The Believers (28 page)

"Dave's not just a carpenter, Mom," Lenny added eagerly. "He's more of an artisan. He does this really intricate carved work. You should see this stair rail he's just finished for some people in Frenchtown. It's got like, faces and flowers and weird little designs all over it. Jean's thinking of commissioning one."

"Is she, now?"

"Lenny's been helping me out here and there in the workshop," Dave said. "He shows a lot of promise."

"Uh-huh."

"In fact, we've been talking about him coming to work for me."

"I'd be like an apprentice, Mom," Lenny broke in.

Audrey chuckled. "Well, that's not going to work, is it, love? You can't commute down here from New York every day."

Dave and Lenny exchanged quick glances. "No, that's the thing," Lenny said. "I've been thinking that maybe I would come back and stay here for a while--get a place in Doylestown."

"Oh, Len, forget it. You hate the country."

"Well, Audrey." Dave leaned across the table toward her. "Lenny feels--and I agree--that going back to New York at this stage in his recovery might not be the best thing for him right now."

"How's that?"

"It's been so healthy for me being here, Mom," Lenny said. "I'm just beginning to feel really good about myself. If I go back to New York, all the work I've done on myself is going to be..."

"The trouble is, New York is the primary site of his addiction," Dave said.

"All the people who enable me are there," Lenny added.

"I've never noticed you needing anyone to enable you, Len. You've always seemed to be perfectly good at enabling yourself."

"Yeah, but Mom--"

"I would have thought being at home with your family was a lot better for you than hanging around in Bumfuck, Pennsylvania, with a lot of strangers."

"They're not strangers," Lenny said. "I've got some really good friends here."

"And with all due respect, Audrey," Dave said, "family is often a big part of an addict's problem."

"Excuse me?"

"Don't get me wrong. I know you love your son and you want the best for him, but I'm sure you're aware, family relationships can sometimes evolve into codependencies that are really unhelpful."

"Oh, I see,
I'm
the problem, am I?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, Audrey. All we're saying is--"

"Crap. All you're saying is crap."

Lenny blinked at her reproachfully. "Dave's only trying to help, Mom."

Audrey stood up and yawned loudly. "You'll have to excuse me now. I have a crossword to do."

Next door in Jean's sitting room, Audrey cleared a space among the sofa cushions and sat down, waiting for Lenny to pursue her. The motif on the toile de jouy cushion covers depicted an eighteenth-century lady and her admirer picnicking on the steps of a ruined summerhouse while a blank-faced rustic trudged past, leading a goat on a string. Audrey smiled bitterly.
Bloody country life.

Several minutes went by, and she was beginning to think that Lenny was not coming after all when at last he entered the room.

"Has Captain Sanctimonious buggered off, then?" she asked.

"No, we're going to a meeting in a bit. I just wanted to talk to you before I went."

"Oh."

"You mustn't take this personally, Mom."

"I don't take it personally."

"Are you sure? Because it seems like--"

"What about Tanya?" Audrey interrupted. "Is she going to move here too?"

"No." Lenny said slowly. "Tanya isn't a person I need in my life right now."

"Is that what Chairman Dave says?"

"It's got nothing to do with Dave."

"Of course not. So have you told her that you're dumping her?"

Lenny smacked his brow with the heel of his palm. "Why are you so worried about
Tanya
all of a sudden? You don't even like her, Mom."

"I like her better than that git in the kitchen. What's the story with him, anyway? Is he gay?"

Lenny shook his head sorrowfully. "Why would you ask something like that?"

"I don't know. It just seems a bit odd to me, the way he's glommed onto you so quickly. It's all a bit intense, isn't it?"

"Dave is not gay. He has a girlfriend."

"Yeah, well, that's not proof of anything, is it?"

"Why are you trying to make this into something bad? Dave's a really good guy. He knows a lot about recovery, and he wants to help me--"

"Fuck it, Lenny!" Audrey shouted. "You're so...you're so suggestible! All it takes is one beardy arsehole telling you some shit about
codependence
, and you're ready to shaft me."

"I'm not shafting you, Mom. Jesus, I'm not married to you..."

