For Love (29 page)

Emily – big Emily – had answered the door earlier this evening, and her plump face had puckered at the sight of Lottie. ‘Oh, Charlotte, my dear.’ She
stepped forward and embraced Lottie on the porch. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered in Lottie’s ear. She smelled of talc, and her hands were damp on Lottie’s arms. She
stepped back after a moment.

‘Well,’ she said. Lottie saw that her eyes were glittering, but she’d clearly decided they were to have the usual chirpy conversation. She launched herself, her watery, lapping
voice: ‘Elizabeth said you might drop by, and I’m so pleased to see you, just come in, come in, we’re all sort of drifting around aimlessly, postprandial I guess you’d say,
but we’re about to have coffee and tea and that sort of thing . . .’ Lottie was following her into the gloomy front hall. ‘. . . and little Emily and I made some dessert this
afternoon. My dear!’ Her voice lowered abruptly. ‘How is Cameron?’

They had paused on the threshold of the living room. Lottie could hear voices, adult voices, in the kitchen. ‘I think he’s fine. I haven’t actually been able to reach him, but
they’ve talked to him at the store.’

Her head bobbed. ‘Poor man, that’s Elizabeth’s experience too, and I want you to know that I am so sorry for him, if you speak to him please tell him so.’ As Elizabeth
emerged into the long hallway from the kitchen, Emily squeezed Lottie’s elbow again, for emphasis.

They had sat in the immense, cheerless living room, decorated in its faded liver colors. Lawrence was a slender, compact man, with shining flat hair and smooth skin. He was beautifully dressed,
Lottie noted, in loose, crushed-looking clothing Lottie guessed to be ridiculously expensive. He and Lottie were drinking decaf, Emily and Elizabeth tea, and the children had soft drinks.

The children seemed chastened to Lottie, scared. They sat silently and listened to the adults. Little Emily pulled her legs up on to the couch – you could fully see her white underpants
– and leaned against Elizabeth, sucking her thumb.

For reasons that were unclear to Lottie, Emily was explaining at great length about the flowers on the living room rug, which had come from her family. That they had been part of a punishment
ritual when she or her sisters misbehaved: they had to sit silently on a rose for a designated number of minutes while their father read the paper. ‘Oh, I remember him as clearly as if he
were alive today,’ she said. ‘The way the paper would
drop
as soon as we began to wiggle or be the slightest bit restless, and Father would say, “Emily, hold that
rose.”
Emily, hold that rose
,’ she echoed. ‘I used to say it myself later, still do, sometimes, when I’m impatient or have to endure something: “Emily, hold
that rose.” ’

Was there any situation, Lottie wondered, that Emily couldn’t talk her way through? She took another bite of the cake the two Emilys had made. Her portion was iced in a violent purple,
little Emily’s choice for half the frosting on the cake’s top. Others had a yolky yellow. She wondered if her teeth were staining.

Now Elizabeth was telling the children about how she had been disciplined: her father had set her to memorize passages of poetry, the more serious the infraction, the longer the passage.

‘Bummer,’ Michael said; and Lottie thought instantly of Ryan earlier this afternoon, his anger at her, hers at him.

‘How ’bout you, Daddy?’ Jeffrey asked. There was shy eagerness in his voice, a remnant of his summer’s sorrow. ‘What was your punishment?’

Lawrence had an odd smile on his face as he looked from one of his children to another. ‘My father beat us,’ he said quietly. ‘With his belt.’ He looked at Lottie then.
It felt to her as though her eyes must be open too wide, and she looked away quickly. The room seemed to have lurched slightly.

‘Oh, Lawrence, how terrible!’ Emily cried. ‘Surely it isn’t true – that lovely man, I so enjoyed him, to think of his raising his hand to you, to any of you. It
just breaks my heart, dear, I wish you hadn’t told me.’

‘I’m very sorry,’ Lawrence had said; but Lottie could see that he wasn’t, not a bit.

Now he pulls on the cigarette, and Lottie can hear the air slide between his lips. ‘You knew the sitter,’ he asks quietly, finally.

‘A little. Her name was Jessica.’

‘It’s a tough thing. For your brother too,’ he says. Then, lightly, ‘How’s he taking it?’

