The Great Man (25 page)

Lila and Abigail met for lunch at an old bistro in the West Village where Lila had often eaten with her first husband. They settled into their booth under the high ceiling in the cool air.

“I hate summer,” said Lila. “The older I get, the more I hate it. It just gets so
hot.
”

“What about winter? Winter is no better.”

“Winter is brutal,” said Lila.

“I never thought I’d get old in New York. I always planned to move south somewhere.”

“But then you don’t,” said Lila. “I know. Because everyone you know is here.”

“Seeing you and Teddy in the same room the other day,” said Abigail, “I was surprised it wasn’t more dramatic.”

“Of course,” said Lila, “we hadn’t known you’d be there, so we weren’t prepared. Maybe that was why it wasn’t as horrible as it might have been.”

“Maxine insisted. She’s very bossy, and I can’t say no to her.”

“Maxine strikes me as lonely,” said Lila.

Abigail rolled her eyes. “By choice,” she said. “Anyway, I have to confess that I didn’t expect to admire Teddy, but I did. I admire her.”

“I’ve admired her for about a thousand years,” said Lila. “It’s impossible not to.”

“On another note,” said Abigail as two bubbling glasses of prosecco arrived, “how’s your love affair going?”

Lila ducked her head and looked at Abigail through her eyelashes with a coy little smile. Abigail found this expression slightly irritating and wished Lila wouldn’t make it. It was what the Victorian novelists used to call a “moue.” She had never liked it in fictional characters, and she didn’t like it in real people. More than anything else, she felt disappointment. She had dressed as carefully for this lunch as if she were meeting a lover. The prospect of this new friendship had caused her so much hopeful excitement, she had hardly been able to sleep the night before.

Lila said through demurely pursed lips, “Very well.”

Something in Lila’s face alerted Abigail then to a deeper possibility. She said, “Really?” with as much polite skepticism as she could muster.

Lila hesitated. Then she said, “Well, I like him a lot.”

“But you’re not excited about him?”

“I don’t know,” said Lila in a different tone, natural and plaintive. “I feel as if I ought to be. He’s very nice, and attentive, and, you know, good at sex and all that. And at my age, to find a man like Rex…”

“But?” said Abigail.

“It’s just that…” Lila paused to consider what she was about to say. “For some reason, I seem to be reluctant to go through this whole rigmarole again. After my second husband died, I found myself alone, kids grown, and I was afraid I would go nuts, but it turned out that I loved being alone after two husbands, three kids, all needing my constant attention.”

Abigail thought of her long-ago affair with Edward. It had felt so separate from her domestic life, even though he had visited her at her apartment. He had needed nothing from her except what she most wanted to give him. When he had visited her, they had been sealed off in a bubble of sensual pleasures: a bowl of ripe fruit or briny olives, a bottle of good wine, music playing, usually Schubert or Bach, and, of course, poetry—they had read aloud to each other. The sex had been almost, but of course not really, secondary.

“But isn’t this different?” she said. “He’s not living in your house. You only see him for dates. You don’t have to take care of him.”

“I know, but I change when there’s a man around,” said Lila. “I diminish myself. I can feel it happening even now at this late date with Rex. I get all kittenish and seductive and stupid.”

“I think I know what you mean,” said Abigail. “I had an extramarital affair with Ethan’s doctor. With him, I felt not myself at all, or rather, I felt I was a different person, a different part of myself, than I’d ever been before. But he made me feel better than anyone ever had before, or has since. Once, he actually told me I looked like Botticelli’s Venus. I felt purely sexual with him, and I saw that as a good thing. I felt like a red-haired seductress. Such luxury, I had never known, the freedom to be that way and no other way with someone. Can you imagine, me?”

Lila looked closely at her. Abigail quailed a little under the direct scrutiny, imagining what she must have seen. “Well yes,” Lila said after a moment, “why not? But with Rex, I don’t know, it’s not secretive or illicit. I feel a familiar pressure to please him, to put him above me somehow, as if he would shatter if he knew how smart and powerful I really was, not that I am; it’s just that whatever powers I have, I squelch. At my age, it’s ridiculous, but maybe some things never change.”

