Middle Age (77 page)

“Falling in love is conventional. Caring for another person. Wanting to live with another person?”

“But where should we live, Roger? You don’t want to move into my little house, and I don’t blame you. But your townhouse is so completely yours.”

“We’ll buy our own house. Tomorrow.”

“Roger! That’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“It’s . . . too abrupt.”

“I am abrupt. I believe in abruptness.”

“You’re . . . an impetuous man.”

“Because I inveigled you into committing a trivial crime against the statute?”

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Middle Age: A Romance

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“You didn’t ‘inveigle.’ I was willing.”

“No. I seduced you. Then I fell in love with you.”

“. . . was that what happened?”

“That was exactly what happened. You witnessed a forged signature, and I thought
I love her!
”

“I didn’t love you. I was afraid of you.”

“You were never afraid, Marina. You were disdainful.”

“No.”

“You’re disdainful now.”

“Roger,
no
.”

“But you can’t lie to me, Marina. I know you too well.”

“I’m afraid of being married to . . . a lawyer.”

“What’s that mean?”

“A lawyer perceives the world as an opportunity for manipulation . . .”

“And a sculptress?”

“I am not a sculptress! That’s almost insulting.”

“Look, you love Adam, don’t you?”

“Adam . . .”

“My son. My son Adam.”

“Of course I love Adam. I adore Adam.”

“Well, Adam needs a woman’s presence, immediately. He needs a mother. He’ll be confused, thinking the nanny is his mother. You wouldn’t want Adam to grow up confused, would you?”

“Roger, don’t be silly.”

“We’ll buy a house, then. Tomorrow. I’ve made a few calls.”

“This is . . . frightening to me.”

“On the river. We’ll buy a house on the river.”

“Is that a good idea? We’ll be reminded of . . .”

“He’s easy to live with, I think. Wasn’t he, in life?”

“. . . but can we afford a house, Roger?
I
can’t.”

“Well, I can.”

“And then, am I expected to sell my house? I love this house, Roger.”

“It’s a charming little place. No matter if the floors are crooked, liquids spill, and glasses fall off tables. No matter if a man of normal height hits his head going through doorways. And every time I come into this room I expect to see the seven dwarves in this bed.”

“I suppose you hate the bookstore, too.”

“The ‘quaint’ bookstore! I love it.”

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J C O

“If you think it’s so quaint, you could invest in it. Molly and I would like to buy the place next door, and tear down the walls . . . Is something funny?”

“Nothing about this conversation is funny. Our future is being decided.”

“Roger, I don’t think I can . . . sell this house. If something went wrong . . . between us. I’m not young enough to . . .”

“You’re just young enough. Do what you want. Keep this house, or sell it. It’s yours.”

“. . . I could use it as a studio, I suppose. If you don’t think that’s wasteful . . .”

“ ‘Wasteful’? How?”

“An entire house, for just . . . a studio.”

“In whose eyes is it ‘wasteful’? Do you give a damn?”

“I’m not sure. I think, yes . . . sometimes. The opinions of other people . . .”

“Fuck other people’s opinions.”

“Other people are all we
have
.”

“No. Each other is all we have.”

“You don’t even believe that yourself. We must live in the world.”

“Is Salthill the world?”

“Well, we must begin somewhere . . .”

“Look, Marina: do you love me?”

“Yes. I think so . . .”

“You ‘think so’? What the hell does that mean?”

“Yes. I do love you. I’ve decided . . . yes.”

“Then that’s enough. We’ll begin there.”

T H

T    who in the middle of her life fled home, in order one day to return home. And, returning home, was astonished at the changes that had taken place in her absence.

At the rear of the house, the landscape was transformed.

“Owen, my God! These gardens! How did you . . . when . . . ? This is beautiful.”

“I’d hoped you would see them one day, Augusta. I never gave up believing you were . . . alive.”

Like new, young lovers they clasped each other’s hand, and dared not look at each other. Not for the moment.

A    day, vanished. Where?

No matter, Augusta Cutler was returned.

