Independence Day (51 page)

“Well,” Sally says almost sadly. “Last night I thought I was in a tide pulling me toward you. Only that isn’t what happened. So I’m not very sure. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.”

“It’s not bad if it’s pulling you toward me, is it?”

“I don’t think so. But I got nervous about it, and I’m not used to being nervous. It’s not my nature. I got in the car and drove all the way to Lakewood and saw
The Dead
. Then I had my radicchio and mushrooms by myself at Johnny Matassa’s, where you and I had our first encounter.”

“Did you feel better?” I say, fingering up two
Annie
ducats, wondering if a character in
The Dead
reminded her of me.

“Not completely. No. I still couldn’t understand if the unchangeable course was toward you or away from you. It’s a dilemma.”

“I love you,” I say, totally startling myself. A tide of another nature has just swirled me into very deep, possibly dark water. These words are not untrue, or don’t feel untrue, but I didn’t need to say them at this very moment (though only an asshole would take them back).

“I’m sorry,” Sally says, reasonably enough. “What is it? What?”

“You heard me.” The living room pianist is playing “The Happy Wanderer” much louder now—just banging away. The Japanese man who’s been hearing all about invasive surgeries walks out of the living room smiling, but immediately stops smiling when he hits the hall. He sees me and shakes his head as if he were responsible for the music but now it won’t stop. He heads up the front stairs. Paul and I will be happy to be on floor 3.

“What’s that mean, Frank?”

“I just realized I wanted to say it to you. And so I said it. I don’t know everything it means”—to put it mildly—“but I know it doesn’t mean nothing.”

“But didn’t you tell me you’d have to make somebody up to love them? And didn’t you say this was a time in your life you probably wouldn’t even remember later?”

“Maybe that time’s over, or it’s changing.” I feel jittery and squeamish saying so. “But I wouldn’t make you up anyway. It isn’t even possible. I told you that this afternoon.” I’m wondering, though, what if I’d said “don’t” in front of the verb? Then what? Could that be the way life progresses at my age? A-stumble
into
darkness and
out
of the light? You discover you love someone by trying it without “don’t” in front of the verb? Nothing vectored by your
self
or by what
is?
If so, it’s not good.

There’s a pause on the line, during which Sally is, understandably, thinking. I’m mightily interested in asking if she might love me, since she’d mean something different by it, which would be good. We could sort out the differences. But I don’t ask.

“The Happy Wanderer” comes to a crashing end, followed by complete, relieved silence in the living room. I hear the Japanese man’s feet treading the squeaky hall above me, then a door click closed. I hear pots being banged and scrubbed beyond the wall in the kitchen. Out on the dark porch the big rockers are rocking still, their occupants no doubt staring moodily across at the nicer inn that’s too ritzy for them and probably not worth the money.

“It’s very odd,” Sally says, clearing her throat again as though changing the subject away from love, which is okay with me. “After I talked to you today from wherever you were, and before I went to see
The Dead
, I walked up the beach a while—you’d asked me about Wally’s cuff links, and I just got this idea in my head. And when I came home I called his mother out in Lake Forest, and I demanded to know where he is. It just occurred to me for some reason that she’d always known and wouldn’t tell me. That was the big secret, in spite of everything. And I’ve never even been a person who thought there
was
a big secret.” (Unlike, say, Ann.)

“What did she tell you?” This would be an interesting new wrinkle in the tapestry.
Wally: The Sequel
.

“She didn’t know where he was. She actually started crying on the phone, the poor old thing. It was terrible. I was terrible. I said I was sorry, but I’m sure she doesn’t forgive me. I certainly wouldn’t forgive me. I told you I can be ruthless sometimes.”

“Did you feel better?”

“No. I just have to forget it, that’s all. You can still see your ex-wife even if you don’t want to. I don’t know which is better.”

“That’s why people carve hearts on trees, I guess,” I say, and feel idiotic for saying it, but for a moment also desolate, as if some chance has been once again missed by me. Ann seems all the more insubstantial and distant for being substantial and not even very distant.

