Next Life Might Be Kinder (24 page)

“Cynthia, what? It's okay. It's okay. Just say it.”

“Whatever it is you are experiencing here,” she said, our eyes meeting again, “it's . . . enviable in a very profound and human way to us. To love someone so much that you'll do everything in your power to keep her near, no matter what.”

“Elizabeth keeps
herself
near.”

“Okay, so it's reciprocal as you experience it. Look, Sam, I'm not your shrink. Philip's not your shrink. So however it works, we don't care. I'm trying to say that going through this with you, I've realized that sometimes a person gets it right the first time. Philip and I the second time, having each been married once before, I mean. Sometimes with another person you get it right the first time. It then defines who you are, what you're experiencing, and you never hid it from us. It's allowed Philip and me to ask some very basic—basic to us, at least—questions about our own marriage. That must sound like some sort of marriage counselor bullshit. But I don't mean it to. Philip is the love of my life; I'm the love of his life. But we both know, if you are with someone who is not the love of your life, you are always aware of it. Every day, that knowledge is with you. And deep down in your heart you know you've
settled
in some way. Which is just human, to settle. In a marriage, things can just go along, you may even be fucking your brains out all the time, or have ten children together, or have been to hell and back together, and even if it's been wonderful traveling through time together, side by side, you know. Still, there'd be the secret knowledge that you aren't with the love of your life. Maybe that'd be like being a secret sharer with yourself. I don't know. What you're experiencing, Sam, what you find so necessary to experience—no matter what else, in Elizabeth you found the love of your life. And please, for God's sake, my little confession in this café here doesn't warrant another moment's thought. And don't think that I've said all this to try and offset my guilt about investing in the movie—it's just money—because you'd be wrong. Okay, sure, having a famous film actress to dinner. Who would have ever thunk all of this, huh? How things turned out. How things turn out. It's beyond Philip and me. It's really beyond us.”

We walked the beach at Vogler's Cove for half an hour or so. “By now, can you name all the birds we're looking at, Sam?” Cynthia asked. “What with your field guide always with you.”

“The gulls, some of the ducks, a few others,” I said. “Slow learner.”

Then we drove back, radio on, no need to talk.

I
T'S ALL CATCHING
up to me. The night before the day Elizabeth was murdered, we were lying in bed and she told me about her visit with Marghanita Laski. We had made love so intensely, it made us both laugh and cry. (“Sam, do you think just now we were trying to make a baby? I don't know for sure, but that felt more than just husband and wife.”) Lying there, we suddenly had a ravenous thirst, and I got up and brought a pitcher of water to the bed, and we each drank directly from the pitcher. She said, “I'm for some mysterious reason having memories left and right. It's like they've invited themselves in without knocking and got into bed with us.”

“Of what, exactly?”

She drank some more water. “Okay, well, in London. I stayed at an expensive hotel in London one time. Only once in my life, on my own, and it was far too expensive for me. But I was so nervous, I had to have some kind of comfort. I think that was my excuse.”

“Nervous about?” I couldn't imagine what I was about to hear, and in fact didn't hear it for some time, because instead of answering, Elizabeth began to kiss me, deep, probing, urgent kisses, and for me not to respond was impossible. I knew a good thing when I felt it, and with Lizzy I had felt it from the moment we'd first met. Now we were in the throes of passion again, and I didn't try to understand it. Afterward, we slept for a while, then Elizabeth woke me and picked up where she'd left off, telling me about her visit to London.

“I'd written that letter to Marghanita Laski.”

“I remember you told me you'd sent her a letter.”

“And the letter said that I loved
The Victorian Chaise-Longue,
and was writing my dissertation on it, and could I ask her some questions about its composition. That was pretty much it. And she sent me an invitation to come see her. I was so excited. I wrote her right back and suggested some possible dates, and in her next letter she agreed on January—this was the year before you and I met. I've kept her letters, of course. I have them here.” She reached into the drawer of her bedside table and produced a folded letter, and she read from it:

 

London is freezing in January. I won't apologize for that, but will for its being the only plausible time, I'm afraid, for your visit. By the way, you used the word “audience,” that you hoped for an audience with me, but you'll perhaps be disappointed to know that I live a simple, quiet life, out of the literary limelight to be sure. No audience necessary, just let's say tea out at a hotel. And yes, you may ask me anything you want, within bounds, and I'll do my best to answer.

