Vintage Ford (11 page)

Which was not to say nothing had taken place, because plenty had—things he and Joséphine Belliard both knew about and that had been expressed when she held his wrist in the car and admitted she wasn't strong enough, or that something was too strong for her.

What does one want in the world? Austin thought, propped against the headboard of the bed that night, having a glass of warm champagne from the minibar. He was in his blue pajama bottoms, on top of the covers, barefoot, staring across the room at his own image in the smoky mirror that occupied one entire wall—a man in a bed with a lighted bed lamp beside him, a glass on his belly. What does one want most of all, when one has experienced much, suffered some, persevered, tried to do good when good was within reach? What does this experience teach us that we can profit from? That the memory of pain, Austin thought, mounts up and lays a significant weight upon the present—a sobering weight—and the truth one has to discover is: exactly what's possible but also valuable and desirable between human beings, on a low level of event.

No easy trick, he thought. Certainly not everyone could do it. But he and Joséphine Belliard had in an admittedly small way brought it off, found the point of contact whose consequences were only positive for each of them. No hysteria. No confusion. Yet not insignificant, either. He realized, of course, that if he'd had his own way, Joséphine would be in bed beside him right now; though in God knows what agitated state of mind, the late hours ticking by, sex their sole hope of consolation. It was a distasteful thought.
There
was trouble, and nothing would've been gained—only something lost. But the two of them had figured out a better path to take, which had eventuated in his being alone in his room and feeling quite good about everything. Even virtuous. He almost raised his glass to himself in the mirror, only it seemed ridiculous.

He waited awhile before phoning Barbara, because he thought Joséphine might call—a drowsy late-night voice from bed, an opportunity for her to say something more to him, something interesting, maybe serious, something she hadn't wanted to say when they were together in the car and could reach each other.

But she didn't call, and Austin found himself staring at the foreign-looking telephone, willing it to ring. He'd had a lengthy conversation between himself and Joséphine playing in his mind for several minutes: he wished she was here now—that's what he wanted to say to her, even though he'd already decided that was distasteful. Still, he thought of her lying in bed asleep, alone, and it gave him a hollow, almost nauseated feeling. Then, for some reason, he thought of her meeting the younger man she'd had the calamitous affair with, the one that had ended her marriage. He picked up the receiver to see if the telephone was working. Then he put it down. Then he picked it up again and called Barbara.

“What did you do tonight, sweetheart? Did you have some fun?” Barbara was in jolly spirits. She was in the kitchen, fixing dinner for herself. He heard pots and pans rattling. He pictured her in his mind, tall and beautiful, confident about life.

“I took a woman to dinner,” he said bluntly. There was no delay on the line—it was as if he were calling from the office. Something, though, was making him feel irritated. The sound of the pans, he thought; the fact that Barbara considered fixing her dinner to be important enough to keep doing it as she was talking to him. His feeling of virtue was fading.

“Well, that's wonderful,” Barbara said. “Anybody special, or just somebody you met on a street corner who looked hungry?” She wasn't serious.

“A woman who works at Éditions Périgord,” Austin said sternly. “An editor.”

“That's nice,” Barbara said, and what seemed like a small edge rose in her voice. He wondered if there was a signal in
his
voice, something that alerted her no matter how hard he tried to seem natural, something she'd heard before over the years and that couldn't be hidden.

“It
was
nice,” Austin said. “We had a good time. But I'm coming home tomorrow.”

“Well, we're waiting for you,” Barbara said brightly.

“Who's we?” Austin said.

“Me. And the house. And the plants and the windows. The cars. Your life. We're all waiting with big smiles on our faces.”

“That's great,” Austin said.

“It
is
great,” Barbara said. Then there was silence on the line— expensive, transoceanic silence. Austin felt the need to reorganize his good mood. He had nothing to be mad about. Or uncomfortable. All was well. Barbara hadn't done anything, but neither had he. “What time is it there?” she said casually. He heard another pot clatter, then water turn on in the sink. His champagne glass had gotten warmer, the champagne flat and sweet.

“After one,” he said. “I'm sleepy now. I've got a long day tomorrow.”

