When We Argued All Night (31 page)

They had lost in 103-degree heat in Fenway Park, and the paper said it was hot in New York, but here in the mountains it was raining. After weeks of heat and humidity, they'd packed for a hot weather camping trip, and it was cold. Now Brenda was restless. She'd have walked up a mountain, but Jess hated hiking in the rain. Brenda wore the only sweatshirt she'd brought, now grubby. But here came tall Jess down the coffee aisle, grasping the top of a can of Progresso soup with each long-fingered hand, her thin arms bare, her high round breasts discernible under her dark green T-shirt. Looking capable, looking happy. Nobody else in the store carried two cans of soup, one in each hand, and if they did, they would not look as if carrying soup was original and slightly scary. If the arm swung wide, a can of soup could become a weapon. But Jess was gentle. You are my sunshine, Brenda said.

—And it's all the sunshine you're getting, said Jess. What now?

—Cookies, bananas, bread.

—I mean when we're done.

—Let's go for a ride.

—Where?

Brenda said, The map's in the car. They found cookies, bananas, bread. They bought wine. She knew where she wanted to go, the reason she'd proposed the Adirondacks in the first place.

—At least we don't have David to amuse, she said as she carried their groceries to the car. David had a summer job this year, busing tables, and was spending the week back home in Concord with a friend.

—And to tell us our misdeeds, Jess said.

—I can't help it, I miss him, Brenda said, lowering the bag into the trunk, then stretching her arms and fingers. But I'm glad he's not here. This long-necked, complicated but essentially lighthearted woman lived with her and loved her. It was still astonishing, and Brenda was never sure Jess wouldn't change her mind. Jess was driving. She got back on the road. Look, Brenda said, pointing at the map Jess couldn't see, pretending she'd just thought this up. Here's where I used to go when I was a kid. The cabin. Let's look for it.

—You know where it is?

—I think so. I loved being there. My parents would quiet down and forget I existed. I could think.

—I love these roads in the rain, Jess said, but she sounded resistant. The dark green hills curved around them, two minutes away from the store. I don't care if it's raining. Here we are, not at work. We are
not
at work.

They drove. For miles, nothing but evergreens or clearings where wildflowers drooped in the rain. Then, abruptly, there would be a lake ringed with cottages, lonely with rain, a general store with a gas station outside. Or a break in the woods and a view of mountains, barely visible in mist. They both liked their work, but vacation was exquisite. Jess was a divorce lawyer. Brenda—with Gene Stearns, whose late father had started the company—supervised ten workers who built wooden playground equipment. Mostly they sold it in sections, to schools and community groups. They held workdays to put it together, and Brenda traveled with the equipment and taught people who'd never built anything how to make a playground. She'd been as far south as Maryland, all over New England and parts of New York State. Best and hardest were playgrounds in the backyards of women's shelters and residences for battered women. Those customers got a discount. She'd spend a week working with the women, showing them how to use tools, how to use their bodies, sleeping in an unoccupied room and eating with them, pretending to get their jokes. She might have lived in a place like that, she reminded herself. It could have happened.

Jess had always known she loved women. Hearing about Brenda's past troubled her. How could you? she had said.

—I didn't know who I was.

—I don't know what that means.

I
n Schroon Lake village, only a few miles from the cabin, they stopped for coffee, which always made Jess happy. There was decent blueberry pie. Then Brenda said, Let's walk down to the public beach. The village of Schroon Lake was the way villages ought to be: the stores were a block from the beach, and in between was the library, where Brenda had read as a child while her mother did the shopping. The little street, with shops crowded together—filled with tourists buying postcards and souvenirs, impatient with the rain—was unchanged. There was the Grand Union, the liquor store whose owner had given Brenda a ride to the cabin in 1969—incredibly, nineteen years ago. Nelson was dead, but it was as if she'd find him there, as if he might have escaped everywhere else to be at the cabin. They walked down the curved street and stood above a lawn and the beach, staring out at the big lake. Swimming was possible at the cabin, but Evelyn had preferred this beach with its clean sand, friendly women to chat with, and lifeguards, and Brenda had spent many hours here. Now the lake's surface was gray-green, rough with wind and rain. No lifeguards in the big chairs on the beach. They descended the lawn and walked in the sand to the edge of the lake. The smell of this country . . . what was the smell? The sounds and smells were not like anywhere, not like southern New Hampshire—what was the difference? Without knowing what she meant, she said, The sky has a different shape at home and here.

