Love Always (5 page)

Les Whitehall had led a charmed life: he was attractive, intelligent and amusing. People who didn’t know him well would be slow to spot the fear disguised as optimism. He was always well spoken, an extrovert. The older generation knew to watch out for men like Les Whitehall, but in New York someone who was that together easily impressed people. What Lucy’s grandmother knew to call “a smoothie” was now, at natural-food stores in the city, the name of a refreshing drink. In another town (might as well say another world) it might never have been apparent to anyone, including Les, that he wasn’t achieving as much as he might. When Lucy met him, he was writing a novel, taking a course in philosophy, playing racquetball and jogging two miles a day, in addition to his job as a college teacher. He commuted to teach classes outside the city four days a week. This made him a maverick to New Yorkers, and exotic to his students and colleagues. In a town where every waitress was an actress, every cab driver a philosopher, where the construction workers were doing field work for their Ph.D.’s in psychology, and the hospital orderly sang opera, you gradually came to assume that every Nathan’s hot dog was actually a dehydrated roast beef. It was taken for granted that people weren’t what they appeared to be, and no matter what
they were, you hoped that actually they were more than they seemed. The city was overcrowded, after all; people who couldn’t swim had no excuse for setting out for the island to begin with. Nobody cared much about anyone’s past. The present simply didn’t exist, and the real interest was in the future. Ask any New Yorker where to get the Sunday
Times
on Saturday night.

Les Whitehall was from Carbondale, Illinois, and if he had stayed there, he would have gone into business (his father and uncle owned a hardware store), bought a cruisemobile, married and had children. He was saved by a scholarship. He went to Princeton, where he dated lanky, loquacious women. He learned early that it was better to be quiet than to speak and make a mistake. Much to his surprise, his silence was accepted as the appropriate response of a superior mind. Everyone at Princeton was assumed to be intelligent until proven otherwise. More than the people he grew up with, the people who crowded around him at college thought in terms of black and white. It seemed appropriate to Les that from then on, those were the colors in which his classmates, in their tuxedos and elegant dresses, would be dressed. He kept up with a few people from that crowd. Lucy could never feel close to any of them. She was no longer sure why she had been so impressed with Les Whitehall. His optimism was part of it. And he had simply been so conspicuous in a town where almost no one stood out that she had been taken in. He was tall but not too tall, handsome but casual, one of those men who could change the filter on an air conditioner and your perception of what kind of a day you had had with equal dexterity. In time, she came to learn that optimism was not something he really felt, but a convenience for him—something he could use as a sort of weapon. When things worked out, he would say that he had predicted it all along, and if they went wrong, he would turn that against whoever had believed in him. Until she met Les, she never realized that fear, not strength, could make people resolute. He knew that he was handsome and forceful. He knew how he appeared to other people. He was so sure of this, and of their surprised and happy reaction to him, that he
would play around—the confession of weakness that lightened his conscience also made others see him as forthcoming. Anyone smart enough to suspect that what he did was tinged with bravado would probably be won over to his side, anyway: interesting, this elaborate defense system in someone so urbane. The childishness made them warm to him.

Another couple introduced Lucy to Les Whitehall, and after dinner he had taken her for a drink. Les’s talk was full of significant pauses and deliberate omissions. He made people want to find out about him, but he chose carefully, selecting people who would have the good manners to question him graciously, backing off if the board creaked, tiptoeing forward when the bridge seemed stable. When they got tired (it was impossible to find out enough to think you had gotten to the other side) he would suddenly take on life. He wore them out in a difficult situation they never wanted to enter into, then gave them something—a fond look, a hand—so that when they least expected it, they were safe after all. He let them feel approved of, but in reality he did not approve of himself or of anyone else. Anyone who had less than he had wasn’t worth his time, and anyone who had more was a threat. That was Les: he perceived of everything in terms of competition. He was still racing with the football, but running more slowly than he had in Carbondale, the letters on the back of the jersey replaced, when necessary, with his heart on his sleeve. The new goal was to get women.

