My Summer With George (18 page)

This day, she had no photographs: it was too early in the year. She was planning a trip to Tasmania in late July—I assumed with Guy, not that she mentioned him. Ilona was an enthusiastic teacher, though, and her conversation was full of news of end-of-term problems, brilliant student papers, brilliant student failures. We were eating at Citron, and were into the dessert course (Ilona loves dessert but refuses to order it unless you agree to share it), enjoying a luscious profiterole, before I ventured to bring up George. I used my usual line: “I’ve met a man.”

Ilona put her spoon down. “You have!”

“Well, sort of.” I described the situation. By now I had it down pat, could tell the story in about six paragraphs, ten minutes flat.

“Wow. How exciting!” She gazed at me with large warm brown eyes. “How wonderful for you!”

I frowned. Had she been listening? “Well, it isn’t, really, Ilona. He’s so indecipherable. And I feel so…so full of longing, you know? It makes me feel a fool, like some Cinderella waiting for her prince.”

She nodded sagely. “Yes, but it’s worth it. Waiting. He’ll come. And you will live happily ever after. I know. I was past thirty-five when I met Guy. I’d been married, and I’d had a couple of long-term affairs, but they weren’t right, they just didn’t work out. But the minute I met him, I knew. The way you know with George. You just know.” Her eyes were wide and candid and soft. “We’ve been together for twenty years now, and I’ve never regretted anything, not for a minute. He really is my Prince Charming.”

Saturday night, Ann and William Stevens were having a dinner party. The Stevenses were charming and interesting and, amazingly, they worked together: Will was a furniture designer (people called him the only straight furniture designer in the Hamptons), and she owned—she’d inherited—a furniture-making business. They were an argument for old-fashioned marriage, marriage as an economic arrangement, because their connection was economic and solid, and in addition, they seemed really happy. Ann benefited because she got exclusive access to Will’s popular designs, and Will benefited because he was assured that anything he designed would be made. He worked in their gorgeous house in East Hampton, she worked at her office in New York or down at the factory, in some little South Carolina town they both loved. They had a nice mix of togetherness and apartness.

People did not know what to think about the Stevenses. It’s very hard on people to see a couple who seem to live in absolute bliss, who seem to have everything. Ann and Will always behaved like the ideal couple and always seemed ecstatically happy. It was a pisser. They also always gave pleasant parties that brought together people who had an edge but also (unlike Liz) knew how to merge. I always felt good in their house; I always had a good time. But afterward, I invariably felt consumed with envy of their relationship, their life. My bad character again.

I got dressed up—well, what passes for dressed up these days—in a long silk skirt in wide stripes of rust, green, and gold, a short-sleeved brown silk top, and a paisley vest that mixed all the colors. Maybe there’d be a new man there tonight, I thought—as I had thought thousands of nights before as I dressed to go out—one I haven’t met ten times before, who is straight and not too young and interesting and interested.

Of course, there wasn’t, but I had a nice time, anyway. I had so nice a time, in fact, that I stayed late, something I rarely did these days. When I pulled into my driveway, the moon was low on the water, and the sky was so black that the stars seemed as close as a blanket dotted with brilliant flickering lights, which you could reach out for and pull down over you. I was tired, and I happily contemplated my nice cool bed, and being in it alone. Why was I so driven to have someone else in my life? Why did I feel I wasn’t fully alive without a lover? Wasn’t I really contented as I was?

I got out of the car and walked toward my house, admiring its peaks and gables, its silhouette, low against the night sky, hung about with trees. I went into the house and immediately undressed and brushed my teeth, but instead of sliding naked into bed, as I usually did, I put on a T-shirt and went out onto the screened porch on the back of the house, facing the water. I settled down on the soft long daybed I had been sleeping on and pulled a light afghan over my legs. The moon spangled a path across the water. The night was so dark that the light from the moon and stars was incredibly brilliant.

My mind, exhausted from the weeks of nights without enough sleep, upset with the sticky-sweet sickness that comes from too much daydreaming, could not rest. Why did I want this man so much? Would I really be happier with him in my life? Were people who were with people happier than people who were alone? Everyone believed they were: it was an unspoken law, an absolute if unproven truth.

