The Age of Grief (5 page)

“They think I ought to be shot. But they really infuriate me. Do you know what sharing a house with Roger was like? He has the most rigid routine I have ever seen, and he drives everywhere, even to the Quick Shop at the end of the block. I mean, he would get in his car and drive out the driveway and then four houses down to pick up the morning paper. And every time he did the dishes, he broke something we got from our wedding, and then he would refuse to pay for it because we had gotten it for free anyway.

“Fred and I get along, but in a way I think he’s more disapproving than Roger is. Sometimes he acts as if I’ve shocked him so much that he can’t bear to look at me.”

“So how have you shocked him?”

“Didn’t Kevin tell you about Hobbs Nolan?”

“He mentioned him.”

“But Hobbs isn’t the real issue, as far as I’m concerned. Men always think that other men are the real issue. You know, Roger actually sat me down one night and started to tell me off?”

“What’s the real issue?”

“Well, one thing I can’t bear is having to always report in whenever I go somewhere. I mean, I get in the car to go for groceries, and if I decide while I’m out to go to the mall, Kevin expects me to call and tell him. Or if I have to work even a half hour late, or if the girl I work with and I decide to go out for a beer after work. I hate it. I hate picking up the goddamned telephone and dialing all the numbers. I hate listening to it ring, and most of all I hate that automatic self-justification you just slide into. I mean, I don’t know how to sound honest anymore, even when I’m being honest.”

“Are you—”

“No, most of all I hate the image I have of Kevin the whole time I’m talking to him, sitting home all weekend with nothing to do, whining into the phone.”

“I think Kevin is mostly upset because you don’t sleep with him.”

“Well—”

“I really don’t see how you can cut him off like that.”

“Neither does he.”

“Why do you?”

“Don’t you think he’s strange-looking? And everything he does in bed simply repels me. It didn’t used to but now it does. I can’t help it. He doesn’t know how big or strong he is and he’s always hurting me. When I see him move toward me, I wince. I know he’s going to step on me or poke me or bump into me.”

“Well, you could go to a therapist. You ought to at least reassure Kevin that you’re not sleeping with this other guy.”

“We did go to a therapist, and he got so nervous he was even more clumsy, and I
am
sleeping with Hobbs.”

“Nancy!”

“Why are you surprised? How can this be a reason for surprise? I’m a sexual person. Kevin always said that he thought I was promiscuous until I started with him, and then he just thought that I was healthy and instinctive.”

“Well, Nancy—”

“I have a feeling you aren’t very approving either.”

“I don’t know, I—”

“But that’s all I want. I realized on the way here that all the time I’ve known you I’ve wanted you to approve of me. Not just to like me, or even respect me, but to approve of me. I still like being married to Kevin, but all of us know by now that the best person for being married to isn’t always the best person for sleeping with, and there’s no reason why he should be.” She glanced out the window. “Anyway, here he comes.” A moment later the door slammed open. Lily thought Kevin was angry, until she realized that he had simply misjudged the weight of the door. Sweat was pouring off him, actually dripping on the carpet. Nancy said, “Jesus! Go take a shower.” Lily wanted to tell him not to drip over the coffee table, with its bowl of fruit, but said nothing. He Looked at them with studied ingenuousness and said, “Four miles in twenty-five minutes. Not bad, huh? And it’s ninety-three. I just ran past the bank clock.”

“Great.” Nancy turned back to Lily and said, “Maybe I should try to call Meredith Lawlor while I’m here. We were pretty good friends junior year. I’ve often thought about her, actually.” Kevin tromped into the bathroom.

Drying lettuce for the sandwiches, Lily watched Nancy slice the turkey. It was remarkable, after all, how the other woman’s most trivial mannerisms continued to be perfectly familiar to her after two years, after not thinking about Nancy
or their times together for days and even weeks at a stretch. It was as if the repeated movement of an arm through the air or the repeated cocking of a head could engrave itself willy-nilly on her brain, and her brain, recognizing what was already contained in it, would always respond with warmth. In fact, although she did feel this burr of disapproval toward Nancy and sympathy for Kevin, Kevin’s presence was oppressive and Nancy’s congenial. Nancy got out the bread she had made, a heavy, crumbly, whole-grain production, and they stacked vegetables and meat on the slices and slathered them with mustard and catsup. The shower in the bathroom went off and Nancy sighed. Lily wondered if she heard herself.

