A Multitude of Sins (23 page)

“I left you two messages.” She smiled in a mockingly amused way. “You didn’t think I’d let you take a taxi, did you?”

Some of the same people he’d seen earlier were present in the lobby—a child sitting alone in a big throne chair, wearing his white tae kwon do get-up. A black woman in a brocaded
fall suit, having a present wrapped in the sweater shop. It was past noon. He’d missed lunch.

“Are we going fox hunting?” he said, hoisting his suitcase.

“I’m taking Patrick to see the last of the fall foliage after school.” Patrick was her son. She held one arm out, extended a foot stylishly. “Don’t I look autumnal?”

“You’re standing right where I had a truly ridiculous conversation an hour ago,” he said. He looked toward the revolving doors. Traffic was silently moving on the street. He wondered if Jeff was lurking somewhere nearby.

“We’ll have to erect a commemorative plaque.” Madeleine seemed in gay spirits. “‘Here the forces of evil were withstood by’ … what?” She patted her moist hair with her palm.

“I don’t mind getting a taxi,” Henry said.

“Screw you,” she said brightly. “It’s my country you’ve been kicked out of.” She turned to go. “Come on … ‘with-stood by the forces of dull convention.’ Alas.”

From the passenger’s seat of Madeleine’s yellow Saab, Henry watched the big construction cranes at work—many more cranes and superstructures than had been visible from his window. The city was rising, which made it feel even more indifferent. A taxi would’ve been better. A taxi alone to an airport, never looking right nor left, could be a relief.

“You look all beat up, though I guess you’re not,” Madeleine said. Driving too fast always put her in aggressive good spirits. Together they’d always been driving someplace good. He liked speed then—but less so now, since it threatened getting safely to the airport.

There was nothing to say about looking “all beat up.” He knew her, yet also now he didn’t quite know her. It was part of the change they were enacting. When they were in the thick of things, Madeleine couldn’t drive without looking at him, smiling, remarking about his excellent qualities, cracking jokes, appreciating his comments. Now she could be
driving anybody—her mother to the beauty parlor, a priest to a funeral.

“Do you realize what the day after tomorrow is?” Madeleine said, maneuvering skillfully through the traffic’s changing weave. She was wearing some sort of scent that filled the car with a dense rosy aroma he was already tired of.

“No.”

“It’s Canadian Thanksgiving. We have it early so we can get a jump on you guys. Canada invented Thanksgiving. Canada invented Thanksgiving,
eh
?” She quite liked making fun of Canadians and didn’t like it at all if he did. He had never really thought of her as Canadian. She just seemed like another American girl. He wasn’t sure how you considered someone Canadian, what important allowances you needed to make.

“Do you observe it for the same reason we do?” Henry said, watching traffic. He still felt slightly dazed.

“We just
have
it,” Madeleine said happily. “Why do you have it?”

“To solemnize the accord between the settlers and the Indians who might’ve murdered them. Basically it’s a national gesture of relief.”

“Murder’s your big subject down there, isn’t it?” Madeleine said, and looked pleased. “We just have ours to be nice. That’s enough for Canada. We’re just happily grateful. Murder really doesn’t play a big part.”

The old buildings of the French University were passing below and to the left. The little Frogs-only fantasy world. He considered how he and Madeleine would function together after today. He hadn’t really thought about it. Everybody, of course, had a past. It would be a relief to the people who knew about them to have this be over with. Plus, not having him in her life was going to be easier for her. Clear her mind. Open the world up again for both of them.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” Madeleine said, both hands firmly on the leather steering wheel.

“I probably already know what it is,” Henry said. His tongue sought the sharp little spike of his broken molar. The
flesh was abraded and sore from going there. He could get it fixed in San Francisco.

“I really don’t think you do,” she said. A big white Japanese 747 descended slowly out of the pale sky and across the autoroute in front of them. “Do you want me to tell you?” she said. “I don’t have to. It can wait forever.”

“That guy wasn’t your husband,” Henry said and quietly cleared his throat. The thought had just come to him— why, now, he didn’t know. Lawyer’s intuition. “Did you think I was stupid? I mean …” He didn’t care to finish this sentence. It finished itself. So much that was said didn’t need to be.

