The Easy Way Out (9 page)

“You're forgetting,” I said, “that Arthur and I have been so happy together lately, we're about to buy a house. So let's not get on that topic.”

“Fine with me. By the way, are you still sleeping on the floor?”

I nodded, and she raised her eyebrows and took a huge bite of her sandwich. She gave a thumbs-up to the handsome brother and returned to her lunch, ignoring me.

“It's my back,” I said. “Conventional mattresses give me backaches, so I sleep on the floor.” When Arthur and I first lived together, we shared a double bed. Arthur liked to wind his big body around mine, and I always felt protected and warmed by him. Then, after a couple of years, warm turned to hot, and we got a bigger mattress. Then I developed an allergic reaction to our sheets and started sleeping in a mummy-style sleeping bag. Unfortunately, I was always rolling off the far side of the bed. Then my back problems began, and now I was on the floor. “It's actually a very common problem.”

“Absolutely. I know lots of people who live with someone who sleeps on the floor beside their bed. In most cases, though, the someone is named Fido. By the way, still having trouble with insomnia?”

I wrapped up the uneaten portion of my sandwich and tossed it
into the dented metal trash can by the door. It landed with a thud that sounded as if a piece of the ceiling had fallen in. The conversation was not going the way I'd hoped. For once, I'd wanted to talk with Sharon about a troubled relationship other than my own. I felt cheated, foolish, and disloyal. I had a sudden urge to call Arthur and try to make plans to go to a movie with him. There was no way to win with Arthur. Every time someone told me how wonderful he was, I felt compelled to point out his many faults, and every time Sharon ventured to say a word against him, I wanted to cradle him in my arms. I was angry that she had the effrontery to insult Arthur and question the sense of our buying a house together; only I was allowed to do that.

I snapped open a can of diet soda. “I happen to have a lot on my mind,” I said. “That's why I have trouble sleeping. I'm in way over my head at work, for example.”

She mopped at her mouth with a wad of napkins and then started to scrub at the grease on her hands. “And you think I'm not? I've got a lot on my mind, but that doesn't mean I don't sleep. Actually, I had trouble dragging my body out of bed on Sunday. I didn't get up until four in the afternoon. I suppose I needed the rest.”

Behind the counter, a small yellow plastic radio sat on a shelf against the wall. The handsome brother was standing on a chair and spinning the dial from one crackling station to the next. He finally settled on a Muzak station playing an upbeat version of “The Shadow of Your Smile.” I looked over at Sharon, swamped with regret. We hadn't spent any time together in over two weeks, and I hadn't bothered to ask her a single question about herself. Even in my most self-absorbed moments, I try to take a genuine interest in my friends; but with Sharon, one of my best friends, I often lapsed. It's easy to ignore a person's frailties when they're manifested only in her ankles. Besides, there was a part of me that was frightened by the thought of being around when the fortress of Sharon's defenses came crashing down.

She tossed her napkin on top of the uneaten portion of her sandwich.

“It wasn't so delicious after all?” I asked.

“After the fourth bite, it was all downhill. The fifth bite is the real test of food. Remember that. The fifth bite, the third date, the fourth fuck, and the sixth year of marriage. Everything else is inconsequential.” She gathered her hair together and hooked it behind her ears with her fingers, a gesture that reminded me of a girl who'd sat in
front of me in third grade. Sharon was thirty-seven, but in certain of her facial expressions, and in much of her loud bravado, the ten-year-old in her was very close to the surface. I asked her how things were going with her new housemate, and she shrugged.

“Roberta? She's driving me insane. I don't know why I let her move in.”

“Well, why did you?”

“I felt bad for her. She's a friend of some friend's husband's friend, and she was desperate.

“Divorced?”

“Separated. She'll never get divorced. All she talks about is how much she hates her husband, a sure sign she'll be with him for life. She keeps telling me how lucky I am to be alone, and how I obviously did the right thing in deciding to never get married, as if I spent the past ten years turning down proposals. You should meet her. It's an exquisite experience.”

In the eight years I'd known Sharon, she hadn't been involved in a single romantic relationship that had lasted more than two months. There were an ample number of men who expressed an interest, and an equal number who became obsessed with her and ended up calling the house at three in the morning or sitting out in front of her house in their cars. She always tossed them off (after the third date or fourth fuck, I suppose) with a ludicrous objection: “He uses deodorant.” “He wears earmuffs.” “He's used the word ‘lifestyle' four times since we met.” “He said I have nice feet.” She had passionate love affairs on her travels, but those lasted only for the duration of the trips. Her severe single status had been a social liability for most of her late twenties and early thirties; she was always attending weddings and baby showers, anniversary parties and housewarmings, for a whole cast of close friends who liked to assure her that she was “next.” Now, however, everyone she knew was breaking off a relationship, settling a divorce, haggling over custody of a child, a house, or a dog. Her bachelorhood, once a slight embarrassment to her friends, had become, in their eyes, a sign of emotional stability and strength of character. The fact that it might also be lonely was usually skipped over.

Sharon owned a Victorian house in Cambridge, an enormous wreck of a place she'd bought before the real estate boom, with money she claimed to have won playing poker. She was always hosting one or two relationship runaways in her extra bedrooms. She was the Jane Addams of the Cambridge divorce court crowd.

“What happened to the salesman?” I asked. The month before, the owner of a furniture showroom in Newton had been in hot pursuit.

