Thomas nodded slowly.
—
What are the odds that six children would make it to old age?
she wondered aloud.
Probably not very good.
—
Better than they used to be.
—
I had dinner with the group,
she said.
But have you eaten?
—
No. I’m not hungry.
—
What did you do today on your panel? Everyone was all abuzz.
Thomas put a hand over his eyes.
I lost it,
he said, only pretending to be abashed.
—
What happened?
—
Some woman in the audience took me to task for exploiting Billie’s . . .
He stopped.
Which was all right, I suppose. But then Robert Seizek, who was on the panel with me, took the woman’s point and said so, and I was nearly shaking with the idea that a novelist, a fucking novelist, would say such shit. And, well . . .
He stopped again.
Thomas wore his collar open, his tie loosened. His shirt billowed over his belt, which rode lower than it used to.
—
You seem pleased with yourself,
she said.
—
It was a dull panel.
She laughed.
—
I bought one of your books today and reread bits of it in the barber’s chair,
he said.
I even read the flap copy again.
—
You did?
The admission rattled her more than she was prepared to show. When had Thomas had time for this? Her fingers nervously caressed the stem of the glass. Though the vodka was getting to her a bit now, making her stomach warm.
—
Do you teach literature or writing?
he asked.
—
Mostly workshops.
Thomas groaned in sympathy.
I tried that. I wasn’t any good at it. I couldn’t hide my contempt for the work.
—
That would be a problem.
She turned toward him slightly and crossed her legs. A different tailored blouse tonight, but the same skirt. He would see the uniform for what it was.
—
What’s the college like?
he asked.
I’ve never been there.
She told him that there was a quadrangle in the shape of a cross, with a chapel at one end and, incongruously, a hotel at the other. There were stone buildings and archways and leaded casement windows, made to look ancient on the Oxford-Cambridge model, but entirely constructed within the last two decades. It was a school unmarked by any idiosyncrasy or ugliness, by any of the
new,
which surely any institution that had truly evolved would possess. It was a universe sprung fully fashioned from the earth without having paid the dues of age. (
Like America,
Thomas said.) And sometimes it seemed a stage set, she told him, although the dramas that were enacted there were real enough: an abnormally high number of professor-student love affairs, alcohol overdoses at frat parties, a near epidemic of razor-cutting (mostly females), the endless machinations of jealous faculty.
I see my job as one of encouragement. It’s difficult to teach someone to write.
—
Do you encourage the poor students?
—
One has to.
—
Aren’t you just wasting their time? And yours?
—
It’s what I’m there for. I suppose if I had a truly hopeless case, I’d suggest alternatives. If I thought the student could handle it. But I’m a bit of a coward when it comes to criticism. And I’m an easy marker.
He smiled.
—
I had dinner with Mary Ndegwa,
she said.
—
I’ve hardly had a chance to see her.
—
She’s very graphic about what she missed.
—
Well, it’s the core of all her poetry.
—
Her son, Ndegwa, is with the Ministry of Finance.
Thomas shook his head again
—
a man who had largely isolated himself and was thus bedazzled by change; a man for whom a child’s life stopped at five.
Baby Ndegwa,
he said with something like awe.
I’ve never been able to write about Kenya. It doesn’t seem to belong to me.
—
We were only visitors.
In another room, a man began to play a piano. The bar was rapidly filling. She and Thomas had to speak more loudly to hear each other.
—
Sometimes I think about Peter,
Thomas said.
I often wish I could just call him up and apologize.
Linda took a sip of her drink.
I can’t remember ever making love to him,
she said.
What we did, I mean. I know that it happened, but I can’t see it. And I can’t understand how I can have been that intimate with someone and have no visceral memory of our time together. I don’t know whether I’ve simply forgotten or I was never paying very close attention.
She paused and shook her head.
What a horrid thing to say. I’d die to think I’d meant so little to someone I was once married to.
Thomas was silent. Perhaps he was struggling not to ask her if she remembered their own lovemaking.
—
Do you know we only made love four times?
Thomas asked.
In all those years? Four times.
—
Technically,
she said.
—
Rich was fucking my wife. I saw them through the binoculars. He said he wasn’t, but I’ve never believed him. It’s been a thorn between us all these years. If I’m right, I could never forgive him, and he knows that. If I’m wrong, he’ll never forgive me for thinking him capable of it. Either way, we’re pretty much screwed.
She waited for Thomas to say more about Rich, but he remained silent. She noticed that Thomas had a new way of holding his mouth; the lips a bit tighter, making him seem more wary. She wondered: was there such a thing as human decency?
—
Thank you for the drink,
she said.
But I have to go back to my room. I’m worried about my son. His lover is going to take him into rehab tonight if Marcus is willing.
She paused.
My son is gay.
Thomas looked not shocked, but almost weary with the knowledge, as if the weight, the weight, of all these
facts
was almost too much to bear.
Has it been difficult for you?
—
That? No. Not really.
She slowly slid off the bar stool.
This will be, though.
