Disturbances in the Field (48 page)

“Yes, yes.” He grunted. “I’d have to be nuts to walk around this neighborhood in the middle of the night. Especially today. Muggers’ Day, was it?”

“I know it’s childish. I know I’m asking too much.”

“No. It’s not asking too much.” He put the magazine down and turned to me. His eyes were subdued now, and amused. “I’ve become interested in the possibilities of celibacy. I saw a talk program on television last week where two women discussed what they called the new celibacy. They found it worked well. It wasn’t too difficult and it had excellent effects on their concentration and energy levels.”

“Really. They could have asked me too. I don’t find it very difficult either. It is a dimension missing, but the longer it goes on, the less you miss it. I imagine it gets to feel natural.”

“These women,” continued George, “had been celibate for a week.”

We had a good laugh, like the old friends we were.

“Why is it that in the end I depend on you and not one of the women?” I asked. “What does that imply about men and women? I don’t think I like it.”

“I don’t see that it implies anything. I’m not here because I’m a man. I’m here because the others are busy with their own lives and I’m at large.”

“It used to be the other way. Men were busy, women were available.”

“Oh Lyd, come on. It’s an individual matter—you can’t make a social theory out of it. It would have been just the same if Nina or Gabrielle had stayed.”

“Oh no. Not the same at all. We would have talked very differently.”

“How?”

“You’d have to overhear it to know. It would sound more intimate in some ways—there’s a common idiom, a sort of native tongue, among women. More explicit detail, too. But less intimate in other ways. You put up guards in different places. With a man you guard your soul—I realize you don’t think there is such a thing—and with women you guard your pride. Men get to see that barrier down more than women do.” It was true, I regretted breaking down in front of Gabrielle more than anything George might witness, and not simply because George and I were once lovers and witnessed much. Because men are more tolerant of weakness in women: It bears out their deep suspicions; it allows them to play their protective role. And perhaps because I cared more for Gaby’s love, a reasonable love rooted in character and not sex. “In fact men may even be better, I mean more cost-effective, friends in a pinch—you can let your pride go and gratify them simultaneously.”

“Somehow I don’t feel flattered, sweetheart. Or gratified either, for that matter. You’re so cynical. That’s not quite what women have been saying lately, is it?”

“No, because they’re speaking to other women, out of pride. Which is fine—everything they say is true.” That in the long run, yes, you pay through the nose for indulging yourself with men. That a woman, however critical, would see weakness as your low moment, while a man assumes it’s your true nature. “Except ... except for these other truths we feel in the middle of the night, in the dark ...”

“I don’t think there’d be a hell of a lot of difference with Gaby or Nina here. I think you’re splitting hairs, Lyd.”

“Maybe. You’re probably a better feminist than I am. Maybe I could have slept with Nina.”

“There goes the new celibacy! At this point you’d do almost anything, I see.”

I laughed too. “No, I think there’s always been something in the air.

“Well, she’s awfully nice,” said George.

“You should know.”

“I do. Did you ever do that, though? I mean with anyone?”

“No. Did you?”

“No.”

“Timid, both of us,” I said.

“You are funny. I haven’t thought of myself as sexually timid since I was sixteen. Uh, nor you, particularly, as I recall ... Oh, so you can still giggle like you used to. Do you really think that’s what it is, timidity?”

“Well, yes, frankly. Also I never had the time. Even to find the inclination, that is.”

“If an inclination is there you don’t need time to find it.”

“Yes, but don’t you think some tastes can be acquired, if you’re really an adventurer? Like squid or escargots?”

“Nina is an adventurer,” he said. “I would guess Nina has been everywhere.”

“I’m glad. I’m glad one of us has.”

“And you wouldn’t feel the same for Gaby?” he teased.

“Mm, no. Not that she’s not attractive. I just don’t—”

“Not your type, eh?”

It felt heady and strange, all this chuckling. There was suddenly the feel of a party. “I guess not.”

“Do you know that’s how Oscar Wilde messed things up for himself? At his trial, they asked him if he had held a certain boy on his lap, if he fondled him, if he kissed him. And he said, Oh no, he was much too ugly. He couldn’t resist his own wit. But they took him up on it. They actually built a case on his little joke.”

