The Republic of Love (40 page)

“I suppose,” his fatherly voice was saying, “that you’ve come to save me from myself.”

Fay considered. Those were not the words she had planned to use. She glanced at the miniature hallway, just big enough to swing a cat – as her mother always described such mean spaces. “Well, yes,” she said finally.

“Then you’ve come in vain, I’m afraid.” He spoke sadly.

“Look can’t we go somewhere and talk?”

He paused for a second. “Why not right here?”

A quaver in his voice, yes, definitely a quaver, and Fay took this as a hopeful sign. “All right,” she said.

He led her into a dimly lit living room.

What made it so dark? She looked around and observed that everything in the room – the chairs, the curtains, the carpets – was some shade of brown. Even the view from the ugly double window was brown, a brown sky, the color of cocoa, midafternoon on a dark November day. She saw a newspaper spread on a beige chair. Her father’s reading glasses were folded on a rather spindly lamp table. Those two artifacts, his glasses, his newspaper, seemed to her to be ringed with dull light.

“Your coat,” he said, remembering himself. “Can I take your coat?”

“I think I’ll leave it on.” She said this primly, surprised at herself.

“Sit down, at least.”

“Just for a minute.”

He lowered himself into a chair. “I suppose you think I’ve taken leave of my senses.”

She settled herself on the edge of an ottoman which was
mouse-colored, rough-textured, not particularly clean. “Yes,” she said at last, repeating his words and even catching his tone. “We think you’ve taken leave of your senses.”

He sighed loudly, so loudly that she suspected him of being deliberately dramatic. “I suppose in a way I have.”

“In a way!” Fay exclaimed, unable to help herself.

“I only wish it were possible to take leave of my senses without causing everyone so much pain. This is terribly awkward for you in particular, Fay, I know that, just before your own marriage, yours and Tom’s. I thought I would be able to hold on a little longer, but – well, I can’t tell you how much I regret causing so much anguish. Especially to your mother.”

She gave a low moan. “Then why are you doing this to her?” A long weak breath rose up from her chest. “And to us?”

“It was something that happened.” He laced his fingers together and leaned forward. “I didn’t will it.”

“When I think how her whole heart’s been devoted to you, everything she cares about. You do know that?”

“Yes, I do know that.”

“You’ve met someone else. You’ve fallen in love with someone else.”

“No.”

“Oh.” For the first time she felt she might cry.

“Your mother must have told you.”

“She’s tried. She’s not at all coherent, as you can imagine. And we didn’t – ”

“Didn’t what?”

“We didn’t believe her.”

“I tried and tried to make her understand. It isn’t easy.”

“You felt smothered. That’s what she said.”

“Yes.”

“What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“Just – smothered. There wasn’t any air.”

“Smothered with what? Love?”

“I couldn’t breathe.”

“And now?” She gestured at the walls, the oppressively ugly ceiling tile, the pair of dreary windows with their stiff synthetic curtains “Now you can breathe?”

“Fay. Look at me. We’ve always been able to talk to each other. When I think of all the things we’ve talked about.”

“It seems as though – ” But the noise of a plane flying overhead drowned her out.

“As though what?”

“As though we never talked about
you.
We only talked about me, about my life, the things I needed.”

“I thought perhaps you might have some inkling of… of how things were. I thought that you, more than anyone else, might understand.”

“Couldn’t you have just – I don’t know – just gone off for a holiday or something. To think things through. This is all so … so – ”

“Drastic. Yes, I know, I know.”

She sat up straight. “I think you should see a doctor.”

“Because you think I’m sick, is that it? In fact, I have seen a doctor. I, too, thought I must be sick.”

“And?”

“It turns out I’m in acceptable health. For my age.”

“I meant a shrink. A psychiatrist.”

“That’s what I meant, too.”

For a minute they sat in silence. Fay could hear the wind gnawing at the window frame and, far below, the murmurous river of traffic. A second plane passed overhead, so noisy she shuddered. These cheap buildings had next to no insulation. She wondered how on earth he’d chosen such a terrible place, and if there’d been a measure of penance involved. “Do you mean to tell me,” she said finally, “that a man of sixty-six who leaves his wife after forty years of marriage is mentally balanced?”

