The Goodbye Summer (16 page)

“Kids,” she’d said. “That’s a problem.”

“Don’t you want children?”

She’d looked into Christopher’s clear green eyes, searching for a hint to what he wanted her to say. She wasn’t cynical about men, far from it, but she’d had a feeling this was a trick question. Still, what could she tell him except the truth?

“Not really. I mean…” She’d started to equivocate, then gave up.
“No, I don’t. I’m not cut out to be anybody’s mother. Some people are, some aren’t. I’m not.”

Was that the right answer? He had three sisters; his grandparents had been married for over fifty years; he came from Iowa. Of course he wanted children.

“What about you?” she’d said, reaching for her cold coffee cup, feigning extreme offhandedness. “You probably want five or six kids.”

“What makes you say that?” He’d started on the sports page; he was losing interest in the conversation.

“Because you’d make such a great father.”

He’d nodded slowly. “I would. But I don’t want kids, either. It’s too bad—the ones who’d make the best parents never want children.”

She’d felt flattered—he must be including her in that assessment. She’d wanted to ask why he thought she’d make a good mother, but she’d wanted to seem nonchalant on the whole subject even more. So she’d let it drop and started the crossword puzzle.

“The guy’s an ass,” Magill said. “Forget about him.”

“No, he’s not.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“No, he’s not. All he did was not call me.”

“I rest my case.” He folded his hands over his stomach.

She smiled. “Silly.” It was tempting to go on, get more sympathy, but she refrained. “I should go. Do you have any dope?”

“Say what?” He sat up on his pillows.

“Dope, grass. Do you have any marijuana? It’s not for me.”

“Who, then? Christopher? No, I don’t, what do you take me for? Do I look like a dope dealer?”

She almost laughed, since the answer to that was absolutely
yes.
“No, not Christopher, somebody else. I don’t want to say who.”

“Someone I
know
?” He looked shocked, then intrigued. “Who?”

“I’m not saying. Never mind, you don’t have any, so forget I asked.”

“Who is it?”

“Nobody. I’m not telling.”

“Frances?”

“My
grandmother
?” She burst out laughing.

He rasped his chin whiskers in a thoughtful, calculating way. “Okay, I know somebody. All I have to do is make a phone call.”

“Oh, great. Well—will you?”

“Happy to. On one condition.”

“Uh-oh. No—”

“You have to tell me who wants it.”

“No! No fair.”

“No deal.”

“Blackmail! Okay, I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me.” She paused for dramatic effect. “It’s Thea.”

“Thea.” Magill’s face spread in a slow grin. “I believe you. And now I’ve got another condition.”

She drove by Christopher’s house on the way home. Not exactly on the way; technically it was a mile and a half out of the way. The rain made it hard to see whether the lights were on behind the closed blinds in his front window, so she turned at the alley and drove around the back. What if he was walking King in the backyard or taking out the garbage, what if he saw her? She’d die. But the rear of his first-floor apartment was as shuttered and dark as the front, and his car wasn’t on the concrete pad beside the fence.

Maybe he was out of town. A family emergency, something so urgent he hadn’t had time yet to tell her about it.

Since Thursday?

She spent the evening practicing her violin. She was working on Dvovák’s Romance in F minor, but she found it echoed her achy mood too closely, she couldn’t stay with it for long. She began to play the intense, insistent first movement of the A-minor concerto of Vivaldi; she’d learned it for a long-ago recital, and she still loved to
dig
into it, that urgent six-note repetition. But tonight it sounded more anxious than joyful, and she had to abandon that, too.

An irritating melody had been running through her brain for days,
since Angie’s last lesson. She found herself fingering the first few mournful notes of “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Angie wanted to play the song wrong, anyway, jolly and rollicking, singing along, almost like a jig—Caddie wasn’t sorry she’d talked her out of it. If you were
going
to play it, play it without double stops. Single notes only in a hopeless, yearning circle. Make the tune hard and bitter, mountain music, primitive and sad and slow. She half hypnotized herself with the plaintive melody; there seemed no way to end it, it kept rounding back and starting over. Angie was crazy to think this was a good song for the pageant. It was much too sad. It was tragic. Caddie finally ended it by setting her instrument down.