 

Elizabeth put the letter back in the drawer. “I borrowed airfare from Mum and Dad,” she said. “They were very sweet about it. Also, they popped for the too expensive hotel. And they suggested I travel up from London to Wales for a visit. Which I did.

“And guess what? When Marghanita Laski herself came to my hotel for tea that first time—we met four times in four days—she noticed everything. She said, ‘Sorry to put it as such, but there's a discrepancy between how modestly, yet quite tastefully, you're dressed and what I imagine this hotel costs per night. And you're probably staying for several nights.' That was all she said about that, but she had sized it up perfectly. And that's where we met all four times, right there, in a kind of pub just off the lobby of my hotel.

“She was so elegant, so beautiful. Very tired-looking, though. I think she'd been ill recently. She made some reference to that, some hint of it. But the great thing was, she didn't think my questions were stupid. She took each question to heart. At least that's how it felt. She mentioned she was doing some work for the
Oxford English Dictionary.
‘I quite enjoy it,' she said. And this was embarrassing—she picked up on me staring at her at one point. Like I was trying to memorize her appearance or something. And that's when she said, ‘Sizing a new person up in midconversation is an odd business, don't you think? Friends tell me I'm quite obvious about it myself.' I was pretty embarrassed.

“But the thing is, Sam, it changed me. Just the chance to talk in person with her changed me. It made
The Victorian Chaise-Longue
mean even more. She was so forthright. In fact, she told me she'd done very few interviews. ‘Nobody of late is really interested, you see.' I mean, there was Marghanita Laski in the flesh. I flew back to Halifax full to bursting with ideas.”

We talked about her meetings with Marghanita Laski for a long time. We got very little sleep. And because she left the hotel so early in the morning, we didn't even have breakfast together. So Lizzy's visit to London turned out to be the subject of our last conversation together. In the Essex Hotel, that is.

With Dr. Nissensen, July 25, 1973:

 

Late in today's session, I read Dr. Nissensen the list of books that were missing from the Port Medway Library. “A child's reading,” he said. “All the titles connected to Wales. Let me give that some thought.” I told him I'd ordered new copies through John W. Doull Booksellers.

“Why would you feel obligated to replace the books?” He paused. “Good citizenship alone?”

I allowed three or four minutes to pass in silence. “Dr. Nissensen,” I finally said, “I've given it a lot of thought, and I'd like to end our work together. I don't want to drive into the city anymore. I need to be away from Halifax, I'm thinking for at least a year.”

He took some notes, closed the notebook. He removed his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief. “It's called terminating,” he said. “In my parlance.”

“Does that mean stopping?”

“It means you no longer come to my office. However, as to the things we've discussed, I hope they continue to be part of your thinking.”

“Does my
terminating
surprise you?”

“Truthfully, not in the least. You've been drifting off in our sessions. They've lost some focus for you. In a year, God willing, I'll still be here. Should that be of interest to you, Sam.”

Silence.

“Is one of the reasons you want to terminate that you finally feel you will never convince me?”

“I suppose so.”

“In our time together, I've deepened my understanding of the extent to which you are capable of maintaining Elizabeth's presence. Your wife being the organizing principle of your grief-filled imagination. But convince me she's other than that? You are correct—it's unlikely to happen.”

“Elizabeth is my wife. She is the love of my life. She is not an organizing principle of anything.”

There were again a few moments of silence.

“I've come to enjoy the silences between us so much,” I said. “Maybe I'm
terminating
because then I can enjoy them all the time.”