He lifted his hands helplessly, shaping them around a circle of air, and she was struck by the frailty of the gesture.

“Don’t you feel anything for her at all? After all the years you’ve spent together?”

“Of course I do. Your mother is an astonishing woman, a warm, loving woman. I got
lost,
that’s all, in all that warmth and loving. It’s – ”

“What?”

“Complicated. For all concerned.”

“Are you living here” – Fay gestured again at the beige wallpaper – “alone?”

“Yes.” And then he added, “completely alone.”

“I see,” she said. The room was unbearably hot, but she felt, for some reason, determined to keep her coat buttoned up to the chin. The mocking tone of her voice surprised her. “So suddenly, after all these years, you’ve decided you want to live in a little furnished apartment all by yourself.”

He waved his wrists again, making irresolute arcs with his hands, and gazed at the window. A mottled light settled on his face. “It wasn’t really sudden.”

“Not” – she paused – “sudden?”

“No.”

“I see.” But she didn’t see.

“No, not at all sudden. I’ve thought about it for a long time.”

“There must be more to it than that.”

He lifted his hands again, feebly, and shook his head.

They fell then into a short silence, broken only when Fay reached out abruptly and took his hand. “Problems between people,” she began, her voice shaking with what she recognized as self-disgust, “can be resolved, you know that as well as I do. Even problems of long standing. It happens every day. People … people make new kinds of arrangements. They, well, they renegotiate.”

“Oh, yes, I know.”

“But you’re not willing to, is that it?”

“I wish,” he said, “I wish it didn’t have to be like this.” He withdrew his hand. “I want you to understand that I just couldn’t go on any longer.”

“Mother thinks …” The word “mother” caught in her throat and stopped her.

“Your mother thinks what?” he asked quietly.

“She thinks … you’ll be coming back. That this is some crazy phase or something you’re going through. She thinks you’ll change your mind, that whatever it is will blow over and you’ll be coming back to her.”

“Oh, Fay.”

“What?” She was crying openly now, rocking back and forth, holding on to the points of her elbows.

“I won’t be coming back. I can’t go back.”

She leaned toward him, feeling a racketing pity for him, and pity for herself, too. “Why not? Why?”

“Because there’s nothing left.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“Love. There isn’t any love left.”

L
OVE
.

Sometimes, lying in bed, resting her face against the hollow in Tom’s chest, Fay feels trapped in the shallow rhetoric of Hollywood or of pop music. Everything she pronounces or thinks seems to come winking off a set of diluted song lyrics.
I wanna hold you round the clock. Love is a merry-go-round.
She feels the vapor of stale breath on her throat.
I love you. Baby, baby.
A numbing self-consciousness has made her doubt every word that leaps off her tongue. Not to mention every word that enters her ear. Love, love, how can we possibly speak of love in the last decade of the twentieth century, a century that is, in any case, in tatters?

And hearing her father utter the word “love” was something else, something far worse. What he seemed to gesture toward when he said “love” was a metaphysical ruin. Something laughable and shaggy like the American buffalo, something antique and embarrassing and touching upon a kind of huffing greed. A selfish whim. Something he has no right to say. No right to expect at an age when he can make do perfectly well, as others do, with an ordering
of dignity and comfort and the warm bath of memory. Lips, hands, genitals, feet, all fallen. Eyes grown opaque with disenchantment. What does he want, what does anyone want? Love in the wrong place, love at the wrong time. Excess. Wreckage. A black hole. Nothing there.

Save me, she wants to cry out to Tom, save me from all this.

I
T’S
F
RIDAY MORNING, AND HERE SPRAWLS
T
OM AT
F
AY’S KITCHEN
table, shoveling in the Cheerios, honking down the Java. Yup. He’s reading the newspaper and trying to get his heart glad on sports scores. He’s all alone. Being alone is a big pain, that’s what he’s thinking, and inside the big pain crouches another, smaller, crescent-shaped pain. It’s fastened on to him, it’s taken hold. He’s trying to dissolve it with rinse after rinse of hot coffee, but it hangs in there, its little teeth brightened with caffeine, biting down mercilessly.

