The Year of Pleasures (15 page)

The result of the interview was that we all came to know one another in a truly legitimate and enjoyable way. At one point, Lorraine suggested we call and put Lydia Samuels on the air, and Ed had seriously considered the notion until he realized we were out of time.

“So, are you really serious about the store?” Lorraine asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I keep fantasizing about it. But what would I do with that apartment upstairs? I thought about using it as an office and for storage, but it’s really too much space for that. I don’t want to pay for something I’d never use.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Lorraine said. “Why don’t you make a women’s getaway? Decorate it wonderfully—excessively, you know? Make it a place where women friends could come together and not be in a hotel. In an apartment, they could cook together if they wanted to. They’d be more comfortable than in a hotel. You could put in movies and books that appeal to women.”

“There’s not much to do here, though.”

She looked at me. “Except for dinner, did we even leave the house yesterday?”

“Okay, you’re right. It’s a thought.”

Lorraine sat silent for a moment, then said, “A whole wall rack full of hair products in the bathrooms. Full-sized bottles.”

“Good cheese, good wine, good bread in the kitchen to welcome them. Beautiful dishes.”

“Costumes,” Lorraine said.

I laughed. “What for?”

“Fun,” she said.

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “I really will.”

“There! There!
There!
” Lorraine sat up straight and pointed to the exit I needed to take. Lorraine and I both had well-deserved reputations for being terrible at directions. Once, when we’d taken a trip out of town, I’d said, “So we’re supposed to exit at Green Street. It’s coming up in about a mile. We take a left.”

“Okay,” Lorraine said, signaling for the right lane.

“Lorraine!” I said.
“Left!”
She gave me a look.
“What?”
I said, and waved the directions at her. “It says you take a left at Green Street!”

“You don’t take a left from the
high
way,” Lorraine said. “Jesus. You’re worse than I am.”

John used to say, when we were lost, “Which way do you think we should go?” And then, after I’d told him, he’d confidently proceed in the opposite direction.

Now I pulled off the freeway onto Michigan Avenue and drove as slowly as I could. “Look at this! I didn’t know Chicago was so beautiful. Did you?”

She took off her sunglasses and leaned forward to see better. And then we were both quiet, admiring the breathtaking expanse of the lake and the stunning architecture across from it—building after building after building. “The University of Chicago’s here,” Lorraine said.

“Where?”

“Well, not
here,
here. It’s in Hyde Park. I think that’s south of here.” She knew more about the city than I, yet I felt like a child the day after Christmas, sitting knee to knee with my best friend and opening the lid of a box to show her what
I
got. “The streets are so clean!” Lorraine said.

“I know,” I answered, as though I were vaguely responsible.

We went up Michigan Avenue, then north on Lake Shore Drive, then came back south and wove in and out of the downtown streets. Back again on Michigan, Lorraine yelled, “The Art Institute!” and I veered toward a nearby parking garage even before she said, “Let’s go!” The statues of lions on either side of the entrance wore gigantic wreaths around their necks; the people going into the museum looked open and friendly, more relaxed about the shoulders than the East Coast people I was used to. A little over forty miles away, the sunlight poured through the windows of my beautiful house. It waited for me, its art glass and wooden floors, its wide windowsills and its porches, its winter garden, bare but for the suggestion of all to come. I wondered about the house’s well-being in my absence as a parent might wonder about her child’s.

Lorraine and I agreed to split up, and I wandered around for a long time, paying less attention to things in the museum than to the fact of it. Some mornings when I read the newspaper, I wanted to weep or pound my fists on the table in frustration. Some mornings I actually did one or the other. But museums offered up the other side of humanity: the glory and the grace.

Before the Chagall windows, I sat down on one of the long benches and stared, then remembered that
Chagall windows
had been on one of the slips of paper in the Chinese chest. John and I must have seen something about them once, and on that small piece of paper he’d been urging me to do precisely this: sit before these tall blue panes. The air around me was cool and quiet and to my mind fragrant—a mix of stone and paper and something not quite incense but close to it. I felt as though I were in a spontaneously created church, truer for its being nondenominational.