“Hoist by his own petard.”

“Yes. I wonder what that means, literally,” said George. “What is a petard?”

“I don’t know. Something on a ship?”

“No, I think it may be something to do with war, fighting.” We fell silent. When he picked up the magazine to return to his crossword puzzle, I saw he had an erection. He saw that I saw, and shrugged. “Why so surprised? You create a provocative situation, you say things, what do you expect?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You’re quite sure about that?” He laughed, but in a distant, excluding way. “Didn’t you ever hear those sirens on the radio, when they say, This is only a test, we are testing the emergency equipment?”

“Oh, good night!” I sank down and pulled the covers up to my chin. For about fifteen minutes I lay there unable to sleep, and then I said, “I was thinking before that maybe I should have stayed with you. We get along well. Then you say something—it doesn’t even matter whether it’s true or not, it’s the way you say it—and I remember precisely why we broke up. It would never have worked.”

George said nothing. He kept filling in his puzzle.

“It’s not my duty as a woman to relieve you, you know.”

“I never said it was. That’s your notion. Go to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning. Do you mind the light on for a while?”

“No, I like it.”

“Let’s not go to sleep angry.” He reached over to squeeze my hand.

Later, in the middle of the night, I felt his hands warm on my back. After all these years the touch was still familiar. In the dark I remembered everything about him.

“Lydie,” he murmured, “I’ve been awake for hours. I even finished the Double-Crostic. Look, baby, if it’s because of Victor, then never mind. But otherwise ... Tell me if it is.”

“It’s not Victor, no.”

“Then you’re not playing fair. You knew this would happen.”

“Don’t talk to me about fair.”

“I won’t talk at all.”

His lips brushed the back of my neck and my whole body trembled, proving Abelard was right. You can want what you don’t want to want.

It was like long ago, only richer, and this time I felt virtuous. Now no one could call me ungenerous or conniving. A tease. What could be more absurd than a middle-aged tease? The best friend in the world, George; he would see me through the most abysmal moments. But unlike Nina or Gabrielle he demanded payment. He gave nothing for free—maybe that was why he was alone. What he gave, though, was lavish, and something they couldn’t: he held me in his arms till the full light of day.

I
WAS NOT EXAGGERATING
when I told George that Victor was like The Shadow. He calls two or three times a week. His reasons, in the order in which he presents them: First, to see how I am. Fine, I say. I would not complain to him if I were dying. Next, to see if the apartment needs any repairs that apparently only he is capable of making; when I say no, his doubtful “Oh?” is rimmed by a wistful halo, like a note captured by the soft pedal. To ask about mail from sources unaware of his change of address. I report the auto insurance bill, a bill for his father’s new hearing aid, his alumni magazine,
Columbia,
a
Scientific American,
and flip through the junk: Project Hope, Push to Excel, Gray Panthers. His last chance to tell the National Rifle Association to go to hell. I omit the appeal from Zero Population Growth, which advises that if each family limited itself to two children a better world would ensue. I’m not sadistic. And finally, to see how Phil is. This last, far from being least, is the real reason for the frequent calls. Althea he sees: they go walking on weekends, through parks and galleries. Together they looked at Picasso’s monumental (fat!) bathers. She told me he stared for a long time. And I always thought he preferred the more subtle figures of Matisse. Once they stopped for a drink; he bought her a Bloody Mary and she was thrilled. I thought it superfluous at her age. He does not need to resort to seduction. Young girls can forgive their fathers nearly everything, especially if the fathers are good-looking, witty, vigorous, and all the rest.

But Phil is unreconciled. He feels his father has done a dastardly deed, leaving his wife of nineteen years after a tragedy, in her moment of greatest need. Leaving him—but this he does not say. It is easier to be angry on my behalf. He is puzzled that I do not show more indignation. Where is my pride? I suppose Phil’s reaction is a “normal” one. I begin to see, after all my worrying, that he is a most normal boy, in the stereotypical way of his age: plays ball, keeps his room in chaos, is awkward but eager in pursuing his first romance, with Ilana, the trigonometry girl, enjoys the music of outrage (Rolling Stones, no satisfaction, anywhere; I rather like it myself), eats erratically, sulks, and disdains communication with me. Years ago, when he was more individualized, I thought I knew him, but this normality I find hard to penetrate. I know him only through the intimate declivities of his outgrown jeans, handed up to me—with each pair I stitch a wider hem. I am taller than average, but from his growth I get the illusion that I am shrinking.

