Middle Age (41 page)

Since the terrible night of Adam Berendt’s cremation he’d prepared this scene. He’d murmured these words to himself countless times, like stones in his mouth they were, clumsy, distasteful. Yet they must be uttered, at last.

“Camille? You are listening—aren’t you?”

He did not say
Camille darling, Camille dear
. Not even to soften the

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Middle Age: A Romance

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blow he did not say
Camille darling, Camille dear
. Never again
Camille darling, Camille dear
. The horror of that realization swept upon her like the taste of impending death.

Yes, Camille was listening. No! Loudly Camille was humming to herself, squatting in a corner of the kitchen as Lionel stood in the doorway behind her. This, too, was a TV scene, a movie scene, yet raw, original, painful as a dentist’s drill without novocaine for the participants.
I had no
idea
.
Not a hint
.
No! We were so happy in that house
. With dampened paper towels Camille was vigorously cleaning the tile floor. It was an expensive tile meant to suggest the hard wood of an eighteenth-century kitchen floor with knot-holes, blemishes, and cracks. Camille Hoffmann had long been the wife of the beautifully restored Colonial on Old Mill Way; and Lionel Hoffmann had long been the husband of the house. Joint owners the Hoffmanns were of a property estimated at $. million.
We will never
sell! Never
. It was rare for the husband and wife to see each other so vividly, let alone embark upon a dramatic scene; since their children were grown and gone, drama had largely departed from their lives.
No, I never
guessed
.
How could I, when we were so happy!
Yet now the household air quivered like the air before an electric storm.

Camille was wiping the floor clean in wide, guilty swipes. For Apollo had made a mess, eating. And Lionel wasn’t supposed to know that, in his absence, the dog was often fed indoors and not outdoors as Camille had eagerly promised he’d be fed; Lionel wasn’t supposed to know (of course, Lionel knew: his allergies could hardly fail to alert him) that during the week, when he was in Manhattan, Apollo had become Camille’s constant companion, and was given his meals in a corner of the kitchen where Camille laid down newspaper to set his dishes on; but so ravenous was the lean husky-shepherd, so anxious and edgy since his master’s disappearance from his life, that Apollo ate nervously, messily, scattering food beyond the margins of the
New York Times
.

(Oh, Camille scolded Apollo. Camille tried to discipline him as Adam had gently but firmly disciplined him. “Mind your manners, Apollo, please!” Camille begged. “Be a
good dog,
please!” So Lionel overheard when Camille didn’t realize he was within earshot. And how offended he was, hearing his wife begging a dog to behave . . . Those interminable weekends in Salthill, Lionel had to endure shut up in the house with Camille, living their blind cave-existence, while his mistress, Siri, long milky-pale limbs and dark eyes brimming with both hurt and passion, was

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J C O

miles away in her flat in the East Village, leading her mysterious life as distant to him as if she were in Tangier . . .
Siri, darling! Think of me, as I
think of you
. Lionel would not have wished to acknowledge that he, too, was begging. While in the house on Old Mill Way Camille tried gamely to eradicate all signs of Apollo, as an adulterous wife might try to eradicate all signs of her lover, naively hoping to deceive her husband. Camille didn’t even trust Lina, their cleaning woman, to rid the house of dog hairs, dog dander, that unmistakable doggy odor that so offended Lionel’s sensitive nostrils, there she was vacuuming, mopping, opening windows herself, and gently scolding Apollo, who was a lonely creature, and rather demanding. Lionel, overhearing Camille with Apollo, gritted his teeth.

Camille’s manner with the dog was pleading and reproachful, frantic and seductive. “Apollo,
please
. You must learn to
obey
. For Adam’s sake if not for mine.” Lionel might have banished the damned dog permanently except he didn’t want to cause a scene; he didn’t want to be cruel to either the dog or his emotional wife; he didn’t want to be crueller than he would have to be; he wasn’t a cruel person, but a gentleman. Lionel wanted to be known among the Salthill circle as a gentleman.
I love it that you so respect
your wife,
Siri murmured, in his arms,
but have you no respect for me?

“Camille? Can you look up here?”

Lionel’s grave guilty voice. God damn, what was wrong with Camille?

“The floor is clean, Camille. I don’t mind—much—that you’ve been feeding the dog in the house. But I”—and here Lionel hesitated, like a man easing out onto cracking ice—“have something to tell you.”

