Next Life Might Be Kinder (25 page)

“I understand completely,” I said.

“Of course you do. And, I already bought the dress.”

Before the lesson began, Arnie Moran stood on the bandstand and announced the dates for the advanced lindy lessons. Then, in singsong, “Tell your friends, tell your cat and dog, tell the birds in the trees, it'll be a big time! Yowza! Yowza! Yowza!”

Predictable in his routine, he punched up the Boswell Sisters on the jukebox. The lesson went well. Elizabeth was especially pleased. She said, “Sam, you've really caught on.” From Lizzy, a direct and simple compliment was all I needed, and not even all that often.

Most of the couples went home right after, but Elizabeth and I stayed to drink the spiked punch that Arnie Moran had provided to celebrate the end of the lessons. Moran walked over and said, “Rocky start, what with Mr. Padgett and all, but we managed, didn't we?”

“Yes, we did,” Elizabeth said. “I'm signing us up for the advanced class.”

“I wear a different suit for those,” Moran said, and Elizabeth and I fell apart laughing. “Glad I'm so entertaining.”

“No, no, you're a sharp dresser, Arnie Moran,” Elizabeth said.

He bowed decorously, then left to talk to the other remaining students.

“Let's go upstairs, Sam. I had a nice time tonight.”

“You're the best lindy dancer in the history of lindy dancers.”

“You came to this determination how?”

“By believing it,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. “You're, I'd estimate, the ninety-four-thousand-two-hundred-and-sixth-best lindy dancer in the history of lindy dancers.”

“I am just
so
flattered by that. I don't know what to say.”

When we got to the apartment, Elizabeth, in the kitchen, unzipped her dress and let it fall to the floor. “It might be a scam, the advanced lessons,” she said. “I mean, where's there to advance to once you have the basic steps down? Maybe we shouldn't put out money for it.”

“It's a night on the town, Lizzy. Even if we don't leave the hotel, a night on the town. And you have such a great time. That's really nice to see. You're at your desk all day.”

“Come to bed.”

“What do you think comes after advanced?” I asked.

“Advanced
advanced,
I think. Maybe Arnie Moran's lessons will go on longer than the dance craze itself lasted. After all, it's his moonlighting, right?”

“I wonder if he's got a day job.”

“Oh, I already found that out. I asked Derek Budnick, and Derek told me Arnie Moran works at the post office. He sorts letters. By the way, I'm in bed, darling.”

“I'm just getting a drink of water.”

“Know what? I watched an old movie the other night after you fell asleep. I couldn't sleep. Usually with us it's vice versa. I forgot the title. It starred Myrna Loy. You know she's my favorite. Anyway, Myrna got all hot and heavy with somebody—they didn't actually show anything in those old movies, except maybe the bedroom door closing, then the bedroom door opening first thing in the morning. Still, I could tell Myrna's temperature had gone up. And the next day, when her best girlfriend asked her how the evening with Mr. Right had gone, Myrna said, ‘Oh, we went from 33⅓ up to 78, then back to 33⅓ for a long, long time.' And the girlfriend says, ‘What about 45?' And Myrna got that smile and said, ‘Oh, too, too in between.'”

“There's no movie writing like that anymore,” I said. I sat on the end of the bed. “Do you wish you had a girlfriend like Myrna Loy to talk things over with?”

“Are you worried about me, Sam?”

“No, of course I'm not worried about you, Lizzy.”

“Do you think I need a best girlfriend? Are you worried I'm lonely for friends or something?”

“Not at all.”

“Probably you are, which is sweet. I've got Marie Ligget. But if I can't have Myrna Loy, I'll go it mainly alone.”

