The Lone Pilgrim (15 page)

But after a certain age, no joy is unmitigated. She knew that if she did not succeed in denying her feelings for Dan her happiness in his presence would always mix with sadness. She had never been in love with anyone unavailable, and she had never been unavailable herself.

Her heart, she felt, was not beating properly. She did not think that she would take a normal breath until she heard from Dan. When the telephone rang, she knew it was him.

“May I come and have breakfast with you?” he said. “Or do you think it's all wrong.”

Nellie said: “It's certainly all wrong but come anyway.”

This was their first furtive meeting. Friday was not a school day: they were meeting out of pure volition. If Joseph asked her what she had been up to she could not say casually: “Dan Hamilton stopped by.” It might sound as innocent as milk, but they were no longer innocent.

The sunlight through the kitchen windows suddenly looked threatening. The safe, tidy surfaces suddenly looked precarious and unstable. Her life, the life of a secure and faithful wife, had been done away in an instant, and even if she never saw Dan Hamilton again it was clear that something unalterable had happened to her. She could never again say that she had not been tempted. She felt alone in the middle of the universe, without husband or child, with only herself. Surely at the sight of Dan everything would fall into place and everything would be as it had been a day ago. She would see that Dan was her colleague and her friend, and that a declaration of love would not necessarily have to change everything.

But as soon as she saw him from the window she realized that a declaration does in fact change everything and that Dan was no longer just her colleague and friend. They could not keep out of each other's arms.

“I haven't felt this way since I was a teenager,” said Dan. Nellie didn't say anything. She
had
felt this way since she was a teenager.

“It feels sort of heavenly,” Dan said.

“It will get a little hellish,” Nellie said.

“Really?” said Dan. “It's hard to believe.”

“I've felt this way a couple of times,” said Nellie. “Back in the world of childhood when everyone was single and nothing got in the way of a love affair. You could spend your every minute with the one you loved. You could have the luxury of getting
tired
of the one you loved. You had endless time. This is the grown-up world of the furtive, adulterous love match. No time, no luxury. I've never met anyone on the sly.”

“We don't have to meet on the sly,” said Dan. “We're commuters.”

“I don't think you realize how quickly these things get out of hand,” Nellie said.

“I'd certainly like to find out,” said Dan, smiling. “Can't we just enjoy our feelings for a few minutes before all this furtive misery comes crashing down on us?”

“I give it an hour,” said Nellie.

“Well, all right then. Let's go read the paper. Let's go into the living room and cozy up on the couch like single people. I can't believe you actually went out this morning and got the paper. You must have it delivered.”

“We do,” said Nellie.

“We do, too,” said Dan.

Miranda was due back the next day, and Joseph in the early evening. Dan and Nellie stretched out on the couch in the sunlight and attempted to browse through the paper. Physical nearness caused their hearts to race. Adulterous lovers, without the errands and goals and plans that make marriage so easy, are left horribly to themselves. They have nothing to do but be—poor things.

“Here we are,” said Nellie. “Representatives of two households, both of which get the
Times
delivered, curled up on a couch like a pair of teenagers.”

They did not kiss each other. They did not even hold hands. The couch was big enough for both of them, with a tiny space between. They kept that space between them. Everything seemed very clear and serious. This was their last chance to deny that they were anything more than friends. Two gestures could be made: they would become lovers or they would not. It seemed to Nellie a very grave moment in her life. She was no longer a girl with strong opinions and ideals, but a mortal woman caught in the complexities of life itself. Both Nellie and Dan were silent. Once they were in each other's arms it was all over, they knew, but since falling in love outside of marriage is the ultimate and every other gesture is its shadow, when they could bear it no longer they went upstairs to Nellie's guest room and there became lovers in the real sense of the word.

Of all the terrible things in life, living with a divided heart is the most terrible for an honorable person. There were times when Nellie could scarcely believe that she was the person she knew. Her love for Dan seemed pure to her, but its context certainly did not. There was not one moment when she felt right or justified: she simply had her feelings and she learned that some true feelings make one wretched; that they interfere with life; that they cause great emotional and moral pain; and that there was nothing much she could do about them. Her love for Dan opened the world up in a terrible and serious way and caused her, with perfect and appropriate justification, to question everything: her marriage, her ethics, her sense of the world, herself.

Dan said: “Can't you leave yourself alone for five seconds? Can't you just go with life a little?”

Nellie said: “Don't you want this to have anything to do with your life? Do you think we fell in love for no reason whatsoever? Don't you want to know what this means?”

“I can't think that way about these things,” Dan said. “I want to enjoy them.”

Nellie said: “I have to know everything. I think it's immoral not to.”

That was when Dan had said: “You're very rough on me.”

Any city is full of adulterers. They hide out in corners of restaurants. They know the location of all necessary pay telephones. They go to places their friends never go to. From time to time they become emboldened and are spotted by a sympathetic acquaintance who has troubles of his or her own and never says a word to anyone.

There are plain philanderers, adventurers, and people seeking revenge on a spouse. There are those who have absolutely no idea what they are doing or why, who believe that events have simply carried them away. And there are those to whom love comes, unexpected and not very welcome, a sort of terrible fact of life like fire or flood. Neither Nellie nor Dan had expected to fall in love. They were innocents at it.

There were things they were not prepared for. The first time Nellie called Dan from a pay 'phone made her feel quite awful—Joseph was home with a cold and Nellie wanted to call Dan before he called her. That call made her think of all the second-rate and nasty elements that love outside marriage entails.

The sight of Nellie on the street with Jane upset Dan. He saw them from afar and was glad he was too far off to be seen. That little replica of Nellie stunned him. He realized that he had never seen Jane before: that was how distant he and Nellie were from the true centers of each other's lives. He was jealous of Jane, he realized. Jealous of a small daughter because of such exclusive intimacy.

