The Widower's Tale (17 page)

What was it, after all these years of casual, unforced monkery, that made me want to take this woman into my arms, to see her naked--no, to be naked with her? Had I become, at last, the quintessential dirty old man? Was I deluded, pathetic, about to fall off a precipice of mortification? My earlier confidence in her attraction to me began to look as absurd as it was. I went to bed a self-appointed fool.

Yet the next day she called and asked if I would like to accompany her and Rico into Boston the following weekend, spend an afternoon at the Fine Arts Museum. We drove together in her car, listening to a tape of Peter, Paul and Mary that Rico loved. Was this nothing but children's music now, the songs that were sung in Cambridge coffee shops when I had courted Poppy, songs meant to rouse a rabble? Had Pete Seeger evolved into a banjo-plinking Captain Kangaroo?

At the museum, when we entered the galleries devoted to antiquities, Sarah let Rico run farther ahead of us than I would have allowed.

"He knows this place by heart. And he won't go far," she said. "He even knows some of the guards by name."

In ancient Egypt, where the lighting was grim and the mummies held Rico's young, ghoulish attention, Sarah took my hand. I gasped so loudly that a nearby stranger glanced at me, concerned. She squeezed my hand harder.

"Are you all right?" she whispered.

"I would describe myself," I said, after the stranger turned away, "as febrile with apprehension. No, anticipation."

She positioned herself in front of me, so that she could look me in the face. "Me too."

"Tell me what this writing says!" called Rico, sparing me from cardiac arrest. We gathered around an elaborately graffiti'd mummy while Sarah read the captions aloud.

In the car, driving back, it was all I could do not to take her hand between the seats. We talked about Elves & Fairies, soliciting Rico's opinions on the tree house, Mr. Ira, the sing-alongs. He wasn't the most talkative child (how Clover could fill the world with words at that age!), but he described the tree-house furnishings in almost scholarly detail.

When we reached Matlock, Sarah dropped me off without coming into the house. I was exhausted, yet equally disappointed to see her drive away.

I called her that night, when I felt sure Rico would be in bed.

"I'm so glad to hear your voice," she said. "I'm sorry we left you off like that. I didn't trust myself."

"I'm no scoundrel."

"I can't say the same for myself," said Sarah. She told me that she had a cousin who lived in Ledgely and sometimes helped out with Rico; he'd take the boy for an overnight visit almost any weekend.

"Week
end?"
I groaned.

"I'm afraid so. And I have a lot of work right now. Which is good." She laughed. "Anticipation. Remember?"

Somehow, I made it across the desert that stretched toward Friday. And then she was there, on my front porch, wearing a long blue dress, carrying a bottle of wine. She wasn't inside my house ten minutes before we fumbled our way upstairs, already enmeshed. I had made the bed up with excruciating care. I had swept and dusted for the first time in weeks, instigating a fit of sneezing. I had neatened the stacks of books on the window seat. Yet none of this order mattered in the least.

As we became gradually naked, under the covers, in the mercifully early dark of late October, I felt Sarah's strength, so surprising, so oddly comforting, as we solved the urgent puzzle of fitting ourselves together for the very first time. I forced myself to remain silent, not to make the pathetic excuses that older men do in movies with scenes like this one; she would understand or she wouldn't. Yet I was trembling, too. I could feel exactly how my body had aged since it had last engaged in a naked embrace. I could feel the appalling looseness of my flesh, from my throat to my thighs.

I opened my eyes at one point, unable to believe that Sarah felt such ardor. Sensing my hesitation, she opened her eyes as well. "I know what you're thinking," she whispered. "And you're dead wrong." She did not, thank heaven, tell me that I was handsome or virile or sexy. She just closed her eyes again and wrapped herself more tightly around me.

In the middle of the night, I woke abruptly at the sound of the toilet flushing. Terrified, I sat up and must have cried out. Framed in the bathroom door, in the instant before the light snapped off, I saw the silhouette of a woman.

"It's me," said the silhouette. I remembered who she was only when she sat on the edge of the bed and put a hand on my shoulder. She said in a rough, sleepy voice, "Are you hungry? We never had dinner." She offered to make us grilled cheese sandwiches or a salad or French toast: whatever I had on hand. I remembered the preparations I'd made for our dinner, the food still waiting on the kitchen counter.

