Perfection (26 page)

I wanted to be with someone younger at heart, more spontaneous, though not as spontaneous as Tomas or Henry. The Daniel who wrote me letters was someone I liked a lot, even if the actual physical man wasn’t “my type.” But “my type” had gotten
me into a marriage of big trouble. “My type” was The Crush, and I sensed nothing but big trouble there. I thought I might do well to avoid “my type.”

One night Daniel brought over photos. I took out my albums, and we looked through our lives together. He showed me his life as a young father, embracing his then wife and young child, bundled against the cold on a skiing trip. I cried. His losses saddened me.

I decided—it felt like a good and rational decision—to be with him.

Daniel took a personal day one Friday. I followed his directions to his house: “Driveway on right, house with weeds,” he’d e-mailed. I smiled as I pulled into the driveway. He had not exaggerated. Presented with a bland split-level house fronted by a mangy lawn, I walked up the cracked concrete stairs and opened the screen door. I called to him, but he did not answer. In the hall was an old upright piano, clearly unused, since the seat was covered with boxes of sporting equipment and dirty clothes that might belong to a boy his son’s age. More sports shoes littered the hallway floor. I might have yelled at my own child for leaving such a mess, but in this case I welcomed the familiar signs of life lived with untidy children. Through a doorway I could see a living room with the underfurnished look of a just-moved-in space. There were no photographs hanging on the walls and no other sort of artwork, just two quite hideous tan couches, and a large TV placed in front of the fireplace. Farther on, a simply laid out dining room, the table strewn with a few magazines and yesterday’s paper. From the hallway I was able to peer beyond into the kitchen. There, it seemed, a renovation had been considered, but the project appeared to have been abandoned, given the evidence
of everyday life’s debris. The light wood cabinets were from some decades earlier. I imagined for a moment the time when they were new and this house set the standard for convenient modern family living. Now the plywood was peeling apart.

I understood that Daniel saw this as a temporary place, for which he had little love. Not like the wonderful Vermont house he often spoke about wistfully, the family home of many summers. This house I stood in now was more like a storage place for his life, postdivorce, until he decided what to do next. In profound ways I admired his lack of attachment. I felt overattached to my house and my stuff in a way that plagued me, especially when I allowed myself to think about leaving it behind. When he came to my house for the first time, Daniel remarked that I should charge admission, because it was like a museum of curiosities.

I called out again, and this time he answered. He was downstairs. I walked carefully down the narrow, carpeted stairs.

There, splendidly, was the oasis of his bedroom, the one room that had been decorated to his taste. It was a wonder of peacefulness, in muted natural colors of earth and sand, with the hushed feeling of an elegant retreat. Perhaps a retreat in Japan, I thought, noting the row of Asian ceramic pots arranged elegantly across a low wooden dresser. A painted screen of swooping calligraphy hung on one wall. He had told me that his parents had spent some years overseas.

Across the room was a low bed, where Daniel lay watching me, with the covers pulled up, looking boyishly expectant. I sat down next to him on the bed and started to undress, since it seemed the right thing to do. The sheets were perfect and white and clean. I noticed that there was music playing. A woman’s voice, achingly sad, accompanied by a solo guitar.

“Who is that singing?” I asked.

“It’s Patty Griffin.” It was just the woman and her guitar. The words reminded me of Joni Mitchell lyrics, poetic yet never obscure. I knew just the kind of sadness she was talking about. There was loneliness, men she couldn’t hold on to, bars she spent too much time in, children growing up poor. One song, titled “Forgiveness,” was so apt that I decided to buy the CD as soon as I got back home.

He pulled back the sheets and welcomed me into the bed. We made love quietly, accompanied by the sad songs. He was incredibly attentive and affectionate. I was nervous but wanting to enjoy myself for whatever this was. I cried when I came. I still felt confused about my feelings for this man, but at least I felt engaged and present and had no urge to run away. After, we spoke about our lives and marriages, and I observed that he was a good listener, even when I rambled on a bit. I slept for a time in his arms, then woke up with a start, in time to get dressed quickly and rush off to pick Liza up at her bus stop. As I stood chatting with the other moms, the time with Daniel had already become one of those strange, disconnected experiences where you feel like everyone must know where you have been all afternoon. But of course they had been busy with their own days and noticed nothing different.