“So go to sleep,” Barbara said.

“Thanks,” Austin said.

There was more silence. “Who
is
this woman?” Barbara said somewhat brittlely.

“Just a woman I met,” Austin said. “She's married. She has a baby. It's just
la vie moderne.
”

“La vie moderne,”
Barbara said. She was tasting something now. Whatever she was cooking she was tasting.

“Right,” Austin said. “Modern life.”

“I understand,” Barbara said. “
La vie moderne.
Modern life.” She tapped a spoon hard on the rim of a pan.

“Are you glad I'm coming home?”

“Of course,” Barbara said, and paused again while Austin tried to particularize for himself the look that was on her face now. All the features in her quite beautiful face seemed to get thinner when she got angry. He wondered if they were thin now. “Do you think,” Barbara said, trying to sound merely curious, “that you might just possibly have taken me for granted tonight?” Silence. She was going on cooking. She was alone in their house, cooking for herself, and he was in a nice hotel in Paris—a former monastery—drinking champagne in his pajamas. There was some discrepancy. He had to admit that. Though it finally wasn't very important, since each of them was well fixed. But he felt sorry for her, sorry that she thought he took her for granted, when he didn't think he did; when in fact he loved her and was eager to see her. He was sorry she didn't know how he felt right now, how much regard he had for her. If she did, he thought, it would make her happy.

“No,” Austin said, finally answering her question. “I don't think I do. I really don't think so. Do you think I ever do?”

“No? It's fine, then,” Barbara said. He heard a cabinet door close. “I wouldn't want you to think that you took me for granted, that's all.”

“Why do we have to talk about this now?” Austin said plaintively. “I'm coming home tomorrow. I'm eager to see you. I'm not mad about anything. Why are you?”

“I'm not,” Barbara said. “Never mind. It doesn't matter. I just think things and then they go away.” More spoon banging.

“I love you,” Austin said. The rim of his ear had begun to ache from the receiver being pressed into it with his shoulder.

“Good,” Barbara said. “Go to sleep loving me.”

“I don't want to argue.”

“Then don't argue,” Barbara said. “Maybe I'm just in a bad mood. I'm sorry.”

“Why are you mad?” Austin said.

“Sometimes,” Barbara said. Then she stopped. “I don't know. Sometimes you just piss me off.”

“Well, shit,” Austin said.

“Shit is right. Shit,” Barbara said. “It's nothing. Go to sleep.”

“Fine. I will,” Austin said.

“I'll see you tomorrow, sweetheart.”

“Sure,” Austin said, wanting to sound casual. He started to say something else. To tell her he loved her, again in the casual voice. But Barbara had hung up the phone.

Austin sat in bed in his pajamas, staring at himself in the smoky mirror. It was a different picture from before. He looked grainy, displeased, the light beside his bed harsh, intrusive, his champagne glass empty, the night he'd just spent unsuccessful, unpromising, vaguely humiliating. He looked like he was on drugs. That was the true picture, he thought. Later, he knew, he would think differently, would see events in a kinder, more flattering light. His spirits would rise as they always did and he would feel very, very encouraged by something, anything. But now was the time to take a true reading, he thought, when the tide was out and everything exposed—including himself—as it really, truly was.
There
was the real life, and he wasn't deluded about it. It was this picture you had to act on.

He sat in bed and felt gloomy, drank the rest of his champagne and thought about Barbara in the house alone, probably doing something to prepare for his arrival the next afternoon—arranging some fresh flowers or preparing to cook something he especially liked. Maybe that's what she was doing when they were talking, in which case he was certainly wrong to have been annoyed. After thinking along these lines for a while, he reached over and began to dial Joséphine's number. It was two a.m. He would wake her up, but that was all right. She'd be glad he had. He would tell her the truth—that he couldn't keep from calling her, that she was on his mind, that he wished she was here with him, that he already missed her, that there was more to this than seemed. But when he'd dialed her number the line was busy. And it was busy in five minutes. And in fifteen. And in thirty. So that after a while he dispiritedly turned off the light beside the bed, put his head on the crisp pillow and passed quickly into sleep.

