The First Warm Evening of the Year (21 page)

“I care about what Buddy would think,” she said. “That's why I'm—” She walked out of the room.

As I sat there alone, I was remembering when Marian sent back my handkerchief, and the aroma of her laundry soap. That same aroma was in the air now, in the wake of her leaving. It made me want to touch the back of her neck with my lips, breathe in the scent on her skin, feel her body press against me. Because any act of intimacy between us made sense and had everything to do with what she was talking about.

A moment later, I heard the click-clack of Marian's shoes as she walked down the hall, farther away the sound of a door closing, then her slow approach back to where I was sitting.

“I can tell you this,” she said, and walked over to me. “I have to ask myself what does it mean that we can talk to each other like this about all the things we talk about? What does it mean that we can be here like this today, and act silly in front of each other?”

“I want to spend the rest of the day with you,” I said. “Here in this house, or anywhere you choose. I want to dream about you tonight. What would Buddy think of that?”

“You know what? I don't know if, after all this time, Buddy would even know me. Who I am. He'd still be thirty-two years old. What would we have in common except the past?” She tilted her head back until it was resting against the wall, raised her face, and stared at the ceiling. “When you said that you felt Buddy and Marian all around you? Buddy and Marian are dead. I've been afraid to accept that. Even think it. And I hear your voice in my doubts.” She closed her eyes when she said, “I blamed you for putting the thought in my head. But you didn't put it there.” She took a deep breath and let out a sigh, while a breeze heaved across the room, joists creaked and beams stretched. As though the entire house had sighed. “I was just thinking. When I was walking down the hall before, there were once people living here, hanging up their clothes, girls' sweaters and boys' shoes. New and shining. It made me think about what they tell you, the things you find in other people's closets, or don't tell you, about who lived here. Or the things people discard and forget about. Not pictures and things like that, but just the things they keep and use every day.”

Like fishing tackle and a faulty gas stove.

“And what they leave behind when they go.” Her eyes were still closed. “What do you leave behind when you go? Or do you ever leave anything behind?”

I told Marian about those early mornings when Rita would steal away, or when I would, taking only what we came with. And the night when Rita threatened to start leaving her clothes in the dark corners of my closet, and wouldn't that make me feel the worst kind of claustrophobia. I told Marian that I would feel a terrible absence if she were to steal away, that now, if I were to anticipate driving back to the city alone at the end of this day, if she were to tell me that what she wanted was for me to leave so she could go back to her house and her memories, that feeling her absence would be a permanent way of life, and that would be impossible to accept.

She moved her shoulders, just a slight shrug, as though it had nothing to do with what she was thinking, opened her eyes, and stared straight ahead at the mottled wall.

She told me, “I'm sitting here wanting to make a case for—for not changing anything about how I live, or about myself, because of all the things we've said, of all the ways I've told you— Geoffrey, there's a part of me that firmly believes if I were to really fall in love, it would negate the love I have for Buddy, make it less legitimate. That's always been my worry. One of them. I don't know if I'm courageous enough to take that chance.” She moved her shoulders again. “And at the same time, all I want right now is to have the rest of the day to ourselves.” She turned to me. “Because, as you can see, there are no ghosts.”

I
t was no longer important to find places Marian had never been to, only that we spend time together, in the car for a while until we stopped along the way and walked close together in whatever little town we came to.

We sat at the counter in a tiny shop and ate sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, strolled down narrow sidewalks eating chocolate cake out of a paper bag. There was nothing hurried about the day. The afternoon had the feel of a holiday. In a moment the music of a calliope would swell, the aromas of cotton candy and French fries would sweeten the air.

I was thinking about all the other times I'd waited to feel the touch of Marian's hand, or the feel of her hair against my face, on the cold floor of an abandoned house, in a brisk wind by a stone wall when I stopped myself from pressing my lips into the palm of her hand.

