Starting Over (7 page)

When he left he kissed her lightly on the forehead and said he would call her.

She thanked him for the lovely dinner.

The day after his date with Renée, Potter had to teach. He had an Alka-Seltzer, three aspirin, and a glass of orange juice for breakfast, but still he felt nauseous and aching. The minutes ticked off like separate eternities. He repeated himself, coughed a lot, and could hear the restless motions of legs crossing, pages riffling, throats clearing, and yawns. Between classes he went to his office, closed the door, and sat with his head on his desk. For lunch, he had one of the secretaries in the English office bring him back a grilled cheese sandwich and a chocolate malt. By the time he got through his PR seminar in the afternoon he was beginning to revive, but he still felt shaky. He figured fresh air would do him good.

He strolled down Beacon Street toward Arlington, and took one of the paths that curled into the Public Gardens. The air was cool and brisk, and so were the people. No one was idling, as they did in the Indian summer time, but all seemed to walk with purpose, toward some appointed destination. The sky was cold, lavender and pink. Austere. Potter stopped by his favorite statue, the one commemorating the discovery and first medical use of ether. The statue was of a woman holding a child. On one side of the base was inscribed a line from Revelation: “Neither shall there be any more pain—”

Potter wondered if he reported to the emergency ward of the world famous Mass General Hospital, whether they would give him a dose of ether. If he were ever a president or dictator, he would see that such a service was available to the public, an emergency facility that would dispense some sort of pill or gas or potion for people who felt the kind of pain that came from having nothing to do and nowhere to go and feeling nothing inside.

In the absence of such a service, he walked. He walked to the glorious statue of George Washington on horseback, and then up the wide center mall of Commonwealth Avenue, with its grey and weather-greened statues of assorted great men of the past. He stopped briefly at each one, as he often did, reading the inscriptions again, making a kind of silent visitation to their memory. There was Alexander Hamilton, and John Glover, a revolutionary soldier from Marblehead. There was Patrick Collins, a turn-of-the-century mayor of Boston, whose qualities engraved in stone proclaimed not only that he was honest and talented, but also that he was “serviceable.” Potter liked that. The notion of being a “serviceable” man. But most of all he liked the staunch figure of William Lloyd Garrison, at ease in a chair that seemed like a throne, whose base bore the words of the great man himself declaring that “I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard.” Actually Potter didn't know a damn thing about Garrison except that he had been a leading abolitionist, but nevertheless the confident, uncompromising words, the grand aristocratic sweep of the sentiment, speaking from an age that seemed more courageous and clearly defined in its purpose and conflict than his own amorphous time, gave Potter a quick, adrenaline thrill. The whole Avenue, with its solid statues, its great trees, its fine old houses lining either side, had a stateliness that Potter enjoyed.

He was finding in general that he liked Boston better than Cambridge. He liked the “old” feeling of the brick sidewalks and yellow-tongued gaslamps on Beacon Hill, liked the open, majestic feeling of the Commons and the Public Gardens, which were laid out on a more intimate, human scale than Central Park, and were less threatening; walking those paths, you expected to be panhandled, yes, but not mugged or raped or murdered.

Boston was grace and tradition to Potter. Cambridge was Harvard. Cambridge was students. Walking through Harvard Square, if you were not a student or someone who might be a student, you felt like an alien, felt as if you stuck out from the crowd, like a German tourist in the South of Spain. Every time Potter went through the Square, the Yeats line flashed automatically through his mind: “That is no country for old men.” Old, in Harvard Square, seeming anything over thirty. At most. The atmosphere was youthfully oppressive.

When he got to Mass Avenue, Potter walked up to the Hotel Elliot at the corner of Boylston and had a couple of drinks in its pitch-dark cocktail lounge. Then he decided to blow a few bucks on taking a cab home, which would spare him a trek through Harvard Square.

Back at his apartment he prepared himself a large tumbler of Scotch and soda and ice, and turned on the seven o'clock news.

The war in Vietnam was still “winding down,” like a busted alarm clock.