‘I don’t know, really.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just I haven’t been able to . . . he hasn’t been home since last night. I’m a little worried, actually. I’ve tried him on and off all day. Right up until I came
over to Emily’s house tonight.’ Lottie had left another message just before she crossed the street. ‘And the call I made here. When we first got here.’ She lifts her
helpless hands to indicate that he wasn’t there. ‘But he’s called in at his bookstore. So I have to assume he’s just walking it off. Or drinking it off. Or avoiding me. Or
all of the above.’

‘He’ll turn up. He’ll turn up.’

Lottie feels, oddly, a sense of comfort in this. ‘What makes you think so?’

‘Just . . . there was something last night. There was lots of nervous tension in the room. Lots of life, in some way, when the cops were there with your brother and so forth. He was upset,
sure, but not . . . not depressed. I thought, to be honest, he might have been on something. But Elizabeth said no, he doesn’t. That’s when I asked her whether he was balling the
sitter, actually.’

‘And she said he might have been.’

‘She said she didn’t know, but that he might have been. Right.’

‘Well, he wasn’t. That’s all. He wasn’t.’

‘He wasn’t.’ It’s a question.

‘He wasn’t “balling the sitter.” Okay?’

‘Okay, I believe you.’

He puts the cigarette out. A long but somehow comfortable silence falls in the oddly lighted room. Lottie is startled when he speaks again. ‘Tell me the hard part.’

‘What?’

‘Of your summer. You said it was hard.’

Lottie lifts her hands. ‘Won’t this do?’ She means Jessica, Cameron.

‘But you implied it was hard before this.’

‘I suppose. But I think I also said I didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘It’s funny.’ He waits for her to respond, but she doesn’t. He purses his lips and then continues anyway. ‘Elizabeth portrayed you as so happily married. But I
don’t think that’s the case, is it, Lottie?’

‘I
really
don’t want to talk about it.’

He holds up one of his hands so Lottie can see the palm. ‘Okay, okay.’ After a minute he asks conversationally, ‘How old’s your son?’

‘He’s twenty.’

‘You look young to have a son that old.’

‘Well, thanks. I was twenty-three when I had him. Not so young actually.’

‘You married young, though.’

‘I suppose so. I was twenty. Is that young?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugs. ‘How long?’

‘How long what?’

‘How long were you married?’

‘Oh, only a few years. We split up a couple of months after Ryan was born.’

‘So you were single awhile.’

‘I was single for almost twenty years.’ Lottie has said this in a loud voice that surprises her.

‘You seem single now.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘No, you give off single vibes.’

‘Are you coming on to me now?’

‘Maybe.’ He laughs, a bitter sound. ‘Maybe I’m just pissed.’

‘Why?’

‘Because everyone’s being so mysterious about what’s been going on here.’ He moves his feet in the patch of light. ‘So maybe I’m just needling you, Lottie.
Maybe coming on a little, but just trying to get to you, basically. You can ignore me. Not – you should know – that I don’t find you attractive. I’ve always liked your
type.’

‘I suppose I should say thanks.’

‘I would understand if you didn’t.’

‘I suppose I should ask you what you think my
type
is.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘What the hell,’ she says, trying to make her voice light. ‘I can take it.’

He’s smiling at her, as though they’ve agreed to something. ‘You’re one of those small, high-energy women,’ he says. ‘Narrow body, wide hips, loves to
screw.’

Lottie is shocked, though she shouldn’t be. ‘That’s a
type
?’ she asks finally.

‘You tell me,’ he says. ‘You were single all those years, you must know yourself pretty well. Am I right?’

Lottie is smiling back at him now. She shakes her head. ‘You know,’ she says, ‘this feels to me like one of the more cynical interludes I’ve participated in.’

‘I’ll go, anytime you tell me to.’

‘That’s what I mean: I haven’t told you to.’ She lifts her hands, gestures. ‘This beautiful young woman is dead, my brother is out there somewhere, somehow
suffering with it. And you and I are sitting here, toying idly – maybe toying theoretically is more like it – with various quasi-sexual ideas.’

‘Why do you suppose we’re doing that?’

‘I don’t know, exactly. Well, you, I’d guess, because you’re pissed, as you say, about what you don’t understand. But maybe you’re angry too, just that
you’ve come back.’ He is smiling again. ‘She left you. You chased her. On the great seesaw of love, she’s up now, and you’re down.’

He nods. ‘All right. I’ll say all right to that. But how do you explain yourself? Why are you playing the game with me?’