After a long while, I looked at my watch. Five more minutes until I had to meet Lorraine at the entrance to the gift shop. I rose with regret, then remembered: I could easily come back here. I wouldn’t even have to drive. It seemed so odd to me. It reminded me that I had not yet fully stepped into my life here—part of me still lingered at John’s side, staring both at him and at the future without him, waiting to see if he were going to change his mind and come with me after all.

When we walked down the museum steps and out toward Michigan Avenue, the sun was starting to set and everything was colored rosy gold. Lorraine looked around and sighed happily. “I’m not sure how to say this,” she said. “But did you ever notice how after you look at art for a long time you come out onto the street and see only art?”

“Yes,” I said. “I know exactly what you mean.”

We were mostly quiet on the way to the airport—talked out, I imagined, which we certainly deserved to be. But just before Lorraine got out of the car, she said, “Remember
Night of the Iguana
?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what we did, so long ago. That’s why this was so easy. Okay. I hate goodbyes, and I’m not going to say it. Call me.” She climbed out of the car. Before she slammed the door, she turned to shout, “Soon!”

I drove away, my hands light on the wheel. What Lorraine had referred to was a line in the movie that we had always loved, about people building nests in one another’s hearts.

The telephone light was flashing when I got home. Two messages. The first was a man, clearing his throat and then saying, “Yes. My name is Tom Bartlett. This isn’t a sales call. You don’t know me, but I heard you on the radio this morning and uh . . . well, you said you wrote children’s books and I wondered if you, you know, ever taught or anything like that or if you . . .” He laughed. “Guess I’m going on here. A bit. You know what? If you wouldn’t mind calling me, I’m at 555-7501. I hope you don’t mind my having called you—Ed Selwin gave me the number. Thank you.”

I replayed the message and wrote down his number. Nice voice, low and easy. The second message was from Susanna. “Oh, my
GOD!
” she began, and I pulled up a chair to listen to the rest. Lorraine had just called her from the airport, Susanna couldn’t believe this, she couldn’t
believe
this, she would be home tonight, all night, call her, call anytime even if it was in the middle of the night, in fact she liked to be called in the middle of the night. I dialed the number.

“Susanna?”

“Yes!”

I smiled. “How are you?”

“More like, how are
you
? Oh, sweetie, I’m so, so sorry. About your husband. He died.”

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you. So you spoke with Lorraine.”

“Yes, and I am so glad we
found
you! We’ve looked for you, you know, every now and then. We all went to Barcelona, years ago, and we tried to find you to come with us then. That was when we were in our thirties, infants. My
God,
it was over twenty
years
ago! When can we get together?”

“Um . . .” I wasn’t sure, suddenly. I needed a breath, a respectful visitation to a place I’d been ignoring. It had been good—it had been a relief—to be so purposefully away from the reality of what had brought me here. But in an odd way, I missed my sorrow.

But then Susanna said, “No rush. We’ll wait. But when you’re ready, we’ll all come there together. Oh, sweetheart, we’ll have such a good time. Maybe it’s a function of age, maybe it’s the scary political climate, but more and more we’re talking about how necessary it is to tell people you love them, how important it is to keep in touch. And you meant a lot to us. We all used to fit so well together! And the three of us have had such a good time over all these years. Did Lorraine tell you about the concerts?”

“No.”

“Well, we go to them at least once a year, we go to all the Stones concerts—Mick is just
cadaverous,
worse than in photos. We saw Leonard Cohen, who depressed the hell out of us, and we saw Joni—what a great jazz vocalist she is now, isn’t she? She’s
aged
so much—although what she said about happiness being the best face-lift? Is that not our girl? Is that not just the most beautiful, soulful, wise thing? Of course, it’s not true. Oh, well, we’re all ancient now, except Lorraine, of course, who is eternally beautiful, mostly due to her biweekly visits to the plastic surgeon. Our next trip will probably be to the arthritis spa—do you have it yet, arthritis? I do, and my
fingers
in the morning! That over-the-counter thing helps, chondroitin. And it’s natural. Oh God. Listen to me. Did you ever imagine talking about such things? I’m telling you, though, Maddy and I are suddenly
beset
with these health worries. Chest pains, memory loss. Maddy called the other day and said, ‘Okay. Today it’s not only Alzheimer’s, it’s that I’m
riddled
with cancer. Six months, tops.’ ” She started to laugh, then stopped abruptly. “Oh, Betta. I’m so sorry. I just meant—”

