Exit Ghost (13 page)

I stood too—only inches away from her—and said, "It's I who's rubbed you the wrong way. Beginning with the deposition." It was the moment to tell her that the deal was off. But I could only keep her realistically in my thoughts if the deal was on and we went ahead to exchange my house for their apartment. Then she would be living amid my things and I amid hers. Could there have been a more ridiculous motive for maintaining the impetuous arrangement I wanted so badly to break? I was hardly unaware of the flimsiness of the reasons I kept turning up to materially alter my life, and yet all that was happening seemed to be happening despite my awareness and without regard for my condition.

The phone rang. It was Billy. She listened for a long time before telling him that I happened to be right there. He must then have asked her why I was, because she replied, "He wanted to look at the apartment again. I'm showing him around."

Yes, Kliman
was
the lover. She was so used to lying to
Billy—to cover her tracks with Kliman—that she'd lied to him now about me. As earlier she'd lied to me on the phone about Kliman. Either that or I was so blinded by her appeal that my mind was riveted to the one thing as it hadn't been for years. Hadn't she lied to her young husband simply because it was easier than going into the truth while I was present and they were miles apart?

There was nothing Jamie could do or say to which I did not register a disproportionate response, including her casual chitchat with Billy on the phone. I was continuously unstable. There was no repose. I might have been gazing upon young womanhood for the very first time. Or the last. All-enveloping either way.

I left without daring to touch her. Without daring to touch her face, though it was well within my reach throughout what she had characterized as my deposing her. Without daring to touch the long hair that was within my reach. Without daring to place my hand on her waist. Without daring to say that we'd met once before. Without daring to say whatever words a man mutilated as I was says to a desirable woman forty years his junior that will not leave him covered in shame because he is overcome by temptation for a delight he cannot enjoy and a pleasure that is dead. I was in deep enough with nothing having happened between us but our abrasive little talk about Kliman, Lonoff, and the allegation of incest.

I was learning at seventy-one what it is to be deranged. Proving that self-discovery wasn't over after all. Proving that the drama that is associated usually with the young
as they fully begin to enter life—with adolescents, with young men like the steadfast new captain in
The Shadow-Line
—can also startle and lay siege to the aged (including the aged resolutely armed against
all
drama), even as circumstance readies them for departure.

Maybe the most potent discoveries are reserved for last.

SITUATION
:
The young husband is away, the sweet, obliging husband who adores her. It's November 2004. She's scared and distraught over the election, over Al Qaeda, over an affair with a college boyfriend who's around and still in love with her, and over "daring ventures" of a kind she married to renounce. She is wearing the soft cashmere sweater, wheat or camel in color, something paler and softer than tan. Wide cuffs hang off her wrists, and loose sleeves connect to the body of the sweater quite low. The cut is reminiscent of a kimono, or better yet, a late-nineteenth-century mens smoking jacket. A thick edge of wide ribbing runs around the neck and all the way to the sweater's bottom edge, creating a collar effect, although there is no actual collar: the sweater lies flat against her. Low on the waist, a tie made of the same broad ribbing is cinched in a careless half-bow. The sweater hangs open from the neck almost to the waist, giving a long, narrow glimpse of her mostly concealed body. Because the sweater is so loosely draped, her body is mostly hidden. But he can tell she is slim—only a thin woman can carry off such roomy clothing successfully. The sweater reminds him of an extremely short bathrobe, and so, although he can see little of her, he has the impression he is in her bedroom and will soon
see more. The woman wearing this sweater must be well-off (to afford such an expensive item) and also she must place high value on her physical pleasure (since she has chosen to spend her money on clothing used almost exclusively for lolling about the house).

To be performed with appropriate pauses, as each will sometimes stop to think before answering the other's question.

MUSIC
:
Strauss's
Four Last Songs.
For the profundity that is achieved not by complexity but by clarity and simplicity. For the purity of the sentiment about death and parting and loss. For the long melodic line spinning out and the female voice soaring and soaring. For the repose and composure and gracefulness and the intense beauty of the soaring. For the ways one is drawn into the tremendous arc of heartbreak. The composer drops all masks and, at the age of eighty-two, stands before you naked. And you dissolve.

SHE

I understand why you're coming back to New York, but why did you go away in the first place?

HE

Because I began to get a series of death threats in the mail. Postcards with death threats on one side and a picture of the pope on the other. I went to the FBI, and the FBI told me what to do.

SHE

Did they ever find the person?

HE

No, they never did. But I stayed where I was.

SHE

So—screwballs send death threats to writers. We weren't alerted in the MFA program.

HE

Well, I'm not the first, even in recent years, who's received death threats. The case of Salman Rushdie is most famous.

SHE

That's true. Of course.

HE

I don't compare my situation to his. But leaving Salman Rushdie aside, I can't imagine that what happened to me has happened to me alone. You have to ask yourself if the threat is prompted by what the writer writes or if there are people who just become inflamed by certain names and who obey urges that are alien to the rest of us. They may only have to see a photograph in a newspaper to become inflamed. Imagine what can happen should they go ahead and open one of your books. They experience your words as malevolent, as a spell cast over them that they cannot bear. Even civilized people have been known to throw a book they hate across the room. For those less restrained, it's only a small step to loading the pistol. Or they may genuinely loathe what you are, as they perceive what you are—as we know from the motives of the Twin Towers terrorists. Rage is plentiful out there.

