The Easy Way Out (42 page)

“Not for another hour. They said there was fog in Chicago, which probably means the wings fell off.” She adjusted the band in her hair and then lightly pushed at the skin around her cheekbones with her fingertips, as if she was trying to tighten it. “Excuse me for saying so, dear, but you don't look well. Were you just running?”

“It's been a long day. Actually, it feels like it's been three long days.”

“I suppose the answer is obvious, but do you mind if I ask you what you're doing here?”

Sitting alone with her in the quiet lounge, I felt much less at odds with her. She seemed so small and defenseless, I wished there were something I could do to protect her. I figured the closest I could come would be to tell her the truth, and I did.

“In other words,” she said, “you've come to head him off at the pass.”

“You could put it that way. And you?”

“Head him off at the pass; what else? I wanted to see him before your father got to him.”

She widened her eyes as she said this, as if she was trying to
impress me with the significance of her words, but I wasn't sure what she'd meant.

“Oh, Patrick,” she sighed. “And I count on you to understand everything.” She paused, looked around, and then inclined her head toward me and nearly whispered, “I've come to tell Tony, before he sees your father, that as far as I'm concerned, and I'm only speaking for myself, as if I would dare speak for anyone else, that he should do exactly what he wants to do about this wedding—it's his life. Marry Loreen, don't marry Loreen, marry the lawyer in Chicago, move to Shanghai, join the priesthood. But if he does come right out and ask me for my opinion, I plan to tell him I'd rather walk to Los Angeles barefoot than see him marry someone he doesn't love.”

I was dumbfounded by her speech and by the sudden shift in her opinion, and my face must have given it away. “You look like you need a drink,” she said. She told me she'd seen a cocktail lounge on the way in and suggested we go there and kill some time. As we walked down the quiet hallway, she took my arm, a warm, conspiratorial gesture that was entirely unlike her.

*   *   *

The cocktail lounge was one of those excruciatingly dark and silent places designed to make nervous fliers feel as if they've entered a bunker where they can store up invulnerability for their flights. The only other customers were two men in business suits slumped over the bar, obviously plastered.

We went to the back and sat on either side of a low metal table with a candle in the middle and a little bowl with four greasy peanuts in it. My mother arranged herself in the chair carefully, as if she was settling in for a long time. She put her raincoat neatly on the empty seat beside her and folded her hands on her lap. She looked weary and stooped. As we'd walked along in the bright lights of the airport terminal, I'd noticed the gray roots of her hair pushing out the orange.

A waitress, emaciated and exhausted, tottered over on high heels. She put napkins in front of us and stood silently beside the table, waiting for our order. She had black rubber bangle bracelets on her right arm, halfway up to her elbow. “I think I'll have a Rob Roy,” my mother said, eyeing her critically.

She rarely drank, and I was surprised at the ease with which she'd produced this order.

The waitress looked at me dully. “You?”

“The same,” I said, “whatever it is.”

“That outfit isn't good for her,” my mother said, watching the waitress depart. “A miniskirt with those heels and those toothpick legs is definitely not what she should be wearing. Why do people insist on drawing attention to their worst features? Look at that Sharon—”

“It's probably a uniform,” I interrupted. “What she needs is a whole new job.”

“Yes, you do,” she said.

“Let's not get started, Rita.”

She looked away from me. “I didn't say that to be critical. I suppose you took it that way out of habit. That must be partially my fault. I was trying to be helpful.”

We watched the waitress standing at the bar, playing with her bracelets and talking to the businessmen. She clicked over to us on her spike heels, the twin drinks sliding on her tray. “One for you,” she said condescendingly, “and, let's see, one for you. Anything else, I'll be right over there.”

I found the drink pleasantly sweet and strong, and the first sip sent a flush of blood to my face. I pulled my sweater over my head and rolled up the sleeves of my shirt. Rita picked up her glass, the napkin wrapped around the bottom, took a measured swallow, and sighed deeply again.

“You know,” I said, “it might not be any of my business, but if you're in the mood to tell me why you changed your mind about Tony, I'd be willing to listen.”

“I didn't change my mind. I've thought it was a mistake for him to marry Loreen since I heard about this other girl. Vivian, isn't that it? I just didn't have the courage to say it. You act one way all your life, and it's not so easy to turn things around all of a sudden. Believe me, I was thrilled when she made that announcement about the engagement at dinner the other night. When your father convinced Tony to come out here and talk with her, I figured I had to do something.”

She looked over at the two drunks slumped on their barstools. Her eyes were shining from the alcohol. “Patrick,” she said quietly, still looking away from me, “I was twenty-one when I married your father, a complete innocent. I didn't know a thing about life or love, any of it, and he knew less. I'm not proud to say we both made a big mistake, but in my heart I know we did. I'm not saying we don't love each other, because I wouldn't say that, even if I thought it was true, which I don't think.

“Anyway, it's a horrible thing to get close to sixty and look behind you and see a mountain of regrets piling up. It's enough to make even me think twice. I saw Tony's marriage as one more I was tossing on the heap, and I thought, admittedly at the last moment, that maybe, for once in my life, I could try to do something I actually might look back at with pride.” She finished off her drink and wiped at her mouth delicately. “I could possibly stand another of those.”