Audrey clutched the arm of the sofa. "You little
shit
."

"No!" Lenny protested. "I didn't mean...I wasn't talking about
Dad
. I just meant--"

"Forget it." She looked away. "I'm not going to argue with you. If you want to bugger off with a bunch of yokels, go ahead. I'm warning you, though, this is it. If you do this, I'm not having you back again. You're on your own."

Lenny lowered his head. "I wish it didn't have to be this way, Mom."

"You'll wish it even more when you get tired of carving stair rails with old beardy-face. You'll come crawling back to New York, and you won't have me to bail you out anymore." She paused, searching his face for any sign of hesitation, of second thoughts. "Go on then, fuck off," she said. "Go complain about your wicked mother at your meeting."

After he had gone, she sat for several minutes, considering the long lavender shadows that the afternoon sun had cast across the floorboards. Presently she stood up and went outside to look for Jean.

She found her in the walled vegetable garden, tenderly examining her tomato plants. "You're in luck!" Jean cried when she saw Audrey. "We're having tomato salad for dinner tonight!"

"I assume," Audrey said, "that you knew about Lenny's plan to become a carpenter?"

"Ah." Jean sat back on her haunches. "I did, yes. I would have said something, but he really wanted to tell you himself."

"And since when did we start going by Lenny's fricking agenda?" Audrey cried. "He's a baby, Jean! And you were meant to be in loco whatsit! I only let him come down here in the first place because you made me. Now look what's happened."

Jean shrugged. "He's not a baby. He's thirty-four. And nothing so terrible has happened, as far as I can see. He's off drugs, he's attending meetings, he may even be going to learn a new trade."

"Oh, right," Audrey said. "
Oh, right
. He's a totally new fucking man, isn't he? Let me explain something to you, Jean. This born-again routine of his is going to last for a couple more weeks, tops, and then he'll be right back to scrounging money for dime bags."

"Well, don't let's declare it a failure before he's had a chance to--"

"I see what this is. You're dying to show how much better a job you can do with Lenny, aren't you? Silly old Audrey made a mess of things for thirty years, and now, here comes Jean, the Flying Nun, to turn his life around in a month!"

Jean stuck out her bottom lip and exhaled a little puff of air, trying to remove the strands of hair that had fallen into her eyes. "That's absolutely unfair, Audrey."

"Well, that's me, isn't it? Nasty, unfair Audrey. I expect you and Lenny have had a lovely time together discussing my character flaws."

"You're being ridiculous."

Audrey stomped away. "I'm going to bed," she shouted as she disappeared through the door in the garden wall.

She did not go to bed, though. When she got back inside the house, the thought of returning to the junk-filled guest room and lying on that ridiculous four-poster bed like the princess and the pea was too unbearable. She retreated instead to the sitting room. She was still there, flipping disconsolately through a pile of holiday brochures, when Jean came in half an hour later.

"It's gotten quite chilly," Jean said. "Shall we have a fire?"

Audrey looked away haughtily. "I don't mind."

"Are we going to make up? Or are you going to mope all night?"

Audrey shrugged. "Are those the only choices?" she asked, continuing to examine the brochures.

Jean smiled and went over to the fireplace. "I'm glad you're looking at those," she said, pointing to the brochures. "I was thinking there might be something in there for the two of us to do one of these days."

"Oh, sure," Audrey said. "Because I've got lots of free time and money for fancy holidays."

Jean began rolling sheets of old newspaper into balls and assembling them in the fireplace. "Are you worried about money, Audrey?"

"Well, Joel's accountant did tell me the other day that I was facing a liquidity crisis..."

"Oh?"

"He thinks I should sell Perry Street, buy myself a granny flat, and invest the leftover in a low-something mutual something..."

"A low-risk mutual fund?"

"Yeah, maybe."

"And what did you say?"

"I told him to bugger off, didn't I?" Audrey laughed. "He was quite upset, the poor sod."

Jean nodded gravely. "Accountants can be beastly, I know. But it pays to listen to them, Audrey. They usually have sensible things to say--"

"Yes, well," Audrey said, stretching her arms languorously, "Joel and I have never been sensible about money, thank God."

