For Love (19 page)

Elizabeth nodded. ‘For the moment,’ she said. ‘Emily’s asleep anyway. Little Emily. The boys pretty much take care of themselves. How’s your other project, Char?
The house, I mean.’

‘Oh, coming along. Coming along.’

‘You’re so admirable, to do it yourself. If it were me, I’d just throw money at it.’

There was a silence. Lottie waited for Cam to speak, and finally he did. His light voice was polite, moderate. ‘Well, of course, Charlotte could do that. But I couldn’t, and
that’s the problem. I’m afraid I’m in a way responsible for keeping her in chains this summer.’

Elizabeth had spun around to look up at him. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Cam, I didn’t mean . . .’

‘As a matter of fact,’ Lottie said, ‘I can’t afford it either. I mean, Jack can, but that’s Jack’s money.’ He had offered at one point, had said the
estate could pay him back after the house was sold, if Lottie felt uncomfortable about taking the money.

The estate couldn’t afford it either, Lottie pointed out. And for Jack to donate it, in light of Cameron’s financial situation, was awkward – impossible, as Lottie saw it. Jack
had backed off, in the end. In part, Lottie knew, because he couldn’t tell how much of her argument was reasonable delicacy on her part about Cameron and his finances; and how much might be
connected to her wish to escape him and his sorrow – the sorrow of their life together.

‘Besides,’ Lottie said to Elizabeth, ‘Ryan likes earning the dough, and he’s cheaper than anyone else we could hire. He and I together are a very cheap team.’

After a moment Elizabeth said, ‘You seem to have a very nice relationship, you and Ryan.’

‘Do we? Well, we do sometimes.’ And then, because that sounded so tepid, she said, ‘It’s always lovely to be with him for a while. For about . . . five days. And then we
discover why it wouldn’t work indefinitely.’

‘But why wouldn’t it?’ Elizabeth said. ‘That’s so hard for me to imagine. I feel in some way that my kids – at least one of them anyway – will always be
there.’

Lottie smiled. ‘All I can say is, you’ll see.’ They were all facing the street; they were quiet for a minute. Lottie thought she could feel resistance to this idea. From
Elizabeth? From Cameron? It’s the way it’s supposed to be,’ she said. ‘They have to push away. They have to find you . . .
wanting
somehow.’

Cameron said quietly, ‘I imagine it’s different for different people.’

Lottie was about to answer, sharply, when a car turned on to the street at the top of the hill. They all looked up at it. It descended slowly, then turned into Elizabeth’s driveway.
Her
car, Lottie realized. It was Ryan. She could hear the pulse of the radio playing. Some reggae beat.

‘Hey, look at this,’ she said. ‘Speak of the devil.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Ryan’s taking Jessica out.’

The car pulled under the porte cochere and parked, most of it hidden along the side of the house. They could see only its taillights, and Lottie noted that one was missing. She’d need to
replace it.

‘God, this is like déjà vu,’ she said. ‘Like watching you guys start up in high school.’

Elizabeth cleared her throat.

Lottie looked over and saw that Cam’s hand was resting, a patch of light, on Elizabeth’s dark hair. Lottie felt brittle and worn, suddenly, teetering on the brink of some outburst.
She slipped her sandals off and massaged her bare feet. It was just that she’d drunk too much, she told herself, like a mother to a cranky child. She leaned her cheek against her bare
shoulder.

After a few minutes, the car backed out. ‘And they’re off,’ Lottie said. She could see Jessica in the passenger seat. ‘You should warn her,’ she said to Elizabeth.
‘He’s a bit of a rake and a rambling boy.’

‘Oh, I don’t worry about
her
,’ Elizabeth said. ‘She gets about three calls a day from different men herself.’

‘And do you tell her what time she has to be in, Elizabeth?’ Lottie asked. ‘Are you
in loco parentis
?’

‘I hardly dare,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’ve been staying out so late myself. And you? With Ryan?’

‘Oh no,’ Lottie said. ‘No. That part of the mom act is over too.’

‘Do
they
believe in love, you think? Does Ryan?’ Cam asked after a moment. Elizabeth was leaning back against his opened legs.

‘I suspect so,’ Lottie said. ‘He takes himself tremendously seriously, and that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? That high seriousness that we weren’t
allowed.’

‘What do you mean, we weren’t allowed?’ Elizabeth asked.