Martha Mitchell had made another of her famous late-night phone calls, bawling out someone who had criticized the Nixon administration.

Tension was high on the Israel-Arab borders.

Suburban mothers in Michigan were picketing against school-busing.

The Orioles had taken a lead on the Reds in the World Series.

The Celtics had a three-game win-streak going.

Derek Sanderson vowed that the Bruins would go all the way.

Tomorrow would be cloudy and cool, with scattered showers.

Potter found himself suddenly laughing.

They called that
news?

He went to the kitchen to make a new drink, but first made a pledge to himself that he would eat.

The most simple substance available seemed to be a can of Hormel chili. Potter took it off the shelf, set a pan on a front burner of the electric stove, and got out the can opener. A do-it-yourself home dinner kit. He would do it a little later. First, he made the new drink.

It was situation comedy time on TV, and he pushed the button in, rejecting. Canned chili was bad enough without having to add canned laughter. He put a Judy Collins on the stereo.

When you're down in Juarez in the rain and it's Easter-time too
—

Potter closed his eyes.

He woke, hungry and dizzy, the TV blank, the stereo scratching.

It seemed he had slept for days, but it was only a little past ten. He went to the kitchen, ground the can of chili open with a vengeance, scooped it out into the pan, where it made a soggy
plunk
, and turned the burner to Hi. Reaching for the Cutty Sark he stopped, took a deep breath, and instead pulled from the refrigerator a bottle of Gallo Rhinegarten white wine, filling one of the fluted glasses he had been given in the division of old wedding present spoils.

Wine with dinner. You had to make the effort. Stay civilized. He scratched his head, then took a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce from the cupboard and dashed a generous amount on the chili. Real gourmet action.

The chili hunk was beginning to sizzle, and he took a spoon and mashed it around in the pan. It looked like dog-food.

After dinner he poured himself a brandy, and lit up a mentholated Tiparillo.

He burped, and thought of Jessica's beef bourguignon. It was her specialty. It took all day, and was usually served with tears, but it was damn good.

Jessica.

After another Scotch he dialed information in New York, and got her number. J. L. Potter. What the hell, no reason they shouldn't talk. Be friends.

Lovers, even? Still? Again?

After one ring he hung up. It would only open an emotional spider's nest. When he talked to her again, even saw her again he wanted it to be out of some motivation more noble than loneliness, more gracious than despair.

2

Potter didn't much want to call Renée Gillespie but he didn't know anyone else to call. And besides, he thought she was nice; in fact he was convinced of that. He even thought maybe she was more attractive than he had felt she was on his first impression, distorted as that was by his fantasy of someone as exotic as he had conjured up from her French-Jewish name. Of that, he was not convinced, but he wanted to believe it. One thing was sure: Saturday night was approaching, a grim specter.

Saturday Night!

It was hallowed and feared and anticipated, lyricized in story and immortalized in song.

The loneliest night of the week.

The night when my sweetie and I used to dance cheek to cheek.

After Potter was graduated from Vanderbilt and went into the Navy he dated a Tri Delt from U. of Maryland, during the Holidays, and, on New Year's Eve, after a gallon or so of champagne at a swell party in Arlington, Virginia, he had asked her to marry him. They became engaged. It was in The Papers. When he returned to his base in Mississippi, she wrote him a long, curlicued letter with circles dotting the i's, saying how glad she was to be engaged, and how she looked forward to the state of married bliss: “Just think,” she observed, in a practical aside, “I'll have a Permanent Saturday Night Date for the rest of my life!”

Potter for some time had mulled over the notion of marriage bringing about a Permanent Saturday Night Date for the rest of his life, and his enthusiasm began to flag; the Engagement simmered down, then died, via letters and the lack of them.

But he understood what she meant, and how she felt about the Guarantee of having her Saturday night date card filled up for eternity. Beginning at puberty, all good American girls and boys were trained and drilled and instilled with the understanding that not having anything to do on Saturday night was a stigma so great that it marked the week as a failure, meant that you were Undesired or Undesirable or Undesiring, marked you as a malcontent or malcontented, a malignant and/or malingering member of society.

