Life Drawing (25 page)

“It isn’t that. It isn’t that at all, really. She’s …” He turned to me. “Do you want to hear all this, Gus?”

No, I did not. I, Gus Edelman, emphatically did not want to hear this. Nor did I want it to be true. Nor did I want to be stuck behind an enormous truck that moved with the vehicular equivalent of a series of spasmodic coughs. I didn’t want anything that
was happening to be happening. But I had also slipped into some other mode. An insensate autopilot mode. As though there were some emergency preparedness crew inside me ready to take over, to behave calmly, to focus on damage control.

“I want us to do whatever is most likely to help,” I said. “If it helps you to talk about her, then I think you should talk about her.”

He didn’t respond. The truck changed lanes. I prayed to a vast imaginary power that he wouldn’t want to talk about her.

“No,” he finally said. “I don’t think it will help.”

We were silent all the way to Greenwich.

“What do you want to happen?” I finally asked. “Are you considering …?”

“Honestly, Gus, I just wish she had never shown up.”

He meant Alison—not Nora. I knew from the harshness of his tone.

“She was supposed to stay only weeks,” I said. “Remember? It’s almost funny, isn’t it?”

“Almost.”

We didn’t speak again until Bridgeport.

“The reason I’m telling you, Gus, is because … because back with that other thing, back before, the part I couldn’t bear was the lying. I don’t want to do that to you.”

Even in disloyalty, he was the better person.

“I appreciate your telling me,” I said. “I would hate the lies too. I will say it again, for the billionth time, I am eternally sorry that I put you through that. But I guess, I’m just not sure what exactly you are telling me. Have you …?”

“No. We haven’t … nothing like that … Though a couple of nights ago …”

I felt immediately ill.

“We were in the barn and she … she told me how she feels.”

I could picture it too clearly. Nora sitting on our old couch, her
shoes off, her feet tucked under her. Doubtless, pages of his on her lap. That earnestness of hers in full flower.
I’ve fallen in love with you, Owen
.

“And you told her what in return?”

“Nothing really. But my guard was down. I couldn’t muster … I didn’t say much.”

“Of course your guard was down. You’ve done nothing but moon over that child … Honestly, what did you think was going to happen?”

He didn’t respond. He wasn’t going to let this become a fight. And he was right. There was no point.

“Never mind,” I said. “I appreciate that nothing happened. And that you’ve told me.”

“I won’t lie to you,” he said again. “She told me how she feels, but she also told me she would never act on it. That she had to tell me, but not because she would ever do anything …”

“And you believed her? Why? Because she wears a cross around her neck? Or is it her beatific smile?”

More silence. More miles.

As New Haven slipped past, I said, “Can’t you just send her away? Tell her the way she feels about you makes it impossible having her next door. Because she must have friends she can stay with. It really can’t be that the property next to ours is the only patch of land on this planet where she can exist and thrive.”

He didn’t respond. Another minute passed by. And then another.

He didn’t want her to go.

“Ah.” I changed lanes for no reason. “I guess it’s more complicated than that.” He really was in love with her—or something like. “Okay. What do you need from me?” It was the question I had sworn I would ask if this day ever came. “What can I do to help make this better? And keep us together? Assuming that’s what you want. Maybe the two of us should stay in Cape Cod. If
she can’t leave, maybe we should be the ones to leave. If you can’t bring yourself to send her away, maybe you could bring yourself to stay away. Until …”

But I had lost him, I could tell. His mind was elsewhere.

“Five years ago,” he said. “You told me, afterward, you told me that you had needed … all of it. That it was, I don’t know. It was part of a journey you were on. That it had felt necessary to you.”

“I don’t believe I said ‘journey.’ I don’t say things like ‘part of a journey.’ That doesn’t sound like me.”

“Let me finish, Gus. This is difficult.”

“It’s difficult all around, Owen. Just in case that’s lost on you.”

“I don’t want to sleep with her, Gus.”

“Oh, please.” The image, sudden, vivid, seared. “The hell you don’t.”