There were no messages from anyone. When Linda tried Marcus’s number, a voice, David’s, said:
You have reached the happy abode of David Shulman and Marcus Bertollini.
Linda cringed for Marcus.
—
That might mean they’re on their way to Brattleboro,
she explained to Thomas, who had taken an armchair in the corner of the bedroom. She propped a pillow behind her back and sat with her legs stretched out along the bedspread. She kicked off her shoes, and Thomas took off his jacket.
Whatever became of Donny T.?
she asked suddenly.
—
What made you think of Donny?
—
I don’t know. He was always on the edge.
—
Of disaster, you mean.
—
Or of great success.
—
The success won out. He’s some kind of banker and worth millions. Probably billions by now.
Linda smiled and shook her head slowly. She thought of Donny T. in the backseat of Eddie Garrity’s Bonneville, counting dollar bills in the dim light of a single lamp on the pier. Maybe it wasn’t the risk that had been the draw all those years ago: maybe it had simply been the money.
—
I want to tell you about Billie,
Thomas said, startling her, until, looking at him, she saw that this had been the nugget of his thoughts all along; and she reflected that his need to tell this story again and again was probably not so very different from that of a woman who had recently given birth and felt it necessary to describe the ordeal in detail to whoever would listen. She herself had done the same.
—
I play it over and over again in my head,
Thomas began.
I always imagine that if I could just reach in and tweak some tiny detail, just one fact, I could easily change everything.
Thomas slid down in his chair and propped his legs on the edge of a hassock.
It was a bogus assignment in the first place. Jean had been hired by the
Globe
to take pictures of a place where two women had been murdered a hundred and some odd years ago. In eighteen seventy-three. At the Isles of Shoals. Do you know them?
Linda nodded.
I’ve never been there, though.
—
Rich had this idea, since it was summer, that we could combine Jean’s assignment with a little vacation. Sail up to the islands and around, maybe head on up to Maine.
Thomas paused.
I hate sailing. It was always Rich’s deal.
Thomas shook his head.
He’d brought a woman with him, a woman he’d been seeing, someone I’d met some months before at a party. Her name was Adaline, and she was perfectly nice — in fact she was quite lovely — but in an entirely unintentional way, she was dangerous. Have you ever had that feeling about someone? That he or she was dangerous?
Linda thought a minute. Only about herself, years ago.
—
I think now that Adaline was a sort of catalyst. For some twisted thing that was playing itself out amongst the three of us — me and Jean and Rich.
Thomas was silent a moment.
Actually, Adaline reminded me of you. She looked just like you did in Africa. I hadn’t seen you since then, so in my memory, you were still that person. And what was uncanny was that she wore a cross.
He put his fingers together, remembering.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. And she knew my poetry. And was very flattering about it. And I’ve never been very good at ignoring flattery.
—
No one is.
—
And Jean saw this — how could she not? — and it ate at her, as it would at anyone. I don’t think Jean was by nature a particularly jealous person. It was just that, on that boat, you couldn’t get away from it; whatever was happening on the boat, you had to live with it. It was in your face, hour after hour after hour.
—
And Rich saw it too?
Linda asked quietly.
—
I have to assume that he did. Why else did he decide to fuck my wife then, on that trip? Jean and he had known each other for years. I don’t think there had been anything between them before that.
Thomas’s eyes went inward, searching the past.
No, I’m sure not. I’d have felt it, I think.
Linda nodded.
—
We were all tense. And Jean and I . . .
He glanced away and back again.
To say we were having problems sounds banal. And it was, it was banal. But they weren’t problems in the way that one can define a problem and then try to solve it and move on. No, it was more that the texture of the marriage had gone wrong.
Thomas sighed.
—
And so what do you do with that? Together you have a beautiful five-year-old girl. You get along well enough. There are no crises to speak of. Do you destroy a marriage because something vague doesn’t feel right? And, of course, you don’t know for certain that the marriage is irrevocably broken. Part of you is always hoping you can make it right.
—
Define “right.”
—
See? That’s the problem. In a marriage, you’re always working towards something, but you’re never sure when you’ve got there. If you’ve reached it yet. “Is there something more?” you keep asking yourself.
He slid his tie through his collar and folded it. He laid it on the armrest.
Jean and I weren’t sleeping together. Not often, anyway. So there was that to deal with, too, because it was all around us. Sex. In the mornings, you could hear Rich and Adaline fucking in the forward cabin. I’ve said that.
The
fucking
so harsh a word, Linda thought. His anger must still be sharp. Bitter.
—
I know that Jean thought for years that I’d used her. Right after I met her, there was an uncanny period during which I started writing again after a long dry spell. For years, I’ve had trouble with writer’s block. Jean thought I stayed with her because of that, that she was a sort of muse for me. I was never able to disabuse her of that idea.
He ran his hands over his still unfamiliar head.
And it was complicated by the fact that early on — before I knew Jean and I would be married — I’d told her about you. She knew I loved you.
He took a breath.
That was a problem.