He had gotten Lucy so completely that it took her months after he had gone to realize that it was so hard to talk about Les because in some sense he didn’t exist. He relied on people to invent him. When he was quiet, she had supposed that he was thoughtful; when he was impervious to other people’s pain, she had admired him for being self-contained and not easily shaken by circumstance. Women adored him, and had always been there for him. He didn’t reject them, but like everyone who required such a thing, he hated both the person who provided it, and himself. It must have been frightening to him that he really liked no one. When he came close to a woman emotionally, he would move away physically. It worked out well for him that
any woman he would bother with preferred an emotional revelation to a physical thrill. But these excesses were rare. Now, it was a mystery to Lucy why he had bothered to attach himself to her. Les took it easy on himself. He shadowboxed until he got his equilibrium back, and if he had trouble regaining it, he bounced from one woman to another, staying on his toes.

And Lucy had no one to tell it to. Just try to tell his colleagues with whom he had been so patient that he didn’t take them seriously, that his good manners were nothing more than condescension. Try telling the lonely women in New York that Les Whitehall was a fraud. Lucy would suddenly become ungrateful or worse, just another pretty, bitter woman, a simple stereotype; and Les—because at the very least everyone would grant that he was complex—would ascend to the category of What We Must Accept Though It Is Inexplicable.

It shocked Lucy to realize that she could think such a thing. Wanting to be talked out of such ideas, she had even told many of these things to Les, because he was so good at rebuttals, when he could not otherwise rearrange reality. The more convinced she became, of course, the more difficult it had been to even raise these issues. It was, for Lucy, as implausible as walking up to Machiavelli and asking to borrow a dime. Even now she was haunted by remembering the perfect lovemaking, the all-night conversations, the gifts, the cards inevitably signed Love Always, Les. After Les announced that he was in love with one of his students and that he was leaving, she had wandered around their house, rounding up the little notes, reading the closings, trying to revert to the way she had thought at the beginning: that if he had written these words, they must be true. Finally, unsure of what was or ever had been true, she took the coward’s way out: she simply turned it against herself. Night after night in the empty house, she thought bitterly that
of course
anyone else would have realized that the kiss that lasted forever would naturally become the kiss of death.

Lately, she had been getting closer to Hildon, because that distracted her from thinking about Les. She knew that he knew this. He knew that she knew. She thought he knew that at
some point, probably soon, she would step back. They were always there for each other in times of trouble. When Les left her, it had reinforced something she had known all along, something she always got in trouble when she forgot: that she could not be an exception. Whatever crazy thoughts men had about other people, they would eventually have about her. If they distrusted the whole world and trusted her implicitly, they would come to distrust her; if they were not close to anyone and they attached themselves to her, one day they would just remove themselves. If you demonstrated, day by day, that you were not the person they feared, they would be confused for a while, but gradually they would stop trusting logic and become frightened. Hildon did not think that anyone was a soul mate except Lucy. This meant that one morning Hildon would wake up and realize that he and Lucy were not simpatico. She was afraid because this happened so often—she dreaded it—but the truth was that she did not fear men individually. They sensed this and opened up to her. They talked to her—most men would tell her anything. Even Les had dropped most of his defenses. He had talked to her day after day, night after night. He had given her everything imaginable to figure him out, and when he knew that she had, he left. While she thought she was explaining things, in his mind she was creating chaos: he had secretly wanted her to consider the evidence, and tell him that he was larger than life. He had not been drawn to her rational mind at all; he had been drawn to the idea of proving that she was romantic.

Hildon hated Les—hated him out of all proportion, even. That was Hildon’s own insecurity: his fear that Lucy would prefer to analyze Les’s angst instead of playing games with him. He might have been right, if Les and all the men like him had not exhausted her. She had actually come to like the way she felt now that she had short-circuited.

Lucy pulled into the airport parking lot. She had forgotten her sunglasses and the glare had given her a headache. A redwing blackbird flew up and slanted away; it had the trajectory of a bullet, heading for the trees at the side of the parking lot.