4

In the small suburban community of Oak Grove, Illinois, Austin meant to take straight aim on his regular existence—driving to and from the Lilienthal office in nearby Winnetka; helping coach a Little League team sponsored by a friend's Oak Grove linoleum company; spending evenings at home with Barbara, who was a broker for a big firm that sold commercial real estate and who was herself having an excellent selling season.

Austin, however, could sense that something was wrong, which bewildered him. Although Barbara had decided to continue everyday life as if that were not true, or as if whatever was bothering him was simply outside her control and because she loved him, eventually his problem would either be solved privately or be carried away by the flow of ordinary happy life. Barbara's was a systematically optimistic view: that with the right attitude, everything works out for the best. She possessed this view, she said, because her family had all been Scottish Presbyterians. And it was a view Austin admired, though it was not always the way he saw things. He thought ordinary life had the potential to grind you into dust—his parents' life in Peoria, for instance, a life he couldn't have stood—and sometimes unusual measures were called for. Barbara said this point of view was typically shanty Irish.

On the day Austin returned—into a hot, springy airport sunshine, jet-lagged and forcibly good-spirited—Barbara had cooked venison haunch in a rich secret fig sauce, something she'd had to sleuth the ingredients for in a Hungarian neighborhood on West Diversey, plus Brabant potatoes and roasted garlics (Austin's favorite), plus a very good Merlot that Austin had drunk too much of while earnestly, painstakingly lying about all he'd done in Paris. Barbara had bought a new spring dress, had her hair restreaked and generally gone to a lot of trouble to orchestrate a happy homecoming and to forget about their unpleasant late-night phone conversation. Though Austin felt it should be his responsibility to erase that uncomfortable moment from memory and see to it his married life of long standing was once again the source of seamless, good-willed happiness.

Late that night, a Tuesday, he and Barbara made brief, boozy love in the dark of their thickly curtained bedroom, to the sound of a neighbor's springer spaniel barking unceasingly one street over. Theirs was practiced, undramatic lovemaking, a set of protocols and assumptions lovingly followed like a liturgy which points to but really has little connection with the mysteries and chaos that had once made it a breathless necessity. Austin noticed by the digital clock on the chest of drawers that it all took nine minutes, start to finish. He wondered bleakly if this was of normal or less than normal duration for Americans his and Barbara's age. Less, he supposed, though no doubt the fault was his.

Lying in the silent dark afterwards, side by side, facing the white plaster ceiling (the neighbor's dog had shut up as if on cue from an unseen observer of their act), he and Barbara sought to find something to say. Each knew the other's mind was seeking it; an upbeat, forward-sounding subject that conjured away the past couple or maybe it was three years, which hadn't been so wonderful between the two of them—a time of wandering for Austin and patience from Barbara. They wished for something unprovoking that would allow them to go to sleep thinking of themselves the way they assumed they were.

“Are you tired? You must be pretty exhausted,” Barbara said matter-of-factly into the darkness. “You poor old thing.” She reached and patted him on his chest. “Go to sleep. You'll feel better tomorrow.”

“I feel fine now. I'm not tired,” Austin said alertly. “Do I seem tired?”

“No. I guess not.”

They were silent again, and Austin felt himself relaxing to the sound of her words. He was, in fact, corrosively tired. Yet he wanted to put a good end to the night, which he felt had been a nice one, and to the homecoming itself, and to the time he'd been gone and ridiculously infatuated with Joséphine Belliard. That encounter—there
was
no encounter, of course—but in any case those pronouncements and preoccupations could be put to rest. They could be disciplined away. They were not real life—at least not the bedrock, real
est
life, the one everything depended on—no matter how he'd briefly felt and protested. He wasn't a fool. He wasn't stupid enough to lose his sense of proportion. He was a survivor, he thought, and survivors always knew which direction the ground was.