I worried that Daniel’s steadiness would incite me to behave badly, like the moderately rebellious teenager I had been but absolutely was not anymore. At forty-four, I was a responsible working mother, who shopped, cooked, did laundry, paid bills. Mostly, I wanted to integrate my life as a mother with my time with him. After his visit to meet Liza with his dog, there had been no more meetings. I wondered if he already knew what I suspected—our lives were not well suited to each other, and there was no use pretending otherwise.
Yet every night when we spoke on the phone, he told me he loved me. I began to say the same, though I still wasn’t sure exactly how I felt. It was not the love I had once felt for Henry, or even Tomas. It was a sincere respect and affection.

Friends in town were heartened to hear of my new relationship and responded with dinner invitations. But Daniel didn’t seem interested in becoming more engaged in my social world. He seemed interested only in being with me, writing to me, or calling me up in the evenings to have one of our long conversations—I lay on the red velvet couch in my darkened living room. I knew that he was lying on his bed in his beautiful bedroom.

In December, we talked about going away together for a weekend. I found an inn in the Catskills and made reservations for us in early February. My brother kindly offered to take care of Liza. The prospect of the weekend away seemed like a positive step forward in our relationship of three months.

My college friend Sara had invited Liza and me to join her family for the Christmas holidays in England. We left as soon as Liza’s school term ended. While I was away in England, Daniel sent me daily and loving e-mails, but although I enjoyed reading them, I saw that I did not miss him the way I had hoped. This just wasn’t right, though it had seemed like such a well-conceived idea.

Unable to imagine a complete deviation from my married life, and in part to distract myself from the upcoming anniversary of Henry’s death, I decided to host a small gathering for New Year’s Eve after our return from England. Though Daniel seemed less than enthusiastic when I told him of my plans, he braved a snowstorm to attend. But as the evening wore on, I saw that my urge to bring him into my world of friends and family life was not likely to succeed.

I had been busy in the kitchen preparing food. I noticed Daniel’s absence and heard childish laughter and squeals that suggested that he had been recruited for Attack. I found him in the hallway looking beleaguered and possibly miserable, with a bunch of kids, including mine, hanging off him. He was, I concluded, done raising small children. He had parented with love and care, had made his sacrifices. My adorable seven-year-old would not be inducement enough for another go-round. I did not blame him—he was entitled. Eliot had been right. I’d have discovered this in time if I had been more patient. Now, unfortunately, Liza actually liked Daniel. I could tell from the way she was hugging his leg.

Shortly after this evening, he sent me an e-mail that would have been devastating had I been in love with him. He said that he anticipated a busy work period and that he would have less time to see me, though he was looking forward to our February weekend. I was too distracted to see what he was after—a gracious exit. If I had, I might have canceled the trip right then and still recouped my hotel deposit.

The January 8 anniversary
of Henry’s death was peaceful, though the lead-up was tense and sleepless. I invited Tomas and a few friends over to dinner. We raised a somber glass to Henry’s memory. Tomas didn’t stay long after the meal, but I was happy he’d come.

After the guests left, I e-mailed my brother to tell him that I thought I might, after all, consider a move back to Brooklyn. I felt guilty about all the money I’d spent on the attic renovation, but he didn’t seem troubled by that. He reminded me that my house would now sell for a better price. Take your time, David wrote,
no need to rush, just let things work themselves out. Some part of me was getting ready to move on.

Maybe both of us were ready. One evening Liza looked up from her dinner and announced, “I’m sad that Daddy died, but I think I can have a happy life.”

I had allowed the flirtation with Tim,
my other online correspondent, to continue intermittently. He had shown me discomfiting moments of drama that would have pleased, even thrilled me, as a younger woman but now felt oddly invasive. The most alarming was the winter afternoon when I found a note and bouquet tucked under the wiper on the windshield of my car as I prepared to pick Liza up from her bus stop. I had not been alone in my house that day when he drove up to leave me this gift. Daniel’s car had been parked near mine.