She was twenty minutes early. A man in gym shorts and a
long-sleeved, embroidered Greek shirt was talking to his son, who sat on his knee. “You don’t bite,” he said. “It hurts when you bite.” The baby, who knew he was being criticized, lit up with the Smile of the Sprite. He puckered his lips and kissed the air. “That’s right,” the man said. “Kisses, not bites.” The baby shifted on the man’s knee. “What does the cow say?” the man said. “Moo,” the baby said. “What does the doggie say?” “Arby,” the baby said. “That’s right. Arby the dog. But what does the doggie say?” “Woof, woof,” the baby said. The baby leaned into its father’s face. “Cows may noise,” the baby said. The baby arched back, and his father grabbed him around the waist just in time.

Lucy hadn’t seen Nicole in more than a year. Since Les left, she had not seen anyone but Hildon with any regularity. She was wondering if this was the place to be anymore; it was the place Les had wanted to be. She didn’t even know where Les was. When the plane landed, Nicole was one of the first off. The baby in the white baptismal dress who had once toppled into her lap was now descending the stairs, a bright pink gauze sundress blowing up around her. In spite of all the times she had watched her on television and at the movies, it did not really register that her niece could be a star. It was hard to realize that other people knew Nicole, other people saw her perform. A man in a seersucker jacket was talking animatedly to Nicole. When Lucy held open her arms to catch Nicole, he seemed rather disappointed. The man was clutching an air sickness bag that Nicole had autographed. “Oh, Lucy, it’s so sad—this man’s neighbor has a son, and the son has muscular dystrophy and he has to sit in a wheelchair and wear a helmet, and I’m his
favorite actress
.” The man smiled and looked apologetic at the same time. He thanked Nicole, backing away, smiling at Lucy, colliding with the man holding the baby as he walked backward. “Boom,” the baby said.

“Listen,” Nicole said, brushing her hair out of her face, “I hope you’re not going to be really mad. The maid quit. We don’t have a maid. Mom had it all worked out with Piggy that he was going to take St. Francis, but Piggy had to fly to Hawaii. Mom said you wouldn’t die if I brought the dog. Oh, I
love the dog so much. He doesn’t cause any trouble. Piggy took us to the vet and they gave
poor
St. Francis a shot. He’s in a cage. Whether you like it or not, I’ve got him. Mom gave me money to put him in a kennel if it will really upset you, but please say that he can stay with me. Please, please.”

Lucy tried to take in Nicole’s rush of words. She had brought the dog. Why hadn’t Jane kept the dog? Why did anyone think she would care if Nicole had the dog? Where was the dog?

“You’re going to think this is really awful, but Mom’s in love. He’s a tennis player, and he’s twenty-five years old, and they’re going to the Inn at Ojai and everything, and Mom just didn’t have anyplace to put poor St. Francis but a kennel where he got
gross
fleas …”

“Twenty-five?” Lucy said.

“Mom said not to tell you—oh, he’s sort of neat. He’s taught me all this stuff about playing tennis. He’s very handsome. He might be twenty-four and he’s going to be twenty-five. This weekend is his birthday, and he was going to introduce me to Chris Evert, but I had my ticket and everything, and they were going to Ojai the next day and everything.”

Nicole spotted St. Francis’ cage. It was gigantic. She and Nicole had to tug together to pull it off the conveyor belt. “I can do it, oh, let me do it!” Nicole said. She began to unfasten the cage. When the top was lifted, St. Francis shook himself and fell against one side of the cage. Nicole put her arms around his neck. “Oh, I love you, St. Francis. You’re all right. You’re in Vermont now.” The dog’s eyes were bloodshot. He tried to stand, and thumped down again. “Is he ever going to forgive us?” Nicole said.

That afternoon, as the tranquilizer wore off, St. Francis dug up a rhododendron. For an encore, he treed the neighbor’s cat and killed a frog and dropped it on the doorstep. He peed against the side of the house, under the kitchen window, and ate no dinner. He was the quintessential villainous dog. As Nicole said, he was “a good boy.”