She Took My Arm As If She Loved Me (15 page)

Since I was having trouble living my own, Alfonso …

“Go to sleep. If you can't, do something else.”

So maybe I would do something else. I could talk to Alfonso—he said to telephone him if I had nothing better to do—but at his age Alfonso didn't deserve to be punished for my sins. On the other hand, if Priscilla were there to listen, I wouldn't be talking to myself during the sleepless Potrero Hill night, would I? So the whole deal was a wash.

No, it wasn't a wash; it was something else. My argument with Priscilla accumulated in great circles over my head, like thoughts in a cartoon. I tried to revise her not as the love of my life but merely a great piece of ass. It didn't work. Tried again. I stood up and went to the door and stuck my erection outside to cool it down. Then heard a raccoon, imagined it lunging with its savage teeth, and decided to remove temptation from its path.

Then I failed to appreciate that no one was there to share this one-man anxious comedy. And probably she wouldn't be in any condition to enjoy the laugh at—what was it now—nearly three
A.M
. A long, soft blanket of fog, glowing where the moon coldly stared through.

I considered masturbation. I gave it a long stroking think. But I wanted Priscilla's soul linked with mine, her hand on my arm, and jacking off wasn't the answer even if her pink and muscled butt was part of the question. I tasted sour in my mouth. My eyes burned.

I rinsed my mouth. I avoided drinking more than a swallow because a person starts to wake up needing to pee at my age, especially if he drinks water when he can't sleep. Here was an idea I could stand by.

Peeked outside once more, just the eyes this time, registering atmospheric roiling fogplay, empurpled by the city's glow, the laden air of San Francisco rolling over itself. Thought again of masturbation, nature's tranquilizer. Stubborn Dan.

Then I tried that boyish trick of imagining the lady of my dreams on the toilet, straining, succeeding, finally reaching back to wipe herself. It doesn't control the adolescent boy's perilous and desperate love. It didn't help me, either (how glamorous for her to fall off the damn thing with diarrhea, how lovely she would be, and how I rushed to help her).

Nothing unreal helps when nothing real helps.

Maybe I slept. Pretty soon, or more likely never, I would get over the bad habit of loving a woman who used to love me.

*   *   *

“He calls me Xavier's Savior,” Priscilla said.

“Pardon?” said Dan Kasdan, legally her husband for a few more weeks.

“Because I'm so good for him.”

I took this in without visibly gulping air. I didn't want to look like a fish. Fishiness is not a preferred presentation procedure for a man making the best possible impression on his wife-for-a-few-more-weeks. I tried to say something cautious and stripped of excess feeling. “Xavier. Xavier's Savior. Does he always talk about himself in the third person?”

“Oh dear,” Priscilla said, “you're irritated and that always makes you sarcastic. About my hair, my lover, whatever comes up. But anyway, all he was doing was making sort of a little joke. I mean, meaning it but still a joke.” She stopped and called Xavier back onto her screen. “I think,” she said.

I tried the joke on myself. Xavier's Savior. My wife was Xavier's Savior. Yup, it was a little joke all right. “So why are you sharing this little joke with me?”

Now it was her turn not to gulp air visibly. Her control was not total. This must be serious. “Because, oh, if we move in together or anything—”

“You mean if he moves in with you. Since you're the savior, you'll also provide the housing—”

“—and it's important that you understand. Since we have a son and everything.”

Jeff, he thought. That was everything. Surely by “everything” she couldn't be referring to the towels, the furniture, and a stock of ghosts in the inventory.

“Jeff,” I said. “Our boy.”

“Well, I want to be honest with you,” she said. “Xavier hasn't had any children—”

What!

“—I mean, and you're the dad and all, always will be, but he wants to take an active interest in my son—”

Active interest, I thought. Her son.

“—not really parenting, of course, and I suppose you can't really call it step-parenting since we're not married yet, if we're ever going to be, and I'm not sure that's a relevant question right now—”

A question Jeff's father hadn't asked.

“—but I just want to check to make sure you don't misunderstand or have any serious objections, not to have some annoying surprise sprung on any of us, all four, I mean me, Jeff, Xavier, and of course you, Dan, but—”

She was nervous. How unlike her. How rude of her to be nervous and therefore to be standing there with her hands clasped together and a very bright smile on her face, harshly asking my help. She had planned her end of the conversation but couldn't be certain of my end.

