Middle Age (16 page)

(The caller hadn’t been Marina Troy but Abigail Des Pres, who’d been one of the women in Adam’s art class at the high school.) The caller broke down into sobs, and Camille, stricken to the heart, sobbed with her. Not that she’d been able to quite believe that Adam was dead, so quickly. Since that hour, Camille’s mind had had no peace. Her thoughts were sharp as razors. They spun, they glittered. In the midst of the glittering a door opened stealthily, and it was her husband coming finally to bed. The house was deathly quiet, it was the middle of the night. Lionel Hoffmann barefoot, carrying his shoes; out of gallantry, not wanting to wake his exhausted wife. (Not wanting, Camille knew, to have to speak to her, touch her.) A rapist he was, creeping into her shadowy room. Camille smiled at the thought, for Lionel was not a man with rape on his mind. “Lionel, darling?” Camille whispered, and Lionel, startled, had no choice but to reply, “Yes? What?” Camille stirred, sitting up, the enormous goose-feather pillow sighing behind her. “What—what time is it?” and Lionel said quickly, “What difference does it make? It’s late. I’m sorry I woke you.” “I haven’t been asleep.” “I think you were, Camille, and I woke you. I’m sorry.” “But I wasn’t asleep, Lionel. I was waiting for you.” “You were asleep, I think. I could hear you breathing. I’m sorry I woke you.” Camille smiled into the darkness at the elusive man hovering just beyond the arc of light. She wanted to scream,
Stop being sorry! I hate you
but instead she said plaintively, “Lionel, do you l-love me?” But Lionel had already slipped

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away into his bathroom, which opened off the far side of the spacious bedroom; already the fan inside was clicking and whirring. “What will I do if you don’t love me? And Adam gone.”

It was Lionel’s strategy to take a very long time in his bathroom before coming to bed. Camille understood that he was waiting for her to drift back to sleep. Since the news of Adam’s death he hadn’t wished to comfort her, nor even to touch her. Nor even to look at her. “Adam was my friend, too”—so strange a remark to make, as he’d turned away from her in a kind of reproach. Yet Lionel’s remoteness was hardly new. How many months, years. Since about the time the children departed? Now she wasn’t Mother, but again Wife. She’d served him and the children well, as Mother. As Wife, possibly she was deficient? Often she overheard Lionel complaining of his office staff, the “girls” he was forced to hire, none of them capable, and she understood that, if Lionel were to interview her for Wife, he wouldn’t hire her. Somehow, her personality had begun to fade in her early forties. As her fair, wavy brown hair had faded. When they’d first met, Camille had been a vivacious eighteen-year-old college freshman; very pretty, and very popular with boys; at Ithaca College, she’d been fre-netically busy with activities like Glowworms, HiSky, PIPS, Slipper & Pen, Lancettes, Icicles, and the women’s intramural volleyball team; she’d nearly been elected class public relations officer, a position of responsibility. She’d met Lionel Hoffmann at a Deke party at Colgate one evening when Lionel’s date had gotten shamelessly drunk, and was dancing with a succession of Dekes, and Lionel had stalked out of the fraternity house, furious; and Camille’s date who was a friend of Lionel’s had asked Lionel to join him and Camille for the remainder of the weekend; and somehow it happened that Lionel, in his fury and heartbreak, had focused on
her
.

And so he’d loved Camille for several years before finally Camille agreed to marry him, giving up her hope of a career in education, and a stint in the Peace Corps. (Camille had begged Lionel to join the Peace Corps with her, they might have spent their honeymoon in exotic Africa, but of course, Lionel vetoed the idea.) Almost immediately after the marriage their relationship altered. By degrees, Camille lost her “sparkle”—her

“dancing” eyes—as her Grand-da-daddy had called them. But she’d been very capable as Mother, with nannies, housemaids, and cooks to assist her, and this had pleased not only her demanding husband but her husband’s yet more demanding parents; and in the pleasure of such knowledge, Camille had basked innocently for years. Then the children were grown
Middle Age: A Romance

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and gone, overnight it seemed. And Camille began to lose her looks. In mirrors, often she saw an unrecognizable face. It was known by Camille to be hers, as in dreams we “know” people who don’t at all resemble their real selves; yet parts might be missing—an eye, a nostril, the right side of the jaw melted away. In family snapshots, Camille was a blur. Her figure was ectoplasmic, shapeless. Her hair lost its color, its lustre, its texture; what beauticians call “body.” Her eyes faded: where once they’d been a deep blue, now they were a pale gray, like wetted newsprint. A number of times Camille answered the phone only to hear the caller say, “Hello? Hel
lo?
”

though Camille had distinctly said hello; when Camille protested she was there, she was Camille Hoffmann, the caller seemed not to hear, and hung up. It was so frustrating! It was heartbreaking. To be a wraith while still alive, and still relatively young. Only Adam Berendt in his kindness had seen
her
.