“I sound very un-smart to myself,” Sally says, ignoring my remark about trees. She takes a drink of wine, bumping the phone with the glass rim. “Maybe I’m undergoing the early signs of something. Self-pitying failure to make a significant contribution in the world.”

“That’s not true a bit,” I say. “You help dying people and make them happier. You make a hell of a contribution. A lot more than I make.”

“Women don’t usually have midlife crises, do they?” she says. “Though maybe women who’re alone do.”

“Do you love me?” I say rashly.

“Would you even like that?”

“Sure. I’d think it was great.”

“Don’t you think I’m too mild? I think I’m very mild.”

“No! I don’t think you’re mild. I think you’re wonderful.” The receiver for some reason is tightly pinned to my ear.

“I think I’m mild.”

“Maybe you feel mild about me.” I hope not, and my eyes fall again upon the little stack of pink dinner-theater tickets. They are, I see, for July 2, 1987—exactly a year ago. “If it’s free, how good could it be?”—F. Bascombe.

“I
would
like to know something.” She could very well want to know plenty.

“I’ll tell you anything. No holding back. The whole truth.”

“Tell me why you’re attracted to women your own age?” This harks back to a conversation we had on our gloom-infested fall excursion to Vermont to peep at leaves, eat overcooked crown roasts and wait in stationary lines of bus traffic, later to retreat homeward in a debrided, funky silence. On the way up and in soaring early spirits, I explained, off the cuff and unsolicited, that younger women (who I’d had in mind I can’t remember, but somebody in her middle twenties and not very smart) always wanted to cheer me up and sympathize with me, except that finally bored the socks off me, since I didn’t want to be sympathized with and was cheerful enough on my own. We were whizzing up the Taconic, and I went on to say it seemed like a textbook definition of adulthood that you gave up trying to be a cheerleader for the person you loved and just took him or her on as he or she was—assuming you liked him (or her). Sally made no reply at the time, as though she thought I was just making something up for her benefit and wasn’t interested. (In fact, I might already have been coaching myself against making
people
up for the purpose of loving them.)

“Well,” I say, aware I could blow the whole deal with an inept turn of phrase, “younger women always want everything to be a success and have love depend on it. But some things can’t be a success and you love somebody anyway.”

Silence again intervenes. Again I think I hear surf languidly sudsing against the sandy shingle.

Sally says, “I don’t think that’s exactly what you said last fall.”

“But it’s pretty close,” I say, “and it’s what I meant and what I mean now. And what do you care? You’re my age, or almost. And I don’t love anybody else.” (Except my ex-wife, which is a non-issue.)

“I guess I’m concerned that you’re making me up different from how I am. Maybe you think there’s only one person in the world for anybody, and so you keep making her up. Not that I mind being improved on, but you have to stick to my particular facts.”

“I have to forget about making people up,” I say guiltily, sorry I ever gave utterance to the idea. “And I don’t think there’s just one person for anybody. At least I hope to hell not, since I haven’t done so well yet.”

“We have some more fireworks out on the water here,” Sally says dreamily. “That’s very nice. Maybe I’m just feeling susceptible tonight. I felt good when you called.”

“I
still
feel good,” I say, and suddenly the bony, horseface woman who’s been banging the piano to death strides out into the foyer and looks down the hall straight at me, where I’m leaning on the wall above the phone table. She’s in step with the plump woman in the neck brace, whom she’s no doubt been making sing “Balls-de-reee, balls-de-rah.” She issues me another savage-eyebrowed look, as if I was where she knew I’d be and up to my pants pockets in the deceit of some angelic and unsuspecting wifey. “Look. I’m in a public phone here. But I feel a lot better. I just want to see you tomorrow if I can’t see you in ten minutes.”

“Where?” Sally says smally, still susceptible.