‘Well, I mean, really, do you think? Didn’t you feel, the moment you felt
anything
, that it was inauthentic? I mean, weren’t we the first real post-Freudians? The first
ones to live with that understanding of life? It was impossible to take yourself seriously. Every single thing was a dynamic. We knew everything was neurosis. And love in particular was made
suspect forever, don’t you think? Trivialized.’ Lottie was warming to it. ‘See, in the nineteenth century, people could
feel
their emotions without second-guessing
themselves all the time. They didn’t have to realize that there was something ridiculously predictable and culture-bound – mundane – about even the most grand of them. Now no one
can even write about love anymore.’ She saw Cam’s hand move in protest, and said, ‘It’s true! Where are the twentieth-century love stories? They’re not
allowed.’

‘I don’t think your . . . post-Freudian feeling is as universal as you claim it is, Charlotte,’ Cam said dryly. ‘And after all, weren’t you the one who called
yourself a romantic earlier?’

‘Well, maybe I did,’ Lottie said. ‘But surely I know better. After all, we can’t believe in romantic love anymore, can we?’ She was asking permission. She was
asking them what they were up to.

‘But we do,’ he said firmly. Then he laughed. ‘We suspend our disbelief and we do.’

‘But that’s hanging by the proverbial thread, isn’t it?’ she asked.

Cam turned his blank face to her. ‘But as Cheever said, it’s hanging by a thread in the moonlight.’

Elizabeth spoke suddenly: ‘As Woody Allen says, we need the eggs.’

Cameron laughed again. He bent over Elizabeth for a moment.

Encouraged, Elizabeth continued. ‘And don’t you think we all believe – in our hearts anyway – that our emotions are enormously serious? Just the way they do?’ Her
arm swung toward where the car had disappeared.

Lottie felt exhausted. ‘Oh, who knows?’ she said. ‘Maybe they don’t take themselves so seriously anyway. I mean, do you know what they call it? Having sex? Among other
things they call it, I presume.’

‘What?’

‘“Doing the nasty.” Isn’t that strange? Here they treat it as though it had all the moral weight of . . . aerobics. But they label it as though it were powerfully evil.
So maybe they don’t believe in love, after all.’ No one spoke. ‘I’ll ask him, tomorrow,’ Lottie said. ‘And get back to you.’

‘Well,’ Cameron said, after a long silence. ‘I guess I’d better be hitting the road.’

‘Oh, okay,’ said Elizabeth casually. And then she stood up along with him. ‘Well, maybe I’ll join you for a while.’

Someone could have pointed out that this made no sense, but no one did. It was awkward as they left, but they accomplished it, calling good night to Lottie in hushed voices as they walked toward
the Volvo, which was parked farther up the street, at the foot of Elizabeth’s driveway. The doors slammed, the engine went on, then the headlights. Lottie heard Elizabeth’s piercing
laugh just before they drove off.

She sat by herself for a while after they’d left. Had this summer been invented to teach her something? Was there some purpose to her solitary witness to all this romance? This
love
, if love it was. She thought of what Cameron had said about hanging by a thread in the moonlight; of what Elizabeth had said about eggs. Two utterly different notions, she thought
suddenly. She should have said so.
Those are two very different ideas. One is concerned with perilous beauty, and the other is about lying to yourself.

She thought again of Ryan, driving off with Jessica. Then of his reeling the girl in with his story, his sad story, in which she, his mother, was just the backdrop, a minor character.

Perhaps, after all, that was what was making her angry – being relegated to a supporting role. Didn’t she have a story too? A story in which Ryan’s role was significant but
definitely minor?

The difference was, Lottie thought, that she was old enough to understand the nature of the story: that everyone had one, but that it was thrust upon you, as often as not. That what counted was
what happened after that, the combining of the aftermath with the original story. Your mother is an alcoholic. Yes: and then? Your mother is an alcoholic, and you live at home and take care of her
as she sinks into early dementia. Your mother is an alcoholic, and so are you. Your mother is an alcoholic, and you leave home and reinvent your life. Your mother is an alcoholic, and you never,
ever let yourself touch a drop.

Jack’s story was Evelyn, of course. But then there was what he’d made of his life, of his family’s life, while he somehow kept Evelyn at the center of it. It was a good story,
an interesting aftermath, and it had helped her fall in love with him.

