Equal Affections (15 page)

He pulled up along the curb of a closed shoe store. Waited. She didn't approach. Well, he had finally shaken her. And now he began to worry about consequences: What if she gets into a car accident? What if I drive her over the edge and she does something impulsive, something terrible? Turning off the ignition, he got out of his car and walked to an open pizza parlor, dug through the rows of sticky, dark tables and red-net candles to the phone booth, dialed his own number, then hung up before there were any rings. He couldn't bear to hear her voice. Oh, what should he do? He was tempted to go home again, except that the thought of her in the bed next to him in her lace nightgown, curled into herself like a nut, was almost too much for him. Going back would mean having to listen to her recriminations and resentments and unhappinesses all night. Whereas what he wanted now—what he needed—was something positive, some good light, some pleasure in his life. Louise took advantage of him, he told himself now. He was her dishrag, her handkerchief. When she hurt, or when she was scared about the cancer, or when she just felt her life was shitty, it was Nat she took it out on. Why the hell can't you clean up after yourself? Well, then, what
did
you do with it? I do everything for you, and you don't lift a finger for me. No, don't touch me. No, don't talk to me. Just leave me the hell alone. And underneath that, and oddly at the same moment: Touch me. Hold me. Help me.

He dug his way back out of the cavernous pizza parlor, drove to Lillian's. She was at the door, waiting for him, by the time he made it out of his car, slowed to hesitation by fantasies of Louise with a gun, hiding in the bushes. She had her hair pulled back in a bun, and wore a beige chiffon bathrobe, and smelled of face cream. “Nat, you look like you just got run over on the highway,” she said, and taking his hand,
ushered him quickly through the door. Her living room was bright, cleaning-lady clean, with Beethoven on the stereo, pictures of her clean-cut (heterosexual) children, smiling, above the dining room table.

As soon as he was in the door and it was locked, he fell into the sofa and sat there, slumped, while she fetched him coffee. “And I have that chocolate hazelnut torte you love so much from O'Hanlon's,” she called from the kitchen. “I'll cut you a piece.”

He smiled, unable to move, and waited for her to bring him the coffee and cake and sit down next to him.

“How was your day?” he asked.

“Crazy. That goddamned Krautheimmer is going to drive me insane, trying to plan this conference around all his agendas. But I don't want to talk about me! Natty, what happened?”

He shrugged. “Nothing unusual. A fight.” And suddenly, to his own surprise, he was weeping.

“Natty,” Lillian said. “Oh, Natty.” And putting down her mug and cake plate, she enfolded him in her chiffon-enfolded arms.

“Jesus, Lil, I don't think I can take another day of it,” Nat was muttering. “I just don't think I can take another day of it. She's crazy, Lil. No, no, she's not crazy. She's just so unhappy she does crazy things.”

“She needs help,” Lillian said quietly, strumming his hair with her long fingers.

“Coming to you like this, it's my salvation,” Nat said. “But as soon as I'm here, I start thinking, Why does it have to end in the morning? God, why do I have to go back, why do I have to go back? God help me, I wish she would die. I can't believe it, I wish she would die.”

“It's okay,” Lillian said. “It's okay.”

“But, Lil, I'm so scared when I think that. I hate myself for thinking that. I mean, it's all my fault.”

“What's your fault?”

“Everything. The cancer, everything. Her whole life is my fault.”

“No,” Lillian said, and pushed his head away. “Now look at me, Nat. She may be miserable and she may have cancer and you may have done some shitty things to her, but her life is not your fault. No one's life is anyone's fault. God knows, it took me long enough to learn it, but I did. We make our own choices, all of us, Louise as much as anyone else.”

“I guess, Lil.” He sniffled and, taking a kleenex from a box on the coffee table, blew his nose.

“Nat, I've told you before—”

He shook his head.

“Nat, it could be the best thing you could do. For her as well as yourself. It could be just what it takes to force her to take her life into her own hands.”

“She can't live without me,” Nat said quietly.