Time had passed, the bathroom fan still whirred. Camille was determined to remain awake though it was :6 .. by her bedside clock.

Thinking how their lovemaking, hers and Lionel’s, had become so rare in recent years as to have acquired, for each, a new and alarming awkwardness; as if they were inexperienced newlyweds, or strangers by some mysterious chance (a lottery?) forced to sleep in a single bed. This bed!

Camille stifled a sob. She adjusted the enormous pillow beneath her head.

Oh, why had Adam Berendt never climbed the stairs to this room, to this bed?
Why didn’t you love me as I loved you, if you’d made love to me in this bed
the bed would be sanctified now and I could sleep
. She’d bathed, and powdered her soft slipping-down body with talcum that smelled of lilac, to erase the gritty-acrid odor of the crematorium, but it was difficult to find a comfortable position in this bed. If Camille lay on her back, her right breast sagged to the right, and her left breast sagged to the left, to a degree that disconcerted; if she lay on her side, her heart seemed to beat faster, and her left breast was mashed against the mattress while her right breast was mashed against her upper arm. (For she could only face the left side of the bed, since Lionel lay to her right; that was his territory.) And her breasts had become fearful to her. Even as their maternal function rapidly retreated in time, they seemed to be growing larger. (In fact, Camille hadn’t nursed either of her babies. Her obstetrician, male, hadn’t recommended it. And Lionel had wondered aloud in his remote, whimsical way if nursing wasn’t a bit aboriginal for their time and place.) How unnatural it had seemed that day in the crematorium “chapel,” that Camille felt

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herself both a ghost and a mammalian physical being, burdened with the impediments of female flesh.
And there is no one to whom I can speak of such
things, now that Adam is gone
. If she dared to bring up such a topic to Lionel, he would have been dismayed and embarrassed; he disliked what he called Camille’s “metaphysical” tendencies, fearing his emotional wife might come to believe in spiritualism, séances, New Age notions like rein-carnation and “channeling” and communing with animals.
Because I am not
my body
.
I am so much more!
Not long ago at a fund-raising luncheon for Planned Parenthood, the unpredictable Augusta Cutler shocked women friends by declaring she was God damned bored with her female body; she’d outgrown the thing, even as, ripening and spreading, it seemed to be outgrowing
her
. Lifting her breasts in both beringed hands, and they were sizable breasts in taupe jersey decorated with myriad tiny pearls, Gussie said in her husky growl, “Sometimes I feel like a rubber sex doll some guy blew up, and discarded.” Abigail Des Pres, the only divorcée in their circle, who’d lost so much weight since her divorce that she’d become ethereal, like a fading watercolor, glanced down at her narrow torso saying, “Me!

I’m a rubber sex doll that’s been deflated, and discarded.” Camille snorted with sudden laughter.

Oh, but was it funny, any of it? Camille knew that Lionel was furious with her, and that his fury had something to do with the size of her breasts, and her hips and thighs, and their ectoplasmic nature; he was furious with her
femaleness;
even as he honored her as his wife, and would never dream (Camille knew!) of being unfaithful to her, still less leaving her. But he was upset with her grieving for Adam before witnesses, their Salthill friends. Camille lay listening to faucets being turned on, and off.

The toilet flushing. Reproach vibrated in these sounds. A medicine cabinet door being opened, and shut. And opened again?
It’s a test of wills
.
If he
can outwait me
.
If I fall asleep before he comes to bed
. Camille smiled, thinking this might be a TV show.
Marriage at Bedtime: The Test of Wills
. How popular it would be!

At last, the fan ceased. A door opened quietly. A man’s shadowy figure, barefoot, in pajama bottoms and white T-shirt top, came stealthily to the bed. Switched off the bedside lamp. Slipped beneath the covers, stiff and on his back and breathing as inconspicuously as possible. Camille was awake (wasn’t Camille awake?) yet she seemed incapable of moving her head, or speaking in even a murmur
Lionel? I’m so afraid
. Her sprawling soft body felt as if it had been shot with novocaine. No, it was the coarse
Middle Age: A Romance

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white pill she’d taken before coming to bed.
Lethesse
was the brand name.