Lily remembered that the kitchen workers in the college cafeteria had always teased Kevin about his appetite. Certainly he still ate with noise and single-minded gusto. His lettuce crunched, his bread fell apart, pieces of tomato dropped on his plate and he wiped them up with more bread. He drank milk. Lily tried to imagine him at work. Fifteen months before, he had graduated from business school near the top of his class and had taken a risky job with a small company. The owner was impressed with his confidence and imagination. In a year he’d gotten four raises, all of them substantial. Lily imagined him in a group of men, serious, athletic, well dressed, subtly dominating. Was it merely talking about him that made him seem to eat so foolishly, so dependently, with such naked anxiety? To
be
so foolish, so dependent? When he was finished, Nancy asked him whether he was still hungry and said to Lily, “Isn’t this good bread? I made up the recipe myself.”

“It’s delicious.”

“I think so. I’ve thought of baking bread for the health-food
store near us. In fact, they asked me to, but I’m not sure it would be very profitable.”

“It’s nice that they asked you.”

“A couple of guys there really like it.”

Kevin scowled. Lily wondered if one of these guys was Hobbs Nolan. Nancy went on, “I make another kind, too, an herb bread with dill and chives and tarragon.”

“That sounds good.”

“It is.”

Lily was rather taken aback at Nancy’s immodesty. This exchange, more than previous ones, seemed to draw her into the Humboldts’ marriage and to implicate her in its fate. She felt a moment’s relief that they would be gone soon. She finished her sandwich and stood up to get an apple. It was before one o’clock. More stuff—the towel Kevin had used on his hair, Nancy’s sandals, Nancy’s other hairbrush—was distributed around the living room. Lily had spent an especially solitary summer, with no summer school to teach and many of her friends away, particularly since the first of August. Some days the only people she spoke to were checkers at the grocery store or librarians. Her fixation on the Humboldts’ possessions was a symptom that her solitary life certainly was unhealthy, that she was, after all, turning back into a virgin, as she feared. It was true that her apartment never looked “lived in” and that she preferred it that way. Suddenly she was envious of them; in spite of their suspicions and resentments, their life together had a kind of attractive complexity. Their minds were full of each other. Just then Kevin said, with annoyance, “Damn!” and Nancy shrugged, perfectly taking his meaning.

“There’s a great swimming pool here,” Lily said. “I’ve
spent practically the whole summer there. You must have brought your suits?”

Kevin had been diving off the high board steadily for at least forty-five minutes. At first, when Nancy and Lily had been talking about Kenneth Diamond, and Lily’s efforts to end that long relationship, Nancy had only glanced at Kevin from time to time. Lily remarked that she had slept with Ken fewer than twenty times in nine years. Nancy stared at her—not in disbelief but in astonishment. Then, for four dives, Nancy did not take her eyes off Kevin. He did a backward double somersault, tucked; a forward one-and-a-half layout; a forward one-and-a-half in pike position; and a double somersault with a half-gainer, which was astonishingly graceful. “I knew he dove in high school,” she said, “but I’ve never seen this.” A plump adolescent girl did a swan dive and Kevin stepped onto the board again. Other people looked up, including two of the lifeguards. Perhaps he was unaware that people were looking at him. He was straightforward and undramatic about stepping into his dive. The board seemed to bend in two under his muscular weight and then to fling him toward the blue sky. He attempted a forward two-and-a-half, tuck position, but failed to untuck completely before entering the water. In a moment he was hoisting himself out and heading for the board to try again. Nancy said, “It’s amazing how sexy he looks from a distance. All the pieces seem to fit together better. And he really is a good diver. I can’t believe he hasn’t practiced in all these years.”

“Maybe he has.”

“Maybe. I mean he looks perfect, and no older than twenty-one. That’s how old he was when we first met—
twenty-one. I was dating Sandy Ritter. And you were dating Murray Freed.”

“I could have done worse than stick with Murray Freed. But he was so evasive that when Ken approached me in a grown-up, forthright way, I just gave up on Murray. He’s got a little graphics company in Santa Barbara, and I hear he spends two or three months of the year living on the beach in Big Sur.”

“Well, don’t worry about it. I’ve always thought leisure and beauty were rather overrated, myself.” She grinned. “But look at him! He did it! That one was nearly perfect, toes pointed and everything.”

“I guess I’m sort of surprised that you think he’s funny-looking. Everybody always thought he was good-looking in college.”