“I don’t mean I have no desire. I mean I don’t want it to happen. And it won’t. I wouldn’t. She wouldn’t either. But there’s something I need to see through. I don’t think we can fix this with geography … Not by sending her away or by our running off to Europe. Or the Cape—with my parents, for God’s sake. You’d last ten minutes. And anyway I don’t think that’s going to help here. I suppose what I’m asking you to do …”

“You’re asking an awful lot. If you’re asking what I think you’re asking.”

“When I stuck with you, Gus, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I don’t know if you ever understood. It actually wasn’t possible. That’s how it felt. For longer than you know. I was doing something I wasn’t capable of doing … And you’re the one who told me this. That sometimes life demands things of you, that just the fact of being alive means allowing for possibilities that may be far from what you’d planned or even hoped.”

“God, I just wish she weren’t so young. I wish it weren’t such a fucking cliché.”

“She’s young, but she’s also not young.”

“Oh, please, Owen, spare me.”

“It isn’t her youth I’m …”

“Let me guess. It’s her wisdom. It’s her spirituality.”

“Gus, if you let me see this through, it will be all right.”

“If I let you see this through? What does that even mean?”

He was shaking his head. “It doesn’t mean sex,” he said.

“Really? Can you honestly tell me that her confession of her love left you unstirred? Was she wearing one of her semi-see-through shirts? And you’re telling me you felt no temptation?”

“No.” His answer came with a strange purity. “No. It did not leave me unstirred. And I did not feel no temptation. But I’m not going to sleep with her.”

“What is it you want, Owen? Exactly?”

“I have never regretted staying with you. Miserable as it felt. Impossible as it was.”

I already knew what he wanted.

“But you didn’t know I was having an affair,” I said. “You wouldn’t have given me your blessing for that. It was over. Long over.”

“Not that long over.”

“You wouldn’t have put up with a neighbor, for Christ’s sake. You’re asking me to sit by and watch it all unfold.”

“Nothing’s going to unfold.”

“You’re not going to fuck her, you mean. You’re not going to fuck her—you say. Or you are. You haven’t been in this situation. I have. It isn’t so easy just to decide it isn’t going to happen.”

“I am not going to fuck her. And I’m not going to tell her I wish I could. And I’ll tell her she has to not say those things to me anymore. I can shut the subject down.”

“Yet you just had to tell me, didn’t you? You couldn’t have, I don’t know, put this down to a foolish infatuation and left me out of it?” But even as I asked, I knew he had done the right thing.

“We agreed to this, Gus. This is the plan. Your plan, as I recall.
This is how we protect ourselves, right? We see it through together. We accept that it’s impossible only to be drawn to one person for our whole lives. You told me that. That it isn’t possible. Not for everyone. So we take whatever steps necessary to work that fact into our marriage. And we stay together. But we allow for inconvenient feelings. We act like adults—and that one
was
your phrase, Gus. And I did it. I acted like an adult. I don’t know if you’ve ever understood how difficult that was for me. But this was your plan, Gus. So once she’d said that to me, I had to tell you.”

He was right. I had thought we could construct some kind of behavioral flow chart to protect ourselves. If this, then that. If that, then the next step.

“I’m afraid if she goes away, I’ll stop writing,” he said.

And there it was.

“So she’s your muse,” I said. “That self-satisfied little girl is your muse.”

“I don’t know what she is. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word ‘muse’ in my life.”

“She’s what got you back writing again, isn’t she?”
Unadulterated
. The word flashed through my mind. Unadulterated adoration. My love had been adulterated. By adultery. Whatever claims I might make, whatever devotion I might profess, it would always carry within its DNA the memory of my choosing another over him. Nature abhors a vacuum. I had left room for such a woman in his life.

“It’s been so fucking long, Gus. Since I could get anything but total shit on a page.”

I knew exactly how long it had been.

“You’re going to want her, Owen. Sexually, I mean. It isn’t going to be enough, just the fun of feeding her your work. The excitement of that.”

“It isn’t like that, Gus. I promise you.”

We had reached another bridge, this one at Groton. “Has she read what you’re working on?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Oh fuck,” I said. “Fuck you, Owen. That’s just mean.”

“It’s not mean. It’s not meant to be mean. It’s … it’s just what I need right now.”

“And what will you need in a month?”