Madeleine looked at him once, looked away, then looked again. She seemed impressed. She seemed happy about feeling impressed, as if this was the best of all outcomes. The enormous jet sank from sight into an unremarkable industrial landscape. No big ball of flaming explosion followed. Everyone safe. “You’re guessing,” she said.

“I’m a lawyer. What’s the difference?”

She liked this, too, and smiled. He understood it was impossible for her not to like him. “How’d you know?”

“Among other reasons?” The freeway traffic was standing back now for the airport exit. “He acted more serious than he felt. Something he said … ‘divided inner somethings’? That wasn’t right. And he looks like an actor. Are you sleeping with him, too? I don’t mean ‘too.’ You know.”

“Not currently,” Madeleine said. She touched her silver hair clip with her little finger and cocked her head slightly. She appeared to be realizing something. What that might be, he thought, would be worth knowing. “I knew you’d go down there,” she said. “I knew you couldn’t resist it. You always want to be so forthright and brave. It’s your disguise.”

Henry watched the pleasureless freeway ambience pass slowly along—freight depots, trucking companies, car rentals, gas stations. The same all over. The green sign was visible.
AEROGARE
/
AIRPORT
. An exertion saying everything twice.

“He’s an American,” Madeleine said. “His name’s Bradley. He
is
an actor. We worried you’d know he wasn’t Canadian.”

“Not a worry there,” Henry said. She took the
AEROGARE
/
AIRPORT SORTIE
/
EXIT
and looked across at him. She seemed slightly undone now. Perhaps, he thought, she was thinking about patting her cheeks when they were in the room, or saying,
I’d pictured something more poignant
. That could seem excessive now.

He reached and took her hand and held it loosely. She was nervous, her hand warm and moist. This whole business had taken something out of her, too. They had been in love, perhaps were still in love.

“Is someone filming all this?” he said and glanced to the side, at a pickup truck following along beside them on the highway. He expected to see the truck bed full of cameras, sound equipment, smiling young cinéastes. Everything trained on him.

“For once, no,” she said.

Up ahead, d’
EMBARQUEMENTS
/
DEPARTURES
was jampacked. Cars, limos, taxis, people loading golf bags, collapsible cribs and taped-up coolers from the backs of idling vans. Policemen with white oversleeves were flagging everyone through in a hurry. He had only a suitcase, a briefcase, a raincoat. It had become a wonderful autumn day. Clouds and haze were being cleansed from the sky.

He continued holding her hand, and she grasped his back in a way that felt important. What would it be like finally, he wondered, to grow uninterested in women? Things he did— going here, there, deciding this, that—he’d always had a woman in mind. Their presence animated things. So much would be different without them. No more moments like this, moments of approximate truth vivifying, explaining, offering silent reason to the choices you made. And what happened to those people for whom it wasn’t an issue? Who didn’t think about women. Certainly they achieved things. Were they better, their accomplishments purer? Of course, when it was all out of your reach—and it would be—you wouldn’t even care.

On the curb side, amid skycaps and passengers alighting and baggage carts nosed in at reckless angles, a family—two older adults and three nearly grown blond children—were having a moment of prayer, standing in a tight little circle, arms to shoulders, heads bowed. Clearly Americans, Henry realized. Only Americans would be so immodest about their belief, so sure a fast amen was just the thing to keep them safe—at once so careless and so prideful. Not the qualities to make a country great.

“Do you think if we asked, they’d include us in their little circle?” Madeleine said, breaking their silence as she pulled to the curb, right beside the praying Americans. She meant to annoy them.

“We’re represented already,” Henry said, looking at the pilgrims’ hefty, strenuous backsides. “We’re the forces of evil they think so much about. The terrible adulterers. We worry them.”

“Life’s just a record of our misdeeds, isn’t it?” she said. He couldn’t open his door for the pray-ers.

“I don’t think that.” He held her warm, soft, moist hand casually. She was just letting the other subject go free now—the lying, tricking, having a joke at his expense. Though why, for God’s sake, not let it go free?