“I just want to see what's possible now,” Austin said unexpectedly. He was half asleep and had been having two conversations at once—one with Barbara, his wife, and one with himself about Joséphine Belliard—and the two were getting mixed up. Barbara hadn't asked him anything to which what he'd just mumbled was even a remotely logical answer. She hadn't, that he remembered, asked him anything at all. He was just babbling, talking in his near sleep. But a cold, stiffening fear gripped him, a fear that he'd said something, half asleep and half drunk, that he'd be sorry for, something that would incriminate him with the truth about Joséphine. Though in his current state of mind, he wasn't at all sure what that truth might be.

“That shouldn't be hard, should it?” Barbara said out of the dark.

“No,” Austin said, wondering if he was awake. “I guess not.”

“We're together. And we love each other. Whatever we want to make possible we ought to be able to do.” She touched his leg through his pajamas.

“Yes,” Austin said. “That's right.” He wished Barbara would go to sleep now. He didn't want to say anything else. Talking was a minefield, since he wasn't sure what he would say.

Barbara was silent, while his insides contracted briefly, then slowly began to relax again. He resolved to say nothing else. After a couple of minutes Barbara turned and faced the curtains. The streetlight showed palely between the fabric closings, and Austin wondered if he had somehow made her cry without realizing it.

“Oh well,” Barbara said. “You'll feel better tomorrow, I hope. Good night.”

“Good night,” Austin said. And he settled himself helplessly into sleep, feeling that he had not pleased Barbara very much, and that not only was he a man who probably pleased no one very much now, but that in his own life—among the things that should and always had made him happy—very little pleased him at all.

In the next days Austin went to work as he usually did. He made make-up calls to his accounts in Brussels and Amsterdam. He told a man he'd known for ten years and deeply respected that doctors had discovered a rather “mysterious inflammation” high in the upper quadrant of his stomach but that there was reasonable hope surgery could be averted with the aid of drugs. He tried to think of the name of the drug he was “taking” but couldn't. Afterwards he felt gloomy about having told such a pointless falsehood and worried that the man might mention something to his boss.

He wondered, staring at the elegantly framed azimuth map Barbara had given him when he'd been awarded the prestigious European accounts, and which he'd hung behind his desk with tiny red pennants attached, denoting where he'd increased the company's market share—Brussels, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Paris— wondered if his life, his normal carrying-on, was slipping out of control, yet so gradually as not to be noticed. But he decided it wasn't, and as proof he offered the fact that he was entertaining this idea in his office, on an ordinary business day, with everything in his life arrayed in place and going forward, rather than entertaining it in some Parisian street café in the blear aftermath of calamity: a man with soiled lapels, in need of a shave and short of cash, scribbling his miserable thoughts into a tiny spiral notebook like all the other morons he'd seen who'd thrown their lives away. This feeling now, this sensation of heaviness, of life's coming unmoored, was actually, he believed, a feeling of vigilance, the weight of responsibility accepted, the proof that carrying life to a successful end was never an easy matter.

On Thursday, the moment he arrived in the office he put in a call to Joséphine at work. She'd been on his mind almost every minute: her little oddly matched but inflaming features, her boyish way of walking with her toes pointed out like a country bumpkin. But also her soft, shadowy complexion and soft arms, her whispered voice in his memory:
“Non, non, non, non, non.”

“Hi, it's me,” Austin said. This time a bulky delay clogged his connection, and he could hear his voice echo on the line. He didn't sound like he wanted to sound. His voice was higher pitched, like a kid's voice.

“Okay. Hi,” was all Joséphine said. She was rustling papers, a sound that annoyed him.

“I was just thinking about you,” he said. A long pause opened after this announcement, and he endured it uncomfortably.

“Yes,” she said. Another pause. “Me, too. How are you?”

“I'm fine,” Austin said, though he didn't want to stress that. He wanted to stress that he missed her. “I miss you,” he said, and felt feeble hearing his voice inside the echo.

“Yeah,” she said finally though flatly. “Me, too.”

He wasn't sure if she'd actually heard what he'd said. Possibly she was talking to someone else, someone in her office. He felt disoriented and considered hanging up. Though he knew how he'd feel if that happened. Wretched beyond imagining. In fact, he needed to persevere now or he'd end up feeling wretched anyway.