“Well, you should just stop doing that and see what would happen if you didn’t play dumb.”

Lila considered this with a mildly defensive expression. “Maybe so,” she said. “I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble. I think I’ve had enough romance for one lifetime. I think I’d like to live out the rest of my life in peace and quiet. My grandchildren give me all the passion I require. It would be fine with me if no one ever had to look at my old naked self again.”

“Gosh,” said Abigail, thinking she wouldn’t mind one more tryst with Edward. She wondered briefly where he was now. “How did you manage to diminish yourself all those years with two different husbands and not just…explode?”

“I think, in fact, looking back now, that I was quite strong as a wife. Both my husbands were passive men who looked to me for direction and impetus. But I never did become a novelist. What I think in retrospect is that I held myself back in order to push them to succeed.”

“Like me with Oscar,” said Abigail.

“But Oscar was a great man. My husbands were both mediocre.”

The oysters arrived. Abigail looked at them in polite consternation.

“Oh hell,” said Lila, “they’re not kosher, are they? You should have said something!”

“I’m conflicted,” said Abigail. “I love oysters.”

“I won’t tell,” said Lila, squeezing lemon over all twelve.

“Remember the old days?” said Abigail. “I’m not even sure what I mean by that. Which days and what I remember about them.”

“There were a lot of old days. I find that the older I get, the more sharply and clearly I remember being very young. Twenty, mostly. I remember college so well, better than any other time in my life. I went to Vassar with Teddy…until she had to drop out when her father lost all his money. The fifties…we had such adventures. We’d take the train down to the city and get into as much trouble as we could. Teddy was the ringleader, and I went along with anything whatsoever. We went to hear a lot of jazz.”

“Back in the late forties, when I was in college,” said Abigail, “Oscar used to take me to jazz clubs up in Harlem and in the Village. I would go because I loved Oscar, but I hated jazz. It was so squawky and honking, such a lot of posturing, I thought. Oh boy, though, did I love Oscar. I couldn’t believe it when he asked me to marry him, I really couldn’t. I was his pal.”

“You were so lucky,” said Lila.

Abigail considered her, liking her immensely now that she’d admitted her new romance wasn’t as thrilling as she’d been intimating. Abigail hadn’t had a close female friend since Maribelle had died. Maxine, of course, didn’t count. “Are you shocked that I had an affair with Ethan’s doctor?” she asked.

“No,” said Lila hesitantly. “After all, Oscar…I mean, you were even.”

“Did you ever?” Abigail asked. She had been wondering. “With Oscar.”

Lila’s eyes flared. “Me, no, I was Teddy’s best friend. I would never have, even if he’d shown any interest, which he never did.”

“Oscar seduced his best friend’s wife.”

“Well, Oscar,” said Lila indulgently.

Abigail poured a little vinegar-and-shallot dressing on an oyster and slurped it down with pleasure. “It ruined Moe’s life,” she said. “He threw his wife out and divorced her, and she died of an overdose. Oscar was such a schmuck. You know, he barely acknowledged his own son. He would just go around the apartment pretending Ethan wasn’t there.”

Lila laughed. “Horrible,” she said.

“Yes, I know, we all just laugh and go on adoring him. How did Oscar get away with everything? Even this flap over
Helena
is bolstering his reputation. No matter what, he can’t be tarnished.”

“Some people are golden,” said Lila. “Blessed by the gods, allowed to do as they please without any repercussions.”

“Well, he still had to die,” said Abigail. “But he died exactly as he had wanted to. A little ahead of schedule, but in his sleep, comfortably, of a heart attack. I’m sorry I didn’t call Teddy to tell her. I didn’t know her number; that’s the truth.”

“She suffered a lot,” said Lila. “She still mourns him.”

“To tell you the truth, I think she was far more in love with him than I was. But their love affair was always illicit. I know from my own how sexy that is. It never got old with Edward. I never tired of him, and I always felt passionately toward him.”

“How long did your affair last?”