Consider the people I’d talked to this evening. My sweet friend Betty Margolis, a plump woman with graying dark hair, was voluble and excited about her latest paintings and the show she was having in Southampton next month. Her eyes glistened. She’d waited decades for artistic success and was enjoying it profoundly now that it had come to her. I asked if she’d seen Liz that day—Liz had never come back to my house after running out of it on Thursday, leaving the mop and bucket right in the middle of the kitchen floor. I was a bit annoyed. I was also unsure whether I would ever see her again. But I didn’t tell Betty that. No, she said, Liz seemed to be away—her pickup was missing. She hadn’t seen Liz since Tuesday, in fact. Even though they lived so close together, they did not live in each other’s pockets! She laughed.

Her husband ambled over. Jack O’Reilly was a failed writer, an unhappy man who was always whining to someone about something and who really seemed to expect his listener to solve his problem. As a child, Liz had learned to retreat from her stepfather, fleeing his emotional demands, and I often suspected that this was part of her problem with lovers today. I have to confess, though, that I, too, ran when I saw him coming. But Betty always smiled at him lovingly and tried to take care of him. She didn’t seem to feel he was a burden. Everyone agreed that Betty was a saint.

“Betty…Oh, hello, Hermione, hi. Betty, listen,” he whined urgently. “You see that pasta salad on the buffet over there? I ate some of it. You think it’s got mushrooms in it? You know how allergic I am to mushrooms. What do you think? I think I have the beginnings of a rash. Here on my neck, look, right there.”

As Betty examined him, I said I didn’t think the salad contained mushrooms; neither did Betty, who could find nothing on his neck.

“Well, I definitely have a headache coming on. Just like when I get an allergic attack. And I know I saw little bits of brown stuff in the pasta. It could have been mushrooms…”

“Sun-dried tomatoes, I think,” I said, looking for ways to escape.

“Umm. I don’t feel too good.”

“Do you want to go home, dear?” Betty asked with concern. I squeezed her arm and wandered over to Dalton Schwab. He was as handsome and beautifully dressed as ever, if thinner and tighter about the mouth.

“I’m glad to see you,” I said.

“And I’m overjoyed to see you, dear heart.”

We hugged. “How are you?” I asked.

“As well as I can be, I expect. I’ve been trying to write about it.”

“A memoir? A new play?”

“Memoir, I think. Of Tim. And some of the others.” His voice caught; he stopped, then began again in a light, almost mocking tone. “I’m afraid it’s getting to be a cliché. So many plays, books. People are sick of it. And what more is there to say?”

“No one ever has anything new to say about anything, really, you know. It isn’t important to say something new, but to say it in a new way,” I said piously, then added, laughing, “speaking of clichés. But seriously, Dalton, you always have your own brilliant, eccentric take on things.”

We flattered each other for a bit, then I got serious. “Dalton, are you lonely?”

“Can’t say that. When I had him—when he was there—when he was alive…it was bad this last year, horrible the last months. Well, you know, you saw him. It was agony just looking at him, remembering how beautiful he’d been. Just watching him try to do things for himself…And of course, I had to take care of him. He needed a lot of care. I loved him, I would have died for him, but that part was agony. And he was so unhappy and got so bad-tempered! Nothing one did for him was good enough…I wasn’t sorry when he died. For him or for me. I can’t say I’m lonely for the Tim of the past months. The Tim I miss left long before that. All of them, all—they died long before they died.”

Well, of course. Wrong person to ask.

Ann Stevens joined us, hugging us both, asking gracious questions, sweetening the conversation. She was full of new plans for their South Carolina house, a thing of some grandeur, I’d heard, although I’d never seen it. It was designed by Sidney Farber, a house of wood and glass perched on a cliff in a forest. She was bubbling over with well-being, with high spirits. High spirits usually attract people, but this evening, neither Dalton nor I had access to high spirits. She must have sensed this and glanced around her, searching for someone she could cheer up, but her eye caught Will’s, and he immediately came over to us and put his arm around her. Dalton flinched; I bit the inside of my cheek. I was especially pleased to see that Dalton’s character was as bad as mine, because I liked him a great deal and respected him too. If his character was as bad as mine, bad character could not be a seal of doom. I stood there listening to the happy couple make happy talk for as long as I could stand it. But as soon as I saw Perry Pears, an old pal from years ago on Twelfth Street, I edged away from the Stevenses. Perry was a good friend, although we met infrequently. How was he?