“I know what you mean. Before John got sick, we did the same thing. I remember him once . . . well. We did the same thing.” I sighed, quietly, thinking of John once turning away from the bathroom mirror and a mole he’d just found on his chest to say, “I’ll be right back. I’m just going to run over to the lawyer’s and put my affairs in order.” And I’d said, “Closed casket or open?”

“I guess I’m a little nervous,” Susanna said. “I’m just going
on.
”

“It’s okay.”

An awkward silence, and then I said, “We will find a time to get together, Suse. I’ll call you. I’ll call everybody—we’ll set a date.”

“Good. Did Lorraine give you Maddy’s number?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s Lorraine for you. She’s in first place and everyone else is in last. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d . . . love her anyway. Here’s the number.”

After I hung up the phone, I moved to the kitchen table and sat quietly for a while, thinking about calling Maddy. Not yet. Then I thought about calling back the man who’d left the message, but decided against that, too. Outside, it had begun to snow: tiny flakes that made it look like the earth was being salted. Tomorrow I would need to buy a new shovel—the one John had used was too heavy for me. He’d appreciated hard manual labor, saying he liked to do work that was outside his head, for a change. I liked reading a good novel while he cleared the walks, popping up every now and then to look out the window and see how he was progressing. That was my contribution. Of course, I had reciprocated—bringing him dinner on a tray when the Sox were playing an important game. Sewing on buttons for him. Finding things he insisted weren’t there when they were actually right before him. I wasn’t sure Lorraine and others like her—ones who were so despairing of marriage, ones who were so sure their expectations could never be met—understood that it was these small moments of caretaking that meant the most, that forged the real relationship. The way one pulled the blankets over the sleeping other, the way one prepared a snack for oneself but made enough to share. Such moments made for the team of two, which made for one’s sword and shield.

I took a long, hot bath, turned down the bed linens, sprayed them with lavender water, plumped my pillows just so, and put Erik Satie’s
After the Rain
on the CD player. Then I sat at the edge of the bed, wondering about the advisability of what I was about to do. Finally, from the top drawer of my nightstand, I pulled out the package of photographs and slid out the picture on top.

Disappointingly, it was not of John; but it was John who’d taken it—as soon as I saw the image, I remembered vividly that mild spring day we’d spent in a small town in France. Soon after we left the hotel, my back had begun hurting from carrying my overstuffed purse, and John had taken it from me and slung it over his shoulder, never mind its floral motif, he was man enough to not worry about that. This he did without a word, of course, in spite of the fact that he had warned me against carrying so many things. We’d had a lunch of fish and salad and little red potatoes drenched in butter and glorified with parsley, and it had been delicious. Before bed that night, we’d tuned the radio to a classical station, flung open the tall shuttered doors that led to the balcony of our hotel, and lain together looking out at the stars, talking about how, when you were in a foreign country, the stars seemed foreign, too. Yes, there was the Big Dipper, but it was the French Big Dipper.
Le Dipper Français,
John called it. And something else, this quick flash of memory: I remembered standing naked before the minibar, looking for chocolate for a late-night dessert, and triumphantly pulling out a candy bar.
“Sneekairs!”
John had said.

But that afternoon John had taken a picture of two men standing together at the railing of a stone bridge. They were dressed alike and casually: tan pants, knit shirts, light jackets, and porkpie hats. One had his hands clasped before him; the other held on to the rail of the bridge with one hand and with the other held a red heart-shaped balloon on a short string. The men were perhaps in their mid-sixties and not what you would call attractive. But they’d stood with a heart-shaped balloon, and I believed they were looking for love.

