucy answered on the second ring.

‘Hey there!' she said, her tone intimating that she knew romance – that commodity we both lacked – had come into my life. ‘So can you tell all now?'

‘I need a friend,' I said, my voice lifeless, flat.

‘Oh God, I thought—'

‘That the news was good? It was. But—'

I broke off, forcing myself not to break down.

‘Oh, Laura . . .' she said, sounding so sad.

‘I'm still in Boston. I have to go get my car, which is over by the airport. But I could be with you in about three and a half hours.'

‘You get here whenever. I'll be up and waiting.'

I went into the bathroom and threw some water in my face, managing to avoid looking at myself in the mirror. Then I went into the bedroom and quickly folded up the leather jacket – dealing with it the way I had dealt with a leather jacket that belonged to Eric, which he'd bought in a Cambridge Army and Navy shop and which I had to fold up after he died. Though I gave away most of his other clothes I kept his jacket. Because he so loved it and wore it all seasons except for the sticky height of summer. Because it too was an old Air Force jacket. Like the one which I was now folding and stuffing into my little suitcase as quickly as I could. Then, pocketing his glasses, I pulled up the telescopic handle of my suitcase and headed to the door, not wanting to look back in case the tears were triggered again.

I headed out the hotel entrance and to the street. There were a couple of cabs outside. I asked one of the drivers how much it would cost to get me to the Fairfield Inn Airport Hotel. He said around thirty bucks, plus three-seventy-five for the tunnel and, of course, there was the tip. Forty dollars. I don't spend that sort of money on luxuries like taxis. So I crossed the street, entered Park Station, and at a cost of two dollars I made it to the airport half an hour later. Then I had to wait twenty minutes for the hotel courtesy coach – which stopped at all the terminals and didn't deposit me at the hotel until around seven-thirty p.m.

My car was in the lot, exactly where I parked it just two days ago. Loading my suitcase in the trunk I thought:
I am a different person than the one who got out of that vehicle just over forty-eight hours ago.
But another part of me simultaneously reasoned:
The only thing that has changed in your life is that you now have a huge sorrow to carry forth with you.

The highway was clear all the way north. I blared the radio, trying to lose myself in that evening's NPR programing, to keep the anguish at bay, occasionally wiping tears from my eyes, keeping my foot down on the pedal, making it to Lucy's front door just before ten-thirty. All the way up to Maine, one supposition kept dogging and unnerving me: had I been more attune to the subtext of the moment – had I said to him, ‘Yeah, let's do the art supply shop together, then get our suitcases at the airport' – would we be in bed at the hotel right now, telling each other yet again how lucky we were to have found such love at this juncture in life?

This question got raised around an hour after I arrived at Lucy's house. When I reached her door she took one look at me and put her arms around me, saying:

‘You need a very large drink.'

She produced a bottle of something French and red. We sat down in the two overstuffed armchairs by her fireplace. The whole story was recounted by me in the sort of hushed, emotionless tone of someone who has just witnessed a terrible accident and is reiterating her account without realizing that the calmness she is displaying is a byproduct of the trauma suffered. When I finished, Lucy said nothing for a very long time. But I could see her trying to keep her own emotions in check. I looked at her, bemused.

‘You're crying,' I said.

‘Does that surprise you?'

‘I'm . . .'

Words were suddenly beyond my reach. It was as if I had lost all my bearings, my way in the world. Whatever small reserves of equilibrium had gotten me through the past few hours had just run dry. I was truly lost.

That's when I found myself letting go again. As the crying escalated Lucy came over and held me for the many minutes it took me to subside, never once trying to soothe me with any kind words or the sort of specious bromides that well-meaning people often invoke when faced with someone in the throes of grief. Instead she just let me cling to her until I was cried out. Then I staggered off to her bathroom to wash my face and attempt to do something with makeup that would lose the terrible darkness that had formed around my eyes. When I returned she handed me my refilled glass of wine and the following smart observation:

‘I won't say something stupid like, “You'll get over it.” Because I don't think you will. But what I will say is this – that man has already realized he's made the mistake of his life. Though part of me despises him for his cowardice – and most especially for causing you such horrendous anguish – part of me pities the sad bastard. Because even if it will always hurt you in some way – as I know it probably will – the truth is you will find some sort of accommodation with this heartbreak. And as to your earlier question, would the two of you still be together if he hadn't gone off to fetch your suitcases—'

‘If I hadn't been clueless to what he was actually telling me,' I said, cutting her off.

‘Clueless? Oh, please. Even if you were together now, his doubts, panic,
whatever
, would have started the moment he was away from you.'

‘But had we been together tonight, perhaps he would have—'

‘What? Had the Pauline conversion that would have kept the two of you together?'

‘It was love, Lucy. Real love.'

‘From everything you reported, I believe you. And that's why he too will be broken by this. But still too frightened, too cowed, to get back in touch with you.'

Silence. Then Lucy said:

‘Do you know why I cried earlier? In part, because of the hurt rendered on you. But also – and I hate to admit this – because of sheer, sad envy. How I have longed to feel what you've felt for the last few days. To be wanted that way by someone. To find actual love – even if it just lasted a weekend. To think:
I'm no longer alone in the world.
'

I shut my eyes and felt tears.