“Did they? It’s hard to remember what he looks like, even when I’m looking at him. I mean, I know what he looks like, but I don’t know what I think about it. This diving sort of turns me on, if you can believe that.”

“Really?” But Lily realized that she was vulnerable, too, and when Kevin came over, dripping and fit, toweling his hair and shoulders with Lily’s own lavender towel, his smile seemed very white, his skin very rosy, and his presence rather welcome.

Actually, it was apparent that they all felt better. Lily had swum nearly half a mile, and Nancy had cooled off without getting her hair wet. Kevin was pleased with the dives he had accomplished and with Nancy’s obvious admiration. All three of them had an appetite, and it was just the right time to begin planning a meal. “This is a nice park,” Kevin said. “The trees are huge.”

“We should get steak,” Nancy said.

• • •

In the bedroom, putting on her clothes, Lily smiled to hear Nancy’s laugh followed by a laugh from Kevin. Really, he was a good-humored sort of person. Although she could not have said how the visit had failed that morning, or why it was succeeding right then, she sensed their time filling up with possibilities of things they could do together. She heard Nancy say, “I think the coals must be ready by now,” and the slam of the door. She pulled a cotton sweater over her head and went into the kitchen thinking fondly of the Humboldts driving away the next morning with smiles on their faces and reconciliation in their hearts. She hadn’t done anything, really, but something had done the trick. Kevin was sitting at the table wrapping onions and potatoes in foil. Lily opened the refrigerator and took out a large stalk of broccoli, which she began to slice for steaming. Kevin had put on a light-blue tailored shirt and creased corduroy slacks. His wet hair was combed back and he had shaved. He said, “Why did you stick with Diamond all those years? I mean”—he looked at her cautiously—”wasn’t it obvious that you weren’t going to get anything out of it?”

“I got a lot out of it. Ken’s problem is that nobody thinks he’s anything special but me. I do think he’s quite special, though, and I think I got a good education, lots of attention, lots of affection, and lots of time to work. It wasn’t what I expected but it wasn’t so bad. Though I wish there had been some way to practice having another type of relationship at the same time, or even just having dates.”

“What did he think about your winning the prize?”

“I don’t know. I broke up with him right after I applied for it, and I didn’t read the letter he sent after I got it.”

“Last night, you know when you were asking—” Lily glanced up, alert. Kevin coughed. “Well, I thought about something. All the guys were so afraid of you in college. They all talked about you, you know, and watched you from a distance.” He faded, then went on, uncertainly. “Your, ah, eyes were so big, you know. It is disconcerting when you—”

But the door opened and Nancy swept in. “The coals are perfect! Are these the steaks in here? I’m famished! Guess what? I got three big ears of corn from your neighbor, who was out in his garden. He’s cute. What’s his name? He was funny, and awfully nice to me.”

“I’ve never even spoken to the guy,” Lily said.

“What do you do? Cross the street when you see an attractive man?”

“It’s not that. It’s that some curse renders me invisible. But Kevin was about to say something.”

He shrugged.

“Put on you by Professor Kenneth Diamond, no doubt,” Nancy said. She handed a potato back to Kevin. “Do that one better. The skin shows. Seriously, Lily”—Kevin took the potato back with a careful, restrained gesture—”you can’t keep this up. It’s impossible. You’re the most beautiful woman anyone we know knows. You have to at least act like you’re interested. I’m sure you act like you wouldn’t go on a date for a million dollars. You don’t prostitute yourself simply by being friendly.” Kevin rewrapped the potato and handed it back to Nancy. Then he smiled at Lily and she had a brief feeling that something dramatic had been averted, although she couldn’t say what it was. Nancy ripped the paper off the rib eyes and dropped it on the table. The Humboldts went
outside to put on the meat, and when they came back in, Lily couldn’t see how to lead Kevin back to his earlier remark.

The wine was nearly finished. Kevin had chosen it, a California red that he’d tried in Vancouver. He kept saying, “I was lucky to find this so far east. That isn’t a bad liquor store, really.” Lily hadn’t especially liked it at first because of its harsh flavor and thick consistency, but after three glasses she was sorry to see the second bottle close to empty. She set it carefully upright in the grass. There was a mystery to its flavor that made her keep wanting to try it again. Nancy was talking about the play she had been in, as the second lead, with a small theater group in Vancouver. Kevin said, smiling, “She got a lot of applause, too. The third night, she got more than anyone in the cast. She was pretty funny.”