How strange Salthill-on-Hudson looked to her! After the great spaces of the West, how small, how precious, how privileged, how locked in time, like a smart, fashionable watch ticking with self-importance, yet no true importance. The very streets—the drives, lanes, circles, passes, “ways” and

“runs”—were too narrow. The expensive, exquisite houses were too close together, even the “country estates” on their several acres. And the Cutlers’

own house! The six-bedroom French Normandy on Pheasant Run, that provoked her to laughter when she saw it. How absurdly large for any single family, let alone a middle-aged couple whose children have long since

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J C O

grown and gone. (“What were we thinking of, when we bought this? Who were we?”) Yet Augusta had to acknowledge the beauty of the property.

She had to acknowledge its illusory promise of seeming to bestow upon its inhabitants some measure of moral, spiritual worth. And it was her home.

What most astonished Augusta was the change in her husband Owen.

(“
Is
this Owen? Or an older Cutler relative . . . ?”) Not just that Owen was older, and now nearly bald, his head covered in a soft pale down, but he’d become soft-spoken, with an appealing hesitancy to his voice: the hesitancy of a man who is no longer absolutely certain what
is,
and what
is not
. Owen’s eyes were now the naked eyes of a man who has surrendered all pride, and consequently all shame. There was no vanity here, but perhaps a kind of ancient tortoise-wisdom. The acerbic patrician manner that Augusta had once found sexually stirring, and had come finally to find hateful, had vanished. Smooth as old, worn stone Owen Cutler now appeared.

Gazing at Augusta, and blinking as if she were bathed in an ethereal, blinding light. How many times exclaiming, “Augusta, darling! Welcome home. You’ve made me so
happy
.”

Happy! And not a word of reproach.

Augusta shook her head, perplexed.

She’d returned to Salthill a tall suntanned rawboned woman. The rosy Renoir-flesh for which she’d been noted, her startling sensuous beauty, had melted away. Now she was handsome, “striking.” Her hair was a bristling ashy-gray that fell to her shoulders like a horse’s mane. She wore jeans with soiled knees, a pullover sweatshirt purchased in a roadside café. Her soiled canvas shoes were worn without socks. Her fingernails were clipped, and not wholly clean. (Her beautiful rings were too loose on her fingers, and inappropriate for her fingers.) Unconsciously, back in Salthill, Augusta kept glancing skyward, confused by so many trees, dense foliage. No horizon! It was a curious stunted way to live . . . you almost expected inhabitants of this region to be short, anemic, blind-blinking like moles.

Owen led her eagerly, proudly into the garden at the rear of the house, that was really three gardens. Augusta stared, in disbelief.

The first, bordering the flagstone terrace, was a garden of roses, of all hues and combinations of hues: crimson, yellow, mauve, pink, cream, ivory-white. The second, on a hillside, was dahlias, begonias, zinnias,
Middle Age: A Romance

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marigolds, gladioli. The third, terraced on a hillside, was a vegetable garden grown lush in autumn: staked tomato plants grown to a height of six feet, squash and zucchini in abundance on the ground, peppers, sweet basil and thyme, honeydews and watermelons.

Augusta realized
It’s Adam’s garden. Except
—

So much more ambitious, and better tended, than Adam’s garden.

Owen said quietly, “For you, Augusta. You see, I never believed you were . . . gone.”

Even as Augusta marveled at these sights, cultivated by a businessman of seemingly limited imagination who’d rarely taken time to stroll about his own property, and “exercised,” grudgingly, by riding a motorized cart about the Salthill Golf Club course, Owen was leading her, like a bride, into a greenhouse—a
greenhouse!
—in which tropical orchids of surpassing beauty and delicacy seemed to float, luminescent in the steamy air.

“Owen, when did you build
this?
My God.”

“Last winter. It came to me in a dream. Or, rather—you came to me in a dream.
You
suggested it.” Owen smiled almost shyly. “You held out an orchid to me, and promised you’d return ‘when the orchids bloom.’ It was a dream that made me so happy, darling, though when I was awake I hadn’t much to be happy about.”

These words hung in the air, irresolute. Augusta was tempted to say
Owen, I’m sorry!

But she could not. The words stuck in her throat. She wasn’t sorry, and wasn’t going to lie.

That was one of the terms Augusta had set for herself, when she’d decided to return to Salthill. No more lies. Even in the service of making others happy.

