“I saw the picture myself—everyone in America did,” Sam said. “You two at the nightclub.”
“Well, don’t let it worry you.” Emile chuckled and patted Sam’s shoulder. “Una wanted no part of it; she wanted me to chase them away. Right, Una?”
“Right.” I felt desolate; the tension at my table felt oppressive and familiar. I tried to identify it. I glanced at Sam, who was smiling at Emile, as if they were the founding brothers of a new fraternity. Men stick together. Why had I worried that Sam would be rude to Emile? That initial silence had been no more than getting to know the lay of the land. Sam’s fury had nothing to do with Emile. Emile was probably feeling sympathy for Sam, for getting stuck with a bitch like me. And I
was
acting like a bitch—even though it did feel justified. Sam gave the turkey carcass warmer glances than he gave me. I was being punished.
I poured more Grizzly Creek cabernet sauvignon into my glass. It caught the candlelight and turned ruby-orange. I sipped, and then I knew why the strife felt familiar. It reminded me of being a child at my father’s dinner table. When fits of Black Ass would strike him, he would head straight for the Blue Danube. Then for days afterward he would give everyone at home the cold shoulder. At the dinner table he would politely ask how was school, how was painting, would you please pass the pepper? He gave all of us the feeling he was terribly disappointed. Not angry, precisely, but let down. That he had expected more of us; of life; of the dinner. And that was how Sam was making me feel: as though I had let him down.
Emile departed immediately after pumpkin pie, and Sam came into the kitchen to help me with the dishes.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. Cool, noble.
“It’s okay.” He scraped turnips into the garbage pail. “Dinner was delicious.”
“Good,” I said, noting the adjective “delicious”; it referred only to the food, not to the company or atmosphere.
We scraped plates for a while. The only sounds were forks against china, food thudding into the trash, water running, my stomach rumbling. I was starving; I had a mad urge to grab a drumstick and start gnawing, but Sam had to observe my self-denial. Then he would know how bad he was making me feel.
“That turkey was really moist,” he said.
“Good.” All through dinner he had made sure I knew I was the bad girl, and now he was tossing me a compliment. “Why were you so awful during dinner?” I asked, trembling from hunger and anger.
“I told you; I was upset.”
“You could have been nicer to me. Emile knew something was wrong.”
“I was nice to you.”
“Barely!”
“Una, I was really pissed that you invited him. I was looking forward to having the dinner alone with you. You want me to pretend nothing happened?”
“You were
fine
to
him
.”
“I thought you wanted me to be friendly to him.”
“Oh, God.” I glared at the turkey pan. I knew I should have bought a throwaway roaster.
“‘Oh, God’ what?”
“You made me feel rotten, being nice to him and cool to me. Like you were punishing me, teaching me a good lesson.”
“I was mad at you. That’s all.”
Neither of us spoke for a while. Sam started washing the dishes in soapy water and I started drying them. I felt flat, as though everything were gone. My great romance, like all its lesser predecessors, was ending. I could tell by the quick way Sam dipped the plates into the water and swiped them with the sponge that he could hardly wait to leave. My harsh overhead light illuminated us like a spotlight on actors playing tragedy.
When he finished with the dishes, he reached for the turkey pan.
“Don’t bother with that,” I said.
“Who’s going to do it?”
“I’m throwing it out,” I said, lifting it off the sideboard and dumping it into a brown grocery bag.
“Shit, Una, it was full of grease,” Sam yelled, crouching down to wipe my kitchen floor with the sponge. Clear yellowish fat oozed from the bag’s pores, dribbling onto Sam’s pants leg.
“Get away from it,” I said, prodding his shoulder. “Just leave it alone.”
He stood straight, gazing at me as though I had slapped him. “Fine.”
“Leave if you want to.”
“I didn’t say—”
I threw yesterday’s newspaper onto the floor to absorb the mess. The instructions for Day One had said nothing about this contingency. I moved slowly; the moment seemed super-clear, as though it were already making its mark as a turning point. I could have been seeing it in a dream: the way my Formica counter reflected the overhead light, the shadows made by the stove and refrigerator on the tile floor, the sopping newspaper. Sam’s breathing. The clock ticking (but I had no clock in the kitchen). My heartbeat.
“Well. Do you want me to leave?” Sam asked.
“Do you want to?”
“Do
you
want me to?”
“I don’t care.” Shrug.
