the Writing Circle (2010) (7 page)

O
N THE MORNING OF THE NIGHT THAT ROBERT OATES
Mullingford asked her to marry him, Nancy put fresh linens on their bed. With luck, he’d be home for dinner, but even if his flight were delayed, he’d certainly be home by that night. Nancy never changed the sheets while Oates was gone—she wanted to sleep with the nap of the flannel matted down by his warm body, with the scent of his breath and his sweat. But before he came home, she always made the bed up with clean sheets. Ever since they’d started living together, she’d done it every time he was gone for a business trip; it had become a ritual, a way of ensuring his safe return.

Nancy pulled the duvet cover off the down quilt, stripped the sheet off the mattress, and shook the pillows free from their pillowcases. A small white feather rose on a draft of air. She watched it float past the bedpost, then settle on the floor. She laid the folded fresh linens on the bed. They smelled of the lavender sachet from the closet, but she knew the smell wouldn’t last long. Oates had been gone for two weeks, and now, so close to the time of his return, she didn’t mind being alone. She wondered what it would be like if he no longer had to travel for his business. Maybe he would have to go away somewhere just so she could suffer their separation, the price she paid so she could savor the anticipation of his returning, so she could feel the relief and joy—no, it wasn’t hyperbolic to call it joy—of their reunions.

They’d bought the bed at an auction on impulse. It was their first purchase together, only three weeks after they met. By then Nancy didn’t want them sleeping in a bed she had slept in with other men, or worse, a bed he had slept in with other women.

On their first night in their bed, Nancy had said, “I guess I own this side, and you own your side,” but Oates had laughed.

“You don’t divide beds sideways,” he said. “You divide them across the middle.”

“And who gets which half?”

“You get the heads, of course,” said Oates. “And I get everything from the waist down.”

Nancy worked the corners of the quilt up inside the duvet cover—always a trick—and held it tight on the bottom edge while she shook it. Lofting, that’s what the saleswoman in the shop had called it when she and Oates had bought the quilt together. The saleswoman had given them a demonstration, expertly fluffing the quilt till it was inflated to three times its size. Then she had compressed it and stuffed it back into the cotton storage bag, tightening the drawstring top, a conjurer undoing her trick. It had made Nancy uncomfortable to have this strange woman handle their quilt, touch something intimate, something that would float on their naked bodies, that they would make love under.

Before she went downstairs, Nancy put on perfume Oates had given her for her birthday, Je Reviens,
I will return.
Strangely, she had never thought before that he might have selected it for its name rather than its scent. She touched the glass stopper to her wrists and neck, then ran it down her chest to the hollow between her breasts, stretching the neckline of her sweater. She dabbed her belly button and reached down inside her pants to the crease of her thigh. But she did not touch herself more, as she might have done if Oates were not coming home that night.

She looked at the bed and readjusted the pillows. It seemed important that the bed be perfectly symmetrical, the pillows aligned. When the phone rang, she held her breath for a moment before answering, afraid it was Oates saying he was delayed. But to her surprise it was Chris.

“By any chance are you free for lunch?” he asked.

“Today?”

“Yes, today. I know people usually schedule lunches weeks in advance, but then they’re always canceling and rescheduling. So I thought I’d see if you could join me at the last minute.”

“I suppose I could,” said Nancy.

“I’ll take that for a ‘yes,’ ” said Chris, “though I’d hoped for a bit more enthusiasm.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nancy. It was the expression she used so often it came out automatically, whether she was actually sorry or not. “I didn’t mean to convey a lack of enthusiasm.”

“It’s okay,” said Chris. “I’m sure you’re wondering why is this guy asking me for lunch? Am I right?”

Nancy couldn’t help laughing. “Yes, you’re right.”

“I thought it would be nice for us to get acquainted. You’re new. Others know you, but I don’t.”

