Crossroads (13 page)

“Oh, remember, you lost track of her.” He twirled his drink in his hand. He had ordered something before I'd gotten there. “You know who I ran into? Peter Kramer, remember? That guy
who lived near us when we were downtown next to the funeral home. He asked about you.” The waitress came over. “You want a vodka tonic, right? Two vodka tonics.”

“Wasn't Peter that guy who was always in love with foreign correspondents and they were always getting shipped all over the world?”

Mark laughed. “I only remember the one who worked for NBC who got sent to Iraq.”

“God, I'm sure there were others.” We were quiet for a moment. “What'd you want to see me about?”

He stiffened. “I just thought we should talk, that's all. I haven't seen you for a long time.”

“Talk about what?” I was having trouble deciding if my coldness was an act or authentic.

“That guy I saw you with. Are you dating or what?”

“I really don't think that concerns you anymore.”

He leaned back against the cushion, pressing his head against the wall. “I'd just like to know what you're doing. I've been thinking about you a lot lately.” He scratched his head, and dandruff flakes fell on his shoulder. Had he always had dandruff? For some reason I'd never noticed this before. “I was thinking . . .” He seemed to be talking to the judge. He stared up and spoke methodically. “Maybe we should give it another go.”

“I was thinking we should file for a divorce.” I smiled at him, the way you smile when you run into someone you used to know and you're happy to run into them but you can't for the life of you remember their name. “I just think it's time.”

He leaned forward on his hands. “You know, these have been bad times, but what about the good times? What about Bermuda? What about when you broke your wrist and I took care of you? What about that summer in Maine?”

“I'm not the one who left.”

He cleared his throat. “Look, I'm confused. We got married when we were very young. I'd hardly been on my own at all. I
think I'd like to see you.” He paused. “I want to see you again.”

“Mark, this is ridiculous . . .”

He stared into his glass. “I'm trying to talk to you.”

I sighed. “I know that. I understand that. I even appreciate that. But don't you think your timing is a little funny? Have you tried to talk to me at all since you left? When I needed to talk, you wouldn't even come to the phone.”

He turned his drink in perfect circles. “I couldn't talk then. You drove me away. You were so introspective, you were too dependent on me. I mean, maybe I can be cold and distant, but you were always on my back.”

The waitress brought us a little bowl of peanuts and I began eating them, one at a time. “I think it would have been much more productive if you'd said something at the time.”

He shook his hand at me, a courtroom gesture I've always hated. “It's just your damn ego that's involved.”

“You're damn right it's my ego.”

“I want to see you again.” He reached across the table for my hands.

“No.” I was adamant when I spoke but I was filled with silent doubt. He was my husband. He was the man I married at twenty-four and I thought that lying in bed with him on a Saturday morning was about the best thing that I'd ever known. We owned things in common. His money was my money and my money was his. This wasn't some fly-by-night affair. This was what I'd committed myself to. But what had I committed myself to, I wondered. To a man who never sweated in bed, who could eat one chocolate chip cookie and close the bag; to a man who could leave a note on the kitchen table and depart. To a man with, as far as I could tell, nearly perfect control.

Mark held my hands tightly in his. “Look, can't we just see one another? Just until we figure this out?”

I was still looking for a way to hurt him and Lila, but not at the expense of hurting myself. If he'd done this to me and now
he was doing it to Lila, I was fairly certain he'd do it to me again. “All right”—I squeezed his hands—“I'll see you.” His face brightened. “If you leave Lila.”

He frowned and shook his whole torso. “You don't understand. I'm confused. I'm not sure what's best. I need . . . well, I need to see both of you, just until I'm clearer.”

I had the sobering memory of a kiss on my lips from the night before, and even if I hadn't had that memory, I'd been told lies by this man. I had to look at him very intently to remind myself that no matter what I'd done to hurt him or what had happened between us or how I felt about him, he was not a man to be trusted.

“I'm afraid,” I whispered, “that's not possible.”