Lottie sighs. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I’m riding my own seesaw. With my husband, I mean. The stuff I’m not going to talk about. Plus . . . well, wouldn’t it be a
kind of revenge on Elizabeth, to fool around with you?’

‘Revenge for what?’

‘For having had an easier life. For any number of small moments of pain. Insults. For living across the street from this house in that house.’

‘You don’t need revenge on Elizabeth for that.’

‘Oh, I know. Water over the dam, under the bridge. Spilled milk, and so on.’

‘Plus she’s already in agony over your success.’

Lottie realizes abruptly that she has known this about Elizabeth.

‘You are aware, of course, that that’s the biggest fuck-you you’ve got going?’

‘Yes.’ She nods. ‘Yes, I am aware of that. As a matter of fact, it’s given me some real pleasure this summer, I admit it. And I do feel that, some quiver of that, every
time I see my name in print. Succeeding is an angry thing to do. For some people. For me. For you too, I suspect. I suspect, in fact, that that’s one of the few ways you and I do understand
one another.’

They sit looking at each other for a long moment. Then he stands up abruptly, steps across the stripe of lighted air, bends over Lottie, and kisses her. Lottie lifts her face to him, she kisses
him back, but she does not stand up, she does not move her hands, which are enlaced around the jelly jar full of wine. His tongue comes into her mouth.

Which of them decides it first, that it won’t happen? It would be hard to say. If she had responded. If he were more insistent, if he’d touched her body. If Elizabeth weren’t
waiting across the street. If Richard Lester or Ryan couldn’t come through the door at any minute. By the time he lifts his face from Lottie’s, though, they both know it won’t.
But they smile at each other in a kind of complicity even about this.

He steps back across the room, picks up his glass of vodka from the arm of his chair, and gulps it. Then he holds the glass out to Lottie. She stands up and takes it. It seems the final part of
some exchange. ‘I should be getting back, I guess,’ he says.

‘Yes, I suppose you should,’ she answers.

But at the door to the dining room – to the light – he pauses and gestures at the messy table, the books, the papers. ‘You working on some new story?’

‘An article; yes,’ she says.

‘What’s it about?’

‘It’s about love, actually.’

‘You’re reading
books
to learn about love?’

‘Well, that plus extensive man-in-the-street interviews, of course.’

He leans against the doorjamb. ‘Ask me. I’ll be your man in the street.’

‘Umm. Okay.
Love
. Sir:
A
: Do you think it’s yearning, love? Or fulfillment?
B
: Is it knowing someone, or not knowing them?
C
: Is it having someone, or not
having them? Then we come to the subquestions. Can you know someone? Can you, as it were, have someone?’

He is shaking his head. The gleaming, polished hair stays perfectly in place. ‘These are not useful questions.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they don’t get at the real issue, and the real issue is, do you want love at the center of your life? And I think women want it to be at the center and men don’t.
That’s all.’ He holds his small, pretty hands out.

Peculiarly, Lottie is disappointed. Did she think he was going to reveal something to her, then? She did, in fact, she realizes. She thought he might have brought her
news
. She feels a
jolt of contempt for herself; and then for him. ‘But weren’t you, in fact, putting it at the center when you held on to your girlfriend?’ she asks. ‘When you forced
Elizabeth’s hand?’

‘Not at all. I told Elizabeth it wasn’t going to last forever, that it was just a kind of craziness. I never forced her hand. I never said I loved the woman. I didn’t love her,
as a matter of fact. And if Elizabeth had been able to believe me, she’d never have gone through – she’d never have put the children through – what they’ve gone
through this summer.’ He sounds angry for the first time, and Lottie feels strangely as though she’s scored some sort of victory over him.

‘But she sure would have gone through something else, wouldn’t she?’ she needles. ‘Sitting at home, waiting for it to be over. Maybe, in fact, she speeded that up by
leaving. Do you think?’

His lips purse in a dismissive expression.

‘I mean,’ she says, ‘let me put this situation to you: How easy would you be about being just a
part
of Elizabeth’s life, if another part of her life happened to
be someone who was fucking her into oblivion daily?’

‘It means something different.’

‘Say what?’

‘It means something different to a woman. For the very reason, specifically because, women put love at the center of their lives, it means something different when they have an
affair.’ He believes this, Lottie sees.