She’d had three, possibly four of these today? The powdery, slightly bitter taste of the pills was confused with the powdery, gritty, acrid-bitter taste of the air in the chapel, and in the parking lot outside Nyack Burial-Cremation Services, Inc. Oh, the shock of it: looking up to the tall stained chimney where big puffs of smoke drifted skyward with balloon-like ease.

My card, ma’am. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have,
ma’am
.
At any time
. The gravely smiling Shad had pressed his card into Camille’s hand, murmuring in her ear as if making an assignation. (And Lionel only a few yards away, oblivious.) Camille shuddered, remembering. She’d torn the card into tiny pieces. She was a Christian woman.

Lionel would never permit her to be otherwise. He, too, was thinking rapidly; Camille could feel his brain, a finer mechanism than her own, working; his thoughts humming and vibrating, like the bathroom fan.

Lionel still lay on his back, though facing the outside of the bed, having shoved his pillow aside (for Lionel had a decades-old, irrational fear of being “smothered” in the goose-feather pillows) and of course, he would begin to snore as soon as he drifted into sleep; and Camille wouldn’t dare nudge him awake. When she did, he responded with irritation and hurt pride. (“Camille, I wasn’t asleep. How could I be snoring? I’m as wide awake as you.”) Lionel’s snoring was surprisingly loud for a man with a lean, lanky frame and fastidious manners. It had the power to penetrate her sleep as a bore penetrates a plasterboard wall. For thirty years Camille’s dreams had reshaped themselves into narratives to absorb the man’s snoring. Often Camille found herself in airports, or on airplanes roaring through the sky. She was on a train, rocked by rhythmic deafening wheels. She was involved with sewing machines, lawn mowers, lathes.

Sometimes there was a wet, gurgling sound to Lionel’s snores and Camille found herself in her nightclothes, barefoot in a turbulent surf. How eternal is a single night, and of what eternities are our long marriages composed!

Yet the most upsetting of sounds was silence; the abrupt absence of sound.

If Lionel ceased snoring, Camille would wake in alarm. “Lionel? Is something wrong? Darling?” She would shake him gently, not into wakefulness but into the comforting rhythm of his snoring. Only then could Camille resume her own sleep. As now she was making her way through an unfamiliar yet teasingly familiar landscape: Battle Park? She was stumbling in rocky soil, snagged by a snoring-thorn bush. Lionel’s deep resonant snores were mixed with wild rose brambles. Sharp little thorns catching at

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Camille’s clothing, and her bare, exposed skin. In a cave in the hillside Adam Berendt was awaiting her. She was desperate to get to him. She understood that something terrible had happened to him, yet if neither of them acknowledged it, this terrible thing had not yet happened. It was no longer summer but the wintry afternoon years ago when, boldly, she’d come to Adam’s stone house on the river. Adam’s studio was somehow in the cave, yet simultaneously in the stone house. And the cave wasn’t dark but warmly lit; it was the outdoors, the winter sky, that was shadowy, the color of heartbreak. Camille, entering, kicking snow off her boots, stepped into an illuminated space like no other she’d seen.
An artist dwells in light,
Adam had told his students. And there was Adam Berendt in stained work clothes, jaws glinting with stubble, square-built, startled to see her.

She’d interrupted him in the midst of deliberating on an unwieldy collage-sculpture. “Don’t send me away, Adam! I need to speak with you.” Camille was wearing a raffish fox fur jacket from the twenties, inherited from a grandmother, and hounds-tooth woolen slacks and knee-high boots; her cheeks blazed; her honey brown hair, just beginning to be streaked with silver, was windblown. She was in her mid-forties, still in the unconscious prime of her Renoir-female beauty. But she had no vision of herself, for her vision had been taken from her, and she had no confidence. In the quizzical stare of Adam Berendt’s single sighted eye she began to tremble.

If he sent her away! “I’m so deeply unhappy, Adam,” she whispered. Gently Adam took her hands in his. Smiled at her, but in silence. Nudging against Camille’s legs were two dogs, the older a yellow Labrador called Butterscotch, the younger a mongrel husky-shepherd called Apollo who quivered and barked excitedly, forbidden by his master to leap up and lick Camille’s face. This dog, new to Adam’s life, was less than a year old yet nearly full grown; his fur sleek and healthy, a mixture of black, dark brown, and silver, with black ears and muzzle. Adam had found Apollo abandoned as a puppy on a state highway, and brought him home. Camille stared at the handsome dog so quickened with life he seemed about to spring at her, not viciously, not with bared teeth, but with an unnamable animal affection. Adam dragged him away, laughing in apology. “The power of Eros,” he said. “No matter your ‘species’ isn’t his.”