“You don’t
care
?” Sam started washing his hands. He grabbed the damp dish towel. “Jesus, Una, say what you mean. You want me to leave? I’ll leave.” He walked out of the kitchen. I heard his footsteps: sharp on the tile, muffled on the Chinese rug in my living room, sharp on the wood floor in my foyer. A door opened; he was taking his coat out of the closet.
Leave
, I thought.
Go ahead, leave
. Never come back. NeverNeverNeverNeverNeverNeverNeverNever. I was still thinking Never when he walked out the door. I grabbed a hunk of stuffing and started chewing.
Thinking Never when the one of your dreams walks out the door is bad luck.
But in the days that followed, I felt oddly vindicated. As if I had suspected the worst about human nature and been proved right. Without the frenzy of Thanksgiving preparations to make, my days felt vacant. I trudged to the subway, rattled underground to the studio, stood before the cameras, and gazed soulfully into Christmas tree balls.
“Did you have a good Turkey Day?” Jason asked one afternoon between scenes. We were sitting on a sofa on the set, drinking cups of the syllabub Margie MacDuff had sent in with Stuart.
“No.”
“Neither did I. Holidays bum me out royal. But I
am
psyched for Christmas. Terry and I are going to Aruba.”
“I would hate Christmas without snow.”
“That’s rude of you. You’re supposed to say, ‘Lucky Jason!’ Or something.”
“Oh. Lucky Jason!”
“Something is wrong in your world, Una honey, and I hope it rights itself soon,” Jason said, peering at me with concern.
But what would it take to right it? I spoke to Sam every night. His feelings were hurt because I hadn’t stopped him from leaving; mine were hurt because he had left.
“You in a better mood?” he asked me one night over the phone.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, feeling detached.
“I didn’t want to leave, you know, but I was so mad—”
“I know you were.”
“Do you understand how I felt about Emile? I mean, he’s a nice guy, a little self-absorbed, but he’s the last person I wanted to spend Thanksgiving with.”
“I told you, Sam—I’m sorry about that. But I couldn’t help it. I had to invite him.” I spoke coolly, with great control. They say that cancer patients in terrible pain are sometimes given hallucinogenic drugs. The drugs do not make the pain stop, but they make it seem removed, as though it were sitting two doors down from the patient instead of inside his skull. That was how I felt, talking to Sam. Bad, but able to speak with some objectivity.
“Listen, Una,” Sam said, his voice rising. “Will you
talk
to me? Tell me what you’re thinking?”
“I’m sorry about everything.”
“Quit saying you’re
sorry
! I don’t want you to be sorry—it’s over and done with.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking,
Why did you walk out?
To ask would be to provoke more anger. My quandary felt the same as it had during the old days when my father would stay out and I would be afraid to yell at him. But Sam did not suffer from Black Ass. He had not run to the Blue Danube. He had not acted out of pique or desperation. He had
reacted
. To the fact that I had invited Emile Balfour to our Thanksgiving dinner. The more I thought about it, with Sam silent at the other end of the wire, the more I realized that
I
was suffering from a variety of Black Ass. Where drinking at the bar had been my father’s emotional crutch, maintaining harmony with every man in sight was mine. Even if it meant inviting Emile, whom I hadn’t really wanted to come, just because it was easier than not inviting him. Less likely to cause hurt feelings and bad vibes. Of course I knew that I would eventually have to reckon with Sam’s wrath, but I took each incident in the order of appearance. I traded truth and intimacy for temporary peace.
“I can’t have dinner with you tonight,” Sam said.
“Why not?” I asked, jolted back to reality, the pain no longer two houses away.
“Christie and I have to go over the seminar I’m giving at Yale. I leave for New Haven on Thursday.”
“
This
Thursday?”
“You knew that.”
“I did?” I knew he was going away for five days, but so soon?
“I’d like to see you later tonight, though,” he said.
“We could have a late dinner. If you don’t mind waiting.”
“I hoped you’d say that.”
On my way home I took the subway to Fourteenth Street and walked west, toward the Hudson. All the discount stores and souvenir stands throbbed with Christmas lights and carols played to a salsa beat. A cardboard Santa grinned through a delicatessen’s steamy window. I hugged my bag to my side.