“Don't be so sure,” Lillian said. “Women have made remarkable recoveries, they've come to life in ways you wouldn't believe, and I think Louise could too.” And then, suddenly, she laughed. “Me, the great feminist,” she said. “The other woman. I mean, looking at it objectively, it's Louise I'm interested in, Louise I want to help. But I don't suppose she'd accept my help. Oh, well. The great, selfless Lillian Rubenstein-Kraft deludes herself again. Thinking I want you to leave her for
her
sake.”

Thus admitting for the first time that evening her own unhappiness with the situation, Lillian turned away.

Nat laughed a little at that as, standing from the sofa, Lillian drew the living room blinds.

The phone rang. Immediately they both turned to look at it and, like people willed into enchantment or hypnosis, froze.

“I'm not going to get it,” Lillian said.

“Don't get it,” Nat said.

“I'm not going to get it.”

They kept standing there, and as the phone kept ringing, they looked intently into each other's eyes across the room. Counting. Finally, when it was silent, they breathed and moved to each other in the center. Their hands intertwined.

“It
is
okay,” Lillian said. “Remember, what we have is okay. We have rich, full lives. We'll take what we can get for the moment, and in the future?” She shrugged. “Who knows what'll happen? Right?”

Nat smiled. “Right,” he said. “God, I wonder if that was her calling.”

“It doesn't matter,” Lillian said. “For the moment it really doesn't matter. It could have been my kids, but they'll call back. You know anyone can call back.”

“Yes,” he said. “You're right. But you know—oh, I don't know, maybe I should go home tonight. I mean, she was so upset, out there on the street, barefoot. I don't trust her. It's come far before; it's never come this far. Could it go farther? I mean, we are on the very horizon of finally saying the truth to each other, and yet somehow we hold back before saying it—you know, I'm in love with Lillian,' ‘You can't leave me until I'm dead, I won't let you,' ‘I can't live with you,' ‘I can't live without you.' All of it. So we keep going in circles, and I think sometimes maybe the anxiety is giving her the cancer, or making it worse—I've read that could happen—and I think—God forgive me—sometimes I think I'm glad, I think I want her to get sicker so I can get on with my life, but then other times I'm just flooded with memories, flooded with memories of the children, us as a family, and I look at her and try to imagine not looking at her—I mean, her not being there to look at, you know? Her not being there to make a fuss or object or yell. You fill the dishwasher the wrong way and instead of a lecture—nothing. Because she's gone. And I think of turning on the dishwasher and the dishwasher starting and her being gone and, Lil, something caves in—it's like I'm gone too. I just can't stand the thought of losing her, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Which is maybe also why I can't leave—not just for her sake. I mean, Lil, forty years! Jesus God, forty years!”

For a moment they were both silent. Lillian looked away.

“Well,” he said. “Well. What to do now?”

“I feel like a criminal,” Lillian said quietly. “You know, for my own sake, I'm encouraging you to do things I'm not sure I really, objectively believe you should do, not in my heart.”

“Everyone deserves some happiness, Lil,” Nat said. “But you can only obligate others to your own happiness so long—up to a certain limit, that is. So the question is, When do you reach the limit? I mean, is marriage like sharecropping or something? Is it perpetual debt?” He shook his head crossly. “I refuse that model. I've given Louise enough to satisfy my own—moral code. Now I have to think of myself.”

“And not leave her,” Lillian said.

They were silent for a few breaths.

“And not leave her,” Nat said.

___________

Later that night Louise, who was in truth far too fearful of Lillian's voice even to consider phoning there, heard her own phone ring. She was sitting in the living room in her bathrobe, the knitting needles knocking gently, one against the other, the television talking in the background. When she heard the phone, she stood slowly, wondering if it might be Nat. She thought she should let it ring a few times, then changed her mind and lifted the receiver to her ear.

“Mom, it's me,” Danny said.

“Oh, Danny, hi!”

“How are you?”

“Oh, you know. Okay. How are you?”

“I'm fine. I was wondering if I could talk to Dad, I have a money question—”

“Well, actually, Danny, he's not home.” She paused to come up with an excuse for him, then decided he didn't deserve one. “He's visiting a friend,” she said.