Then, angry, still half in love with him, but knowing there was no going back, I looked away.

 

When Sean left for Los Angeles at the end of September, I was relieved, and plunged into work. Two of my smaller projects had received funding: a traffic-pattern alteration in the Bowery and a commercial revitalization project on the Lower East Side. Neither was as big as SAP, but they were enough to keep me busy. I was at my desk from early in the morning until after dark. From the back of the office, I could see the place where the East River met the Hudson, and I could spend hours staring at the confluence, at the point where two huge bodies of water merged. It was always turbulent at the point of confluence.

Sean phoned me about once a week from California. On our last call, he sensed I was distracted, so he told me when he would be back and said I should call him when I felt like it. It was almost a week after he said he would be getting back that I called him at his parents' place in New Jersey. “Can you come to New York?” I asked when he reached the phone.

“Tonight?”

I thought for a moment. “No, tomorrow night.”

When I met him the next night on the corner of Mott and Canal, he looked bored as he rocked on the balls of his feet. I was late and he was a little annoyed, but I was glad to see him. “What took you so long?”

“The subway was mobbed.”

“No, to call me. You waited a long time.”

“I don't know.” I slipped my hand through his arm.

“I don't either.” He kissed me lightly on the cheek.

“I've been very busy.”

“So have I.”

We walked slowly, looking for a restaurant, though neither of us seemed very anxious to eat. “Why'd you call?” he asked me at last.

“I don't know. I guess I wanted to see you.” It had been almost a month that we hadn't seen one another. “Look at that intersection.” I pointed to where the Holland Tunnel fed into Chinatown. “It should have been redirected years ago.”

“Where should we eat?”

“I don't care.”

Sean sighed. “If you don't care, why'd you call me to have dinner with you?”

“I didn't call you for dinner.”

“So why did you call?” He was growing impatient with me.

I took a deep breath. “I called because I wanted to go to bed with you.”

Every weekend for the next three weeks in a row, Sean came into the city. We spent the whole weekend together. On Wednesdays he often had meetings, and we'd spend that night together when he was in the city. He'd arrive from the meetings a little flushed, excited. He'd talk a blue streak all night about the film industry and how crazy everyone was. On the fourth weekend, Sean called to say he'd been invited upstate to visit some old friends. “They're great. You'll love them.”

He picked me up from work on Friday and kissed me as I climbed into the car. “Bring your long johns?”

“Is it going to be cold?”

“Get in.” He pulled me to him. “I'll keep you warm.”

Sean cut over west and headed straight uptown. “We're going to miss rush hour if I've got anything to say about it.” He took Riverside to the Henry Hudson Parkway, and we were off. From the parkway to the thruway. The thruway to Albany. “I can make it there in four hours flat,” he proclaimed and proceeded to do just that.

I watched him drive as we sped madly along. He drove with precision. He drove the way some men think. He moved with cold logic, straight to the point. There was something direct and honest in the way he drove and if he'd been my type, I would have fallen in love with him for that. “So,” I said, trying to make conversation, “tell me about Sandy and Earl.”

“They're great,” he said. “You'll love them.”

“I know. You said that, but what's great about them?”

“Oh, you'll see. They're swell people.”

“How do you mean ‘swell'? I mean, what're they like?”

He made a
tsk
sound. “I don't know. You'll see.”

It was the word “swell” that first made me think something was wrong. Nobody says “swell” anymore. “So how was your week?”

“Oh, fine. Not much happened.”

I settled into the cushy bucket seat and watched, his hand resting not on my knee, as it usually did, but on the little green plastic ball of the gearshift. His fingers caressed the ball, which glowed an almost Day Glo green; his hand massaged it like a breast. “Nothing happened?”

He shook his head and turned on the radio. I leaned against the window and he motioned for me to lock my door. His hand gripped the green plastic ball.

“Is something wrong?”

He shrugged. “I just want to concentrate on the road, O.K.?” There wasn't much to concentrate on, actually. It was a pretty straight and even stretch of highway, without much
traffic. All he had to do was point the car in front of us and talk to me.