Tonight was supposed to be the night of Jeff and Jenny Waring’s buffet supper in honor of his and Fay’s forthcoming marriage. Jenny Waring’s been cooking up a storm for days, weeks. She’s made her famous Chicken Marbella. Forty guests or thereabouts have been invited – his friends, Fay’s friends. A coming together. Two rivers meeting, a symbolically charged wha’d’ya-call it? – a confluence. He’d been looking forward to it; it shames him how
much he’d been looking forward to it, and now the whole party’s been scuppered.

It couldn’t be helped, given the situation, but he’s grieving,
grieving.

“Of course I understand,” Jenny had said to him when he’d phoned last Tuesday night. “Really, I mean it. What I mean is, things do come up, things happen. Believe me, I know that. Do I ever! I’ll get busy right away and phone everyone and explain. And, listen, Tom, I’ve got all this Chicken Marbella in the freezer, ditto the chocolate torte, I’ll just keep it socked away and we’ll make it a postwedding bash, okay? Instead of a prewedding thing. When you get back from your honeymoon, you and Fa – ;South Carolina, isn’t it? We can talk about it later. Really, I do understand, honestly. I just hope, well, I just hope it isn’t anything serious, that’s all.”

L
OUISE OF
G
RESHAN’S
T
RAVEL
was nowhere near as understanding as Jenny Waring. “I’m sorry, Mr. Avery, but I did tell you when you first booked that your tickets were final. You remember me saying that, I’m sure you do. Excursion tickets are
final.
I always make that
absolutely
clear to my clients, because we
have
had trouble in the past, people don’t understand what cancellation insurance is
for.
I can understand how you feel. If your fiancée was actually sick, if she had a doctor’s certificate, we might be able to do something for you, but this is different, this is a contingency of a different color, someone who’s used up her vacation time. I hate to say this, Mr. Avery, but she should have checked first. I’m afraid I don’t know what to suggest. You’re absolutely sure she can’t arrange to get more vacation time? I mean, if she explained to her employer? Yes, I remember booking you to San Diego last winter, I’ve got your file right here in front of me, we do try to look after our regulars, but Mr. Avery, we can’t take a loss every time one of our – . Yes, I know this is a honeymoon we’re talking about, you told me that. I understand that. No, of course I wouldn’t want you to go on your honeymoon alone, that is
not
what I was suggesting, that would be perfectly ridiculous. Look, Mr. Avery.
Please, allow me to make my point. I’m
trying
to explain. Well, I’m doing my best. I
did
speak to the manager about this. I’m sorry. There is nothing we can do. That happens to be our policy, that’s all I can say, my hands are tied.”

T
OM’S MOTHER
was on the line, buoyant, breathless. Bright little sparks seemed to fly out of the telephone straight into Tom’s ear: “Tom? How’re you doing? Pretty busy time right now, I bet, you’re right down to the wire practically, just two weeks to go. Whew. The big day. We’ve got the calendar circled in red. Mike’s had the car checked over top to bottom, and guess what? He’s got himself two brand-new snow tires. Say we get a great big storm, and there’s Mike and me stuck on the highway somewhere, just when they start playing ‘Here Comes the Bride’ at the church. Every time I think of Fay all got up in her mother’s bride dress I get sort of, you know, teary-eyed. I guess I’m getting soft in the noggin, it’s my old age or something. Who’d of thunk it!”

T
OM CHERISHES
his connections in radioland, otherwise he would have quit years ago. The spreading circles of listeners out there in the darkness intrude on his most private affections, and he feels especially warm toward those who phone in to the show, plucking out their own hearts and going at them with a wire brush. The faces may be blank and the voices often deceptively stripped of particularity, but he loves their eager innocence and the way in which they overlap in a kind of black festival heat, letting go for a few minutes of the tight knit of their own lives. He loves them all.

But none of this shared radiance consoles the solitary body,
his
body, alone in a bed, alone at a table, alone in the rubbish heap of his unarticulated thoughts.

Fay is half a mile away, in another bed, part of another household, a household ruptured and sorrowing. He is longing for her, day and night. He’s never felt love this close up and he fears its loss. The organs of his body are swollen and dangerous with apprehension, and his throat, too, seems plugged with unspoken
words. You are first in my heart, he wants to tell her, but can’t.