Losing Julia (42 page)

“YOU WANT TO
take a walk or something?” Martin looked at me hopefully. It was just after nine a.m. and we were both sitting on the edges of our beds, unsure how to proceed.

“Sure, I’ll take a walk.”

“Not a long walk.”

“No, not a long walk.”

“Good, let’s go on a walk.” He leaned forward and pushed himself off the bed with a low grunt, then went to the dresser to brush his hair. I rose and finished buttoning my shirt in the mirror, then followed him out the door and down the hall.

Outside the sun was just piercing the morning mist. It smelled of wet evergreens and I had a vague memory of watching my father chop wood and then helping him stack it, careful to shore up the ends of the woodpile.

“Nice day.”

“Yes, nice day.”

We walked slowly, looking down a lot the way old people do, scanning for danger.

“I always wanted to go first,” he said after a while.

“Go first?”

“To go before Doreen. I always hoped I’d go before Doreen.”

“Oh, you mean
there.”

“Yes,
there.
She was much stronger than me. She would have been okay.”

Most men feel this way about their wives. Fortunately for them, most men get their wish.

“I guess I always just assumed that I’d go first,” he said. “I didn’t give a lot of thought to it being the other way around.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I hope I go before you,” I said.

“Oh no, I hope not.” We looked briefly at each other and exchanged thin smiles.

“Do you suppose everybody has somebody they hope will outlive them?” I asked.

“Sure they do. The only thing worse than going first is going last. We lived next to a couple, the Bennetts, who had a son who died in a skiing accident. Ed and Nancy hardly left their house for a year. One day Ed told me—I’ll never forget it—he told me that God better not exist, because if he does there’s a madman on the loose.”

We walked on in silence. Then Martin said, “For two years I didn’t throw out her clothes. Nothing. Sometimes I’d stand in her closet—she had a big walk-in closet that she loved, double-tiered hangers and lots of cubbyholes, she loved cubbyholes—and I’d look at her things and I’d smell her, just like she was there.”

I patted him on the shoulder.

“And then I’d imagine her voice coming from the shower, asking me if she should wear the red dress or the green dress. She always laid out several outfits on the bed before we went out, with matching shoes and purses and earrings. Sometimes just before we got into the car, she’d decide her outfit was all wrong and run up and switch into the other one. But she wasn’t lavish; she made a lot of her clothes herself.”

“You want to keep walking?”

“No, I’m kind of tired of walking.”

“Me too. Let’s head back.”

“Yes, let’s head back.”

We turned and slowly walked back.

I WAS AWAKE
when she knocked. I was sitting in the chair by the window, listening to the creaks of the hotel and watching the moon. It was sometime after two a.m. I hadn’t been waiting exactly, just sitting and thinking and hoping and praying, unable even to close my eyes.

When I opened the door she stepped in immediately, closing it quietly behind her. I could just see her face in the moonlight. It was wet, streaked with her tears.

“Thank God,” I said, putting my arms around her and pulling her toward me. I could feel her back tremble.

“I had to,” she whispered, cupping my face in her hands and staring up at me. “I had to be with you.”

“Julia, I want to tell you something.”

“Please don’t.” She pressed her finger against my lips. I kissed it, then pulled it away and kissed her hard on the lips and then her face and neck and down along her shoulders. I felt her hands in my hair and then searching down my back, frantically. I pushed her toward the bed and tore at her clothes and struggled to keep from saying the things I wanted to say.

We made love for hours, exhausting ourselves against each other’s lips and mouths and skin until the bed was soaked with our sweat. Sometime during the night I promised never to let go but I must have, for when I awoke at dawn she was gone.

I’VE BEEN
staring at a blank page of my sketchbook all day but nothing is coming to me. Maybe tomorrow.

SARAH CAME
into my room this morning just as I was struggling with my pants. She invited me to her house for the Fourth of July. “We’re having a little backyard barbecue, me and the boys, and we thought you might like to join us. It’ll be fun. We’ve got sparklers and those little black snakes that smoke and there’ll be lots of ice cream. I can pick you up and bring you back. It’ll just be for a few hours.”

“I’d be delighted, if you’re sure.” I held the top of my pants closed as I tried to sit up on the bed.

“We’d love it.” She patted me on the shoulder, then turned and left.