They settled on a time and a place, a new restaurant in town called Xantha’s, which she hadn’t been to yet, but Chris obviously had. She did wonder what the real reason was for him asking her for lunch. He didn’t seem like a man who would waste a lunch on something as inconsequential as getting acquainted.

Nancy hung up the phone carefully. So far Oates’s return was still safe. She went downstairs to her study. She wanted to work on her novel this morning, but she had a deadline for the newsletter. She finished an article she’d been doing on the disappointing news about virtual colonoscopies and turned her attention to licorice, which had recently been implicated in a study on hypertension. It caused salt retention, contributed to weight gain, and raised the risk of heart arrhythmia. Still, the very word
licorice
made her salivate. She loved all kinds of licorice: the soft twisties you had to peel apart, the disks stamped to resemble coins, the bean-size pastilles that came in a little tin. Her mother hated licorice, but her father relished it as she did. He’d buy a bag of licorice shoestrings and they’d eat them together, twirling them around their tongues, dangling them into their mouths like black spaghetti. One time they’d started at opposite ends of a long strand and chewed towards each other until they were nose to nose. Nancy’s father’s top drawer always smelled of Black Jack gum. You didn’t see it around anymore, that blue package with the black oval.

Condemning licorice in her newsletter made Nancy feel like a traitor to the pleasure of her past. After all, she had eaten licorice all her life and hadn’t suffered any ill effects. At least not that she knew of. Old loyalty made her suspicious that maybe it wasn’t licorice but something else that would prove to be the culprit, licorice merely the innocent bystander. Studies were always contradicting previous studies, though it could take years for a reversal. All her newsletter did was alert people to the latest findings. But it was all so pathetic, really. In spite of all the fancy technology, they were still naïve about the mysteries of the human body. She could forgive the medical community its innocence, but she had more trouble forgiving it its arrogance. The so-called wisdom doctors dispensed was just the theory of the moment. Her father had known this. In his early life as a doctor, he had learned about it firsthand.

Nancy pushed her laptop towards the back of her desk and closed the lid. She realized she’d lost the proper narrative tone for her article. Lost faith, for the moment, in the voice she had created, that friendly, authoritative voice, the pseudophysician who informed, illuminated, reassured. She needed to get away from her desk, get out of the house. She often took a walk in the late morning as a break from work. She grabbed a jacket and went outside. Few cars came along her road at this time of day. The road paralleled the river, and she walked upstream, as she usually did, towards the Kleinholz farm.

Teresa Kleinholz was Nancy’s friend, though their friendship was constrained by their political differences. Nancy liked everything else about Teresa. Teresa was instinctively generous and worked hard without talking about it. She had a pudgy face, little blue eyes, and wore itchy-looking sweaters and scarves that she knit herself. Although they’d dexterously avoided talking about politics all the years they’d known each other, the bumper sticker Teresa put on her car at the last election ended any possibility they would ever be close. Even now, the bumper sticker, dirty and torn at the edges, made Nancy tighten her lips each time she saw it.

The Kleinholzes owned two horses, bought for Teresa’s daughter, Kate. Kate was busy in high school now and no longer enchanted by equines, and Teresa had inherited the horses and their care. One of the horses was a mare with an attitude, the other an old gelding named Jackie, whom Nancy had ridden a number of times. He had a white patch on the front of his face that looked as if he had leaned against a freshly painted fence. He was slow, gentle, and partially blind in one eye. When Nancy took care of the horses when the Kleinholzes were out of town, she was partial to Jackie, sneaking him an extra apple. Today, as she climbed the hill towards the farm, she recognized the vet’s black pickup truck in the driveway and walked faster. When she got closer, she saw a little tableau in the far corner of the field: Jackie was lying on the ground, with Teresa and the vet bent over him. The mare stood eyeing things from a safe distance.