SHE

Yes, the rage is out there, and it's unrivaled and insane.

HE

And it's frightened you silly.

SHE

It has. I'm in a state. Just being nervous and afraid all the time—and the shame associated with being like that. At home I've become silent and narcissistic and obsessed with my own safety, and my writing is awful.

HE

Were you always frightened of the rage?

SHE

No, it's a recent thing. All the trust has gone out of me. You don't merely have your enemies now. The people who are meant to protect you, they've become your enemy. The people who are meant to take care of you, they've become your enemy. It's not Al Qaeda that scares me—it's my own government.

HE

Al Qaeda doesn't scare you? You're not afraid of the terrorists?

SHE

Yes. But the deeper fear is roused by the people who are supposed to be on my side. There will always be enemies out in the world, but ... in your turning to the FBI, if at a certain point you had started to feel not that it was the FBI who was protecting you from the person who was
sending the death threats but that it was the FBI who was endangering you, that would have given a whole new depth to the terror, and that's why I feel as I do now.

HE

And you think you won't have these fears up where I live?

SHE

I think living there will quell my more reasonable anxieties by taking away the aspect of physical danger, and I think that will calm me down somewhat. I don't think it will get rid of my own rage—my rage at my government—but I can't do anything right now, I feel so on edge. Since I can't even begin to know what to do, I
have
to go away. May I ask you something?
(Politely laughing beforehand at her presumptuousness
)

HE

Of course.

SHE

Do you think you would have gone away anyway if you hadn't gotten the death threats? Do you think at a certain point you would have left anyway?

HE

I don't honestly know. I was alone. I was free. My work is portable. I had reached an age where I was no longer looking for certain kinds of involvement.

SHE

How old were you when you left?

HE

Sixty. Seems quite old to you.

SHE

Yes. Yes, it does.

HE

How old are your parents?

SHE

My mother is sixty-five and my father is sixty-eight.

HE

I was just a bit younger than your mother when I left.

SHE

That's a different thing from what we're doing now. Billy is not too pleased about the whole thing. Or about what it's revealed about me.

HE

Well, he can write there too.

SHE

I think it will be good for both of us, and I think he'll see that in time. He's more adaptable to begin with.

HE

Is there anything that you wish you weren't leaving behind? What will you miss?

SHE

I'll miss some friends. But it's good to be without them for a while.

HE

Do you have a lover?

SHE

Why do you say that?

HE

Because of the way you say you'll miss some friends.

SHE

No. Yes.

HE

You do. How long have you been married?

SHE

Five years. We were young.

HE

Does Billy know you have a lover?

SHE

No, no he doesn't.

HE

Does he know your lover?

SHE

He does.

HE

What does your lover think about your going away? Does he even know you're going away? Is he angry about it?

SHE

He doesn't know yet.

HE

You haven't told him?

SHE

No.

HE

Are you telling the truth?

SHE

Yes.

HE

Why are you telling the truth?

SHE

Something about you seems trustworthy. I've read you. You're not easily scandalized. I imagine from what I've read of your work that you're a curious person rather than one who makes superficial judgments. I guess there's a pleasure in having a curious person's curiosity fixed on you.

HE

Are you trying to make me jealous?

SHE

(Laughing)
No. Are you jealous?

HE

I am.

SHE

{
A bit startled
) Really. Of my lover?

HE

Yes.

SHE

How could that be?

HE

Does it seem so impossible to you?

SHE

It seems very strange to me.

HE

Truly?

SHE

Truly.

HE

You don't know how attractive you are.

SHE

Why did you come here today?

HE

To be alone with you.

SHE

I see.

HE

Yes, to be alone with you.

SHE

Why do you want to be alone with me?

HE

Shall I be truthful?

SHE

I've been truthful with you.

HE

Because it excites me to be alone with you.

SHE

Good. I suppose it excites me to be alone with you too. Perhaps for different reasons. We could probably both use a little excitement.

HE

Doesn't your lover supply the excitement?

SHE

He's been around my life a long time. Being my lover is a relatively recent development. There's nothing new.

HE

He was your lover in college.

SHE

But then he wasn't for many years. It's going backwards with him. The absorption is long over. It's retrograde now.

HE

So your lover is not exciting. And your marriage is not exciting. Did you expect marriage to be exciting?

SHE

(
Laughing
) Yes.

HE

You did really?

SHE

Yes.

HE

Didn't they teach you anything at Harvard?

SHE

(Laughs softly again)
We were very in love when we got married, and the prospect of the future, of merely having a future, seemed glorious. To get married seemed like the greatest adventure possible. The newest thing we could possibly do. The great next step.
(Silence)
Are you glad you went away? Are you glad you did what you did?

HE

I would have answered differently several weeks ago. I would have answered differently several hours ago.

SHE