—No it doesn't.

—It circles differently. She'd lived in New Hampshire for something like sixteen years. The sky there curved back to David's long, difficult babyhood and a list of women: Roz; Karen, whom she'd loved too hard; scary Jean; Annie; and then the first hard year with Jess, when she couldn't believe she'd found, at last, the person with whom she'd grow old and kept trying to spoil things just to make sure. But the sky here in the Adirondacks made a larger curve, all the way back to her mother under a big hat calling to her and Carol, brushing sand off their backsides and pulling the fabric of their ruffled cotton bathing suits from where it was caught in the cheeks of their buttocks, telling them to stay out of the water because they'd just eaten ice cream. Evelyn was younger then than Brenda was now. How had she caught up to and passed her mother? A fragile, imaginary Evelyn, having seated her girls on the sand where she could see them when she turned her head to breathe, yanked her own rust-colored nylon suit down, tucked her hair into a white rubber cap with a strap under the chin, glanced at the sky—imaginary Evelyn saw sun, not rain—walked purposefully into the lake and swam back and forth parallel to the beach.

Jess looked bored, her arms crossed, and Brenda put her arm around her shoulders to turn her back toward the car. Okay if we look for the house?

—We have enough gas, Jess said.

Brenda made one mistake, then backtracked and had Jess turn down the right road. Nothing much had changed since she'd been there last. At last, came the long driveway. Jess turned down it, but said, What are we going to tell the people here?

—Maybe there won't be anybody, and we can walk down to the lake. It was a small lake, lost in the hills. She went on, Or we can say we're lost. Or we can tell the truth.

Nobody was there. The house looked much as it had when she'd been there with Nelson. The grass was high, and the windows were boarded up. A faded F
OR
S
ALE
sign leaned on its pole near the driveway.

—Does it still belong to Harold's first wife? Jess said.

—I heard she sold it years ago.

Jess parked the Toyota and slapped the edge of Brenda's seat. Let's go, she said. Anybody asks, we'll say we might buy it.

They walked around the edge of the house. The rain had stopped, but the sky was low and dark above the lake. Brenda walked down to the edge of the water—the familiar round shape, a few houses close together on the opposite shore—then turned to look at Jess coming too. She put an arm around her and Jess leaned into her. She stroked the back of Brenda's neck and ran her forefinger down Brenda's back to just below her waist. It was good to be away from people, where they could touch.

—I'm cold, Jess said.

—At last, Brenda said. Let's go back into town and buy you a sweatshirt.

—Dark green, Jess said. Also—could we get a dog?

—Today?

—When we get home.

—What made you think of it now? Okay.

—I have a past too, Jess said. Brenda turned and took Jess's face in her hands, thrust her tongue into Jess's mouth. They both laughed but they prolonged the kiss.

Brenda wondered if the key was still in the Band-Aid box in the place near the door where it had always been. Probably not. The exterior had been painted since her time, though it was in need of paint now. Anyway, she didn't want to go in. Inside was Nelson's ghost. She touched Jess's arm. You still put up with me, she said.

—I like the way your head sits on your shoulders, Jess said.

—Unlike the heads of your old girlfriends, which stuck out of their asses.

—That's right.

—Maybe I'll call Harold, tell him the place is for sale, Brenda said.

—How old is Harold? Jess said.

—Same as my father. Seventy-eight. Not too old to answer the phone.

5

H
arold—on a bright, cool Sunday morning in September 1995, after an insufferably hot, dry summer—discovered yet again, at eighty-five, that he was a pretentious idiot. When he'd retired from teaching, he had told Naomi, who was already retired, that he was going to write, that he'd write every day in the spare room of their apartment, which he'd made into a study, that he'd write even on weekends.