But after I received Daniel’s cryptic letter, I felt cooped up and ornery. Perhaps it was that hemmed-in feeling that explained why I visited Tim one January afternoon, and why I let him stay over another night when I knew full well that doing so was unkind and wrong. Daniel wasn’t for me, but he was a good person and did not deserve my childishness. In retrospect, I wish he had just dumped me cold. Then only I would have been hurt, and just a bit.

I told Daniel about Tim. I canceled our weekend trip, forfeiting the deposit. Daniel and I officially broke up. He wrote that he had concluded weeks earlier that things were not meant to last, and of course, he was correct. His letters, as we unraveled, became surprisingly mean-spirited, but I figured he was fully justified. I had screwed up.

In an effort to salvage something from my latest bungle, I
broke Eliot’s three-month rule once more and invited Tim over for a meal. The following weekend I dragged Liza off to meet Tim at local skating rink. He took her hand to make a turn around the rink, but Liza did not seem pleased. In fact, Tim told me that Liza had kicked him in the shin, which alarmed me—she was not an aggressive child. I apologized to him and spoke sharply to her as we drove home. Perhaps, I reasoned, she would come to like him better as time went on.

I invited Tim for another dinner. He arrived eagerly, perhaps too eagerly. After dawdling with him for some months, I had now abruptly offered him a chance to win me over. He brought Liza a present. She mumbled thanks, continued to survey him silently, and remained curiously withdrawn. Observing her, I knew that I had screwed up yet again. It had been too soon to present her with someone new. As Eliot had predicted, I was running out of chances.

After Tim left, Liza said, “Mama, I don’t really like him.”

“What don’t you like about him?”

“It’s like”—she looked upward in her characteristic way, plucking the kindest phrase from the ceiling light fixture, then returning my gaze—“he’s trying too hard.”

“Okay,” I said. I felt tears come and quickly wiped them away before she could see me fall apart. I had been reckless with two entirely decent men who had liked me. I felt like a spoiled brat who needed a time-out, or maybe a good old-fashioned spanking. A few weeks later, when I had gathered up the energy, I ended things with Tim.

After the activity of the fall and winter,
I finally took a longer look through the paintings I had made in Maine. Tomas
had been enthusiastic about them. Sara had always encouraged me to pursue my artwork, long relegated to the few summer weeks I spent in Maine. “They will be appreciated,” she said of my paintings in an e-mail. I took a few pictures to the local frame shop, so that they would feel more official and presentable.

Meanwhile, Henry’s book notes and research lived on, now unwanted relatives overstaying their welcome. Occasionally I’d go into his office and open the file drawers, rifling through the impenetrable documents. I struggled to read his longhand notes, kept in several small Moleskine notebooks, the ones Bruce Chatwin supposedly used. After the events of the summer, I had no interest in finishing Henry’s book for him. In fact, it required great discipline to resist hurling the contents of his file drawers into a large black plastic trash bag.

Irena had been right. I had been drawn to self-absorbed, creative men, and they had sucked all the air out of the room. I felt ready to try a life that wouldn’t be the death of me but would still involve some adventure and risk taking. Nothing as physically bold as climbing Mount Everest, or crossing the Sahara, but for me, who had played by the rules to a fault, a bit of daring nonetheless. Henry had wasted the gift of time I had given him. Eliana reminded me in all her e-mails that I had been given a gift of time and that it was important not to waste that opportunity.

I read the man’s profile. Here is Derek, and he is a bad boy. Let me imagine the contents of his closet. Black jeans. Black T-shirts. A few pairs of black boots. A motorcycle, probably black, unless it’s red. A black leather jacket to go with the motorcycle.
He lived in the city. It seemed like a good idea to start dating men there, to get used to
the idea of urban living. I figured that this man would usefully determine the outer edge of what I could tolerate; he’d be a research project.

One photo showed him with a naked, wiry torso. And was that a tattoo on his upper arm? It was, he replied, in his first e-mail to me, and there were more elsewhere on his body. I wondered where they were. I had one tattoo (a hummingbird on my right calf, a birthday present to myself when I turned forty), but I wasn’t a tough motorcycle girl, just a girl who had wanted a tattoo. This guy was definitely a bad boy, who rode his black or red motorcycle above the speed limit and could drink Boris Yeltsin under the table. I was counting on it.