Life Drawing (26 page)

Wolf answered the door with a quiet greeting, Lillian calling out from the living room, just behind him. “Hello, hello, welcome … don’t take off your coats, because we’re headed right out.”

“Only if you don’t mind driving,” Wolf said. “Our car is in the shop.”

He hadn’t hugged either of us and neither did she as she emerged. That was one of their peculiarities. Not only the absence of physical affection—which I was used to in my own family—but the way they could greet us after ten months as though we’d just been over the night before.

“I’ll put on a coat,” Lillian said. “Though it’s never really cold anymore, which would be just fine with me if it didn’t signal the end of life on Earth.”

They were strikingly elegant still, in that way that has little to do with anything as impermanent as clothing or as vulgar as money but everything to do with bearing. She looked like Amelia Earhart might have had she lived long enough for her cropped hair to turn white, with permanently tanned yet barely lined skin, and those loose joints of her son’s, long limbs, easy motions. And even in his eighties Wolf too seemed like he’d be best suited standing beside some early-twentieth-century biplane, white scarf fluttering, blue sky beckoning—not to mention that his name was Wolf, which wasn’t short for anything, his official first (or Christian) name being Edward, but was a title, an honorarium, he had acquired in his youth for quests or conquests or hungers unknown by me. Fearless. Happy. They were adventurers. By nature and in fact, putting themselves in situations time and again throughout their lives in which terrible things might have happened and sometimes did—which meant they were quick to scoff at such irritations as our impatience with having to wait endlessly at every summertime traffic light on Route 6.

I handed Owen the keys. “Tag, you’re it,” I said. “I could use a few drinks.”

I asked if I could step in to use the bathroom and Lillian looked at me for a moment as though I had named an activity of which she was unaware, and then said, “Oh. Yes. Of course. We’ll all wait in the car.”

Y
ears before, it had surprised me that they didn’t share our preference for the desolation of the Cape midwinter. I’d thought that having worked so much in empty spots, they would; but they were as sociable as Owen and I were not. They loved the six-month-long hubbub of summers up there, only tolerating the winter because they couldn’t afford two homes. Without the crowds and chatter, they worked on the seemingly ceaseless project of writing up all their adventures. Of that, they spoke little, but then, occasionally, a rather touching memoir piece would appear in a journal of archaeology and a copy would appear at our home—both their names listed as authors. And there were reams of typescript tucked into odd cabinets throughout their house, so though it wasn’t a topic of conversation it was a backdrop to every visit.

As were copies of Owen’s books—except the novel depicting Lillian as a young woman. At publication, her sole comment had been, “As fiction I’m surprisingly compelling,” a response that Owen took as a lavish compliment, given what she might have said. “It was an assumed risk,” he said. “The fact that she didn’t sue me for slander or royalties or inadequate filial affection is a landslide victory.”

The oddity of Owen’s ties to Lillian and Wolf—whom he too called Lillian and Wolf—had been a relief to me from the start. I’m not sure I could have married a man with the sort of mother I fantasized my own would have been, the nurturing, clucking sort, who would love me up—as Alison might say. But I rather enjoyed being the oddball daughter-in-law to a pair of distinctly non-parental characters who seemed to have wandered off the set of a Noël Coward play, brandy snifters in hand.

And they were good people, at heart. At our few early family gatherings, I feared that these university-affiliated archaeologists,
authors of books and articles, shabbily elegant WASPs, might make my Jewish high school history teacher father feel somehow lesser. But there had never been a glimmer of that. Wolf had gone out of his way to express admiration for those who could translate what he called
the mare’s nest of human civilization
to youngsters. “There isn’t an archaeologist worth a damn,” he said, “who can’t still tell you about the history teacher who first made the past come alive.”

The only truly awkward moment we’d ever experienced was when we’d all gathered for a brunch for some occasion—maybe Owen’s fortieth birthday, a June event—and Lillian made a toast to my mother’s memory, then began to quiz my father on the ways each of his daughters did or didn’t remind him of her. He’d made a puzzled face as if to say it had never occurred to him to make any such connection at all; and it was Letty, a usually quiet presence, who’d saved the day with an abrupt subject change, asking us urgent, out-of-context questions about whether we had any travel plans for the summer.

After that, Owen must have clued them in, because it never happened again.

S
ince it was one of very few restaurants open that time of year, the dark basement bistro was more crowded than one might have guessed from the quiet street. Everyone there knew Lillian and Wolf, which meant endless introductions and appraisals of the degree to which Owen looked like one or the other or, as was genuinely the case, both.

Once all of that settled down we had what was really our first chance to talk, and Lillian asked immediately after my father. I gave her the basic report, nothing good to report, nothing imminent either. As I looked at her face, etched deep by experience, by keen interest in the world, I wondered if she might understand
the new and better relationship I had with my father now that he was no longer himself but a strange, scrambled version of a man I barely knew, full of surprises, short on rules.

The drinks flowed and the meal won us over with its simple, fine quality. I found myself thinking that life was a pretty good thing, right then. And I enjoyed, too, surprising Owen with my good spirits.
Look, I can be the bigger person also. I can let you have an adventure, let you explore something outside the close of us
.

W
e had sex that night in the tiny bedroom down the hall from his parents. It wasn’t sweet and it wasn’t particularly loving. We were both drunk by then, both unguarded and both hungry for connection. At one point when he was deep inside me, I said, “Are you really sure you don’t want to do this with her?” And looking right at me, he said, “I never told you that.” I wanted to hate him, maybe I did; but I could also barely stand the level of excitement that I felt.