"No, quite. And it's wonderful, of course, not to care too much about that sort of thing. But money does tend to
become
important when you don't have enough of it."

Audrey scowled. "And how would you know?"

Jean looked down at the ball of paper in her hand and sighed. "Well, in any case, I was thinking that our holiday would be my treat."

Audrey held up a brochure for walking tours of Italy, opened to a photograph of an elderly man in knee socks and sandals, striding along the Via Appia. "Just imagine having to face that fucker over your espresso every morning."

"There are lots of other things there," Jean said patiently. "There's a Caribbean cruise that the
Nation
magazine organizes..."

"I'd rather stick a pin in my eye."

"Oh? It looked quite fun to me."

"What, floating around the islands with a bunch of old guys quarreling over who gets to sit in the Jacuzzi with Katrina van den Heuvel? You know, don't you, those boats are all riddled with Legionnaires' Disease?"

"Okay, then, not the
Nation
cruise, but there's bound to be something in that lot that you'd find interesting..."

"Jean, what are you going on about? I have a husband lying in hospital. I can't be going off on pleasure trips with you."

Jean gathered up a handful of kindling from a basket and began arranging it over the newspaper in the grate. "I do think, Audrey, that at some point you're going to have to start facing up to certain things about Joel's condition."

Audrey looked up. "How do you mean?"

"I just think there's going to come a point when you have to, you know, let him go..."

Audrey clapped her hands. "Ohhh! Here it comes--the 'Let's Kill Joel' speech. Yeah, well, thanks for that."

"Audrey, you know I don't..."

"Yes, you do. You all do. Especially now he's turned out to have been shtupping that silly cow. You just want to get rid of him and wrap the whole thing up already. Well, let me tell you, I'm not letting that woman have the last word on my marriage--"

"Oh, for goodness sake," Jean cried, "stop it!"

Audrey stared. "Excuse me?"

Jean shook her head. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap. It's just--ever since this business with Berenice came out, you've been angry with her, with me, with the children--with every one of us
except
Joel. I don't care if he's in a coma: he's behaved abominably. I think it would help you to acknowledge that."

Audrey stood up slowly. "You think I'm
not
angry with him?" she said. "You think I don't hate him for what he's done to me? Of
course
I'm fucking angry, Jean! What am I, an idiot?"

Jean shrank back. "I'm sorry, Audrey...you never said--"

"I've spent my
life
serving that man. I put up with his affairs for forty
years
, and now, at the end of it all, I find out that he didn't love me at all. I find out that the great passion of his life was some fat fucking photographer!"

"Oh, you don't really think that. You
know
Joel adored you--"

"Please!" Audrey raised her hand. "I know what my marriage was and wasn't."

"But Audrey--"

"He wrote that woman poems! Do you think he ever wrote poems for
me
?"

"I...I didn't realize you felt this way, Audrey."

Audrey sat down again. "Well, now you do."

Jean laid a couple of logs on top of the kindling and struck a match. The two women watched as the flame caught the newspaper and crept upward.

"Whatever your marriage was or wasn't," Jean said, "you can't change it now, Audrey. You have to let it go."

Audrey shook her head. "And what am I supposed to do when I've let it go? Arse about on cruises with you for the rest of my life?"

"Forget the cruises, okay? There are hundreds of other things you can do with your life. Productive, fulfilling things. You're only fifty-nine."

"Thanks for reminding me."

"That's young! You're still an attractive woman. Perhaps you'll meet someone else."

Audrey moaned. It was terrifying, certainly, to think that her sex life was over for good, but marginally more terrifying to think that it was not. The idea of courtship at her age was grotesque. She did not want to become one of those hormone-replacement floozies bopping around in a leather skirt, boasting about her still-vibrant sexuality, trawling in the back of the
New York Review of Books
for someone to share her love of Pinter and Klee and rainy days in Montauk. No. It was ridiculous, it was so...
American
, all this talk of reinventing herself and moving on. She had made her apple-pie bed, and now she would have to lie in it.