“Lately,” Dr. Nissensen said, “I've been reading Emily Dickinson. She said, ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes.' It may be a statement about grief, about what comes after an important loss. I wonder if by ‘formal feeling' she means a peaceful clarity. Perhaps a clarity that allows peacefulness of heart. Perhaps coming to peace with the realization that mortality cannot always be explained. Perhaps I'm looking for a whole theology encapsulated in just one line of poetry. I don't know.”

Silence for a moment.

I said, “Have I told you that every day I want to strangle Alfonse Padgett all over again?”

“‘All over again'? But you've not killed him a first time, Sam.”

“Wrong. I strangle him every day. I've gotten a lot calmer about a lot of things, some thanks to you, Dr. Nissensen. But in a way, the thought of Alfonse Padgett puts more poison in my veins the more time that passes. That probably doesn't reflect well on me, huh? But most things don't.”

“That's funny. I'll miss your humor. Some of it.”

Silence.

I said, “You live with someone in a marriage and yet so much of what the other does happens out of your immediate experience.”

“Yes, that's just normal.”

“What happened that day to Elizabeth was out of my immediate experience. But I believe that soon she'll tell me about it. I sense it coming. And then I'll know.”

“Well, especially considering this may well be our last conversation, I can only, for the thousandth time, suggest that you are both seeing and not seeing Elizabeth each evening. You are both hearing her and not hearing her. This bifurcated reality is sponsored by your intractable grief. And I'm quite aware you despise my use of such language. Yet I want you to at least know that I cannot subscribe, even after hearing the remarkable specificity, the stenographic detail, of your experiences on the beach at Port Medway, to your seeing Elizabeth there. I simply cannot responsibly suggest anything other than that we continue with our sessions. That we should deepen our work. I will cut my fee in half, if that is a concern. I am not interested in persuading you out of your condition, Sam, and never have been. I am only interested in lessening, to whatever extent possible, your torment. And I feel thus far I've failed to significantly lessen it.”

“Well, the way I see it, it's not you who's failed me, it's
me
who has failed,” I said. “Week after week I fail to get the truth across to you.
I've
failed in that. I can't write, I can't sleep, I can't stand people—well, there's Philip and Cynthia—and I can't get the truth across to you. You once quoted the Russian poet Akhmatova—or did I quote her? ‘Who ever said you were supposed to be happy?' Nobody in their right mind would expect to be. Personally, I never considered happiness a given. Probably never will. But I can say that definitely, definitely I'm happy when I'm with Elizabeth on the beach at night.”

“Elizabeth's presence keeps declaring that she is not coming back,” he said. “Bardo doesn't return people, it eventually allows them a further passage. From my recent reading about it. From my understanding of it.”

“Stalemate all along for months. And now, truce.”

Silence.

“I drowned Peter Istvakson. I thought you should know.”

Dr. Nissensen waited for me to say more. After a minute or so, he said, “If I thought that were true, I'd be obligated to report it to the proper authorities. And while I believe you had violent feelings toward Mr. Istvakson, did you act on them—other than in thought?”

Silence.

“Naturally, you might wish to discuss this. Should I pencil you in?”

I stood up and held out my hand and he shook it. “Thank you, secret sharer,” I said. “For your kindness and intelligence. But no, don't pencil me in.”

Outside on the street, I checked the notebook Dr. Nissensen had given me: my pickup was parked less than a block away. I was home in my cottage by one-thirty in the afternoon.

T
HROUGH ALL OF
everything, Elizabeth had maintained her devotion to the intermediate lindy. She practiced a lot and got me to practice a lot. She even came up with a pun: “When it comes to the lindy, I'm completely unflappable.” Not bad, I thought. Half an hour before the last scheduled lesson, as she was fitting herself into the black dress again, she said, “The advanced lindy lessons start up in just two weeks. We definitely qualify now, Sam. I'm getting the final installment of my stipend, and I'm going to pop for the lessons myself, so, not to worry. What with your bonus for the radio writing, we're in good shape money-wise, sort of. There's one catch, though. I'd like to purchase a new dress for the advanced lessons. That way I'll feel I've, you know, advanced.”