“Oh, Lionel! I didn’t realize you were here.”

Camille smiled. Blinking as if a bright light were shining in her face.

And her softly flaccid girl’s face shone like the floor she’d been wiping. For here was a woman who clearly suspected nothing; a woman of childlike innocence. She was dressed somewhat oddly in a gardener’s denim coverall, over a salmon-colored turtleneck; squatting, she bulged alarmingly at the thighs. Her graying brown hair was brushed back and fastened with a clip. She wore no makeup, she seemed to have no eyelashes. Surely, Lionel thought, annoyed, Camille had had eyelashes at one time? Her smiling mouth had a rubbery resilience that made her husband think of a doll’s mouth which a man would never, never wish to kiss.

He could not recall when he’d kissed that mouth last. The thought filled him with guilty revulsion.
Oh, Siri!

“Camille? Why don’t you stand up, please. It’s difficult to talk to you like this.”

Middle Age: A Romance

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Camille laughed lightly, and straightened; she swayed as if the sight of Lionel made her dizzy, and this, too, made her laugh, nervously. Lionel had to resist the impulse to steady her as one might an elderly or infirm person.

“Lionel! You’re home early. This is—Thursday? Or no: Friday.”

It was Friday. The end of the week. On Friday evenings, Lionel sometimes returned on the :8 .. Amtrak to Salthill, and sometimes he returned on the : .. Amtrak. He was a man of routine like all the Hoffmann men. But tonight, with Siri’s encouragement, he’d returned early, on the 6:8 ..

You must tell her
.
You have promised me!

“Camille, I’m sorry to startle you. I thought you’d heard me drive in.”

(Of course she’d heard. Why otherwise had she been desperately cleaning the kitchen floor? Why otherwise had Apollo been hastily sent out of the house, barking and whining forlornly in the backyard?)

“I’m afraid—I have something to tell you.”

Those words. Such weak, hollow, unoriginal words! Lionel felt a thrill of disgust. He was a six-foot puppet through whose hole of a mouth someone, or something, spoke words of such clumsy banality he could not believe they might be mistaken as his.

Yet Camille, that good woman, managed to smile as if to encourage him. Her lashless eyes were damp with terror.

“Lionel, dear?
What?
”

S   the new car, the white Acura. Beside her in the passenger’s seat was Apollo, panting and eager. This was no dream for it was morning, and a new day. She turned off Salthill Road, north onto West Axe Boulevard. She had not slept the previous night and was grateful for dawn and now she was driving, as if nothing were wrong, as if her life had not been rent in two as with the terrible stroke of an axe, to the farmer’s market in West Nyack. Her swollen eyes stared. On the grassy median a dog cringed in terror as traffic streamed past on both sides. Had the poor creature been abandoned? So cruelly abandoned? Was it lost?

Camille slowed her car to watch in horror as, hesitating, the dog ventured off the median, leapt back up onto it, then ventured off again, gathering its courage to run blindly across the right-hand lane. It was instantaneously struck by a speeding minivan, the small dark-furred body lifted and flung twenty feet along the edge of the road like a bundle of rags.

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J C O

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” At once Camille braked her car, heedless of horns behind her and of her own safety as she left her car to run to the stricken dog, which dragged itself off the pavement and into weeds, a trail of bright-glistening blood in its wake. The dog, a small-bodied mongrel with Labrador retriever blood and no tags, was whimpering in pain and terror.

Beside Camille, Apollo barked excitedly.

This was no dream. Traffic sped past on the notoriously busy boule-vard. The minivan had vanished. No one else would stop. It was a Saturday morning in October, the first morning of Lionel Hoffmann’s departure from the house on Old Mill Way, the first morning of Camille Hoffmann’s left-behind life. She pressed the heel of her hand against her broken heart and wept for the injured dog. “You, too! You, too!” She knelt in blood-splattered weeds daring to put out her trembling hand to the writhing dog whose mouth frothed with saliva. Sunlight glittered on her beautiful useless rings.

Words once uttered, that can never be revoked
.

How could you
,
when we were so happy!

Guilt darkened Lionel’s face like blood seeping into a translucent sac.

His hoarse voice was unrecognizable, his throat felt as if he’d swallowed thorns.