What was stopping me now? Stopping us? What had always stopped us? The restraint of a self-styled decorum? This was not about decorum, and not about restraint. It was about constraint, deeper than a semantical distinction. If there was a specter around us, it wasn't Buddy alone, but Eliot, who carried his own pocketful of constraints, and the drag of those constraints was the string tugging at Marian and me. Not that I thought this was Eliot's intent. More the consequence of personality, and psyche.

There was no calliope playing. The air held only the stale smells of small town exhaust. The only thing waiting for us was our imminent return to Shady Grove. The afternoon had lost its feeling of a holiday.

I might have slowed down and walked a few steps behind. Maybe all I did was pull my shoulder away from hers.

Marian turned her head and glared at me.

“What just happened?”

“What just happened?”

“In your eyes. Around your mouth.”

“What just happened?”

“Geoffrey.”

If I'd been more reckless, I would have assumed that Marian's question was an expression of an insight into each other that informed our attraction. I would have believed that such a thing was possible. That what she'd just asked me was as much an act of empathy as perception; not at all a matter of chance, or caprice. A declaration. If I'd been willing to believe this, I would not have answered her with my silence. I would not have hedged. But my silence held.

Whatever Marian had sensed, the change in my footsteps, the expression on my face, she grabbed me by the lapels of my sports coat, pulled me to a stop and said, “Tell me what just happened.”

For a moment, I wanted to tell her to forget all about it. Only there was just the right kind of sunlight on her face, I could smell the chocolate on her breath, and there was her laugh, which I'd somehow prompted and which could never be denied—not that I felt steady enough to determine what I was seeing in her face, or hearing. I couldn't rely on myself to know what I heard in
her
step.

“What is it?”

“I'm tired of imagining the things I want to do with you. It isn't enough just to want you.”

“Then tell me,” she said, “what you imagine.”

W
e were leaning against Marian's car. She said, “I know I can trust you, Geoffrey. Now I want you to trust
me
.” She smoothed the front of my coat with the palm of her hand. “I want you to go back to New York, and I'll call you in a few days. You can wait a few days, can't you?”

Nineteen

T
his was the way Marian told it. The way it was told to her:

Whatever else Eliot was feeling when I walked out of his office, it wasn't envy for my talking with Marian the way I had. All that talking was too much talking for Eliot.

What Eliot was thinking about was Buddy and Marian planning on leaving Shady Grove. Moving away from home.

He didn't know why he was thinking about this. Maybe it was because I knew about it and he didn't, although he was sure his feelings had nothing to do with me and nothing to do with Buddy, either. It had to do with Marian and him. They never made plans. They'd never gone away on a vacation together. Why was that?

Alone in his office, Eliot thought about the first time he got Marian to leave her house and meet him in town. It was for breakfast at the diner. He remembered the solemnity of that morning, the intensity of her sorrow. He didn't mind it. He was glad to be in her company, watching the way she sat, the way the expressions changed on her face, the hand gestures when she spoke. It was just as he'd remembered from years ago. It was like sitting with a memory. He never told her how much he liked that, or how much he liked being in her presence.

He thought about the afternoon when he came by to move the boxes out of Laura's house and say a quick hello to her old college friend who had come up from the city. He remembered thinking that this was all he needed to know going into that March afternoon. Then he pulled up to the curb and saw that Marian had been crying. It was the sight of her crying, the return of tears he'd tried to wish away that disturbed him. It was troubling to see it and it didn't matter to him what she'd been talking about that made her cry. What mattered was hurrying to change the subject. Make the coin disappear. He realized it was a mistake letting Marian go to Laura's by herself that day; that he should have gotten there before I arrived. He believed that at the time and he was certain of it now.

He didn't remember when it had occurred to him that Marian had been crying in front of someone she'd met only a few minutes before. It must have been after I came back to Shady Grove and he saw me sitting in the town square and came over to ask me— He couldn't remember what he wanted to ask me, and whatever I'd said did not satisfy him.

Was Marian going to leave him? That's what he wanted to know.

His face was hot. The office seemed small and airless. It was about time he expanded, knocked a few walls down, raised the ceiling.

