For Love (39 page)

Ryan parks the car aimed in the wrong direction on their side of the street. As they come up the walk, they are arguing about whether this is a ticketable offense. Suddenly Lottie sees that the
door is open. She stops. They left it locked, of course, when they went to the service. As she mounts the front steps, her heart is pounding. She steps into the empty hallway and freezes, looking
around, ready for anything. But then Cameron calls from the kitchen. ‘Charlotte?’

‘Oh, Cam, it’s you,’ she says, and feels, for just a few seconds, relief. But as soon as he comes out from the dining room doorway, she sees that this is bad, this is trouble.
He looks disheveled, frantic. He’s moving too fast; Lottie can see perhaps a little too much white in his eye. His hair is uncombed, he looks ill.

He smiles at Lottie and Ryan, a tethered, false rictus that terrifies her. ‘All dressed up. Where ya been?’ he says in his small, pressured voice.

Before Lottie can think of a lie to tell, Ryan says, ‘Jessica Laver’s funeral.’

He turns his harsh smile on Ryan. ‘There must have been a fair crowd, no?’ Ryan starts to answer, but he rides on: ‘Seems like everyone I know and love was there. If
you’d asked me, I’d have gone with you.’

Again Ryan begins to speak; he’s saying Cameron’s name. This time Lottie interrupts. ‘It didn’t occur to us. Ryan had his own reasons for going – he knew Jessica.
And I wanted to be with him. It had no connection to you, Cam.’

They stand in a little circle in the empty front hall. Outside the open door, the huge sycamore stirs, sighs in the wind. Cam is staring at Lottie, then his eyes flick to Ryan, then to the
living room windows, then back to Lottie. ‘Well, you look very nice, both of you. Very nice,’ he says finally. He seems to mean this.

‘Thank you,’ Lottie says.

‘Thank you,’ Ryan echoes.

‘It’s over?’ he asks. Before they can answer, he walks quickly to the living room windows and stands staring out.

‘The service? Yes,’ Lottie says.

She follows him into the room, willing herself to move slowly. His nerviness seems volatile and dangerous, and Lottie is aware of wanting to pull against it. ‘Elizabeth was going on to the
what-d’you-call-it. The reception, whatever. We didn’t.’

‘She’s alone?’

‘Elizabeth and the
family
, I should have said.’ She watches him from the side, his strong, harsh profile, his quickly shifting eyes. ‘Why don’t we sit down?’
she says. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

He laughs, a mirthless bark, but when Lottie sits in one of the chairs facing the windows, he sits too. He looks at Lottie now; he’s smiling again. ‘I called her this morning and got
Emily,’ he says. ‘I talked to Emily. Emily and I had a little chat. She said Elizabeth’s leaving. After the service. Elizabeth’s leaving town.’

‘Ah!’ Lottie says. She’s frightened suddenly.

‘And what I’m wondering, Charlotte, is if you knew that, that Elizabeth was leaving.’ Lottie doesn’t respond. ‘And if you knew that, why you wouldn’t have
told me. Why you would have led me to believe something distinctly other than that.’

In her peripheral vision, Lottie can see Ryan shift his weight slightly. He’s still standing in the hall, watching her and Cameron.

‘I did know it,’ Lottie says softly.

‘What?’ Cameron’s voice is sharp.

‘I said I knew it. And I thought that she had a right to go. Unmolested, as it were.’

‘Charlotte.’ He shakes his head. He smiles sadly at Lottie. ‘That was wrong of you. That makes me very angry.’

‘What part was wrong?’ she asks.

‘It was all wrong,’ he says. He has leaned forward, and the smile is gone. ‘To lie to me. To think it’s right that she should go. To think that what I am about is . . .
molesting Elizabeth. Wrong. All wrong.’

‘Well, I disagree with you, then. Obviously. I did what I thought was right.’

‘Right for who?’

‘
Right
. More abstract than that.’

‘There is no abstract right, Charlotte.’ He shakes his head again.

There’s the sound of a car door slamming somewhere outside, and he turns quickly in his chair, half rises. His head moves, small tugs left and right. He looks feral. He stills finally and
sits back down. There’s a long silence.

Lottie says, ‘Would you like some coffee?’

He looks at her. ‘No. Thank you.’

Lottie gets up. Elizabeth won’t be here for another fifteen minutes at the soonest. ‘Well, I would,’ she says. ‘Ryan? You?’

‘Umm. Sure,’ he says, and starts to move toward the kitchen.