"Steaks?" I said.

"Absolutely anything," said Sarah.

After dressing, making dinner, eating it together at the kitchen table, we returned to bed. Naked again, this time I became aware of her body more than mine. She was indisputably younger, but I felt, too, how much older she was than Poppy had been when we last shared this bed. I did not know it yet, but already that night my physical memories of Poppy--her fingers, breasts, tongue, and feet; her frazzled hair against my face--had begun to fade. Perhaps, I realized later, I stopped guarding them so closely.

In the beginning, Sarah was firm about keeping Rico ignorant of our involvement. This meant that we made love at the oddest of times: mostly in the morning, on Mondays and Wednesdays, when she did not have to report at TGO. After she dropped Rico off at the barn, she would park out on the street, walk through my front door, and head upstairs. I would be waiting, having showered after an early run.

I don't know why it felt risky and illicit, but I worried that someone would notice the change in my running schedule or the frequent loitering of Sarah's car on the street. We did not speak, at first, of whether we cared if the adults around us knew we were lovers. We were doing nothing "wrong," were we?

I knew that Poppy would have liked Sarah, but did this matter? Did I feel, against all logic, an adulterer's guilt? Elsewhere in my addled psyche, I wondered just how much of a fool I'd been to spend the prime decades of my life so blandly as a monogamist and then a monk in an era of merrily fulfilled concupiscence. Poppy would have been amused to see me loosening up just as the rest of the world clamped down. "Neither a leader nor a follower be, sometimes I think that's your motto," she teased me once.

One evening in early November, as I read alone at the kitchen table, my dinner plate pushed aside, I was startled by the sound of my front door opening. Certain it must be Sarah, I closed my book and stood, a wide smile on my face.

But it was Clover who entered the room. Since the start of school, I rarely saw her after she finished her afternoon duties. Sometimes I would ask her to stay for supper, or she would invite me out, but ordinarily she went home to her apartment. Now she stood in the kitchen, looking decidedly unhappy.

So she had found out. Could she have the nerve to be distressed about my relationship with Sarah? (Was she jealous?) In haste, I began to cobble together my defense and was about to preempt her when she sat down at the table, across from me, and said, "Daddy, I need your help."

I closed my book. I waited.

"Daddy," she said, "I want them back. Filo and Lee. I need to ask if you'll help me hire a really, really good lawyer."

I saw her repressing the tears. I thought of her breakdown, the tornado of emotions it had unleashed. "Sweetheart," I said, "is this the best time to think about that? I know you feel well established here now, but it's only been a few months since you started this new enterprise. And it's not as if ..." I fought my desire to protect her from the truth. I spoke softly. "Todd's a good father to them, and New York is the home they know best."

"Daddy," she said, "Todd's found someone new. He said she loves the children. She loves
my
children. My
children!
And she ...
She."
Now the tears fell.

Into my mind came the duplicitous thought that Todd, after all he'd been through with Clover, would have made a wise choice in her replacement. Clover had no idea how often Todd and I had spoken in the first weeks after she'd fled. I liked Todd, and I was certain that if he said this woman cared for Filo and Lee, it was true. I was also certain that Clover hadn't a prayer of winning a renewed battle for custody. I thought of the lawyers I knew best--all retired.

That I did not answer her at once was cruel, however unintentionally. What remained of her composure collapsed. She began to sob. "Daddy, it's a
woman."

Would his newly chosen mate have been a polar bear? A sailboat? All I could say was "Yes, well ..."

"Oh Daddy, there's so much I didn't tell you. I'm sorry. You must think I'm such a loser." I could barely make out her words.

I got up and went to her at once. "When you need my help, daughter, that's what I'm here for."

Oh, Poppy.

