In the Middle of All This (11 page)

She couldn't quite shake the slowness and the pain. If she attended any of the sessions, she knew she'd fall instantly asleep, although that would be explained away as a higher level of meditation. She didn't want to fall asleep in a chair. At the concierge desk she scheduled an afternoon massage.

“You know that's during the plenary session,” he said.

She nodded. She didn't care.

Unwilling to return to the room, she finally found an empty leather chair. It was like sitting on a dead cow. She dozed.

“Elizabeth?”

She forced her eyes open. It was …

“Mark,” he said for her. “How are you?”

She looked at him. She couldn't remember how they knew each other or if he knew about her problem. Though almost everyone knew.

“I'm a little exhausted,” she said.

“Obviously. But how
are
you?” He looked her in the eyes to see if he could tell.

She shrugged.

“Well.” He smiled. “I've got to get to the next session. You coming?”

She shook her head. “I'd like to.”

“You're not going to hear Richard?”

She knew what an honor it was that he was getting to lead a chant. “Another time,” she said.

“Another time.” He hurried off.

Even here, even now, it was like running a race where she couldn't keep up, or like she was the only one running and all the others stood on the side, empathetic, voyeuristic, waiting for her to be over.

She tried to linger outside the auditorium for Richard's chant, but the crowd spilled over and she couldn't even see inside. She surrendered to her room for a nap. For some reason her other shoulder hurt. She tried to massage it away, a gnawing heat around the blade. The bed was horrid.

Later, on the table in a towel while the woman worked on her, she kept waiting for the pain to change. It was still there. Right there. Goddamn. In the room, when Richard returned, his face all bright with success, and asked how she was, she couldn't bring herself to tell him. “Fine,” she said. Whenever he wasn't looking she swung her shoulder around and around. She sent him off to dinner by himself.

Though he wouldn't be alone, she knew. He had so many admirers. He'd been with the ashram over twenty years, but recently, they said, he was
emerging
. He told everyone it was the Epiphany courses he'd begun taking, and now other people from the ashram were signing up. Three hours a night, three times a week. He was really growing and she admired that, but he'd begun the course work because he needed to be stronger for her, and now it was taking him farther away. He promised this would be his last session.

When he came up after evening chants, he was exhausted and exhilarated. He tried to tell her all about what he'd eaten at dinner and with whom, as if she cared through the searing in her shoulder.

“What's the matter?” he said.

“Just tired.”

Instantly he slept. When she looked at him this way, in the slackness against the pillow, in all that restfulness that he so easily entered, she couldn't help thinking that he was saving himself for his next wife.

When his parents had left and they had their house back to themselves, she sat on the couch with a glass of wine and the newspaper and tried not to think about anything. She read the Sunday engagement section and magazine, raked in the faces of all those up-and-coming couples and perfect women. Martin sat with his back to her, holding a four-finger scotch and flipping from one sports channel to the next. They hadn't fooled around in seven weeks. It felt like one long endless slide, as if they'd rolled the wrong number and found themselves tumbling down into a place so far behind that it wasn't a question of catching up anymore, they were just trying to stay on the board. She took a gulp of wine and rifled through for the Week in Review.

“I've been thinking,” Martin said, turning from his chair.

She rose with the rest of her wine and a last section of the paper. “Just don't make any calls tonight, okay?”

He sat watching the repeating highlights, the television glazing his knees. One more drink couldn't hurt, if he could just up and go get it.

When he woke it was past three and the guys on the screen were still talking about tonight and tomorrow as the station looped them around with the highlights. If he waited for another few minutes he could say the one-liners along with them. He felt sober, not hungover. He poured himself a seltzer and dialed her number.

“What are you doing up?” she said.

“The usual.” He looked around in the dark kitchen for something to distract himself with. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. I'm fine.”

“How was Bridgetown?”

“Good.”

It was indifference; she just couldn't bring herself to say anything else.

“Well, I …” He opened the microwave door and inspected the crusted stains on the glass tray. Pizza. Mashed potato. Milk. “I don't know whether this thing is going to happen.”

“Of course it isn't going to happen,” she said.

“I didn't say that.”

“It's all right, really. You know I'm not in a place where I can handle anything beyond me. Richard's not around much.”

His head hurt. “I was thinking we all might come over there for the summer.”

“I don't need any sympathy visits,” she said. “I don't need anybody feeling obligated.”

“It'd be fun,” he said.

“Maybe.”

“Well, you think about it.”

“You
think about it.”

“So what else is going on?”

“Nothing is going on. Whatever gave you the idea that anything is going on?”

“How's Richard?”

“He gets in at midnight, then he wants to talk, then he falls asleep. Then I'm all awake.” She took a breath. “I get wound up.”

“Hmm.” He shut the microwave door. “I guess I should get to bed.”

“All right. Thanks for calling.”

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

“So how are we going to do this?” Lauren said. “I mean, I know we
can
do it, but how are we going to do it?”

“We're just going to,” Martin said.

“Is cancer contagious?” Sarah asked.

Martin looked at her. “Where'd you get that idea?”

“You know, can you catch it?”

“No.”

“I think I'd rather stay with Grace this summer.”

“You
love
Aunt Elizabeth.”

“I don't wanna be away for the whole summer,” she said tearfully. “I won't have any friends.”

“Max will be there. We'll be there. Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Richard will be there.”

“It's not the same.”

“I know, sweetie. I know. But you always have fun when we go away.”

“You can't keep doing this to me,” she cried. “And now I don't even get to pick the place!” She ran upstairs and slammed herself into her room.

“So, you just said it was all right? You didn't think of asking me or anything?”

“Maybe they won't come,” she said tiredly.