‘No, no,’ Lottie says. ‘I’ll do it.’

She goes back out to the kitchen and puts some water on to boil. She gets out the paper filter, the grounds. She makes herself move slowly, calmly, through this ritual. She can hear the
stillness in the living room, though once Cam speaks and Ryan answers, something about the service. Someone is up once too, walking around, but Lottie forces herself to stay in the kitchen, to
watch the brown drops fill the glass pot.

When she comes out, she is carrying two mugs. She hands one to Ryan, who’s sitting now on the arm of one of the old chairs. She sits down again in her chair. Cam is watching her steadily.
She looks back, keeping her gaze level. ‘Are you sure?’ she asks. ‘That you don’t want any?’

‘Quite sure,’ he says.

‘What’s your plan?’ Lottie says at last. Absurdly, she has tried to make her voice conversational, and he hears that. He smiles. As if in response to this, Ryan shifts his
weight.

Cameron looks over at him. ‘Your mother’s funny, Ryan.’

‘Unh huh,’ Ryan says. ‘I know. I like Mom.’

‘At the moment,’ Cameron says, ‘I do not.’ His face falls, then – in a way that shocks Lottie – it grows flaccid, his eyelids seem to thicken, lines pull, as
though he’s stepped into a more powerful gravitational field. She sees that he’s exhausted, near the end of something. She wonders how much he’s slept since Jessica died; whether
he’s slept at all.

‘What
is
your plan, Cameron?’ she asks again.

‘Oh, Charlotte, come on.’

‘No, I’m curious.’

He stares over at her coldly. ‘I’m here. I’m waiting. Clearly I’m going to try to stop her. Is that a plan?’

He’s waiting for an answer, so she lifts her shoulders.

‘If it is, that’s my plan. To hold on to what I love. Wouldn’t it be your plan?’

‘I might execute it differently.’

‘I think you might.’ His voice is heavy with something ugly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, come on, Charlotte. When have you ever tried to hold on to something you love? When have you ever worked at love? You think love is something that happens to you – a
feeling.’

‘And what do you think it is?’

‘What you choose. What you do. How you live.’

‘Grace versus works,’ Ryan says.

‘Thank you, Ryan,’ Cameron says. He shuts his eyes. ‘Grace versus works. It’ll do.’

Lottie meets Ryan’s eyes across the room and feels a welling of gratitude. He understands, then. He knows they have to keep Cameron distracted. Distracted and talking. And then she
realizes what
her
plan is. She realizes that she’s decided against her brother here too. That she will try to guarantee Elizabeth’s departure. That what she is choosing, what she
is doing, are in the service of everything she’s been struggling against in her own life since she and Jack married.

‘I don’t think “versus” is correct,’ she says.

His eyes snap open. ‘What?’

‘I don’t think it’s grace
versus
works.’

‘Oh, Char. The philosopher of love. No doubt you’ve solved it all this summer with your research.’

‘I’ve thought about it.’

‘Fine.’ He turns slowly in his chair to watch a couple of kids walk past, their sharp voices carrying back long after they’ve passed the window. They’re talking about
money, it seems.

‘You need them both, surely,’ Lottie says. He looks almost confused as he stares at her. ‘I mean, you can’t work at it if there’s not a sense of –
occasionally anyhow – of grace. In love, after all, there are two. Two people. If you’re working at it alone, you’re working
on
the other person.’

‘And that’s what you think I’m doing?’

‘Elizabeth wants to go, Cameron. She wants to work on her marriage. You can’t make her love you through
works
.
Love-works
. Whatever you want to call it.’

‘I don’t need to make Elizabeth love me. She does love me.’

‘Yes, of course she does. But she loves Lawrence too, and that’s where she wants to turn her energy.’

‘But that’s because
he’s
been working on her. She’s a very vulnerable person. Very easily swayed. I understand Elizabeth. I understand how important all those
conventional aspects of life – all the status things – are to her. They always have been. But they’re not what she wants, really. And now maybe it’s
my
turn. To work
on heir again. To remind her of what she really wants.’

They sit in silence for a minute. Cameron’s fingers are dancing nervously on the arm of his chair. Lottie looks at Ryan, who’s sunk farther down in his chair.

She says, ‘You know, I’d be furious if someone said that of me.’

‘Said what?’

‘Said that they knew what I
really wanted
. Implied that they understood me better than I understood myself.’ Abruptly she remembers that this is what Larry has said about
Elizabeth too, and she stops too quickly, her mouth a little open.