He sighed. He looked out his window and then he said, “Gus.” Just that. Not even to me. Not really. But as though I were a thing or an event or a phenomenon. As though I were a problem and maybe also a solution. As though I were a fact that he alone knew and understood, a secret belonging to him.

“I can’t believe it,” I said.

“She isn’t going to hurt us. I just want to see this through.”

“You really aren’t going to fuck her?” I asked—though I wasn’t even sure that was the point.

“Truly not. Never.”

“So if I say, go ahead, spend time with Nora, let her stir your creative embers, let her play that role in your life, that’s really it?”

“That’s really it.”

“You’ll want to. You already want to.”

“I want other things more.”

“Don’t you feel just the least bit like a fool? It’s such a cliché.”

“I don’t know, Gus. Yes. Maybe. I’m writing again. That compensates for a lot of foolishness.”

“I don’t understand it, Owen. She’s religious. She believes in God. She goes to church. You’ve been scoffing at people like her for decades. We both have. Is it really just the prettiness? The young girl thing? And please don’t tell me you find her spirituality refreshing.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Gus. I couldn’t write. I began spending time with her. I could. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe I am an old fool and it’s all … pathetic. I would rather be
in a car with you for an eight-hour drive. But … but she got me back to work.”

“Great. I’m the chauffeur and she’s the inspiration. Since you don’t like the word ‘muse.’ ”

“It’s not like I’m having an affair,” he said.

But it was. Or it was worse. Very possibly it was worse. I had long ago forfeited the right to say that, though. “It’s a kind of affair,” I said. “You might as well be fucking her,” I said.

“That isn’t true. And you know that isn’t true. Let’s test that theory. How about I sleep with her?”

“Jesus, you can’t even bring yourself to be crude about it. Is she that precious? How about you
sleep with
her?”

“The point isn’t what I call it. The point is, I’m not.”

“The point is … oh, hell. I don’t even know what it is. I’m pulling over. You drive. I’m a mess.”

On the shoulder, we each got out and then Owen got into the driver’s seat. But I stood outside the van in the cold. I couldn’t bear the thought of being back in that space with him. Cars whirred by. I looked up at the sky, light gray, relentlessly so, no break in the cover, no evident source of light.

I had no choice. I knew that. Owen knew that. He had done the right thing by telling me about her professed love—an event, I realized, that explained his sudden desire to leave home for a few days. He had done the right thing, but he had also done the hurtful thing. Here it was again. The fact that to be truthful can so often be both right and wrong.

And none of it mattered, not really. Because I had no choice but to agree.

“Whatever,” I said, as I stepped into the van. “Just don’t fuck her. And don’t tell me about how wonderful she is. Spare me that, please.”

We drove in silence for a very long time then. We crossed into Rhode Island, skirted through Providence. All in silence. We
reached Fall River without our usual comments about Lizzie Borden and her axe. And when we spoke again, it was of other things, things like traffic patterns; and desolate New England towns; cranberry bogs in winter; and then his parents, of course. What dinner would be waiting for us in Wellfleet.

The empty Sagamore Bridge, so strange with no other cars in sight, seemed to have been built for us alone. I half imagined that if I turned around, I would discover it had disappeared.

B
y the time we reached Wellfleet, I had gone through a dozen or more moods. Rage. Disbelief. More rage. But when we pulled up to his parents’ house I was gripped by a strange elation. After all, what had I really learned? That she was in love with him? I already knew that. That he was inspired by her? Arguably, I had known that too. That she had read his new work? Only that was real news and it did sting, but it did something else as well. Whether he’d meant to or not, Owen had finally given me a chance to be generous to him. Maybe even a little bit noble. And at a cost that felt bearable to me, used to Nora as I was. And so by the time we got out of the van, I felt almost exhilarated.

This was by no means my usual mood when faced with a few days of Lillian and Wolf. Often, they made me feel inconsequential, like a sapling unlikely to thrive. Both tall, both lean, they exuded an identical unflagging energy, as though all those months and years of work in sun-beaten deserts had forged them into super beings.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
. The first time I met them the line had stuck in my head—as had the conviction that whatever had made them stronger would undoubtedly have killed me.