“Fuck you, Owen,” I said, for the second time that day.

That whole trip turned into a kind of strange sex holiday. We behaved in ways we hadn’t for years. We got each other off in the van, parked in vast empty lots. We walked on the beach, then stopped to make out with his hands under my coat, under my sweater. It was as though a dam of some kind had broken, or maybe we just knew that if we didn’t find the molten core of what kept us together, we would have no chance once we returned home. Or maybe he was so pent up from wanting Nora that he had endless sexual energy for me; and I was turned on by his being so turned on. Or maybe it was just the sea air. But for four days we were in a kind of haze of carnality, his usually non-parental parents transformed into strangely parental figures in front of whom we tried to behave ourselves.

“I’m so glad you and Owen are still so happy,” Lillian told me on our last night, as she and I put dinner together. “You know, when he was a boy, I wondered if he’d find someone who could warm him up. He was such a serious little man. But here you are. An old, happily married couple and clearly still having fun.”

W
hen we got home on Monday evening, I half expected Alison to be on her porch waving a big welcome, but no one emerged from their house.

I
hadn’t really believed that the tide of physical desire would sweep us right past Nora and the issues embodied by her, but I was a little stunned at how smoothly Owen settled back into the routine of spending his days with her out in the barn. And up close to that reality, I no longer found it exciting or even remotely ennobling. I just plain hated it.

He needed her. Or thought he did. There wasn’t much difference that I could detect.

Nobody outside a marriage can understand it, everyone agrees. As if people inside a marriage can. I don’t know why I set myself against crying uncle, and ending what felt like daily cruelty, why I didn’t beg Owen to run away with me, to admit that our sanctuary had been fouled. But for just over a week I supplied myself with reasons to stay this terrible course. Briefly, I convinced myself it was indeed the greatness of my heart. That I was a larger, more generous woman than I had thought. And that theory got me through the first day.

Next, I decided that I wouldn’t give Owen the satisfaction of admitting I couldn’t handle the type of suffering that I had put him through; and so a kind of fierceness got me through another few days.

And what of him?

Was he really doing this because those months and months of having no words to put on the page had made him desperate? Desperate enough to ask this of me? Or, was he just trying to hurt me? Or, was breaking my heart the only way he could restore his own creative soul?

I doubt he knew the answer any more than I did. He was kind to me when we were together, rubbing my shoulders as he passed, offering me cups of tea, cooking dinner a few nights in a row. Almost as though I had the flu. But he didn’t ask how I was doing under this new arrangement of ours, and we never mentioned Nora.

On my own, I avoided her as much as I could, heading indoors with a quick wave if I spotted her while I was outside, making excuses to suspend our dinners for four.
I’m not feeling well in the evenings these days
, and
Things are going so well. I haven’t been able to pull myself away from working, even after sunset
.

All untrue. Physically, I felt fine. And my work had all but stopped by then.

It was a mystery to me where Alison stood in all of this. We did try a walk together again, our first in ages, but I wanted to wring her neck as she spoke of Nora’s
work
with Owen, alighting each time on the notion of
the child
needing a father figure in her life. I did not wring her neck, though, or even audibly question her view. To do so was to break my promise to Owen. So I just wondered, mystified. Had she really blinded herself so successfully to the fact that her daughter was in love with my husband and he half in love with her? Was it possible that she had? Likely that she had? I had no idea. What did I know of maternal delusions? The only person who had ever idealized me was Owen, and I could barely remember that.

“C
an we talk?” Alison asked at my kitchen door, the afternoon of December twenty-first.

“Of course.”

She dropped her coat on a kitchen chair. It slid to the floor and she picked it up. “Let’s go in the living room,” I said. “There’s a fire.”

“N
ora and I had a conversation yesterday.” She looked away while I settled on the orange chair. “I know you’ve been angry and I don’t know if you can understand this, but I only did what I thought … I just, I just honestly thought that … I believed everything I told you all along. I wasn’t lying to you.”

“Alison, I’m lost.” She looked distraught, and also drained somehow. Her clothes, a dark blue jumper over a black turtleneck, seemed askew, her curls, unbrushed, were a great unruly mess. And she wasn’t wearing lipstick, I realized. For the first time ever. Even when I had picked her up at the hospital, her lips had shone coral, light. Even when she had stayed at our house supposedly frightened for her life. “I don’t know what you’re telling me,” I said.

“Right. Of course.” She took a deep breath. “I haven’t encouraged her … Truly, I would never have done that. I’ve just wanted Nora to know there are men in the world who … who aren’t bad.”

I couldn’t tell where we were headed. “I know that,” I said. “You’ve been saying that for weeks.”

“I didn’t encourage her. But … Gus, I don’t have any excuses, I just so badly wanted her to stay here.”

“I don’t understand,” I said—meaning more than one thing.

“I saw what I wanted to see,” she said. “I … I should have done more. I … I wanted her here. Away from Paul.”

I didn’t speak, just tried to take it in.

“He loves you so much, Gus. I knew Owen would never cheat.”

“What do you mean you didn’t encourage her? What are you apologizing for, then?”

“She’s such a hurt person. I know she doesn’t seem it all the time. Or maybe ever, to you. But she is. She’s never had a steady platform. Not really. I just … Truly I never egged it on, I just didn’t tell her to stop. Not the way I should have. And I … I’m not blind. But I did think it was just a silly crush. And then, yesterday,
she told me she had spoken to Owen. Before you and he went to the Cape. And I realized that even after she … declared herself, he still hadn’t sent her away. That he knew how she felt, and he hadn’t sent her away.”