In Montana, Augusta had seen such older men: men like Owen Cutler: obscurely wounded by life, retired from the fray of life, ex-cattlemen perhaps, seemingly well-to-do, and yet hesitant, uncertain. Like men venturing out onto thin ice. These men were invisible to younger men, and to many women. Their sexual bravado had faded, the masculine air of energy, self-esteem, self-confidence. In the prime of their lives they’d been “successful” and then, perhaps abruptly, unexpectedly, something had happened—illness, accident, financial losses, disappointing children, divorce, death—to break them, and make them doubt everything they’d believed in. Yet somehow they’d mended, and made a decision to live, and to live happily, as long as possible. Seeing Owen in this light, Augusta saw him

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J C O

with a new respect. Here was a man she would not have left . . . at least, not in the way she’d left Owen. Here was a man she would not have wished to hurt, or to bring to his knees.

Owen was saying, with the air of one confessing a weakness, “A private detective I’d hired to find you, a man named Elias West, who came highly recommended, led me to believe, initially . . . gave me hope . . . he’d found a handbag of yours, in Miami . . . stolen? . . . and later . . . oh, God, Gussie, this is terrible, I don’t think I can tell you . . .” Owen paused, wiping his forehead with a tissue. “Maybe another time, dear. For I’d had to identify a . . . a woman’s body . . . in Florida. And . . .” Owen was so moved, Augusta felt a stab of panic. Elias West had come up with a possible corpse, then? Augusta didn’t want to know.

Augusta said tersely, “Yes. A handbag of mine was stolen. In April.”

“And that led us to believe you were in Miami, of course. Just to know that you were somewhere, and alive . . . gave me hope.”

Owen continued to show Augusta through the greenhouse, identifying orchids. Yes, they were beautiful, orchids. Useless, beautiful. Vaguely Augusta recalled her first orchid corsage, at least forty years ago. Forty years!

Pinning it on her prom dress, she’d managed to stick herself practically in the left breast.

Augusta was thinking she would resume taking photographs that very week. She would take a course in the city, at the New School. She would convert a room in the house, to a studio, with a darkroom. She foresaw photography trips in the future. She might photograph the places of her long-ago past, as she’d photographed those of Adam Berendt. She might return to Florida, and to the West. And there was the Southwest. These would be solitary trips. Though always she would return to Salthill.

Elias West
. Augusta had to admit, the mere sound of that man’s name stirred her interest. What a character! What a man.

And quite a lover.

Possibly they might meet again?

No. Augusta had discarded West’s number. There was something duplicitous and cagey about West, no woman could trust him. In a gesture of good sense and self-abnegation Augusta had discarded his number.

Except: West, a private investigator, could hardly be difficult to locate.

Middle Age: A Romance

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No doubt he was listed on the Internet. And his number would be somewhere in Owen’s files.

I   a bright September morning when Augusta telephoned Owen. She was staying in a rented cabin in Montana, with a view of snowcapped Scapegoat Peak. Why exactly at that moment, why had she made her decision, Augusta didn’t know. Except the season was changing, she’d been away long enough. She was lonely at last. She did miss Salthill.

The receiver was picked up on the first ring.

“Owen? It’s me.”

“ . . . Augusta?”

There was a pause. Augusta might even then have replaced the receiver. “Yes. I suppose.”

“Augusta! Darling! Will you be . . . coming home?”

How warm, Owen’s voice. How entirely without reproach or the slightest hint of anger. The old Owen, Augusta was thinking, would have been furious, and slammed the receiver down as soon as he heard her voice. The old Owen would have long since ceased loving her, and filed for divorce.

“Yes.”

She began to cry. But Owen would not hear.

Augusta would offer Owen no explanation for her behavior. Her final caprice (as her children saw it) was to arrive home days after she’d been expected, and without having telephoned in the interim.
A year and a day
absent. Just long enough
. Owen was waiting at the foot of the driveway when at last Augusta’s rented car turned into the drive, and he hurried to greet her, kissing her hands, and her face where she allowed him, laughing, breathless, his face dangerously flushed. Augusta blinked away tears, and refused to become emotional. She’d spent a year mourning—what?—