When Nellie ran into Dan with his middle son Ewan at the liquor store one Saturday afternoon, it had the same effect on her. Both she and Dan were buying wine for dinner parties. Both knew exactly what the other was serving and to whom. This made Nellie think of the thousands of things they did not know and would never know: that family glaze of common references, jokes, events, calamities—that sense of a family being like a kitchen midden: layer upon layer of the things daily life is made of. The edifice that lovers build is by comparison delicate and one-dimensional. The sight of the beloved's child is only a living demonstration that the one you love has a long and complicated history that has nothing to do with you.

They suffered everything. When they were together they suffered from guilt and when apart from longing. The joys that lovers experience are extreme joys, paid for by the sacrifice of everything comfortable. Moments of unfettered happiness are few, and they mostly come when one or the other is too exhausted to think. One morning Nellie fell asleep in the car. She woke up with the weak winter light warming her. For an instant she was simply happy—happy to be herself, to be with Dan, to be alive. It was a very brief moment, pure and sweet as cream. As soon as she woke up it vanished. Nothing was simple at all. Her heart felt heavy as a weight. Nothing was clear or reasonable or unencumbered. There was no straight explanation for anything.

Since I saw remarkably little of Nellie, I suspected something was up with her: she was one of those people who hide out when they are in trouble. I knew that if she needed to talk she would come to see me and eventually she did just that.

It is part of the nature of the secret that it needs to be shared. Without confession it is incomplete. When what she was feeling was too much for her, Nellie chose me as her confidante. I was the logical choice: I was family, I had known Nellie all her life, and I had known Dan for a long time, too.

She appeared early one Friday in the middle of a winter storm. She was expected anyway—she and I were going to pick up Jane later in the afternoon and then my husband and I, Nellie, Joseph, and Jane were going out for dinner.

She came in looking flushed and fine, with diamonds of sleet in her hair. She was wearing a grey skirt, and a sweater which in some lights was lilac and in some the color of a pigeon's wing. She shook out her hair, and when we were finally settled in the living room with our cups of tea I could see that she was very upset.

“You look very stirred up,” I said.

“I am stirred up,” said Nellie. “I need to talk to you.” She stared down into her tea and it was clear that she was composing herself to keep from crying.

Finally she said: “I'm in love with Dan Hamilton.”

I said: “Is he in love with you?”

“Yes,” said Nellie.

I was not surprised at all, and that I was not surprised upset her. She began to cry, which made her look all the more charming. She was one of those lucky people who are not ruined by tears.

“I'm so distressed,” she said. “I almost feel embarrassed to be as upset as I am.”

“You're not exempt from distress,” I said. “You're also not exempt from falling in love.”

“I wanted to be,” she said fiercely. “I thought that if I put my will behind it, if I was straight with myself I wouldn't make these mistakes.”

“Falling in love is not a mistake.”

She then poured forth. There were no accidents, she knew. That she had fallen in love meant something. What did it say about herself and Joseph? All the familiar emotional props of girlhood—will, resolve, a belief in a straight path—were gone from her. She did not see why love had come to her unless she had secretly—a secret from herself, she meant—been looking for it. And on and on. That she was someone who drew love—some people do, and they need not be especially lovable or physically beautiful, as Nellie believed—was not enough of an explanation for her. That something had simply happened was not an idea she could entertain. She did not believe that things simply happened.

She talked until her voice grew strained. She had not spared herself a thing. She said, finally: “I wanted to be like you—steady and faithful. I thought my romantic days were over. I thought I was grown-up. I wanted for me and Joseph to have what you and Edward have—a good and uncomplicated marriage.”

It is never easy to give up the pleasant and flattering image other people have of one's own life. Had Nellie's distress not been so intense, I would not have felt compelled to make a confession of my own. But I felt rather more brave in the face of my fierce cousin: I was glad she was suffering, in fact. I knew she divided the world into the cheerful slobs like me and the emotional moralists like herself. A serious love affair, I thought, might take some of those sharp edges off.

I began by telling her how the rigorousness with which she went after what she called the moral universe did not allow anyone very much latitude, but none the less, I was about to tell her something that might put her suffering into some context.

“I have been in love several times during my marriage,” I said. “And I have had several love affairs.”

The look on her face, I was happy to see, was one of pure relief.

“But I thought you and Edward were so happy,” she said.

“We are,” I said. “But I'm only human and I am not looking for perfection. Romance makes me cheerful. There have been times in my life when I simply needed to be loved by someone else and I was lucky enough to find someone who loved me. And look at me! I'm not beautiful and I'm not so lovable, but I'm interested in love and so it comes to find me. There are times when Edward simply hasn't been there for me—it happens in every marriage. They say that it takes two and sometimes three to make a marriage work and they're right. But this has nothing to do with you because I picked my partners in crime for their discretion and their very clear sense that nothing would get out of hand. I had my bad moments, but nothing ever did get out of hand. I can see that an affair that doesn't threaten your marriage is not your idea of an affair, but there you are.”

This made Nellie silent for a long time. She looked exhausted and tearstained.

“One of the good things about this love affair,” she said, “is that it's shot my high horse right out from under me. It's a real kindness for you to tell me what you've just told me.”

“We're all serious in our own ways,” I said. “Now I think you need a nap. You look absolutely wiped out. I'll go call Eddie and tell him to meet Joseph and then when you wake up we can plot where we're going to take Jane for dinner.”

I gave her two needlepoint pillows for her head, covered her with a quilt, and went to call my husband. When I got back I sat and watched my cousin sleeping. The sleety, yellowish light played over her brow and cheekbones.