5

So what do you think, everybody? Is this the coolest thing or what?" Ira stood, along with his assistant, Heidi, and ten four-year-olds, at the foot of the beech tree. They stared up into its branches, marveling at the wide structure that looked like a ship lodged snugly beneath a canopy of glistening burgundy leaves. Ira marveled, too, at how the tree appeared both gracious and omnipotent in the way it held the tree house so securely. Though he was being given the credit for this achievement, he wondered now how he'd ever believed it would actually, practically come into existence. He was a poor carpenter at best, and he'd copied his drawings from books. Robert's manual ingenuity and Celestino's brawn: those were the secret, essential keys to Ira's success, and they had been little more than serendipity. What would have happened if that grandson hadn't shown up the day Ira stood by the tree, gazing into the branches with total
What now?
bewilderment?

The children began talking all at once. Ira clapped rhythmically to ask for silence.
Clap-clap, clap-clap-clap
. Obediently, they echoed the cadence precisely. Often now, Ira was newly astonished by the authority he could exert without words. There was so much he no longer took for granted, and this was not entirely good.

"Now!" he said. "We are going to be taking our wood-shop skills and our safety rules up this ladder with us when we go up to decorate the inside of our tree house. We are going to split into two teams, the way we do for the sand table. Heidi's team will go in first, then my team."

The kids began jumping up and down, shouting that they wanted to be on Heidi's team. Again, Ira clapped. Again, obedience; silence.

Robert and his grandfather emerged from the house. Robert waved a camera. "Yo, Ira! We have to document the inauguration!"

So as Heidi helped her five team members up the ladder through the trapdoor to the first level, Robert moved around the tree with his camera.

"Where's your Man Friday on this important occasion?" said Percy.

Robert lowered the camera and gave Percy a scolding look. "Granddad, I did not hear you say that."

Celestino had helped them out just twice, with encouragement from the woman whose garden he tended next door, but his strength had been crucial in lifting and bracing the largest, longest timbers, those supporting the three different levels. The levels diminished in size as they rose, each one safely walled on all sides. Celestino had also supplied a load of branches he'd been about to cart off for mulching at the dump. They gave the tree house its fabulous chameleon aspect. When the tree fell into shadow at the end of the day, the structure nearly vanished from sight.

Clover and Evelyn came running up the hill. "Wait, Ira, wait!" Clover flourished a camera of her own. She gave Ira a rough hug with her free arm. "Moment of architectural truth!"

Truth! Now there's a concept
.

It seemed there was nothing Ira could do these days to banish this sour, ironic voice from his head. It did not matter that he felt welcomed here, that he liked Evelyn, Heidi, Clover, and the rest of his colleagues as well as (if not better than) the women he'd worked with back at The Very Beginning.

As Clover posed Ira's team in front of the tree and Heidi lined hers up along the rail of the tree house above their heads, Evelyn approached Ira.

"Maurice and I are having a cocktail party next Saturday, mostly for the school's new neighbors. We'd love it if you could come--and please feel welcome to bring a date. Clover tells me you have a housemate? I know just how intimidating this town can seem to newcomers."

"Oh dear. I'm afraid I already have plans," said Ira. Instantly, that inner voice piped up.
Plans? We have plans? What plans might those be? To, oh let's see, order tandoori takeout and rent a good movie to watch with our "housemate"?

Evelyn looked honestly disappointed. "Maurice is dying to meet the mastermind behind the tree house. I think he's feeling a tiny bit upstaged. He's built an opera house, but never a tree house!"

"I would love that." This was true, though Anthony would kill him if he went to that cocktail party alone.

When Clover finished taking pictures, the children ran to Ira like well-trained puppies.

"Back to the room," he said. "Our turn comes after block time."

"Can we please roll down the hill?" asked Marguerite.

The grassy slope leading to the barn was irresistible. Ira looked at the five faces before him, all exhilarated, all (except for Rico's) white as Easter lilies, white as the adorable spotless Austrian jacket that Marguerite wore.

Roll to your aristocratic little heart's content
.

"Why not?" said Ira. The children squealed.

"But one at a time, okay?" He helped them line up. "And when we get to the bottom, let's put on our walking feet."

Ira watched Marguerite's imported jacket as it became a blur descending the hillside.

Oh now please
, sniped Inner Ira.
Parents are instructed to send their children to school in clothes that are ready to play, play, play!

At last, five small faces beamed up at him. "You, too, Mr. Ira!" called Jesse.

