I Regret Everything (27 page)

When he grabbed my arm I screamed, not a sound usually heard in a Manhattan law office. My mother looked like she had been punched and my father reacted like he had suddenly found himself holding a scorpion. In sprung rhythm I was out the door, through the reception area, down the stairs to the lobby, and out into the street. The temperature was still in the nineties and the wet sidewalks were sardined with overheated people.

My phone vibrated. A text from my mother.

Spaulding, please come back.
J

I won't comment on the emoticon. There should be a word for when you love someone but can't be around her. I would text back later when I wasn't running. At 51st Street I got on the subway.

Jeremy buzzed me in when I rang his bell. I walked up the stairs and opened his door without knocking. I was about to unbutton my blouse so I could take a shower when I saw him seated at the kitchen table with a sketchy-looking guy. There were documents on the table between them. The lecherous appraisal the stranger gave me was not welcome.

—Bogdan's buying my apartment, Jeremy said.

I filled a glass with cold water. Before drinking, I pressed it to my forehead. As they continued to pore over the papers it occurred to me that my parents or someone representing them might show up here. I asked Jeremy when the two of them were done to come meet me at the Japanese restaurant down the street.

There was no way I would move back in with my mother and I couldn't go to Connecticut. And it wasn't as if I could just pitch a tent at Jeremy's either, especially given what he was dealing with. And he had just sold his apartment.

Begin / with qui - / et mind /
if goal / is cool / and calm.

I was eating soba noodles when he sat down. In five minutes we brought each other up-to-date on what had occurred since this morning. I got a little breathless discussing the encounter with my parents. He put his hand on mine and told me not to worry, I'd be all right. That seemed far-fetched. Then I handed him the envelope with all of my research.

—You should read this, I said. It's about all kinds of treatments.

—You're incredibly sweet to do that. If you want, you can stay with me.

—You just sold your apartment.

—First, he said, you don't sell an apartment and then immediately vacate the premises. I have the place for a while.

He called the waitress over and ordered a glass of iced green tea. It was nearly eight o'clock but the sky was still light. The restaurant was filling up.

—I'm driving to Montauk after dinner. Want to come?

The Volkswagen had a good sound system and I found a radio station that played the kind of ambient hip-hop you trance out to. The temperature cooled off once we were out of Brooklyn and there wasn't much traffic on the L.I.E. Jeremy was quiet. The last time we went to Montauk, I had slept most of the way. But I was awake now. I was so awake I thought I'd never sleep again. Had I just broken up with my parents? Was there a way back and did I even want to find it? My thoughts were like birds' wings beating in a confined space. It probably wasn't the best time to have a meaningful exchange but I needed to hear Jeremy's voice. The geography of Long Island was mysterious to me so I asked him to tell me about it.

—Look at your right palm with your pointer finger aimed straight away and then separate your thumb as far as you can. Your pointer finger is the coast of New York and Connecticut. Your thumb is Long Island.

I flexed my hand and he squeezed the coast and the upstate part of New York, too. Instantly, I felt better. Air coursed through the car and it seemed to cleanse the stink of the day, all the bad stuff that had happened. I didn't want to ask him questions like what his plans were so mostly I just looked out the window and listened to the music while Jeremy told me about Montauk.

—It's not glitzy like the Hamptons and the crowd that goes there in the summer is looking for the sun and the sky and the surf and the cliffs. The houses are weathered. They've survived hurricanes and blizzards and persevered. The ocean can be rowdy, even in the summer when the beaches are stippled with families.

—Stipple is a great verb but I don't think I could just drop it into a conversation.

—The beach is stippled and on a calm day maybe the water is dappled.

—Stipple and Dapple sounds like a law firm.

—But even if the water looks calm there are rude currents, this wild aliveness teeming just below the surface.

That's how Jeremy described it as we approached on the road from Amagansett: This wild aliveness.

—Stipple, Dapple, and Rude, he said. Pretty good.

—
That's
the law firm, I said.