“The most incredible thing, Hermi. I’m walking around bedazed, bedazzled, bedight—”

“Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered?”

“Them too.”

“What?”

“This woman—a girl, really: well, she’s a married woman with children, but so much younger than I, and gorgeous, and so-o-o nice—well, she’s announced that she’s in love with me! Can you imagine? Out of the blue, the azure, the plain where the clouds roam, wandering buffalo, this just happens! Just happened.” He gave me a dazed, sheepish grin.

Perry is a good-looking man, but he is also, after all, closing in on seventy.

“How old?” I snapped.

“Thirty-eight. Gorgeous. Elaine is her name. ‘Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable, Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat.’” Perry taught Victorian literature at Brooklyn College before he retired. “She lives down the block from me, we have clandestine meetings at the supermarket and the gym, we pass in the street, we chat about her dog, her kids, her husband, my need for a good home-cooked meal…”

I tsk-tsked. Perry had always looked sunken-cheeked, in need of nourishment, but I had thought the days when women believed men incapable of feeding themselves were gone. My character was getting a workout tonight. Still, consumed with envy though I was, I couldn’t help being happy for Perry. He deserved to be loved, I thought.

“That’s wonderful, Perry,” I said sincerely. “How did you meet?”

Not everyone was blissfully happy. The Parkers sniped at each other across their martinis, and the Steiners—well, Jim Steiner never let his wife, Diane, get more than a phrase out of her mouth before he interrupted her. Then I ran into Eric Stoller, another old friend, who had a house in Hampton Bays. I had dinner with Eric a couple of times a year, so we kept up with each other. Eric made documentary movies, mainly in Asia and Africa, and over the years had slept with every beautiful or intelligent woman he encountered—including me, years ago. For Eric, sleeping with interesting women was simply an essential part of everyday life, like eating breakfast, bathing, or combing his hair. But when he reached fifty-five, he began to have trouble finding women to sleep with: it was not that he didn’t find
any
but that he couldn’t find one every night. This was a terrible shock, a comedown, his first sexual failure. He had a very interesting woman as a lover, but she was living in Germany at the moment. Alone, he was irritated and bewildered. He could not understand what had happened.

“Essie isn’t coming over this summer?”

“She’s coming, but not until July. Then I’ll go back with her in August. But I have to return here in September to start shooting a new film. Out west, in the redwood forests.”

“Well, that isn’t too bad.”

He grimaced. “You don’t understand. Women don’t understand. You think if there’s someone in your life, that’s enough. You don’t see.”

“What am I missing, Eric?” I smiled.

“It’s lonely. I want company, someone to do things with, travel with, go to the movies with…”

“Well, of course! We all do. That’s why we have friends.”

“No. Not friends! I need a woman for that, a woman I can sleep with afterwards; it’s the only way I feel comfortable, the way life feels right.”

I considered. “Maybe you should have married again.”

“Ugh!” He gestured in disgust. “Although I tell you, Hermione, sometimes I even think it might be worth it. The worst thing happened to me last month! So humiliating! I was in Nairobi; it was spring. I was just back from Tanzania, the Serengeti—I was doing a film on endangered species…So I’m staying in the Nairobi Hilton, there’s a bunch of us there, all involved in the film in one way or another. And this one woman who works for the executive producer, a nice woman, acts really friendly to me, and I think, Well, this is more like it, this is like the old days. She’s really zaftig, you know, not young but still juicy, in her late forties, semi-interesting, not a genius but smart enough…” He sipped his wine.

“So one day, she calls me up and invites me to go to the theater with her. And I am cheered up; I think this sojourn may turn out to be fairly pleasant, after all. But the night we go out, she never stops talking; she chatters incessantly. I am relieved to say good night—I don’t make a single move.

“And what happens! She calls again. I take her to dinner. She does it again. But this time I stop her. I ask her why she is calling me, why she talks so much, what is going on. And she stops dead. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘it shows.’ ‘What shows?’ I want to know. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘you see, I had my forty-fifth birthday eight months ago. And it did something to me. Because after my birthday, I started screwing without stop, screwing every man I meet, any man I meet, every night someone, and my shrink tells me I have to stop, I can’t keep doing this. So I thought, well, I’d call you! Someone old, who doesn’t do it anymore…’