Of course, when they met, Jack also had the knowledge she was seeking. That was powerful, Lottie thought. Sexy. That certainly helped it get going, that same thing that allowed middle-aged
professors to hit on nubile young students with such ease – women who a few years later, when they’d become investment bankers or lawyers, would wonder at their choices. At the clunky
brown shoes, the hair artfully arranged over the bald spot, the food spilled down the lapel.

With Jack, though, after the knowledge, the power, other things unfolded. His story, and what he made of it. And if Lottie were honest about it, she was the one, anyway, with the liabilities:
the closetful of secondhand clothing, the inevitable run in her panty hose. And, of course, the dented breast, a mild lateral scoliosis, terrible teeth, a tendency to spill when eating. Their first
dinner out, when the waiter cleared her place and then fastidiously swept the crumbs from the tablecloth in front of her, there was a silence as they’d taken it in – the smears, the
bright dabs of color. They didn’t know each other well yet. When the waiter had left, Jack leaned forward and looked more closely. ‘It’s really worthy of de Kooning,
Lottie.’ Lottie smiled at the memory and went inside.

She wandered through the rooms, flicking the light switches. In the kitchen, she turned on the radio. The Red Sox were losing. She changed the station – jazz – and went into the
living room, sat down in her mother’s chair. She liked the way this felt. This was better. Light fell in from the dining room, pooled on the floor. Lottie turned away from it and looked out
the window at the dark street, the odd porch light up and down the block a melancholy beacon. She could hear the music, dim and tinny on the cheap radio, but it wasn’t where she was. She was
at a remove, she thought. ‘At a remove,’ she murmured.

What about Cam’s story? Was there a narrative to his life? She had no idea, she realized. There was the one he’d seemed to make – the clutter of books, friends, the beautiful
apartment in the derelict neighborhood, the store. But she didn’t really know how he fit in. There was something disjunctive, not clear, about it all. About him. His history with Elizabeth,
for instance. He’d said to Lottie that it made him what he was. But what was that? How did that go with the bookish Cam? Or with the Cam who stayed and took care of their mother? And who was
the Cam who had passed through Chicago those years ago so full of romantic will?

Could there be such a thing as romantic will?

She remembered the visit they’d made together a few weeks earlier to their mother, how oddly uncomfortable she was watching his patience, his attentiveness to the old woman. She had
thought then that it was because she felt he shouldn’t have forgiven her for being the kind of mother she’d been. She’d tried to get him to concede that, in fact, in the car on
the way back that day. But now it occurred to her that she’d felt even then that there was something false in his devotion, something that had to do with his need to see himself as a certain
kind
of person, when his truest feelings – she would have sworn this – were quite different.

She heard footsteps on the front porch – Richard Lester! – and she froze, every muscle tensed. The front door creaked open, then shut, very carefully. Richard appeared, moving slowly
across the hallway. As he passed in front of the lighted dining room doorway, he turned to where he thought she was, in the kitchen, where the music rattled. Lottie was holding her breath,
absolutely motionless, watching him, his exaggerated high steps. When he made it to the foot of the stairs, she heard him gasp in excitement and scamper up, careless now of his noise.

In her mother’s chair, invisible Lottie sat, still frozen. And then she was aware of how rigidly she was holding herself. She inhaled, slowly. Exhaled for a long count. She forced herself
to relax, she let her muscles drop, her head loll back. Her legs bent open at the knees, her arms slid down and rested, curled fingers turned up, on her thighs.

She closed her eyes. How absurd they were, she and Richard: the two celibates of the tale, hiding from each other in terror. She imagined describing this night to Jack, making a foolish story of
it. ‘A non-bedroom farce,’ she’d call it. She imagined Jack’s lined but youthful face, the intense light eyes, the curve of his mouth.
The palsied waltz of the
wallflowers
, she’d say.

Then someone was shaking her shoulder. She was cold, it had started to rain, she could hear the hard pelting drops outside. It was Ryan.

‘Jesus, Mom,’ he said. His voice was tightened in judgment and disgust. ‘What’re you
doing
down here?’

As the alternately rainy and muggy days of the summer wore on, as the time when the accident that would change their lives drew nearer, Elizabeth began to hang around
Lottie’s house for a little while almost every day. She’d arrive sometime after breakfast – Lottie would hear her on the porch, her light, quick step – and then she’d
knock at the open front door, call, and come in as far as the empty hall.