Nancy leaned on the fence and tried to make out what was going on. Teresa and the vet were intent on what they were doing and didn’t look up. Nancy debated going across the field, but it seemed wrong to disturb them. Also, she was afraid to get any closer. Whatever was happening there in the field, it didn’t look good. Horses didn’t lie down like that unless there was something really the matter. Nancy turned and started walking back home again. Then she broke into a run. The road had a lot of sand in the pavement. Slivers of mica glinted in the sunlight. Nancy ran until she was far enough from the Kleinholzes’ farm, far enough so she didn’t have to see if Jackie was dying.

WHEN SHE GOT TO THE RESTAURANT,
Nancy found Chris already seated at a table by the window. She would never have chosen that table, where they were on display to everyone walking by. The glass came right down to the floor, so even their feet, under the table, had no privacy.

Chris had a pink, freshly shaved look, and his dark hair looked as if it had just been professionally styled. Oates’s hair was grey, and Nancy cut it herself while Oates sat on a stool in the kitchen, an old bedsheet draped around him.

“It’s great you were able to come,” said Chris. “I thought I should get to know you a little, not rely on what others said about you.”

“And what did they say?”

“Only good things,” he said. “What a valuable addition you’d be to the Leopardi Circle. What a magnificent writer you are.” He leaned towards her over the table. He smiled and sniffed. “Nice!” he said.

How much perfume had she put on, anyway? It had been a while ago, but perhaps sweating had brought it out again. She had a horrible thought that Chris might think she had perfumed herself for him. Was it possible that he thought she was available, that this lunch was a prelude to a date? She would have to work Oates into the conversation as quickly as she could.

But Chris was a step ahead of her. “Just so you know,” he said, “there are no rules about people seeing each other outside of class.”

“Do you mean seeing each other, as in having lunch together, or do you mean something more?”

“Either,” he said.

The waitress appeared to take their order. Chris had obviously already studied the menu and knew what he wanted. Nancy looked at it quickly and ordered a turkey sandwich, usually a safe choice.

“Aside from Bernard and Virginia, who were actually married to each other,” she said, “are there pairings I should know about?”

“Nothing currently,” said Chris. “Though I’m sure you know that Gillian and Bernard had their moment. Gillian and I, appearances to the contrary—and I am speaking ironically here—have yet to have our moment.”

Nancy hadn’t known about Gillian and Bernard, though it did not surprise her. She was probably one of the few women she knew whom Bernard had not slept with.

“In case you or anyone wondered,” said Nancy, “I’m happy to see people outside of class. But I do live with someone.”

“Of course I wondered. I knew you weren’t married and thought it would help to set things straight, right at the start.”

“So that’s why you invited me out for lunch?”

“Not exactly,” said Chris. “Though, to be honest with you, it’s better to know these things than to make a fool of oneself, which, as you may have heard, I’ve done more than once in my life.”

“No,” said Nancy, smiling. “I haven’t heard. But I’m still waiting to hear the real reason you invited me.”

“I just wanted you to know that, in spite of whatever Bernard may have told you, I’m really happy to have you in the Leopardi Circle.”

Bernard
had
told her that the decision to accept her hadn’t been unanimous, but he
hadn’t
told her that Chris was the holdout.

“Then tell me,” said Nancy, “just between us, as new friends now, how come you voted against me?”

Chris smiled a big smile. It was obviously a smile that had served him well in the past in his dealings with women. The waitress had come with their order, and Chris waited until she left before speaking again.

“Truth is,” he began, “it had nothing to do with you personally. I just thought we had enough highfalutin literary types, and I wanted a better balance.”

“Who’s weighing in on the highfalutin side?” asked Nancy.

“Gillian, obviously. It would take a warehouse of ordinary folks to balance her. And Bernard—I know he’s your buddy, but you have to admit he is a literary icon. And Virginia, although she’s a sweetie.”

“I gather you don’t like Gillian.”

“Nobody
likes
Gillian,” said Chris. “She isn’t someone to like. She’s someone to revere. And I, along with everyone else, revere her.”