“I want them to come. I just wish you'd asked me.”

“Can they come?” she asked.

“Of course they can come.” He looked around at the perfect house. “How long do you think they're going to stay?”

“Ten or twelve weeks.”

“Good god.”

“We'll paint after they leave.”

“Two little kids—we're certainly not going to do any touching up beforehand.”

“I never said we were.”

He pulled out his electronic calendar, punched in access numbers. “I might need to be away for a part of that time.” He typed with his index finger. “Maybe half of it.”

“I could tell them to rent an apartment.”

“That's all right.” He closed his calendar and smiled. “They don't have any money anyway.”

“I need you, too,” she said.

“Maybe you're just being needy.”

He shut himself in the meditation room, saw Muyamaya, took a cleansing breath. Oh that was wrong, that was wrong. But what else could he say when the only mantra that ever came to him these days was
I am absent, I am absent
. People had no idea—
no idea
—what his life was like, what their life was like. They'd been in their prime, he'd loved his job, she'd made a lot of money, and they'd take on anything. She was fearless. She wanted it all and she tried
everything
. Once they'd gotten lost in the snow in the Italian Alps—a storm had come up so late in the season it was practically an illusion—and they'd stepped into a miracle of a trekkers' hut and sat up all night sipping scotch and even—even made love when they were supposed to be worried for their lives. The next day they'd walked out. Now they had to try everything just to survive, and they had to live with it and figure out how to live beyond it at the same time. Practically every week a new therapist came to the house, or she bought a new remedy or she took a trip somewhere to work with somebody. She had to devote herself to it, and he tried to devote himself to her. And now she was going to draw a line around the summer and have them both give in to it. He supposed he could go off to Bridgetown, maybe do an Epiphany course in Amsterdam, and see where the firm might send him. Twelve weeks wasn't so long. Just a whole bloody summer. But what was she thinking? Was this another one of those moments when you got caught in the middle and you just had to wait your way out? What about
them?
He opened the door and looked over the stairs. She was standing under the crystals in the foyer. He padded down to her.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I just get a little tense, that's all.”

“You like your space,” she said.

“I do.”

“I'm not saying I'm dying,” she said. “I'm just saying time is precious, and I want to be with them and I want to be with you.”

“Okay,” he said.

She sniffled. “You think I'm being a shit, don't you?”

“Darling. Sweets.” He touched her cheek, held her. “You need to do what you have to. Me, too. Right?”

“Right,” she said.

“I'm sorry about the other thing.”

“No, you're not.”

“Then I'm sorry about not being sorry. I'm going back upstairs. Okay?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

FURTHER QUESTIONS

 

I have to apologize for calling you at home like this,” the provost was saying in that measured voice of his, “and so early at that. But I'm afraid I had no choice. Jane Wilson … ah … it seems that one of our students, Jane Wilson, hung herself late last night.”

“Jane Wilson?” Martin said, sitting up in bed in the still-dark room. That wasn't Jane Doyle. Who was she?

“I'm afraid so,” the provost said. “We're all terribly saddened about this. Can you make a noon meeting in my office?”

“Of course.”

“See you then.”

Jane Wilson? She was in his residential seminar on living anthropology. He could not quite summon her. Indifferent brown hair, combed back. Her face puffy and sallow. She'd just handed in a paper on Friday.

“Jane Wilson?” Lauren whispered beside him.

“A student,” he said. “Suicide.”

“Oh no.”

On his walk to the class, Martin avoided knots of students talking in hushed or loud voices, excited, gossipy, stricken. The dorm was locked. He looked around for a phone or a doorbell. He pounded on the door.

No answer.

All the students had dispersed to their classes. He pounded on the dorm door again. Nothing. The class was held in the basement. He hiked around to where he thought the window was and bent down. They were there in the cramped room. He knocked. They were all talking. He knocked again.

“The professor,” someone called out.

“Could you let me in?” he shouted through the closed window while pointing toward the side door.

Geoff opened the door for him. He was tall and pale, with red hair falling across his face as if he'd just woken up. Martin hated teaching in the dorms.

“I got locked out,” he said.

“We had to.” Geoff hurried ahead of him down the stairs, toward the class. “There were too many people coming through.”

“I understand.”

In the room the students looked at him, expectant, tinged with misery. “I guess you heard what happened,” he said. They nodded. “We're not going to have class today.” They nodded again. “But we can talk about it, if you want. Or you can leave.”

No one left. A sorrow for all of them leaped from his heart—even for the lacrosse player who was always late and hadn't turned anything in yet, and for the stoner who made too many sarcastic remarks—and he fought to restrain it. He sat cross-legged on his desk and waited.

“She killed herself,” a girl said. “I just saw her Friday.”

“I saw her yesterday afternoon,” a guy who had taken out a pack of cigarettes said.

“And?” the girl said.

“Nothing. I just saw her.”

“Does it make any of you feel like killing yourselves?” That was—thank god—not Martin who asked. It was one of the students. There were nods and groans.

“I tried once,” someone whispered. He could barely catch who it was.

“I haven't thought about it since I was a freshman,” a junior said.

And he sat there, for the hour, letting them run their encounter session. He said as little as possible. At the end there was a kind of sigh, and they all looked at him, deflated. He had to say something. His face grew hot and he knew he was blushing, and he'd long since ceased to blush in front of students and this made him hotter and redder.

“You just—we just—need to be as kind to one another as we can,” he said. “Because we can never know if it will be the last time we have.” Kindness, he was teaching them kindness. The faculty handbook said to teach Truth and Art. There was some truth in kindness—perhaps some art, too—but did he have to sound like a goddamn Hallmark card?