“Anywhere. Name it. I’ll come down there in a Cessna.” The two women stay standing in the lighted foyer, unabashedly ogling me and listening in.

“Are you still taking Paul to the train in New York?”

“By six o’clock,” I say, wondering where Paul could be at this minute.

“Well, I could take a train up there and meet you. I’d like that. I’d like to spend the Fourth of July with you.”

“You know, it’s my favorite holiday of a non-religious nature.” I am enthused to hear her even warily agreeable, though she can seem more agreeable than she is. (I have to tabulate all the declarations and forswearings I’ve committed to in the last ten minutes.) “You didn’t answer my question, though.”

“Oh.” She sniffs once. “You’re not really very easy to fix on. And I don’t think I’d be a good long-term lover or a wife for somebody like that. I had a husband who was hard to fix on.”

“That’s all right,” I say. Though surely I’m not as elusive as Wally! The Wally who’s been gone for damn near twenty years!

“Is that all right? For me to be a not very good lover or wife?” She pauses to think about this novel idea. “Don’t you care, or are you just not putting any pressure on me to do anything?”

“I care,” I say. “But I’d actually just be happy to hear any good words.”

“Everything isn’t just about how you say it,” Sally says, very formally. “And I wouldn’t know what to say anyway. I don’t think we mean the same things when we say the same things.” (As predicted.)

“That’s fine too. As long as you’re not sure you
don’t
love me. I read a poem someplace that said perfect love was not knowing you weren’t in love. Maybe that’s what this is.”

“Oh my,” she says, and sounds sorrowful. “That’s too complicated, Frank, and it’s not very different from how it was last night. It’s not very encouraging to me.”

“It’s different because I get to see you tomorrow. Meet me at seven at Rocky and Carlo’s on Thirty-third and Seventh. We’ll start new from there.”

“Well,” she says. “Are we making a business deal to be in love? Is that what’s happening?”

“No, it’s not. But it’s a good deal, though. Everything’s up front for a change.” She laughs. And then I try to laugh but can’t and have to fake laughing.

“Okay, okay,” she says, in a not very hopeful voice. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You better believe it,” I say in a better one. And we hang up. Though the instant she’s off I depress the plunger and shout into the empty line, “And so you’re nothing but a fucking asshole, are you? Well, I’ll have you killed before Labor Day, and that’s God’s promise.” I snap a vicious look around at the two women, framed by the screen door, peering at me. “I’ll see you in hell,” I say into the dead line, and slam the phone down as the women turn and head hastily upstairs to their beds.

I
take a quick peek out onto the porch to see if Paul’s there. He’s not—only one of the gin players is left, asleep but managing to rock his rocker anyway. I make an investigative turn through the smelly dining room, where the light’s still on and the big boarding-house lazy Susan table is cleared and shining dully from being wiped with a greasy rag. Through the two-way kitchen door open at the back I see the young woman who was clanging the dinner bell, wearing a chef’s hat and waving when Paul and I arrived. She’s seated at a long metal table in the brackish light, smoking a cigarette and flipping through a magazine, her hand around a can of Genny, her chef’s hat in front of her. Clearly she’s immersed in her own well-earned and private quality time. But nothing would make me happier than a warmed-up plate of dinner spaghetti with a couple of cold-as-they-may-be slabs of garlic bread and maybe a brew of my own. I’d eat right here, standing up, or sneak a plate to my room by the back stairs so no other guests would have to know about it. (“The next thing, everybody’ll want to eat late, and we’ll be serving dinner from now to Christmas. It’s hard to know where to draw the line in these things”—which of course is true.)

“Hi,” I say in through the kitchen door, one room into the next, sounding meeker than I want to sound.

The young woman—who’s still wearing a chef’s boxy-looking white tunic, institutional baggy pants and a red neckerchief—turns and gives me a skeptical, unwelcoming look. A round tin ashtray sits on the table in front of her, beside a package of Winstons. She looks back and flicks her smoke on the ashtray’s rim.