I try to soften his heart towards his father. It is only fair, since I am the only one who understands why he left. Much of the time, now, I am able to regard Victor with a certain numbed objectivity. I no longer go about enraged. Since that one night with George—no, since that moment when he asked was it because of Victor and I saw that it was not—Victor seems distant, abstract. He is a sexy man who has suffered severe misfortune. This view, I know, is unfashionable. What is fashionable is not objectivity but self-help, with solipsism as its informing vision, and
realpolitik
for technique. However, Victor is a man who lost two children and I don’t wish him to lose a third. I know what his devotion is like: he would not survive it. Look what he has had to do to endure the loss of Vivian and Alan—rush to the embrace of some fat old mama. For God’s sake, his own mother had some class. She endured her goddamn cancer with class. Couldn’t he imitate the better type of person? Still, he deserves his son.

Much of the time I am this paragon of fair-mindedness. Only one little rip in the screen of my objectivity: when I hear his voice on the phone—how am I, the apartment, the mail, Phil—then I become a fury. He becomes real and I become something savage out of myth, which is also unfashionable.

Summer is approaching. June, as the song says, is bustin’ out all over. The children will be going away and I have a project to undertake. I will learn to live alone. A secondary project: I will learn to ride on buses again. City buses, to start with, in the hope that someday I will be able to look at those black-windowed, sealed long-distance capsules without turning away and rubbing my eyes. Not tears. They are a sliver of metal in the eye. Come winter I will work on snow, tramp in it, scoop it in my hands, make angels, and maybe someday ski. I may take a bus to a ski resort and plunge down a hill, then take the ride home on the dark road, simply to know its true measure, as Thales might have done. For the way that dark ride looms distorted in my head offends my sense of harmony.

And so I call Victor one afternoon at his studio. No more phone off the hook for the advancement of art. That is one habit shocked out of him. Soon he will break down and get a machine. (“But it rings, Lydia. That’s the trouble.”)

“Lydia, this is a surprise.”

As soon as I hear his voice I feel furious. It comes on like a sudden siege of fever.

“I called to ask if you’d mind taking the car over the summer. I really don’t need it and it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I’d rather take buses.”

“Well ... sure, if that’s what you want. But it’s much safer for you to have it at night. That walk from the bus stop.”

“I can always get a lift from someone. Or a taxi.”

“All right. I’ll take it on Saturday. I’ll be over to see Althea. Will you be home?” he asks hopefully.

“Victor, if you’re in, I’m out. Oh, if you’re coming up this time, ring the bell. I had to change one of the locks.”

“Why?”

“It broke. It was old.”

“Can you have a key made for me, then?”

“A key? Why? You’re not living here.” He waits, his silence sad, proud, and humble at once. He is appealing to my better nature. Also in the silence is something sexual, some reminder of intimate times, when we asked things of each other and received. A very heady mix. “Oh, all right. When I get around to it.”

“I waited for Phil outside of school yesterday but he wouldn’t even speak.”

“You did? Well, I’ve tried to talk to him about it, but you know Phil. He doesn’t like something, he removes himself.” Victor doesn’t pick up that tossed-down glove. His response is silence, this time opaque, a wall. “He got a summer job as a lifeguard in a Y camp upstate. I assume that’s okay with you?”

“I don’t like all this secondhand information. I want to hear from him what’s happening.”

A pity I’m not the vindictive type: time was when I got my information about Phil secondhand from you, baby. “I don’t like it any better than you do. Althea wants to work as a mother’s helper. Some rich people out in the Hamptons with two little kids.”

“First I want to know who they are, everything.”

“I’m sure she’ll tell you. When has Althea ever failed to give details?”

“What about you? Do you have any plans?”