There was a moment of silence during which Danny apparently decided not to pick up on her cue. “It's nothing urgent,” he said. “Can he call me tomorrow?”

“Sure he can.”

“Good. Anyway, anything important up?”

“Not much,” Louise said. “I'm thinking of becoming a Catholic.”

There was another brief silence. “Excuse me?” Danny said.

“I just said I was thinking of becoming a Catholic.”

“A Catholic. Why?”

“I think Catholicism offers a lot to people who have to be alone.” (In fact, this idea hadn't occurred to her until that moment, but it seemed true as she said it.)

“Well,” Danny said, flustered, “I don't know much about Catholicism. Forgive me, Mom, if I sound surprised, but I never thought you were a religious person.”

“I haven't been up until now. But my life is changing, Danny. I need to do something—because of my life.” Suddenly she felt herself on the
verge of crying, talking about her life like that. Already she had gone too far; she didn't want him to know she was crying. So she covered the mouthpiece with her hand and struggled to control her breath.

“I think it's great that you want to change your life, Mom, but—well, what about getting a job? Wouldn't that be a good idea? You were talking about that last week!”

“Danny!” she said. “Who would hire me?”

“Lots of people! Anyway, I thought you were going to apply at World Savings.”

She laughed. “Don't be silly. A dumb old lady who doesn't have a college degree—what would they want with me at World Savings?”

“Mom, you're not dumb or old. You're very smart.”

“Well, that's very sweet of you, son, to say so.”

“I mean it.”

“Thank you. It's always nice to know you can depend on your children for flattery, even when you're an old rotten hag.”

“Mom, for Christ's sake!”

“Listen, Danny,” she said, “I have to go—something's in the oven.”

“Mom, I—”

“I'll talk to you soon, honey. Don't worry about me, I'm fine.”

“Mom—” He sighed, whether with relief or frustration she couldn't tell. “Okay, then. Bye.”

She hung up quickly, blew her nose. Instinctively she moved to the kitchen, as if there really were something in the oven. But of course there wasn't. She turned it on to clean itself.

But as she walked back to the living room, the vision returned to her: the vision of the stone cell, the white robe, the gentle relinquishing as the scissors snipped away and the hair fell in locks to the floor. It stunned her, this vision; she suddenly had no strength, and she crouched where she stood, in the middle of the dining room, almost in a position of prayer. With her hands she pressed shut her eyelids, as if by pressing she could really block out the vision encroaching upon her. “Dear Lord,” she said. “Dear God. Dear Lord.”

So she remained, on her knees, in the dining room, for what seemed like several hours. She was trying not to think of her husband and his two-named lover, but instead to feel the ecstatic release as those inevitable shears—cutting, cutting—removed from her the burdens of her life.

Eventually she stood up. One of her feet had fallen asleep, and the buzzing was like a cry uttered by her body, a cry for life anyway.

She hobbled toward the bedroom. It was well past two. One more day of life, one more day in the world, she thought, and tried to remember—as she got into the bed, penitent, purified, and vowed to eternal silence—that this in itself was something to be happy for.

F
rom their first meeting Walter had felt a curious affinity for Louise. Some quality of unadmitted hesitancy, in eyes that would have looked, to most people, steadfast and determined, came through to him as he shook her hand at the San Francisco airport. It was the end of the first semester of his second year at law school, and even though they'd known each other only a month and a half, Danny was bringing Walter home for Christmas. (“But isn't it a little premature for that?” Walter had asked. “No, no,” Danny said, “it's right, it feels right to me.”) Once Walter agreed, Danny lied over the phone, telling his mother they'd known each other nearly six months. Apparently his need to show Walter to his family was so urgent that he felt no qualms about stretching their brief courtship out like that, and not only to Louise; soon he was telling everyone they'd known each other six months; he even had himself convinced they'd known each other six months. (Six months! It had seemed an inconceivably long time then, since it was nearly six times as long as they had, in fact, been together. Now six months passed in a breath, an instant, and each day that point at which their time together would be doubled receded further and further into the future.)