He sat a moment longer, facing forward, unable to exit. He said, “Have you decided you don’t love me?” Here was the great mystery. His version of a prayer.

“Oh, no,” Madeleine said. “I wanted us to go on and on. But we just couldn’t. So. This seemed like a way to seal it off. Exaggerate the difference between what is and what isn’t. You know?” She smiled weakly. “Sometimes you can’t believe the things that are taking place are actually taking place, but you need to. I’m sorry. It was too much.” She leaned and kissed him on the cheek, then took both his hands to her lips and kissed them.

He liked her. Liked everything about her. Though now was the wrong moment to say so. It would seem insincere. Reaching for too much. Though how did you ever make a moment be worth as much as it could be, if you didn’t reach?

Outside, the Americans were all hugging one another, smiling big Christian smiles, their prayers having reached a satisfactory end.

“Are you trying to think of something nice to say?” Madeleine said jauntily.

“No,” Henry said. “I was trying not to.”

“Well, that’s just as good,” she said, smiling. “It might not be good enough for everybody, but I understand. It’s hard to know how to end a thing that didn’t completely begin.”

He pushed open the heavy door, lifted his suitcase out of the back, stepped out into the cool fall light, then looked quickly in at her. She smiled at him through the open doorway. There was nothing to say now. Words were used up.

“Wouldn’t you agree with me about that, Henry?” she said. “That’d be a nice thing to say. Just that you agree with me.”

“Yes, okay,” Henry said. “I do. I do agree with you. I agree with you about everything.”

“Then rejoin your fellow Americans.”

He closed the door. She didn’t look his way again. He watched her ease away, then accelerate, then quickly disappear into the traffic heading back to town.

Charity

On the first day of their Maine vacation, they drove up to Harrisburg after work, then flew to Philadelphia, then flew to Portland, where they rented a Ford Explorer at the airport, ate dinner at a Friendly’s, then drove up 95 as far as Freeport—it was long after dark—where they found a B&B directly across from L. L. Bean, which surprisingly was open all night.

Before getting into the rickety canopy bed and passing out from exhaustion, Nancy Marshall stood at the dark window naked and looked across the shadowy street at the big, lighted Bean’s building, shining like a new opera house. At one a.m., customers were streaming in and out toting packages, pulling garden implements, pushing trail bikes and disappearing into the dark in high spirits. Two large Conant tourist buses from Canada sat idling at the curb, their uniformed drivers sharing a quiet smoke on the sidewalk while their Japanese passengers were inside buying up things. The street was busy here, though farther down the block the other expensive franchise outlets were shut.

Tom Marshall turned off the light in the tiny bathroom and came and stood just behind her, wearing blue pajama
bottoms. He touched her shoulders, stood closer to her until she could feel him aroused.

“I know why the store’s open ’til one o’clock,” Nancy said, “but I don’t know why all the people come.” Something about his conspicuous warm presence made her feel a chill. She covered her breasts, which were near the window glass. She imagined he was smiling.

“I guess they love it,” Tom said. She could feel him properly—very stiff now. “This is what Maine means. A visit to Bean’s after midnight. It’s the global culture. They’re probably on their way to Atlantic City.”

“Okay,” Nancy said. Because she was cold, she let herself be pulled to him. This was all right. She was exhausted. His cock fit between her legs—just there. She liked it. It felt familiar. “I asked the wrong question.” There was no reflection in the glass of her or him behind her, inching into her. She stood perfectly still.

“What would the right question be?” Tom pushed flush against her, bending his knees just a fraction to find her. He
was
smiling.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe the question is, what do they know that we don’t? What are we doing over here on this side of the street? Clearly the action’s over there.”

She heard him exhale, then he moved away. She had been about to open her legs, lean forward a little. “Not that.” She looked around for him. “I don’t mean that.” She put her hand between her legs just to touch, her fingers covering herself. She looked back at the street. The two bus drivers she believed could not see through the shadowy trees were both looking right at her. She didn’t move. “I didn’t mean that,” she said to Tom faintly.

“Tomorrow we’ll see some things we’ll like,” he said cheerfully. He was already in bed. That fast.