Past Great Peconic Bay and Napeague, beyond a long sandy neck the land expands and the borders of Montauk stretch from the ocean to the Long Island Sound. The shops that lined Route 27 were dark when we drove through the quiet village. We checked into a surfer motel called the East Deck. It was important to him that we be able to hear the ocean.

The room was basic, a large bed, a couple of chairs, a desk, and a set of drawers. But it had sheets, towels, and a roof, and most important, no one knew we were there. Jeremy brought two bags in from the car, a large canvas suitcase on rollers and the leather bag he bought in Rome. When we unpacked, I put the Ganesh on the dresser.

In the morning we walked into town and drank coffee and ate eggs and hash browns. My phone had been off since yesterday. I turned it on and saw there were seven messages from my parents.

I texted my father,

Please don't worry. Taking a little vacation.

Thirty seconds later I received this:
Where are you?
I texted back
I'm all right
and copied Harlee. Then I turned the phone off again. I felt bad about it but also believed they might try and have me committed so a time-out was necessary.

When we walked back to the East Deck, Jeremy asked me what I was going to do today.

—Be with you, I said.

—I have to finish these poems, he said. I need enough good ones for a collection. I don't know how much time I have or how long it's going to take me but this morning I need to write.

—I understand.

—I know you've jettisoned your life to come out here. Any time you want to go back . . .

—No one made me.

At the beach surfers in their black sheaths floated like giant water bugs. I panicked when I realized I had forgotten to take my meds for two days. The doses were way lower than they had been but now I was going to do without them entirely. The situation with my parents was nuts, my own mental health was improving but still felt a little tenuous, then there was the assault in Connecticut that for all I knew had left me with post-traumatic stress disorder. All things considered, I was a rock.

A boy and girl around my age stood ankle-deep in the surf flinging a football back and forth. They were my contemporaries yet entirely different from me, so blithe and carefree in this paradise. I was the apple-bearing snake, carrier of knowledge, prophet of exile eyeing these innocents at the shore. Around me little children played under the gaze of watchful parents who lay on towels or sat in chairs sheltered by colorful umbrellas. A mother was slathering a patient boy in sunscreen; a father affixed water wings to the chubby legs of his baby daughter. Parents believe they can protect you from what the universe has in store but they're no better than some Indian elephant god when it comes to keeping the really bad stuff away.

In the village I bought a hot plate and a teakettle. That afternoon I put a batch of the Chinatown leaves and twigs into the boiling water. After a couple of minutes the room had filled with a nasty funk. I poured the viscous potion into a cup and offered it to Jeremy, who tried not to gag. It looked and smelled like something from a toxic dump. He took a few sips before emptying it in the bathroom sink.

—You did a good deed, he said, but I'm afraid this stuff is going to kill me.

 

[email protected]

[email protected]; [email protected]

 

Dear Parents, I know how worried you are about me and given how I've behaved in the past that is totally understandable. While I am still kind of a mess, I am no longer an unhealthy, self-destructive mess. I appreciate the good things you have done for me. Have faith that I will be all right. You will, too. Your daughter, Spaulding

 

Jeremy was seated on the bed with his laptop open. It was noon and I had just returned from the beach. When I asked him what he was doing he said he was working on a will.

—That's what you were doing the day we met, I said.

—This one isn't Mrs. Vendler's. Are you sure you want to be here?

—Stop acting like you kidnapped me.

We walked to the Sandpiper Café in the village. The bright room was crowded and we sat in the back. A waitress came over and took our order. Her name was Sharon, she was twenty-one, from Dublin, and working here for the summer. Her cheeriness seemed so real. I wondered what traumas she endured. A father who drank, a boyfriend who hit her, no one escaped. And yet she processed what the universe served, rose in the morning and showed up for work. I ordered a tuna melt and Jeremy got a fish sandwich and a milkshake.

—Are you going to tell me what's going on with you?

—I thought we had agreed to not talk about that.

—It's not an unreasonable demand.

—All right, one question. What do you want to know?

—What did your doctor say?

—We're all dying, Spaulding.