“Pardon?” she asked. “Dan? You're not saying anything?” She worked her eyebrows humorously. “Sleepy-time, dear?”

“No,” I said.

Suddenly she was all briskness. “Well. Well. Well, Xavier wants to have a talk with you about, about, I don't know, but I trust him. And you know my instinct is good—I trusted you, too. Still do, Dan.”

What a sweet thing to say. I was proud to merit her confidence. I didn't take all the pleasure in this scrap of praise that she may have hoped to give me.

Without spending the time to look carefully into my heart, I was pretty sure I didn't take any pleasure at all in this praise, sincere though it was.

“Make his point of view, essential decency, clear in a … in a predicament, I think you could call it, that involves all of us. He wants to level … the ground rules … sort of man-to-man, I suppose—oh, you'll see, Dan! You're always so … you're one of the truly…”

“He wants
what?
To explain something to me? Ask me for your hand or something?”

Now she was on a roll. She was getting over the rough place. We could go back to comfortable banter about the newly important matter in her life and maybe, in some way she could not calculate, it was important in my life too. But my life wasn't really her business, was it?

“Not on bended knee, dear,” she said. “I don't see Xavier falling to his knees like that, though of course you can never tell … No, not even as a joke. He'd be embarrassed. No. No.”

I wanted to thank her for seeing the fantasy through to a happier conclusion. I also wanted to hurt the woman I loved, which was an odd desire I had begun to live with. I didn't like it, didn't approve, didn't resist. The desire was for her, to love and to cherish this woman of strength and self-possession; the fear was that I might hate her if she didn't stop denying that we had made our history together. She used to love me; I wanted her to remember that she used to love me. She didn't. She claimed the right to her own story. “I don't have a very good memory, dear.” And: “Try to remember that.”

There was some kind of buzzing going on, filling the space between the walls and between us. I knew what it was, that humming of thought, Priscilla's complicated intelligence—sometimes I called it calculation—and usually it meant something important was getting ready to happen. It was a kicking-in of new gears. It was Priscilla making sure she was still in control by taking charge of matters.

“Fact is,” she said.

Uh-oh. Danger danger.

“Fact is, truth be told, it's a strange world.”

Agreed. Duly noted.

“In my heart of hearts, dear, which isn't necessarily the deepest part of a woman's nature—”

I was worried that she was going to take Jeff elsewhere. I was worried that she was going to confess some awful intention that would cause great pain. I was not speaking, only receiving.

“—I know this might seem funny to you.”

No. Not funny, whatever it was. I made the effort and croaked out hoarsely: “Tell me.”

“Fact is, I'd rather be with you than with him, but you know everyone has to follow a road she doesn't necessarily choose.”

“You're following your unbliss?”

“Okay. Okay. Sarcasm helps nothing, dear. But there's a job here and I've got to do it.”

It was not very California of her, I thought.

“It's not very California of you,” I said.

She grinned. “I think I must be from Boston. In my past life maybe, huh?”

Priscilla had found a winsome impotent lover with a habit of saying “I hear you” and/or “Thank you for sharing”—epitaphs for an age. Even I could see that Xavier was pretty, with those deep sad eyes and that romantic mane of white hair, long and clean and tossed by his fingers every time he caught his reflection in a mirror; but “Thank you for sharing”? His only physical defect or flaw was a sudden braking in the forward locomotion of his feet when he caught sight of a mirror. It stopped him, his eyes went tender, he stared, he fingered his hair. He gave the mirror an ardent farewell glance. He sighed and proceeded, for otherwise he would stay there forever and the world would halt in its revolution around the sun. Weep, dear glass, for this needy free spirit.

“Are you paying attention?”

“I'm here.”

She was frowning and worried. “Just talk,” she said. I must have fallen silent, as a person might do when thinking.

“Isn't that what we've been doing?”

“No, no. With
Xavier.
Xavier wants to talk with you. Just be civil and talk.”

“Is that conversation necessary?”

Her smile was radiant and cleared away all worry. “Do it for me,” she said, “for our whole family, Dan.”

Chapter 14

For Priscilla, Xavier was a change, something old and yet something new. And now it was time for “Dan and Xavier Enjoy a Rational Grown-up Discussion.”