He stammered, “Camille, I’m—sorry.”

“
I’m
sorry!”

Gamely Camille was trying to keep the mood light. Though the floor tilted drunkenly beneath her. Though her mouth ached with smiling.

“Camille, I had to tell you. It was—time.”

“Yes?”

“We couldn’t continue, obviously—as we were.”

“We couldn’t?”

Was Camille in shock? Stunned? Smiling in that bright-blind way of hers. Lionel wasn’t smiling for this was hardly a smiling matter. This was hardly an occasion for levity. His sinuses were impacted as if with cement.

That damned dog! Almost, Lionel was furious with his friend Adam Berendt for dying so carelessly and leaving the animal in their care. For after all that was what Apollo was: an animal. When the children were young it was explained that Daddy had allergies, Daddy couldn’t live with animals, not dogs, not cats, not even parrots, and perhaps that was true; or
Middle Age: A Romance

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true to some degree. And now it was certainly true. Lionel’s eyes were watering with pain, misery, excitement. He said, urgently, as if to involve Camille in his drama, “You know that, Camille, don’t you? I think—all along you must have known.”

“ ‘Must have known’—?”

Camille smiled, leaning against the kitchen table to keep her balance.

She saw in her husband’s face an expression of commingled pity, guilt, sympathy, and annoyance. For this was a scene for which she had no preparation. It was a familiar scene from TV and films, yet Camille had no more idea of how to play it than she would have known how to play her own death scene.
So sudden! So raw! Cruel as a blow in the face
.

“These months,” Lionel was saying ecstatically, as if his words made perfect sense, “—this past year. Since last November, to be exact.”

“—November?”

Camille was having difficulty not only with her balance but with her hearing. This was all so strange! The refrigerator’s motor throbbed in both her ears. Or was it blood drumming in her ears. On the kitchen counter were several dampened, dirtied paper towels. But the floor shone. Spotless.

“—I’ve known her. The woman I—with whom I—have become involved.”

Involved?
The curious neutral term hovered between them like a swarm of dust motes.

“Camille, I never intended it to happen. It began with pain—in my upper spine, my neck? D’you remember? ‘Cervical spine strain’ the doctor called it. And, after that—” A dreamy confused look came over Lionel’s face, like butter melting on warm meat. He lifted his hands in a gesture of helpless acquiescence to fate.

Camille was trying to comprehend her husband’s bizarre words. Had he been drinking on the Amtrak? It wasn’t like Lionel; but then, none of this was “like” Lionel. Vaguely she recalled his complaint of neck pain months ago, but—what had neck pain to do with
this?
The throbbing in her ears had become a roar. Her husband’s mouth moved, and she saw his excited anxious eyes, and felt his words like chunks of mud flung at her.

Hesitantly Lionel approached Camille as if to touch her, but finally he did not touch her. She stood dazed as one who has been mortally wounded but has not fallen. Lionel stood rigid, staring in dismay at the woman he’d injured, and did not move toward her.

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J C O

Already he won’t touch me
.
Already my marriage is over
.
My life
.

At this awkward moment the telephone began to ring.

The telephone! Like a sleepwalker Camille moved forward to answer the phone. Still she smiled. A phone call was a happy event, usually. Lionel couldn’t bear his wife’s bright warm brave voice. “Hello? Oh Marcy, hel
lo
.” Like a criminal in retreat from the scene of his crime, Lionel quickly fled.

Marcy, their daughter. Twenty-seven years old.

Lionel dreaded her, and their twenty-five-year-old son Kevin, learning his news.

Oh, Daddy
,
how could you! Breaking Mother’s heart
.

Lionel’s plan was to pack a few things and drive back into the city, in his car; Lionel’s was a Lexus, the older of the Hoffmanns’ two cars, but the one he preferred. Siri had promised to be waiting for him in the apartment on East 6st Street. (Maybe she would have prepared for him one of her exquisite vegetarian-Indian meals.) For months Lionel had been smuggling items of clothing, documents and papers, into the city in his briefcase; unobtrusively, trusting Camille not to notice. Camille had not noticed. In Manhattan in Siri’s company he’d been buying new clothing and furnishings for the apartment, which Siri believed was a beautiful apartment but rather somber and unimaginative.
Not at all like you, Lionel!