—I know that. But we're not all dying soon. I've been reading about these alternative treatments that sound . . .

—Please stay off the Internet. My whole professional life has been spent with this. I prepare people for their final voyage, that's what I do. I see them at check-in and stamp their passport. I wave goodbye and tell them to have a good trip.

—It's that easy?

—How's your tuna melt?

I told him it was the best tuna melt I'd ever had even though it wasn't, but I thought it would be healing for him to hear something positive. He smiled and I noticed the dark circles under his eyes. Was he thinner than he had looked a week earlier?

When the sun beats against your eyelids and you open your eyes, everything is washed out. This is the opposite of how I felt. The strangled shouts of children sad at summer's end and the crying of gulls. The pavement hot on the soles of my feet as I walked to and from the beach. The pungent smell of sunscreen. The rough feeling of sand on skin. Everything madly vivid. I swam and sunbathed and wrote snatches of verse in my notebook. We met up for lunch and after we ate Jeremy gave me driving lessons. Arranged in the Volkswagen's passenger seat wearing a baseball cap and dark sunglasses, he sat quietly, occasionally reminding me to speed up or activate the turn signal. It was the kind of experience a person usually takes for granted, but I would let my eyes wander from the road to Jeremy and try not to think about driving alone.

We drove up Route 27 to the lighthouse, then back around the airport and over to Fort Pond Bay. There was a seafood restaurant on the Sound and sometimes we stopped there and ate mussels and French fries. Jeremy didn't have much of an appetite but he liked to watch me eat.

Late one afternoon, Jeremy told me to turn left on Captain Barrett Road. It looked familiar and when he asked me to pull over I realized we were in front of the house he had been planning to buy. There was a For Sale sign on the lawn.

—I used to talk about the “psychological acuity” required to write good poetry and now I think, “How remarkably pretentious,” because I understood nothing.

—That isn't true.

—It is. Promise me you won't lead someone else's life. That you'll lead your own.

—I promise.

Jeremy got out of the car and walked onto the property. He stood on the grass and looked at the house. I sidled up to him and without saying anything he slid his arm around my waist. Anyone driving past would have thought we were the proud new owners.

—Can I help you?

A man was walking toward us. He had been in the backyard. Around my father's age and overweight, he was dressed in shorts and a burnt-orange tee shirt with Lone Butte Casino emblazoned across the chest.

—We were just admiring the place, Jeremy said. Who are you?

—The owner, the man replied. One of 'em anyway.

—What's your name?

—Who wants to know?

—Ezra Pound.

—I'm Claude Vendler. My aunt left us this place. Some New York lawyer was trying to screw us out of it but here I am.

—I happen to know that lawyer.

—You know Jeremy Best?

—And he regrets what he did.

—You can tell him Claude Vendler says he's a worthless son of a bitch.

—He already knows. But I'll give him the message.

—He knows? What the hell does that mean?

—It means he's aware of it, he feels terrible, and I'm sure he'd appreciate your forgiveness.

—I'll think about that. The place is for sale. You interested?

—Used to be, Jeremy said. But not anymore.

The sunlight flared in the windows of the house, turning them into pockets of blinding fire. I squinted and looked away. Claude Vendler said goodbye and sauntered in the direction he'd come from. Back in the car, I didn't start the engine.

—Did you really do what that guy said?

—It's a little more complicated than that, but I'm not proud of myself. Some people, Spaulding, when they get sick they become saintly. I don't want to destroy your illusions but I'm not one of those people. The whole plan was a mistake. I didn't want you to know about it so I tried to fix what I'd done. Before I was able to do that your father found out. I don't want to keep anything from you.

I turned the key in the ignition, looked both ways, and guided the car back on the road. For five minutes I drove and neither of us said a word. I reached over and squeezed Jeremy's hand. He didn't say anything else, just looked away and stared out the window. The car was so quiet I could hear my phone vibrating and because I thought it was probably my parents I wasn't going to look. Something made me pull it out of my pocket. A text from Marshall.