That afternoon I took the bus into town and stopped at Henry Shay’s Store for Men, where after some debate I settled on a new shirt: dark blue with a modest button-down collar. When did I last buy a shirt? Five years ago? I used to like clothes, in so much as women liked men who understood clothes. But the clothes I wore never felt right; they never said what I wanted to say. Not that I wanted my clothes to say much; rather, I just didn’t want them to say the wrong things, to say too much too loudly. Yet I couldn’t find anything that would just shut up and let me be: understated said boring, conventional said conservative, casual said kicked-back in a premeditated sort of way, formal said uptight.

A short and balding salesman with a tentative, commercial smile measured my sleeve and then my neck. Didn’t I used to be a forty-two long instead of a forty regular? I’m sure I was. And how old were the clothes I now owned? Did I look like some threadbare cat-food-eating miser? I decided to go through my closet as soon as I got back to my room and toss out everything with a stain or a rip.

Before returning home I stopped at a liquor store and bought a bottle of Grgich Chardonnay—the merchant’s recommendation—which I hid in the back of my closet next to Jim Beam. I thought of getting a gift too, something for the house perhaps, but decided not to overdo it.

The thing was not to act desperate.

ON FRIDAY
morning I awoke extra early, and before my shower I carefully clipped the nose hairs that began growing like ivy once I hit seventy. (That the last healthy cells of my body should be devoted to the manufacture of nose hairs is a fact I find almost unspeakably perverse.) I was dressed and ready by eight and sat in my corner chair with the bottle of wine in a bag next to me. (I’d purloined a strip of red ribbon from the crafts shop and tied it around the neck of the bottle, though my efforts to make it curl at the ends using scissors had left it frayed and limp.)

As I waited I tried to remind myself that Sarah hadn’t invited
me
to her house but rather an elderly man she perhaps felt sorry for. Nonetheless I felt extremely nervous and kept checking myself in the mirror to be sure everything was where it was supposed to be. I couldn’t bear to make a fool of myself. Not today.

I was out front by twelve-thirty, sitting on a bench near the taxi stand searching the street for Sarah’s yellow VW Beetle convertible. She pulled up five minutes late and jumped out to open the door for me.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” she said, guiding me into my seat.

“Great day for a barbecue.” I tried to strike a casual balance between enthusiasm and rapture.

“I hope you don’t mind having the top down. Is it too windy for you?”

“Not at all.”

“I’ll put the top up.”

“No, please. I haven’t been in a convertible for years. It’s wonderful.” I leaned my face out the window like a curious dog just sprung from the kennel.

Sarah was wearing a light blue summer dress cut low in the back and just barely reaching midthigh. Her legs looked tan and I wondered what she’d do if I put my hand on her thigh, which suddenly seemed profoundly accessible. Scream? Call the police? Medicate me? Smile? Of course she wouldn’t smile, but it was a pleasant thought. Very pleasant. I held my hands together in my lap.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, pulling off her sunglasses with one hand and placing them on the top of her head, the ends tucked into her hair.

“Not bad, thanks.” I was sorry she was so familiar with my medical chart.

“You look good today.”

Did I? But of course she was just saying it. Yet I did
feel
good.

“Me? Why you look just beautiful.”

“Oh aren’t you a sweetheart.” She spun her head and flung me a smile.

Ten minutes later she pulled into the driveway of a white, ranch-style house with a single maple tree on the left and a small patch of overgrown grass on the right. A few scrappy-looking rosebushes ran along the front beneath a bay window that looked into her living room. At the door two boys appeared, the smaller one tucked safely behind the larger one.

“Jeffrey, this is Mr. Delaney. Can you say hello to Mr. Delaney? Jeffrey’s in fifth grade now and doing a great job, aren’t you, Jeffrey?” He smiled shyly as we shook hands. “And this here is my baby boy Kevin, he just turned five. Kevin, can you say hello?” I caught sight of his big brown eyes and dark lashes before he slid around behind his mother.

“I’ll save a handshake for you, Kevin,” I said.

Sarah motioned toward the living room. “Well it’s not much, but then they don’t pay a lot at Great Oaks.”

“Why should they? All you do all day is alleviate human suffering, it’s not like you’re trading futures.”

“I guess I’m lucky they pay me at all.” Her voice trailed off into the kitchen.

I walked slowly through the living room, examining the plates hung on the walls and the framed photos that covered nearly every available inch of table space. The room looked freshly painted and the white carpet and yellow-flowered sofa made it seem almost unnaturally bright. I imagined lying on the sofa with her after the boys were in bed and talking about whether the rosebushes were getting enough water and should we take the children to Disneyland this year. But enough talk for one night…

“It’s charming, very warm,” I said.