The house was so quiet. “Too quiet,” she said to Finney, who followed her from room to room like a little white ghost. People talked about dogs being attuned to their moods, exhibiting canine empathy when they were blue or depressed, nudging them with their paws, licking tears from their cheeks. Finney wasn’t that kind of dog, usually. Humans were useful to him for food, play, petting, and walks, and as long as you provided enough of those your mood was irrelevant to him. Tonight he wasn’t himself, though. He wouldn’t leave her alone. She touched his nose to see if it was hot. No; but still, it seemed more likely that
he
was sick than that he knew
she
was. Sick in the heart.

She hadn’t been lonely in a long while. Weeks. She hadn’t had this tightness just below the chest that wasn’t pain, exactly, more like nothing, an empty pocket of air at the center.
I’m by myself again.
Worse now, because she thought she’d been rescued.

In Washington she’d been so brave, speaking right up to strangers, waiters and shopkeepers and people like that, in the bold, arch, humorous way she admired so much in others. Being with Christopher had given her the courage, made her feel assured and strong, as if she were anybody’s equal. It was like being drunk. On the street, glimpses she caught of herself and Christopher in store windows had made her feel proud because they were so obviously a couple. Everything added up, like a math problem or puzzle pieces fitting together. Completion, a mystery solved.

She had some over-the-counter sleeping pills. She took two, knowing
they’d make her feel groggy in the morning, and went to bed early. But the pills just gave her anxious, unsatisfying half-dreams. She got up at eleven and made some herbal tea. She stared at the phone. Christopher liked to go to bed early.

She called him anyway. “Leave a message at the tone,” he recommended.

“Are you there? Are you out of town? Christopher, if you’re home, would you call me? I’ve been worried that something’s wrong. Um, everything’s fine here. It’s Sunday. Night. I was just thinking about you. Hoping you’re not mad or something. If you are, would you call and tell me? Okay, well. Sorry if that’s—paranoid,” she said hurriedly, and hung up.

“Call him,” Thea suggested.

“I
have
called him. He’s either not there or else he’s not answering.”

“Then go knock on his door. Caddie, you have to find out. You’ll make yourself sick if you just sit here and do nothing.”

“We don’t have—we haven’t been having the kind of relationship where I do the calling. You know, the initiating. It just started out that he was the one, so now—if I do, it’s too…”

“Well, that’s silly. Aren’t you a liberated woman? I thought you modern girls called men up at the drop of a hat.”

“Anyway, I have called him. I can’t reach him.”

“And nothing went wrong over the weekend, you didn’t have a spat—”

“Nothing. It was almost perfect.”

“Almost.”

“Well, nothing’s perfect,” Caddie said practically. She didn’t want to think about that one little moment—and certainly she couldn’t tell Thea about it—the only possible culprit she could imagine. “
Christopher’s
perfect, though. I still want you to meet him. Oh, I hope you can.”

“I’m dying to. How long have you been seeing him?”

“About five weeks.”

“Are you in love?”

“Oh…it’s so soon.”

“Do you think? I fell in love with my first husband in one night. He took me to see
On the Waterfront.
I had blonde hair then, lighter than yours, and he said I looked like Eva Marie Saint.” She laughed. “Naturally, I was a goner.”

“When did you first tell him?”

“You mean, that I loved him? We were on a picnic. We were lying on an army blanket, I remember, looking up at the sky through the tree leaves. Holding hands. He said it first. Then me.”

“How long had you known each other?”

“I don’t remember exactly. Not that long, though.”

“Weeks?”

“No…”

“Months?”

“I suppose. Why?”

“Oh, Thea,” Caddie burst out, caution gone, “I’m afraid I did something. To scare him away—I think it’s because of what I said.”

“Sweetheart. If you told him—”

“I did. I said it, the last night. But so softly, and I thought he was asleep!”

It had to be that, those murmured words she couldn’t hold back. They’d just made love, and she’d felt so fragile inside, so tender and moved, she’d cried a little. Christopher had seen her tears, but he’d only smiled, hadn’t said anything. He’d just pulled her into his arms, and soon after he’d fallen asleep. That’s when she’d said it: “I love you,” on a soft exhale of breath.

“He must’ve heard me,” she said miserably, “and it was too soon. No, it was, I shouldn’t have said it.”