Xavier's boyish good looks could appeal to anyone, male or female, but in this case they appealed to Priscilla and not to Dan. However, this tennis entity of tangled, healthy, maturely white hair, generous smile with shining teeth, darting boyish shy unease, long legs—the whole Town and Country Academy Alumni Association gathered into one good sport—had planned ahead and was ready to make his case to Kasdan. He asked Kasdan's okay. He intended to play square. All he wanted was to be an honest person.

I wasn't ready to offer a blessing to the man who wanted my wife, even if he looked me forthrightly in the eyes and said he really cared, needed, hoped; even if he confessed that this conversation made him nervous; even if he cast down his long lashes, blushed and moved his footwear uneasily. Xavier was giving it a best effort. Like many a handsome lad before him, he felt sure his personal appeal could win the day. How could I fail to be convinced? He was so vulnerable.

“This is really embarrassing,” said Xavier.

“We can agree on that.”

“Um.”

“We can agree on that, too.”

With a warm grin, a toss of healthy mop, a winsome gleam in the eye, Xavier said, “You and I were sort of friends, sort of knew each other, so you could sort of think of this in terms of betrayal, or not betrayal, or maybe—”

Betrayal. Sort of. Yes. A piercing minty odor, alcohol and oil and tart, came off Xavier as his metabolism labored away, his sportsman's cologne excited by the heat of conflict, shedding itself with green and yellow implications into the air. Probably he wasn't really drenched in perfume. I was just oversensitive to my wife's lover's manly aroma.

Since I seemed unwilling to speak, cat got my tongue, Xavier had to do all the work around here, put the ball in play. “So I thought I should explain. It's not like you think. I didn't
want
to cause you difficulties. It's hard for me, too, Dan. I mean, it's not as if I had a choice about, about, about…” His voice deepened. “About Priscilla.”

Politeness at least obliged me to say something, and so I strangled out a few echoes: “About Priscilla you didn't have a choice.”

A shower of smiles tumbled off Xavier in my direction; a vinaigrette wafting in the stirred-up, riled-up air. It was a multimedia avalanche of gratitude and anxiety. He was so appreciative because I favored him with a comment. “Since you and I were friends,” he said, prompting me to go on.

I was unwilling to grant him that. With the aid of all the therapy he had enjoyed, Xavier understood my wince and frown at the word “friends.” He had insight, he paid attention, he practiced the art and craft of sharing. Therefore, he amended the word “friends.” “Buddies,” he said, “acquaintances for a long time,” and peered hopefully up into my face. Would that be satisfactory? But trying to peer upward toward a being who was lower than he was gave this tall man an odd posture. Humble piety did not become him.

“I mean, anyway, these days, women tend to make their own decisions, too … Dan?”

“Listening.”

“I mean a strong-minded person like…”

He probably meant Priscilla. I was pretty sure of that. “Listening,” I repeated.

“Their own minds up,” he said.

“Half a sentence,” I said.

“Dan, I hear you. I'm upset, too. But it's so much better…” The sentence trailed off. The minty cologne level rose. He found it difficult to share with me what was so much better.

“Listening,” I said. This was becoming my mantra. It was what I shared with him.

“Their own. Own. Level,” he said, moving now from half sentences to single words. “Um.” To a timid biding of time in the form of a sad, brave humming. A kind of grace note of vulnerability. An expression of Xavier's total good feeling.

And so he rallied. He had manifested himself today in order to explain and lay himself open and ask my comprehension and sympathy. He spoke forthrightly, lover to husband; well, hopeful lover to estranged husband; whatever. Words were not important; deeds were what mattered, plus honesty and compassion and whatever. In short, he had come to ask permission to court my wife, openly, vulnerably, respectfully. He took a deep breath. He was ready to lay his cards on the table face up. He was ready to serve from the deep court, if that was the proper expression—and it wasn't. He opened his mouth and then he closed it and then it came open again of its own volition. “I can't get it up,” he said suddenly. “Dan, she's gonna help me. She says she can do it and I believe her. She had me checked out at this clinic they run at Stanford … ran through urology, diabetes, plaque in the arteries, all those options … Guess you don't need the detailed reports, but … Nothing physical wrong with me! I check out okay!”