F
OR SOME REASON
, this morning I woke thinking about what a serious scholar Elizabeth had become. Introspective, funny and teasing, and naturally elegant, my wife. She could not always say why
The Victorian Chaise-Longue
struck such deep chords, and kept striking them with every new reading. She knew the book wasn't great literature (“Marghanita's no George Eliot, I know that”), but it filled her imagination like great literature, and that was enough. And Elizabeth didn't suffer any illusions. “In some ways, writing a dissertation is like making a point that doesn't really have to be made,” she said. “But it's required just to move on in the academic world I'm wanting to be part of. It's pretty straightforward. In this thing I'm writing, I guess I'm trying to say something about the provocative nature of certain so-called minor writers, Marghanita Laski in particular. I'm really into literary obsession. So this dissertation, it's trying to include stuff about what it's like to read a single book over and over and over again. Like the zillion times I've read
The Victorian Chaise-Longue.
And in the end I have no idea if my professors are going to accept it. Yesterday I had a kind of panic attack about this. Today it's better. Seesaw. Seesaw. Seesaw. And I guess there's nothing to be done about it except finish the goddamn thing and see what happens.”

“What might most please Marghanita Laski? You said you keep asking yourself that.”

“But my point is, I can't expect special dispensation just because I have this personal way of writing. Just because I'm demonstrating my passion for
The Victorian Chaise-Longue.
I've pretty much lied to my professors—”

“Come on, not really.”

“Yes, Samuel, I've pretty much lied to them. My proposal implies I'm writing about Marghanita Laski in a way that people write a traditional dissertation, but I'm really not. On top of that, I used some of my stipend for intermediate lindy lessons, for goodness sake!”

“Don't forget crème brûlée two times last week for dessert in restaurants.”

“I don't keep a secret crème brûlée bank account at the ready. Dessert comes out of petty cash, eh?”

So there were pressures. Elizabeth often felt, as she said, “put under the gun” (unfortunate phrase, painful to write). Every doctoral candidate in her program was required to do a fifteen-minute presentation, designed to be a kind of in-progress report, and to some extent was supposed to demonstrate a sense of discovery, as if to prove that scholarship was by definition full of surprises. There again, when Elizabeth's turn came around, she felt she had to fake it somewhat, because the surprises she experienced in writing about Marghanita Laski and
The Victorian Chaise-Longue
were more of a personal rather than an academic nature: how, through the writing, she was coming to a knowledge of herself, just as someone living a life. “But you know what?” she said. “Here's the reward I'm giving myself when this is over and done with. We're going to Hay-on-Wye and let my mum feed us for a week. We can walk to all the castle ruins in the area, just like tourists. I can show you my favorite makeout spots. I had potential makeout spots all mapped out at age fourteen. Some of them were quite near castles. It was more dramatic that way. I wanted my makeout sessions to be historical. Too bad I never got to use my map. Oh, except that one time.”

Two or three days ago, as I neared completion in the organizing of her papers, I discovered Elizabeth's presentation. It was titled “Marghanita Laski as a Third Person in My House,” and I read it straight through. I remember she had asked me to sit in the back row of the lecture hall. She started off with great confidence. After a two-paragraph summary of the plot of
The Victorian Chaise-Longue,
Elizabeth did a close reading of three passages. Then, after glancing nervously at Professor Auchard, and losing her place in her neatly typed pages, but quickly gaining it back, she delved into the more subjective (her word) aspects of working on her dissertation. At one point she provided an anecdote that illustrated what it was like to live in a small apartment with a husband and an outsize cat. Elizabeth said our cat was plump,
that Maximus Minimum “practiced accusatory stares.” She went on to say, “For months and months I've been in this intellectual but also erotic conversation among three women. Me, Marghanita, and the fictional character Melanie.” When she uttered the word “erotic,” laughter could be heard here and there in the audience. Marie Ligget, who sat at the end of the front row, turned and looked back at me, smiling a tight, knowing smile and nodding her head in an exaggerated fashion. When Elizabeth's presentation had ended, Marie, on her way out of the lecture hall, stopped, leaned down, and whispered, “No wonder Lizzy reads that book all the time.”

It was dark out when Elizabeth and I left the hall. On the street, she said, “That went pretty well, I think. But I definitely noticed a puzzled look on Professor Auchard's face. Except that's his natural look all the time, so it's probably okay. Maybe.” Pub-hopping, we both got very drunk that night and ended up at Cyrano's. Marie Ligget was working the late shift, and, as there were few other customers, she sat with us for a while. “So, Lizzy,” Marie said, “if I buy a copy of your favorite novel, will you underline the parts that work best for you? You know,
work best.
” She made an obscene gesture, then got all serious and said, “You were great. You're so smart, Lizzy. I was really impressed.”