Ira hadn't rolled down a hill in at least twenty years. What the hell. He lay on the grass, raised his arms, and propelled himself down. As the world tumbled fiercely around him, he let the vertigo take hold. "Ban-zaaaaiiiii!" he called out.

At the bottom, he faced the sky, laughing uncontrollably, the world still spinning, his ears buzzing. He pulled grass from his mouth. Five faces clustered above him. All were amused, laughing along with him, except for Rico. Perhaps Rico had X-ray vision and could see right through Ira's laughter to the vertigo that had nothing to do with rolling down a hill.

He sat up, but he had to wait a few moments for the dizziness to pass. Then he got up and brushed himself off. "Okay then. Who's for building a zoo?" As he followed his followers into the barn, he heard Clover's voice behind him.

"Bravo, Mr. Ira! That was awesome. I know five sets of parents who will hear about this at the dinner table tonight!"

Ira liked Clover, but it made him nervous that she had so obviously decided, from the start, to make him her friend. They were the two newcomers here, yet in a way everyone was new because the setting was new. Ira had had an equal share in deciding just how they would make the most efficient use of the space. And from a certain perspective, Clover was the least new. She had grown up in this place--this extraordinary place. Ira's heart had quickened at his first sight of that pond from the top of the hill; but to end up back here in your forties?

During Ira's break period, when his kids were in movement class or having a science stroll outdoors with Miss Ruth, Clover sometimes invited him to have coffee at the edge of the pond. More than once, she'd brought along homemade scones or muffins; Ira had the feeling that she'd made them with
him
in mind. Early on, she'd shown him pictures of her children, who lived mostly with their dad in New York. This led to the "what we love and miss most about the city" conversation. Clover was thrilled when she found out that Ira had grown up in Forest Hills. But a week or so later, as Ira consumed a ginger-cranberry scone, savoring every bite yet trying to banish from his mind the disturbing suspicion that it was a bribe, Clover had brought up her ex-husband again and said, out of the blue, "He's in the process of coming out of the closet. If you want to know the truth, that's why we split up."

Actually, Ira did not want to know this truth--not this Ira, the newly paranoid Ira--yet she'd looked right at him as if she expected some specific reaction. Did it mean that she simply
assumed
he was gay; that, contrary to his best efforts, he could set even a middle-aged, middle-class woman's gaydiation detector bleeping off the end of the dial?

"Well that is a tough place to be," he'd said to Clover, "especially with kids. And wow, I guess it's good that you're clearly not bothered by it." What did he mean by that? Of course she was bothered by it!

"I'm trying to be ... civilized about it, if that's what you mean. Though maybe at this point it's foolish for me not to be there. I kind of ran away. No. I ran away. 'Prune the hedges,' as my therapist likes to say. It looks terrible, I know, but I wasn't emotionally prepared to ... be a full-time mother while having my heart whacked slowly into little bits."

Maybe the best approach was to pretend he was in a parent-teacher conference. He asked how she thought the kids were doing without her constant presence. She laughed, self-deprecating, and said that she thought they were doing remarkably well. He asked if she wanted to return to the city, children aside.

Her smile vanished. "Ira, there is no 'children aside.' That's my lesson. But I know what you mean. And I can tell you this much: there's no way I could afford a place of my own in the city."

"Your ex wouldn't help? Wouldn't he rather have you there for convenience of ... visitation?" God how he hated that word.

Clover was silent for a time, looking at the water. "Todd was pretty mad when I left. He told me I really screwed up. So I can't imagine how I could ask for something like that."

"If he's a good father, he'll be more circumspect by now," said Ira.

"Circumspect," she said, sounding amused. "How can parents ever be
circumspect?
How often have you seen that, Ira?"

Exactly then, to Ira's relief, Evelyn had called his name from the barn. He had not been alone with Clover since; come to think of it, he had not seen as much of her as he usually did. A few days before, when he'd greeted her outside her office, she looked as if she'd been crying. Should he ask her what was going on? Only a year ago, of course he'd have held out a hand. No question. But that was then. He no longer presumed that because you were likable and smart, you were also to be trusted.