“I'd like to see you very much,” Austin said, his ear pressed to the receiver.

“Yeah,” Joséphine said. “Come and take me to dinner tonight.” She laughed a harsh, ironic laugh. He wondered if she was saying this for someone else's benefit, someone in her office who knew all about him and thought he was stupid. He heard more papers rustle. He felt things spinning.

“I mean it,” he said. “I would.”

“When are you coming back to Paris?”

“I don't know. But very soon, I hope.” He didn't know why he'd said that, since it wasn't true, or at least wasn't in any plans he currently had. Only in that instant it seemed possible. Anything was possible. And indeed
this
seemed imminently possible. He simply had no idea how. You couldn't decide to go for the weekend. France wasn't Wisconsin.

“So. Call me, I guess,” Joséphine said. “I would see you.”

“I will,” Austin said, his heart beginning to thump. “When I come I'll call you.”

He wanted to ask her something. He didn't know what, though. He didn't know anything to ask. “How's Leo?” he said, using the English pronunciation.

Joséphine laughed, but not ironically. “How is Leo?” she said, using the same pronunciation. “Léo is okay. He is at home. Soon I'm going there. That's all.”

“Good,” Austin said. “That's great.” He swiveled quickly and stared at Paris on the map. As usual, he was surprised at how much nearer the top of France it was instead of perfectly in the middle, the way he always thought of it. He wanted to ask her why she hadn't called him the last night he'd seen her, to let her know he'd hoped she would. But then he remembered her line had been busy, and he wanted to know who she'd been talking to. Although he couldn't ask that. It wasn't his business.

“Fine,” he said. And he knew that in five seconds the call would be over and Paris would instantly be as far from Chicago as it ever was. He almost said “I love you” into the receiver. But that would be a mistake, and he didn't say it, though part of him furiously wanted to. Then he nearly said it in French, thinking possibly it might mean less than it meant in English. But again he refrained. “I want to see you very much,” he said as a last, weak, compromise.

“So. See me. I kiss you,” Joséphine Belliard said, but in a strange voice, a voice he'd never heard before, almost an emotional voice. Then she quietly hung up.

Austin sat at his desk, staring at the map, wondering what that voice had been, what it meant, how he was supposed to interpret it. Was it the voice of love, or some strange trick of the phone line? Or was it a trick of his ear to confect something he wanted to hear and so allow him not to feel as wretched as he figured he'd feel but in fact didn't feel. Because how he felt was wonderful. Ebullient. The best he'd felt since the last time he'd seen her. Alive. And there was nothing wrong with that, was there? If something makes you feel good for a moment and no one is crushed by it, what's the use of denying yourself? Other people denied. And for what? The guys he'd gone to college with, who'd never left the track once they were on it, never had a moment of ebullience, and maybe even never knew the difference. But he
did
know the difference, and it was worth it, no matter the difficulties you endured living with the consequences. You had one life, Austin thought. Use it up. He'd heard what he'd heard.

That evening he picked Barbara up at the realty offices and drove them to a restaurant. It was a thing they often did. Barbara frequently worked late, and they both liked a semi-swanky Polynesian place in Skokie called Hai-Nun, a dark, teak-and-bamboo hideaway where the drinks were all doubles and eventually, when you were too drunk to negotiate your way to a table, you could order a platter of fried specialties and sober up eating dinner at the bar.

For a while an acquaintance of Austin's, a commodities trader named Ned Coles, had stood beside them at the bar and made chitchat about how the salad days on the Board of Trade were a thing of the past, and then about the big opportunities in Europe after 1992 and how the U.S. was probably going to miss the boat, and then about how the Fighting Illini were sizing up at the skilled positions during spring drills, and finally about his ex-wife, Suzie, who was moving to Phoenix the next week so she could participate more in athletics. She was interested, Ned Coles said, in taking part in iron-woman competitions.

“Can't she be an iron woman in Chicago?” Barbara said. She barely knew Ned Coles and was bored by him. Ned's wife was also “kidnapping” their two kids to Arizona, which had Ned down in the dumps but not wanting to make a fuss.