‘You have your children, you have your friends,' Lucy said.

‘And I'm still alone.'

Another silence.

‘We're all alone,' she finally said.

We talked until well after midnight, finishing the bottle of wine. I managed to avoid another bout of tears. Then exhaustion hit. Lucy pointed me in the direction of her guest room, telling me that I should sleep as late as I wanted. If I woke and she was gone, I should make breakfast and coffee and loiter here as long as needed.

‘And if you don't want to go home, the garage apartment is yours,' she said.

‘I'm going home,' I said.

‘I hope that's the right decision.'

‘Whether it's right or wrongheadedly wrong, it's the decision I'm making.'

‘Fine,' Lucy said, her tone lightly hinting at a disapproval she would never actually articulate, but which she clearly felt.

Lucy's guest room had a double bed with the sort of ancient mattress that seemed to have caved in around the time of the first Kennedy assassination.

At three-thirty in the morning I admitted defeat when it came to surrendering to sleep. Getting up, getting dressed, I left a note on Lucy's kitchen counter:

Ten minutes later, I pulled up in front of our house. Dan was sitting on the swing bench on our front porch, smoking a cigarette. As soon as I pulled up he tossed the cigarette away, his face all schoolboy guilt.

‘Hey,' I said, getting out of the car.

‘Hey,' he said back. ‘Weren't you supposed to be staying in Boston tonight?'

‘Couldn't sleep. Decided I should come home and be in time to see you off on your new job.'

He looked at me carefully.

‘You really drove all the way back here in the middle of the night just to do that?'

There wasn't suspicion in his voice, just the usual quiet, world-weary disdain.

‘How long have you been awake?' I asked.

‘All night. You weren't the only person who couldn't sleep.'

‘Dan, you don't have to do this job.'

‘Yes, I do. And we both know why. But thank you for coming back in time to see me off to my new role as stockroom clerk.'

I blinked and felt tears.

‘You're crying,' he said.

‘Yes. You've made me cry.'

‘And now I feel like an asshole.'

‘I don't want an apology. I want love.'

Silence. He stood up, reaching for his car keys, clearly thrown by what I had just said.

‘See you tonight,' he said.

Silence.

He headed off. Then, with a quick about-face, he turned back to me and gave me a fast kiss on the lips.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘Sorry for so much.'

I searched high and low within me for a retort. But all that came to me was the loneliest of replies:

‘Aren't we all.'

Dan got into his car and drove off to his new job. I sat rooted to the garden chair, staring up at that big black infinite sky, the limitless possibilities of the cosmos. Thinking one thought:

The death of hope.

SUNRISE. I USED
to get up after it. Now I wake well before the dawn. A readjustment of my body clock that also arrived with my ability to again sleep through the night. Sunrise. I usually have had the second cup of coffee by the time those initial tentative shafts of light have found their way into my kitchen. On fine clear mornings – and there have been a string of them this week – the early-morning light, especially at this time of year, can be like copper filament; a luminous braiding that always seems to target the little counter where I sip the Italian roast that I make in a cafetière, and which I now get specially ground for me.

The interplay of the light, the heavy aromatics of the coffee, the fact that I have just woken up from a reasonable night's sleep without (for the past six weeks) the aid of medication. Significant small details to celebrate at the beginning of another day of life.

I have become a runner. Every morning, after a sunup breakfast, I put on a very lightweight pair of track shoes that Ben convinced me to buy (he too has gotten the running bug) and go out for a five-mile jog to the water. My route rarely changes. Houses, avenues, road, more houses (the initial stretch of neighborhood modest, the next expansive and expensive), a bridge, trees, open spaces, rolling green lawns, then that telltale white marine light announcing that I am close to the water's edge.

Running suits me. Solitary, singular, very much bound up in a daily negotiation with how far you're willing to push yourself; the frontiers of your endurance. At first, when I decided that, yes, I would force myself out for a daily run, I was a mess. I could not get myself further than a half-a-mile, and I would frequently find myself winded, or suffering the sort of physical agonies that beset neophytes to the jogging world. Then Ben – who'd become so smitten with the sport that he ended up on the university's cross-country team – told me I should come spend a Saturday with him at Farmington, during which he'd take his mother out and teach her a few tricks of the running trade. Actually my son bettered that promise, as he convinced his coach – a very nice young guy named Clancy Brown (very thoughtful and cool in his non rah-rah way, and clearly pleased to have a talented young painter as one of his star runners) – to spend an hour looking over my form. He helped me rid myself of all sorts of bad habits I had already picked up.

Since then, Ben and I run together whenever we see each other (which is about once a month – not bad considering that, when I was in college, I only went home at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter). My form has considerably improved. Five miles is now the quotidian target – but, as Clancy recommended, I do take one day off a week. I also pace myself with care, as I don't want to court serious injury or the sort of burnout I read about all the time in the running magazines to which I now subscribe. Now I can do the five-mile jog in around an hour – and I'm pleased with that. Like Ben, it is the ability to lose myself in the tangible physicality of running – coupled with the rising endorphins which brighten life's darker contours – that has made me such a convert.