“Boring,” she said, and tossed him off with a flick of her hand. “You meet a man who's past a certain age, and all he wants to talk about is his bitch ex-wife and his needy widowed mother. I spent an entire evening with him a couple weeks ago, and he didn't ask a single question about me. Not one. Just an endless gush about himself. And his ‘needs.' I managed to get a scrap of information about my life into the conversation, but I practically had to use dynamite. Finally, I just held up my hands and said, ‘This has been one of the most boring nights of my life.' ”

“You did?”

“Of course I did. You think I was afraid of hurting his feelings? He wouldn't have noticed if I'd dropped dead over dinner. I was so crazy from listening to him, I swear if I'd had a gun I would have opened fire in the restaurant. The only thing he said about me was that I had nice eyes.”

Sharon's eyes were an astonishing shade of green, almost the color of the flesh of a kiwi fruit. She usually deflected compliments about them by saying they were given to her to draw attention away from her large nose.

“Maybe you should set him up with Roberta.”

She frowned and rummaged through her huge straw bag. A deck of cards fell onto the table. “They'd last two minutes with each other. No one to listen. And if I forgot my cigarettes, I'll collapse. Did you notice if I put them in here back at the office?” She took out several more decks of cards, a paperback book on how to manage time, three tubes of lipstick (even though, to my knowledge, she never wore any), a damp bathing suit, and a bottle of sunscreen. Sharon had a pale, flawless complexion that was highly susceptible to sunburn. She once explained to me that she couldn't stand having a burn because it made her look too vulnerable. At last she came to the Luckies and sighed gratefully. She lit up and inhaled with such voracious relief, my mouth watered.

“Have you ever thought of switching brands?” I asked tentatively. “In the scheme of things, unfiltered Luckies are pretty high up there in the danger zone.”

She daintily peeled a flake of tobacco off the tip of her tongue. “Please, Patrick. Next you'll suggest imitation mayonnaise. I'm not about to waste the good time of my life denying myself pleasure in
hopes that I can add on a few years at the end when I'm old, poor, and bedridden. Some things are worth dying for.”

“The brother who's so crazy for you, for example.” He was standing on the chair adjusting the radio again, a stained white apron around his waist. His hips looked wonderfully narrow. “He has a nice behind,” I said.

She sighed longingly. “I suppose he does. But he can keep it. Anyway, I have to get back to the office and make another few dozen people happy. We should get going.” She dropped her cigarette into my soda can and swirled the dregs around until the sizzling stopped. Then she stood up and slipped on her poncho, making a great show of adjusting her hair. “Since you paid for my lunch, Patrick, I'll give you a piece of advice on your brother's wedding; try to stall the shower. Once they have the shower, he has to go through with it. But I still think you should keep out of it. If you'd leave Arthur and move in with me, I wouldn't have to put up with jerks like Roberta, and you could have your own life and wouldn't have to fly to New York for sex. But that's just my opinion.”

As we were leaving, the handsome brother asked how everything was.

“Heavy on the grease,” Sharon said. “Too much cheese, too many hot peppers, and the bread wasn't fresh. You guys are never going to make a go unless you serve fresh bread. And wash the windows every once in a while. It might help if people could see into the place. Well, then again, maybe not. Maybe better if they don't see it.”

The brother beamed, as if she'd made some outrageously flirtatious comment.

Seven

A
rthur and I had a Sunday-morning routine that varied little from week to week. No matter what the season, Arthur prepared an elaborate cholesterol-and-calorie-busting breakfast of pan-fried potatoes, a meat carefully chosen for its high fat content, fruit, and pancakes or waffles. In Arthur's book, it didn't count as an indulgent meal, because it was figured into his weekly food plan. Bloated from the binge, we'd crawl into the living room and read the Sunday papers as a team. Arthur summarized all the local and international political news, economic indicators, and op-ed pieces. I kept us both up-to-date on environmental disasters, plane crashes, train wrecks, earthquakes, and the latest murders. When we were finished with the papers, Arthur put on a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, and we listened to it straight through, usually following the libretto.

Initially, I'd recoiled from the ritual, finding it too depressingly predictable. But Arthur had convinced me to keep at it, and now I had to admit it I took a certain degree of comfort from the boredom of the routine. Going along with this one weekly event assuaged a tremendous amount of anxiety I had about minor indiscretions like discussing my home life with Sharon and fooling around with Jeffrey.

The Sunday after my lunch with Sharon, Arthur and I were in the middle of listening to
Ruddigore
when Tony called. He called almost
daily now, and although I'd tried to take Sharon's and Arthur's advice to stay uninvolved, I wasn't finding it easy. I think there was something in going against their advice that made me feel especially close to my brother, as if he and I were involved in secret negotiations. It reminded me of the time Tony, at age twelve, had a particularly fierce fight with my father and decided to run away from home. He and I stayed up late every night for a week, planning his escape, stockpiling supplies, stealing money from Ryan's bureau drawers. Tony left one day at noon and returned in time for dinner, explaining to me that he didn't want to hurt my mother's feelings by missing the meal.

“What do you think, Patrick?” he asked that Sunday morning. “Do you think that your parents suspect I might be seeing someone else?”

“I doubt it,” I told him. “I'm sure your father imagines you spend every free minute in bed with a woman you picked up at the grocery store, but as for a real person, with a name and a face, I doubt either of them suspects a thing.” My father had been obsessed with Tony's sex life ever since my younger brother reached puberty. The problem, as far as I could tell, was jealousy. “I'm sure you'd know it if they did.”

“You're probably right. Want to hear something pathetic?”

“Absolutely.”

“I actually feel bad for those two.”

I asked him what he meant, although I understood perfectly. The only person I knew who was more unhappy than my parents was me when I thought about how unhappy my parents were.