Temptation (42 page)

Until, one Friday, around two months after our last meeting, a small package arrived in the mail. When I opened it, I found a rectangular object, wrapped in gift paper. There was also a letter-sized envelope. I opened it. I read:

Dearest David

Of course I should have answered all your calls, and all your e-mails. But . . . I’m here, in Chicago, with Philip. I’m here with him because, in the first instance, he did as I asked – and, from what I’ve read in the papers, your career seems more than somewhat back together again. And I’m here because, as I think you know, I’m now producing the movie you wrote. But I’m also here because, quite simply, he begged me to stay. I’m certain that sounds absurd: Philip Fleck – Mr $20 Billion – begging anyone for anything. But it’s true. He pleaded with me to give him another chance. He said he couldn’t bear the idea of losing me and his child. And he uttered that time-honored entreaty: ‘I’ll change.’

Why did he do this? I’m not sure. Has he changed? Well, at least we’re talking again and sharing a bed . . . which is an improvement. And he seems reasonably excited about the prospect of fatherhood . . . though the movie is naturally in the forefront of his mind right now. Anyway, for the moment, we’re in a relatively decent place. I can’t predict if this will last or if he’ll revert to his introverted ways, and I’ll finally reach the point of no return.

What I do know is this: you have taken up residence inside my head and won’t go away. Which is wonderful and sad . . . but there you go. Then again, I am a desperate romantic . . . married to a desperate unromantic. But say I had run off with you? A desperate romantic involved with an even more desperate romantic? No way. Especially since desperate romantics always pine for what they don’t have. But once they have it . . . ?

And maybe that’s why I couldn’t call you back, couldn’t answer your letters. Because it would have been such high drama. But when the high drama ended . . . then what? Would we have stared at each other (as you said you sometimes stared at Sally) and wondered: what was the point? Or, perhaps, we would have lived happily ever after. That’s the gamble – and we’re always itching to take it . . . because we need the crisis, the drama, the sense of danger. Just as we always fear the crisis, the drama, the sense of danger. I think it’s called: never knowing what we want.

So there’s a part of me that wants you. Just as there’s a part of me that fears you. And meanwhile, I’ve made my decision: I’m staying put with Mr Fleck, and hoping for the best. Because the bump in my belly is now quite a significant one, and I don’t want to be on my own in the world when he-or-she arrives, and because I did/maybe still do love his-or-her very strange father, and I wish this was your child, but it isn’t, and life is all about timing, and ours didn’t work out, and . . .

Well, you get my rambling point.

Here’s a little ditty by our favorite poet, on the same topic (only in a far more succinct style than yours truly):

I hope you’re letting go, David.

And as soon as you’ve finished reading this letter, do me a favor. Don’t brood about it. Don’t imagine what could have been. Just go back to work.

With love

Martha

I didn’t immediately follow her last directive. Because first I opened the wrapped present – and found myself staring down at an 1891 First Edition of
Poems of Emily Dickinson
, published by the Robert Brothers of Boston. I held the book in my hands, marvelling at its compact elegance, its venerable heft, its aura of permanence – even though, like everything, it too would eventually crumble. Then I glanced upwards and caught sight of myself in the flat black screen of my laptop: a middle aged man who, unlike the book he was now holding, would definitely not be here in one hundred and eleven years’ time.

And then something else crossed my mind – a request made to me by Caitlin when I was visiting her last week. As I tucked her into bed in our hotel room, she asked me
for a bedtime story. Specifically, The Three Little Pigs. But with a proviso:

‘Daddy,’ she asked, ‘can you tell the story without the Big Bad Wolf?’

I considered this for a moment, wondering how I could make it work:

‘Let’s see now . . . there’s a house made of straw. There’s a house made of sticks. There’s a house made of bricks. What happens next? Do they form a residents’ association? Sorry, sweetheart, the story doesn’t really work without the Big Bad Wolf.’

Why doesn’t it work? Because all stories are about crisis. Yours. Mine. The guy sitting opposite you on the train as you read this. Everything’s narrative, after all. And all narrative – all storytelling – confronts a basic truth. We need crisis: the anguish, the longing, the sense of possibility, the fear of failure, the pining for the life we imagine ourselves wanting, the despair for the life we have. Crisis somehow lets us believe that we are important; that everything isn’t just of the moment; that, somehow, we can transcend insignificance. More than that, crisis makes us realize that, like it or not, we are always shadowed by the Big Bad Wolf. The danger that lurks behind everything. The danger we do to ourselves.

But who, ultimately, is the mastermind of our crisis? Who is the controlling hand? To some, it’s God. To others, the state. Then again, it might be the person you want to blame for all your griefs: your husband, your mother, your boss. Or maybe – just maybe – it’s yourself.

That’s what I still couldn’t figure out about everything that had recently happened to me. Yes, there was a bad guy
in the story – someone who set me up, smashed me down, and then put me all back together again. And yes, I knew the name of this man. But . . . and it’s a big
but
 . . . might he have been me?

I glanced again at the blackened screen. Within it, the outline of my face was framed against the inky darkness. What a phantom-like silhouette. What a spectral portrait. And it struck me that, from the moment man could see his own reflected image, he was wracked with all the usual cavernous ruminations that creep up on us daily:
who am I in all this . . . and does it even matter
?

And then, as now, he could find no answers. Except perhaps, the one I was currently telling myself:

Forget about pondering all such impossible questions. Forget about the futility of everything. And don’t imagine what might have been. Just get on with it. Because what else can you do? There is only one remedy. Go back to work.

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Epub ISBN: 9781407009575

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Reissued by Arrow Books 2010

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Copyright © Douglas Kennedy 2006

Douglas Kennedy has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Hutchinson

First published in paperback in 2007 by Arrow Books

This edition published in 2010 by

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ISBN 9780099469261