—A couple of hours on weekend mornings, that's all, he said. Otherwise, I'll stop believing I'm worth anything.

Naomi, as emotionally complete as ever—she was a tidy zippered case equipped with every tool—had readily agreed to leave him alone in the mornings, and she accomplished that all too well. On weekdays she took classes, taught illiterates to read, and went to a gym. On weekends she walked with a friend even older than Harold. Today, after that, she was going on to lunch with another friend. Harold usually wrote. Sometimes he couldn't. Since he'd retired, he'd published a study of Delmore Schwartz he'd worked on for many years and had written some reviews and articles. Nothing he wrote changed anyone. Walking with Naomi would have been appealing, but he had not yet said to her, I'm not going to write on Saturdays and Sundays anymore. I'm going to be with you. She'd probably prefer walking with her friend. Her friend was ninety-one. How long could she walk?

And he—he was about to start another book, though only a fool would start a book at his age. Well, he would be a fool, then. He had bought a computer a few weeks earlier, and mostly, this morning, he had been wasting time, stomping back and forth to the toilet, glancing at the paper (Bosnia, as usual). But he had also learned how to insert page numbers. The real job of the day was continuing to copy notes he'd been making for the last eight months, a plan for this book. Typing the notes on the computer was different from typing them with a typewriter because he was a messy typist, but the computer made everything look good. He disliked the finished look of what he'd typed: his plan, plainly set down as if an office full of assistants would carry it out, made him feel even more like a pretentious idiot. The book—for God's sake!—the book was an autobiography. A memoir. A memoir of doing things wrong.

And right. Also doing things right. Personally wrong, up to a point, politically right, mostly. Something like that. He had just typed
death of Nelson
in the list of events to write about. He got up and left the room, though he had three-quarters of an hour of his two hours left.

One reason he felt like a pretentious idiot had nothing to do with Naomi. Evelyn Saltzman had had a heart attack. Artie had been too upset to call, but Carol had called Harold, and he'd gone to see Evelyn in the hospital. Now it was a few weeks later and she was home. When he'd phoned the other day, Artie said, Come see us, it would cheer her up. Come Sunday. Maybe ten or eleven? I'm driving her to Carol and Lenny's for lunch.

—I write in the morning on Sundays, Harold had said. How about after lunch, when you come back? Artie and Evelyn had never moved out of Brooklyn, but now they lived in Brooklyn Heights and it was easy to get to them.

—Nah, she'll be worn out. And I want to watch the tennis. Then Evelyn had called to him, and Artie had gotten off the phone.

Now on Sunday, Harold—amazed that at eighty-five it was still possible to do something he regretted as much as he regretted having said he was writing this morning and couldn't visit Artie and Evelyn—picked up the phone. Can I come now?

—Sure, Artie said. We're just about to take a walk. She's supposed to walk.

—Where?

—The river.

—I'll find you, Harold said. He took a hat for the sun and left the apartment. All over the city, old people walked. Naomi and her friend, Artie and Evelyn. Well, he and Artie had walked when they were young too. As he hurried to the subway, he spotted a cab. Eagerly, he rode across the Brooklyn Bridge, back into Brooklyn. He sat up straight and looked at the river. The glint of sun hurt his eyes.

He had the taxi drop him near the Promenade, close to Artie and Evelyn's apartment. As he set out on the paved walk next to the river, he heard Artie call, Hey, you old bastard! and turned.

—
One-four-nine is the school for me, drives away all adversity!
Artie sang. He was elated now, after being terrified when he thought Evelyn would die. They were sitting on a bench, smiling and waving. Harold stood in front of them, leaning over to kiss Evelyn, who looked old, but whose eyes were bright with humor and pleasure. How do you feel? he said.

—I'm alive, she said, and what crossed her face for a second looked more like despair.

Harold made the choice to ignore it. And you're out of the hospital. You look wonderful. What a beautiful day.

The wind made crisscrossing lines on the river. There were sailboats.

—Sit, Artie said. We're resting. How's the work?