I called the waitress over and ordered another round of drinks, even though the first had made me bleary. We sat in silence, waiting for her to bring them, and when she did, I foolishly clinked my mother's glass, as if this were a cheerful celebration. I hated listening to her talk about her life like this, partially because I knew there wasn't anything I could do to help. I asked her if she'd ever thought about getting a divorce.

“Oh, only every day of my life,” she said. “But I've always thought of it as something I might have done, never as something I might still do. The first time it crossed my mind, it already seemed too late.”

The candle was burning down in the amber ball on the table between us. I picked it up and sloshed the melted wax against the sides of the glass. We sat in silence for a long time, listening to the drunks at the bar and to the faint, bland music in the background. Once or twice we passed some comment on the waitress, who'd taken a seat at a table near us and was picking at her fingernail polish.

“You know, maybe I shouldn't bring this up, but I can't keep my big mouth shut,” she said. “I was very upset that day you came into the store and made your horrible speech about Tony and Loreen's marriage and how awful life was going to be for them.”

“I know you were upset,” I said. “I've been meaning to apologize for a long time now.”

“It isn't a question of apologizing. It was obvious you weren't talking about the two of them, and it upset me, that's all. I hate thinking that you view your own life that way. Especially since you don't seem to be doing anything to change it.”

If I'd been just a bit more drunk, I might have let myself slide off my seat and onto the floor. Since I practically grew up in a confessional booth, I was familiar with the elation that follows being absolved of sin. I was delighted to hear that she'd misinterpreted what I'd said that day in the store. I was so delighted, in fact, that I didn't give much more thought to the way she had interpreted my reckless
speech. She had her head tilted over to one side and was unscrewing an earring.

“If you really believe that's what the future holds for you, you ought to do something about it now, while you still have the chance. Take it from one who knows a thing or two about mistakes, Patrick.” She took out her earring and dropped it into the glass ashtray in the middle of the table.

Looking over at her as she wearily removed her other earring, I kept thinking about Fields's reservations to Bermuda. I could rewrite the tickets in her name, and she and my father could take them and go off on a second honeymoon tomorrow, make a new beginning for themselves. But as soon as I tried to find the words to suggest it to her, I knew it was a foolish notion and that they could no more do that than get a divorce.

“We should keep an eye on the time,” she finally said. “With our luck, we'll probably miss him.”

I checked my watch. We'd been sitting at the table for close to an hour, and Tony's flight was about to arrive. I finished off my drink quickly and paid the bill.

*   *   *

By the time we got to the lounge, the two people who'd been standing there earlier were lost in a small, noisy crowd. The plane had landed and was pulling up to the gate, its lights flashing. There must have been a downpour while we sat having cocktails, for the big window in front of us was streaked with rain.

“I guess we just made it,” I said.

But Rita stopped walking and gripped my arm.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

“Turn around, Patrick.”

“What do you mean, turn around?”

“Trust me: just turn around.”

But old habits die hard, and I didn't trust her. I looked into the crowd of people in the waiting lounge and saw Loreen standing by the gate. She was wearing a long raincoat with a belt pinched in tight at her narrow waist; a plastic bonnet covered her big hairdo. “I don't understand,” I said. “What's she doing here?”

“I suppose she must be heading him off at the pass,” she said, “like the rest of us. She just happened to get here at the right time.”

We turned around and left quickly.

Thirty-eight

I
didn't realize it then, but much later it occurred to me that I must have been quite drunk by the time my mother and I walked out of the airport. Whatever a Rob Roy is, it packs a fairly solid alcohol-and-sugar punch. I hadn't eaten much of anything that day, and I hadn't slept more than a few hours in close to a week. My judgment was surely clouded, although I may be trying to make excuses for what I did.

Even if I was under the influence, I knew better than to speed and run the risk of being pulled over by a cop. I'd already racked up a couple of moving violations that year, and adding a drunk-driving charge to the offenses would have cost more than I could afford. I suppose spending a couple of weeks in jail would have solved some of my problems, but it wasn't what I had in mind. I drove carefully through the tunnel and then along Storrow Drive on the Boston side of the river. The sky was still full of planes circling overhead, but otherwise the city looked different to me. The buildings seemed less imposing and the lights less dramatic. I scanned the radio for a late-night jazz station but couldn't come up with anything. It was almost midnight, right around the time I'd first heard from Tony, almost three months before.

I didn't know what he was going to say to Loreen when he stepped off the plane, if he'd be shocked to see her or if he'd been the
one to tell her to come pick him up. If my mother's suspicions were correct, he'd apologize for having been so distant, complain about his job, maybe confess sorrowfully to a case of the last-minute jitters, and then tell her he loved her and start the ball rolling once again.

It was all out of my hands, and as I cautiously navigated my way home to Cambridge, I wasn't even that interested in finding out what happened.

Back at the airport, I'd taken my mother's keys and walked up to the top floor of the parking garage to get her car for her. She was a good deal more steady on her feet than I was, but I was feeling unusually chivalrous. As I was driving the big, boxy car down the endless series of circular ramps, growing increasingly dizzy, I thought about her words to me back at the cocktail lounge. And it hit me then that she'd been right about what I'd said in the store that day: I hadn't been talking about Loreen and Tony at all, and I hadn't been talking about my parents. I'd been talking about myself, describing my own life and my pessimistic, unhappy fantasies of what the future was likely to hold if I kept on course. By the time I'd reached the ground floor of the garage, aided considerably by power brakes and steering, the past three months had fit together and I knew exactly what it was I had to do.