So you either went out, accompanied, or you hid. Pretended to be Busy, pulling the curtains of your room about you, the covers over your head, the lamps dimmed, the music stopped.

Ho ho ho. High school stuff.

College stuff.

Life stuff.

Potter felt sure that Senior Citizens were still plagued by it. It was worked inside your head so deep, you could never really get it out, never just sit around quietly somewhere in America on Saturday night, reading a good book, without feeling guilty or cheated.

But there was also a protocol that dictated that a girl, a woman, had to pretend to be busy by Thursday, or Friday, if she were asked out for Saturday Night, that a boy/man should not ask out a woman for that evening if it were too late, lest he insult her or shame himself. It was altogether tricky, even when one was an alleged Adult.

When Potter called Renée on Thursday afternoon and asked if she could have dinner with him Saturday, she said, “You mean Saturday
night?
”

He inhaled, squinting his eyes as he held the phone, and said, “Yes.
Saturday night
.”

There was a pause of age-old legendary painful feigning, as Renée, no doubt caught in her own images of social nicety, said hesitantly that if she could get a Sitter, yes, it would be OK. Which left open the possibility that only the problem of the Sitter was what might hang her up and might have prevented her thus far from accepting sundry other such invitations. Potter understood. He would check back with her to make sure she had got the Sitter, knowing already she would succeed in doing so, knowing with relief that he had filled up the hole of this soonest Saturday, for him and for her, before it swallowed them up, each vulnerable and singular.

Potter, relieved, whistled a tune.

The night when my sweetie and I used to dance cheek to cheek
.

Very soon after Potter had made his Saturday Night Date with Renée, the phone rang. It was Marva Bertelsen. She wondered if Potter could come to a small dinner party on Saturday night. He explained he had already made a date. Marva explained that was too bad, because she had just the right girl for Potter.

“How do you mean,” he asked, “just the right girl?”

There was a tantalizing pause.

“I mean, just the right girl for
you
,” Marva said brightly.

“How do you know?”

“Well. She's
very
attractive.”

“Mmmm.”

“And
very
intelligent.”

“Mmmm.”

“Well, I guess you're not interested.”

“I didn't say that.”

“You just keep saying ‘Mmmm.'”

“Mmmm.”

“Well, it doesn't matter. She's in my pottery class. I like her, and I invited her over for Saturday, but you might not like her at all, come to think of it.”

“Come to think of
what?
”

“Ohhhh. I don't know. When I think of it. She's really a glorified secretary. Works in personnel for United Insurance.”

“So?”

“So, you probably want someone with a much more glamorous job.”

“I didn't say that.”

“I think she's very glamorous, as a person—herself—but right now she doesn't have what anyone would consider a glamorous job. Of course, she just got divorced not long ago, and she had to take what she could get. A B.A. in Psychology doesn't mean anything. Job-wise.”

“Divorced?” Potter asked.

“Yes,” Marva said with what sounded like a yawn. “You probably wouldn't be interested at all.”

“I bet she has two children,” Potter said.

“Oh, no. No children. She lives by herself in this really nice apartment on Beacon Hill. Wow. The biggest bed I've ever seen. Lots of incense and all. That sort of thing. Probably bore you to death.”

“Not necessarily,” Potter said.

“Weeeel. Maybe you could come by for dessert. Just to meet her. You probably won't see anything in her at all.”

“Well, you never can tell.”

Potter took Renée to have dinner Saturday night at a Greek place in Boston that Max Bertelsen had recommended, The Ommonia. It was a little bit overdone, with fake statues and a purple kind of lighting and a Greek combo, but it was rather festive, and Potter was in the mood for it. Renée seemed more relaxed than she had before, and quite animated; her fingers, long and white, made lacy patterns as she talked and laughed. She was wearing a white silk blouse with frilly cuffs, a maroon velvet midi, and black boots. Potter usually loved seeing women in boots, but somehow, Renée's were a little wrong. Instead of seeming sexy, they looked sort of orthopedic.