At Bestfood I pushed my cart through the aisles. First I thought I would make spaghetti for dinner, but when I reached the pasta aisle, nothing looked good. I thought of sautéed chicken breasts, of steak sandwiches, of stir-fried vegetables. But each time I reached the shelves where the ingredients were located, I would stare until the boxes blurred and then walk away. I envied the shoppers whose carts were full, who grabbed things off the shelves, who had planned tonight’s meal last night—or earlier.
In the front of the store, beside a display of salt-free wheat biscuits, a woman wearing a German folk costume reminiscent of Bad Cannstatt was handing out samples of the biscuits squirted with Bavarian Cheese Spread—beer-flavored cheese food out of an aerosol can. Hanging onto the handle of my cart, I watched her. She smiled at everyone who passed. “Super for cocktail parties!” she said to a woman in a black business suit. The woman took a cracker off the tray and walked on without thanking the fräulein. How embarrassing, to be thirty-five and forced by your employer to wear a folk costume. Whenever people were not passing, the woman stopped smiling. She shifted her weight, as though her feet hurt. I wondered whether, behind the cardboard booth, she was wearing little Bavarian slippers. I walked over, put a box of biscuits and a spray can of cheese into my cart, and smiled at her. She smiled back.
Outside the store, brakes screeched. All I had in my basket were the biscuits and cheese spray. I stood in the express line and decided we would order pizza or Chinese food for dinner. A woman asked me to sign her copy of
Soap Opera Update
, and two other women then grabbed copies from the rack beside the register and thrust them at me. I wanted to go home, stretch out on my sofa, and sleep until Sam arrived. The cashier rang up my order. When she pressed $4.32 for the can of cheese, I nearly told her to forget the whole thing.
At home, waiting for Sam, I changed into jeans and one of Sam’s old T-shirts. My radiator had been on all day; I turned it off and opened some windows. The winter had been humid so far; I wanted a dagger of icy air, but instead it felt vaguely warm. It smelled of exhaust and pretzels; it felt damp, and I knew any precipitation would be rain, not snow.
I turned on my radio, but that song where geese honk out “Jingle Bells” was on, and I turned it off. I decided to call the train station, to find out the timetable for trains to Watch Hill. Margo was getting married in two weeks. The Ninigret Inn would be full of Cavans, Lincolns, and friends from hither and yon for the marital/Yule fest. Margo had said that Matt had ordered one hundred and twenty-five yards of laurel roping, a twenty-five-foot blue spruce, and a three-hundred-pound pig for roasting.
When I called the station, I got a recording telling me all lines were temporarily busy but that my call would be answered by the next available ticket agent. I hung up. I walked into the kitchen, stood in front of the refrigerator, and wished I had bought something for dinner. Or at least for a snack—I didn’t count the cheese spray. I wondered what time Sam would arrive. Holding the box of biscuits, I walked into the living room and began to watch TV. I watched the network that carried
Beyond the Bridge
, although I had no real interest in the program that was on. It was a dramatization of some plane crash in the Andes. I watched out of loyalty, or ennui, or the hope that the network would show one of the
Beyond
ads, hinting about Delilah’s elopement. There were three such ads, and I appeared in all of them.
When Sam arrived I was asleep. He turned the key I had given him in the lock and stepped into the apartment. It woke me. Lying on the couch, I listened to him take off his coat, drop his briefcase on the floor. Sleep pulled me down, but I raised myself on one elbow. He was standing in the doorway, watching me. His black hair straggled across his eyes, and he had a wide grin.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Eleven-thirty. Work took longer than I thought it would.”
I started to get off the couch. “We should call for Chinese—I think they stop delivering at midnight.”
“Are you really hungry?”
“No. Just sleepy.”
“Me too,” he said. Holding my hand, he walked ahead of me into the bedroom.
We stood beside the bed in the dark room, kissing. “Don’t turn on the light—” I said, grabbing his forearm. “I look like a wreck and a mess.”
“Too late. I already saw you in the living room.”
I climbed under the covers while Sam cleaned out his pockets. He kept his wallet in one pants pocket, his checkbook in another, his datebook and pens in his breast pocket. He was extremely organized. There was a decent chance that, when he was in high school, he had been the sort of boy to use a plastic pocket protector. I considered asking him, but I didn’t. I snuggled under the covers, making a nest. It had been many nights since Sam was last here. While he went to the bathroom, I thought of all the Cavan women who were making nests that night, all except my mother. Margo was snuggled beside Matt in Watch Hill, Lily was snuggled beside Henk uptown, and I was making a warm spot for Sam.