Cameron looks at her. ‘Because you understand yourself so very well, no doubt.’

Ryan stirs a little at his tone, and Lottie glances quickly at her son, then back at Cam. ‘You know,’ she says, ‘I have a letter for you. From Elizabeth. Maybe it would be good
for you to read it.’ Lottie starts to get up, but he raises his hand.

‘I don’t need to read it.’

‘Come on, I’m just going to go up and get it. I think you should.’ She stands.

‘I’m not going to, Charlotte.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because. Because I know what is says. And it’s not news. And it’s not interesting. And it’s not relevant.’

‘Cameron, it’s what Elizabeth wants to say to you. What could be more relevant than that?’

He shakes his head, looks sideways down the street out the window again.

‘I think you should read it, Cam.’

‘Why?’ He looks sharply back at her. ‘Have you? Have you read it, Charlotte?’

‘Yes. I have.’

‘How perfectly extraordinary,’ he says. He turns to Ryan, as though to ask him to comment.

Over his shoulder Lottie sees Elizabeth’s big rental station wagon pull up the driveway. It stops with the tail just visible, sticking out under the porte cochere around the side of the
house. Lottie begins to talk loudly. ‘All right, yes. I read it. I was worried about you, for God’s sake.’ What she is thinking is:
Don’t slam the doors. Don’t, for
Chrissakes, slam the doors
. ‘A young woman had died – do you remember that? – and I was assuming you might be upset.’ Lottie strides across the room, turns, strides back
as she talks, like any bad actor trying to invent stage business, trying to call attention to herself. ‘I came to your apartment, and you weren’t there. I had no idea where you were!
What you might be doing. I was very worried. I was worried you might have killed yourself, Cam!’

He grimaces.

‘And then I was worried that if the letter was in any way a rejection, a rebuff, that it might make you worse. Might make everything worse.’ Lottie is standing directly in front of
him now. She points at him. ‘You would have done excactly the same thing, Cameron. Exactly. Or I hope you would. You would have tried to protect me. Or a friend. Or whoever. You would have
read the letter. You would have taken it with you just the way I did.’

She lets a silence fall. No sound from outside. Just the trees, a very distant honking. Surely Elizabeth has made it into the house by now, Elizabeth and the children.

‘Because it might have caused me to despair? Because what was in the letter might have caused me to despair, Charlotte?’

‘Yes,’ she says. She sits down again, on the edge of her chair, and tries to keep her eyes intent on his.

‘But you’d like me to read it now. Why is that?’

‘Because. You’re being ridiculous. Arrogant. As though she had no will or choice in the matter. As though your will, your choice, were all that mattered.’

‘My will and hers are one.’

‘They are
not
one. I know that.’

‘By reading my mail.’

‘By talking to her. By listening to her, which is more than you’ve done.’

‘You can’t tell me she talked to
you
about me.’

There is such contempt in his voice that Lottie feels stung. After a few seconds she says, ‘That is what I’m telling you. She talked to me many times.’

He smiles, slightly. ‘I can promise you, Charlotte, that she didn’t tell you anything that really mattered. That you know nothing, you understand nothing, about what really went on
between us.’

‘Oh, you’d be very surprised, very surprised, at what I know.’ Lottie’s voice is shaking, but she couldn’t have said whether this is something that has happened to
her or something she’s willed to keep his attention.

‘I don’t believe you,’ he says.

‘You should.’

He lifts a dismissive hand and starts to turn his head, to look out the window again.

Quickly Lottie says, ‘She told me about a time you made love in an alleyway. Or a passageway, I guess, really.’ He looks back at her, his mouth slightly opened. ‘In Central
Square,’ she says. ‘It was raining. You were standing up.’ His face is so drained, suddenly, that she feels a horrible pity for him; but she goes on. ‘She told me you cried
when you first made love again.’

Lottie keeps her eyes on his face, but in the corner of her vision she can see one, then another, figure moving around the back of the car. Then they’re gone.

‘But why would she? Why would she talk to you?’ His voice is whispery and cracked. He isn’t quite looking at Lottie.

‘Because. I don’t know. Because it made the whole thing more romantic to do so, maybe. It jacked it up. And that’s what she wanted, I think. She wanted romance, something to
take her mind off the fact that her husband was leaving her. Seemed to be leaving her. Something to make her feel alive.’ Lottie lifts her shoulders. ‘She was bored. She told me that
too. And lots of other things. Things about that time you went out to San Francisco, for example. Which is not so very different from this, really, is it?’