When he tried to work, all he managed to do was pick up the phone and start to call Marian at the nursery, put down the phone, start to call her house, put down the phone again. He didn't know what he would say to her. He wondered if he was supposed to want something more than their relationship. He couldn't think what that might be. Hadn't he behaved the way she wanted him to behave? Given her what he assumed she wanted from him?

Eliot sat for quite a while and wondered what it was he wanted from Marian. He had never asked himself that question before, and he didn't know why he was asking himself now.

After ten years with Marian he was wondering why they never talked of love?

But what bothered Eliot most was why, all of a sudden, was he even thinking this? Why, when he thought of being with Marian tonight or tomorrow or next week, didn't it seem as satisfying as it had just the other day, and when had satisfaction become important?

When had it become true that it was no longer enough just to be with her?

Eliot sat at his desk, head down, until he heard movements outside his door and realized it was getting near closing time. The phone rang. It wasn't Marian's voice he heard, but one of the guys. Was he up for some basketball tonight?

Later that evening, he was out at the high school shooting hoops with his friends, the six partners of the Bradford House.

Pounding the ball on the hardwood floor. The physicality of playing a game, uncomplicated, absolute and clear. Move. React. He felt like he was flying.

After the game, when he and his friends went over to the pub at the Bradford, they sat around the big table in the corner—the usual crowd was there at the bar watching a hockey game on the TV. The talk was about nothing of any consequence, the way it always was, what Eliot looked forward to, what he depended on had he given it any further thought, except he wasn't there to give further thought to anything more complex than the beer they drank and the jokes they told. As uncomplicated as sports radio and no more profound.

He was feeling lightheaded and it wasn't the beer, but this sense of escape, and if he didn't know from what he was escaping, well that was the point. As long as he sat there, Eliot felt as though he'd come back home and was unconnected to and unconcerned with all the considerations that puzzled him.

The respite, the
spell
, lasted until they all walked outside and Eliot got into his car. He didn't drive off, only watched his friends as they pulled away, going to their wives, their girlfriends. Eliot did not want the night to end, he did not want to be alone.

He wanted to call up Marian, and without any explanation tell her, “I don't feel like being by myself . . .” But he'd never called her spontaneously, or made an unannounced visit. Maybe he could change that tonight. Marian would meet him at the pub, or come to his house or invite him to hers. She would understand what he was asking.

He sat looking out at the empty sidewalk, and when he got out of the car, he left his coat on the front seat and started to walk. He didn't notice the chilly air, the quick breeze, only that he needed to move, the solitary man, hands in his pockets, staring at the tops of his shoes.

Eliot couldn't express, even to himself, what he was thinking. He once told Marian—apropos of something she'd forgotten—that he didn't understand why people thought it so important to learn foreign languages; but now he felt as though Marian and I had been speaking a language foreign to him, and that he needed another language to understand what was happening to him, or else what did all the talk come to?

He wondered what this feeling of loneliness was about. Why tonight?

These were paralyzing questions, without resolution, and Eliot was unable, not unwilling, to push them aside. He had to stop walking and brace himself against a tree. He felt the entire day cascading over him. All those words. He could feel their weight, their volume, pressing down on him, and what he felt was so ridiculous, what he was thinking so improbable, that he started to laugh, not with amusement, nor pleasure. He was laughing at the absurdity of what he was thinking. That he and Marian never made plans.

He and his ex-wife used to make plans, he thought. They took vacations together—Marian could have told him that you can't make plans with the past. There is no future to a memory—but Marian and Eliot never left Shady Grove.

Eliot wanted to take back that day when he saw Marian standing with me. He wanted to take back that afternoon. But what did he want to have back? What was he so afraid of losing?

It had never been clear to him before, and he had never given it any consideration, not beyond its chronology, but he and Marian had just one year to themselves, that first year after Buddy died. Then Laura came back. It was Laura, he thought, who was able to distract Marian from her sadness. Who understood Marian's sorrow and her mind. It was Laura, Eliot realized, who compensated for what he lacked. He was just the boyfriend.