What, I wondered, would I do, when I felt ready to look for love again? Stand outside with my own red balloon? Would I begin to
date
—ludicrous word, at my age—and go through the excruciating process of sharing personal histories? It was exhausting to even think about:
I was born in, I was an only child, I worked as, I voted for,
blah blah blah. A newly divorced friend of mine named Peggy had told me about calling an upscale dating service. She had asked about how the service worked, and the woman who’d answered the phone told her with immoderate good cheer that it was a fail-safe operation: The agency, after taking your thousand (!) dollars, put your picture and bio in a book and made a little video of you. The men chose what women they wanted to meet, and the women chose what men. Unless you chose each other, you didn’t meet. Then the woman had said to Peggy, “So! Now that I’ve told you about us, let’s talk about
you.
How old are you?” “I’m fifty,” Peggy had said, and there was silence on the line. Then the agency woman had rushed to fill it, saying, “Okay, well, I just have to tell you that most of our clients are in their thirties. But new people call every day, just as
you
did!” Peggy had hung up, stared out the window for a while, and gone to the library, where she checked out an armful of fat novels and a book called
How to Fix Everything
—no irony intended. “I’m better off anyway,” she’d said. “Can you imagine the indignity of breaking
up
at this age?”

I knew it wasn’t completely hopeless; I knew people met and fell in love in later years. But as to what a decent relationship might progress to, how could I ever sleep with someone else? Yet I didn’t want that part of my life to be over. Bad enough to never have had children. What if I never again had a sex partner? Soon after we’d first met, John had told me, “You’re a hot-blooded woman, Betta.” I’d answered, “Yes. That’s for you, you hot-blooded man.” What if I never again enjoyed that particular pleasure?

Maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible. Maybe I would simply grow used to it. There were other things I could still do to add spice to my life. Travel, for one—John and I had never gotten to Greece. Or to China. Or Africa. Or Alaska. I took a pen and paper from the drawer—perhaps it would be good to make a list of ideas for things to do, and cross them off as I did them. It would keep me focused and looking forward to the future; it would lessen my anxiety. In times of despair, it would be good to have a whole list of possibilities I might refer to.

I leaned against the pillows and rested the pad of paper on my knees. I tapped the pen against my teeth, thinking. And thinking. Finally, I put the pen and paper away. The things that brought me the most comfort now were too small to list. Raspberries in cream. Sparrows with cocked heads. Shadows of bare limbs making for sidewalk filigrees. Roses past their prime with their petals loose about them. The shouts of children at play in the neighborhood, Ginger Rogers on the black-and-white screen. But trips? No. Without John, no. For now, only raspberries, only cream. Only books waiting at the bedside. Only the worn flannel of my favorite pajamas. Everything else was just too big. I recalled a message I’d seen on an online widow support group, emphasizing that there was no true timetable—people had to honor their own needs and their own methods. One woman had written in saying she felt fine after three weeks, was something wrong with her? Another said it had been three years and still she felt immobilized by pain.

I turned out the light, slid down flat under the covers, and closed my eyes. It was Sunday night, the part of the week that used to make John melancholy. Well, as melancholy as he got, which was not really melancholy at all. People who didn’t know him well wouldn’t have been able to see the difference in him, but I could. It manifested as a kind of distractedness—his mind was being pulled toward the patients he would see the next day. He had to leave behind Sunday before it was through, and this always made him a little sad. His hands stayed too much in his pockets; his head hung lower than usual. His smile was close-mouthed, and anytime he embraced me, on those days, he’d make a tiny, side-to-side rocking motion he did not otherwise make, a movement of consolation meant for both of us. Goodbye to the lovely leisure of the newspaper in bed on Sunday morning, of homemade scones and coffee served on TV trays as we watched the political shows with their blustering and defensive guests, they with their sweating, bald heads, their unironic thick-rimmed black eyeglasses.