“But Caddie, if you felt it—”

“I scared him away.”

“I don’t believe it, not from what you’ve told me about him. Christopher would not do this.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” If only she’d kept quiet. But the words had sounded so daring and bold. She’d never said them to a man before,
and she’d wanted to for so long. Now that she finally had, she’d ruined everything. “I am such an
idiot.
”

“No, you’re not. Call him,” Thea said. “Call him, because I’m not going to fear the worst until I hear it from your lips.”

She waited until her last student left. Christopher’s machine came on, and she was stumbling through another awkward, pretend-carefree message when he suddenly picked up. “Hello?”

“Christopher? Hi! It’s me! Where’ve you been?”

“Hang on a sec.”

Waiting through half a minute of squeaky, muffled quiet, as if he had his hand over the mouthpiece, she had time to worry that his “Hello” had sounded impatient, maybe even irritated. How many messages had she left for him in the last seven days? She’d lost count.

“Hi,” he came back on to say. “Sorry about that, I had to finish something.”

“Are you working?”

“I’m always working. How are you? What’s up?”

“I’m fine, I—I’ve been worried about you. Did you get my messages?”

“Yeah, I was going to call you.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve been really busy, I just haven’t had a chance.”

“Oh.”

“Everything okay with you? Anything new?”

Her mind went blank. She couldn’t think of anything new. There must be no point to this call, then; she was only interrupting his work. What was happening?

“You sound funny,” she said finally. “You don’t sound like yourself.” What she meant was, they’d never had a telephone conversation like this. Always before, they were playful on the phone, even sexy; in truth, she often felt more comfortable talking to Christopher on the phone than she did face-to-face.

“Yeah? Who do I sound like?”

She tried to laugh. “Somebody who wants to get off the phone.”

He didn’t say anything.

She waited through an excruciating silence with her eyes shut tight. “Are you angry with me for something?”

“No, I’m not angry. I’m preoccupied. I told you, I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“How’s work going? How’s—”

“It’s busy.”

“Would you like to come over? Take a break?” Stupid, he
never
came here, he didn’t like her house. “Or I could go over there,” she said when he didn’t answer. “If you like. Whichever.”

He took a deep breath, a reverse sigh. “It’s not a good night.”

She couldn’t say anything for a full minute. He didn’t help her. She put her hand on her throat and asked, “Are we breaking up?”

Another long, unbearable silence, and the answer in it was obvious.

“What happened?” She had to whisper to get that out.

“Nothing happened. Caddie, it’s one of those things.”

“It’s because of what I said, isn’t it?”

“What? What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Look, it’s…it’s just that we don’t have that much in common. I mean, when you think about it, we have nothing in common.”

She slumped. It was true. She’d known it all along. “I thought we were having a good time, though.”

“We did. No, it was fine. It’s just, I think maybe it meant more to you than me,” he said, and finally his voice sounded kind, not cool and impersonal. But the change wasn’t consoling; it just made it impossible to argue. “It’s a bad time for me to have a serious relationship. It’s not your fault. And I think it’s better to break it off clean rather than drag it out.”

“Yeah.”
But what if I hadn’t called?
she thought.

“Caddie? You okay?”

“Yes. Fine.”

“I’m really sorry. You’ve been great.”

She hiccuped a laugh.

“I hope we can still be friends.”

She had to pull the receiver away from her ear for a second. “Yeah,” she got out. “Me, too.”

“Oh—Caddie?”

“Yes?”

“You can keep the CDs, but you know those books I lent you? On dog obedience and companion animal training? I’m going to need those back. Sorry to ask, but—”

“Okay. I have to hang up now.”

“Right, okay.” Now there was life in his voice for the first time. She was a load off his mind. “Well, Caddie, you take care.”

Years ago, in graduate school, she’d had a cat, Abigail. A scrawny, mostly gray alley cat a child in the neighborhood had foisted on her, but she’d grown to love it. One evening Abigail crawled home, sick and injured, bleeding from the mouth; she’d been hit by a car. Caddie rushed her to the vet, who’d kept her overnight. In the morning, he’d called. “I’m so sorry,” he’d said in the gentlest voice, “Abigail didn’t make it. We made her comfortable, but she was bleeding too much inside. She died about six o’clock this morning.”