“Sure, that's O.K.” Something was wrong. I couldn't pinpoint it. I started retracing our steps. Had I said something stupid? Something insensitive? Had I not shown sufficient interest in his job as assistant director? Or perhaps I was just expecting him to behave the way Mark behaved. With Mark, silence was synonymous with anger. “I got a new assignment. Seems they want to alter traffic patterns down in the Bowery.”

“Oh, yeah?” He pulled off the road. “Let's stop somewhere. I'm hungry.”

“You're not interested in my new assignment?”

“I just want to get a bite of something.”

I tried to explain that my new assignment had to do with more than just traffic problems. It had to do with population distribution, with sociology, with urban design, with pollution, with politics. It was no use. He wasn't listening. He was looking for a Howard Johnson's. The window felt cold against the back of my hand and I knew winter was coming. I could feel it in the glass. The sky was very clear and the few clouds overhead were white, but I knew that ahead of us, up north, winter was coming. My first Christmas without Mark. I hated being cold. I moved away from the window, closer to Sean, and let my hand fall on his thigh. “How did you meet them?”

He sighed, as if he were about to make a huge effort. “Let's see. I met Sandy when I was doing soaps out in L.A.”

“I didn't know you did soaps.”

“I don't like soaps. The money's good but I hated doing them. I had to play this stupid gynecologist. Sandy was casting director. We got to be friends. She quit after she met Earl. He's a photographer and he teaches. They've got this great thing going. Now she runs a little theater outside of Saratoga.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It's very nice.”

The last three weekends I'd spent with Sean he had talked nonstop. He talked about everything. About the film, about my work, about what he liked for breakfast. Maybe it was driving that made him quiet. I looked at the road. There were trees, and hills that were starting to rise into mountains. The trees, the road, the leaves starting to turn, they all reminded me of those weekend jaunts Mark and I used to take out of Cambridge. The older you get, the more things remind you of other things. Everything reminded my father of home. Every lake was Lake Michigan. “Trees,” he said about the redwood forest; “we've got big trees right in Wisconsin.”

We pulled into a pancake house outside Albany. Sean ordered strawberry pancakes. I ordered a bowl of clam chowder. The chowder tasted fishy. The strawberries ran off his pancakes like blood. He ran his fork with a bit of pancake on it around his plate in circles as if he were going to paint a picture. I sighed and ate slowly. This wasn't quite what I'd had in mind. So he was moody. Lots of men were moody. Lots of people were moody. A cup of coffee loosened him up. He described the little brook that ran behind the farmhouse. The two apple trees. A dog named Sophia. He sipped his coffee and told me about the way the leaves up north turn a special shade of scarlet. Like those cornpuffs in the box of Trix. Did I remember Trix? Those round balls of mauve and russet and orange?

He reached across the table for my hand and dipped his sleeve in the syrup and strawberry sauce in his plate. “Damn.” He frowned and seemed at a loss for what to do.

“Here,” I said. I moistened a napkin in my ice water and gently wiped his sleeve. He smiled and kissed every finger on my hand. But when we got back in the car, he drove in silence. “How much farther is it?”

“We'll get there eventually,” he answered.

“What do you want to do this weekend?” My hand rested on his hand, which rested on the Day Glo green gearshift.

“I don't know. We'll do something.”

It seemed I'd spent most of my life trying to understand men. My father, Zap, Mark, and now Sean. Women, I've always understood, more or less. What moves us, I think, is the desire to fill spaces, to destroy emptiness. The womb, the heart, the shelf. But men seem to be running away from emptiness. They drive fast, they go places. The sky was darkening as we passed through Albany, heading on Route 87 toward Saratoga.

What was I doing here, I asked myself. Why did I have to bother to start again? It is always at this time of day that I get maudlin. Sometimes I think these memories of dusk are going to kill me, and it is this time of day that always brings me back to my family.