“It meant a lot to me that you were there, Marie.”

“So, want to hear my grievances or what?” Marie said.

“Yes, we do!” Elizabeth said. Marie, with great flair and with no holds barred, proceeded to work her way through (1) her “stupid” boyfriend; (2) her stupid boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, whom she suspected might not be ex; (3) her boss, whom she called a “complete dunderhead.” And then she hypothesized that the reason she was so upset at her boyfriend was not because she was convinced he was still sleeping with his ex, but because the ex, according to Marie's boyfriend, had taught him so much about sex, so that deep down Marie was grateful to her. “See what I mean when I say it's complicated?” Marie asked. “Like, for instance, the other night—”

“Don't get too graphic on us, Marie, please,” Elizabeth said.

“Oh, get off it, Lizzy. You don't keep secrets from me. You told me that Victorian chaise longue is the place you love most to fuck your husband—that means you, Sam. Even more than the bed. Remember telling me that?”

“You never told
me
that, Elizabeth,” I said, laughing. “Maybe we should move the chaise longue into the bedroom and put the bed—”

“No, Sam, you idiot,” Marie said. “The whole good idea is that it
isn't
in the bedroom. The bedroom is where fucking is supposed to happen. Whereas fucking on the chaise longue in the living room has nothing to do with ‘supposed to.' Think about it.”

“Marie!” Elizabeth said, taking such pleasure in her friend but acting all huffy.

“Am I in the way here?” I said. “There's a lot of empty tables.”

We had the best time that night. I'll never forget it. We sat there until well after closing time. Marie brought out a nice bottle of wine. At about three-thirty
A.M.
she made us each an espresso. I knew we'd pay for it all in the morning, but who cared? It must have been about five
A.M.
when Marie finally locked up. To my great surprise, she came back to the hotel with us. “When you were in the men's room,” Elizabeth said, once we had taken aspirins, gotten into bed together, and turned out the two bedside lamps, “Marie asked if she could sleep on the chaise longue, just this once, and I said sure, why not?” In the morning I made omelets and coffee. Marie announced that she had to open Cyrano's at ten
A.M.
and would sleepwalk through her shift. Sitting in the kitchen the rest of the morning, talking with Elizabeth about nothing in particular, I don't think I was ever happier. It all felt like just regular life.

S
O, WHAT DID
Elizabeth finally tell me?

That night at about nine o'clock, she lined up her books. Then she looked at me. “You've asked me in so many ways to tell you what happened that day, Sam,” she said. “I've come to believe it's wrong for me
not
to tell you. But it's the last thing in the world I want to tell you. The thing itself—being shot and the physical pain of it—was over quite quickly. Maybe that'll put your mind at ease a little. I hope so.

“What feels so good, darling, is when you come up behind me, say when I'm sitting on the chaise longue reading, or half asleep. And you unbutton my blouse, say the tangerine-colored blouse with the light scalloped pattern. The pattern you can hardly see at first but if you look closely, you can. I've stood up now, next to you. But facing away. Then you lean back, just so I lean back too, and you touch my nipples. That feels so nice, Sam. I reach down. And I can already feel—I don't mean imagine, either. I can already feel you inside me, even though we still have all of our clothes on. Know what else?”

She stared out over the cove; I thought she might leave. But she said, “The day it happened. That morning—let me start there. I'd left our apartment before you'd woken up. I went to the library. Later, I went and got a coffee at Cyrano's. Marie wasn't working. I thought I might run into you there. I was hoping to. And then, when I got back home, you were already out. Off to the CBC, I think. I spent the rest of the morning at my typewriter, straight through to lunch. Getting at that paragraph. Getting at that one paragraph in
The Victorian Chaise-Longue:
‘It is the ecstasy that is to be feared, she said with shuddering assurance, it is a separation and a severance from reality and time, and it is not safe. The only thing that is safe is to feel only a little, hold tight to time, and never let anything sweep you away as I have been swept—and perhaps that is how, only how I can be swept back.'