“Three years!” said Abigail. The thought now astonished her, that that handsome young man had maintained his interest in her for so long. “It only ended because he moved away when his wife got sick, to Arizona, for her lungs. Oh, I was heartbroken. It’s funny how heartbreak fades gradually. When he left, I truly thought I couldn’t go on. I loved that man, but after a few years, I woke up one morning and found that I wasn’t pining anymore. Life went on with Oscar.”

The waiter took away the oyster tray and empty glasses, smirking.

“Did Oscar know about your affair?” Lila asked.

“I doubt it,” said Abigail, “but if he had, he wouldn’t have cared at all.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Lila.

“It’s true.”

“I bet he would have been devastated.”

“No,” said Abigail, thoughtfully. “Maybe at first, but he would have gotten over it.”

Lila let it drop, although it was clear she disagreed. “The old days,” she said. “I remember one night over at Teddy’s when Oscar was there, a party they were having. Does it bother you to hear about this?”

“After all this time, I’m well past anything but curiosity,” said Abigail.

“Well, they had on some sort of wild music, as usual. I always loved jazz, unlike you. And candles lit, a fire in the fireplace; it was magical and bohemian. Teddy was making something, probably a big paella, in the kitchen. Oscar was sketching a young dancer who must have been about his daughters’ age, twenty or thereabouts. Samantha and Ruby had both left home by then. The young girl was so smitten with him. I watched from a couch…. Oscar must have been in his early sixties then, which made him more than three times her age. She was sprawled on Teddy’s couch…long legs draped over one arm. Big brown eyes, hair messy in that seductive way, her limbs all sprawling. He drew her as if…you know. I remember watching her seduce Oscar, waiting to feel envious, and feeling only curiosity. It was then that I must have realized that I wasn’t pining for Oscar anymore. I watched her and admired her as if I were him.”

“Oh yes, I remember when young girls looked so delectable to me suddenly,” said Abigail. “It wasn’t a sexual thing, I don’t think; it was just getting on to the next phase of life. If we’d lived in a primitive sort of tribe or something, we’d have been elevated to wise old crone status, helping the young girls mate and raise their young. There must be a biological component to that feeling. It’s like lust, in that it’s a kind of sensual fascination, but it isn’t lust. But it makes us love to watch them all the same.”

“All right, I have to know something,” said Lila. The wine had arrived, and they were now well into their first glasses. The color in Lila’s soft cheeks was high. Her eyes sparkled. Abigail was smitten anew; Lila looked so much like Emily Robinson, the pretty blond girl she’d admired in her class at Brooklyn College. Emily had been sexily plump like Lila, with that same endearing, beguiling combination of earnestness and intelligence.

“Okay, what?” said Abigail.

“I can’t ask Teddy, for some reason,” said Lila. “All right, here it is. What was Oscar like in bed?”

Abigail burst into a guffaw. “Oh my!” she said. “What a question.”

“Sorry,” said Lila. “I hope you’re not offended.”

“Not at all,” said Abigail. She lifted her wineglass and took a sip. Then she put her glass down and said, “He didn’t interest me at all that way. We didn’t have great chemistry, I guess. I preferred Edward. Edward was sensitive and gentle, thoughtful. Oscar didn’t care about anything but his own pleasure. Like a big dog.”

Lila’s eyes turned inward, as if she were picturing this. “That’s what I thought,” she said. Abigail could almost see her mouth watering. “My husbands were both so irritatingly sensitive and gentle, I sometimes wanted to shake them. You know…not at the same time, of course. But somehow I always ended up with those poetic types. I really would have preferred a big dog.”

“Well, you should have shtupped Oscar! Everyone else got to.”

“My friend’s lover?”

“I agree, it would have been very bad form.”

“Anyway, he wasn’t interested in me.”

“Oh, sure he was.”

“I swear he wasn’t.”

“I don’t see how he possibly couldn’t have been,” said Abigail. “I am sure that the only reason you never went to bed with him was that you were loyal to Teddy. If you hadn’t been…”

Abigail and Lila both laughed.

“That’s funny,” said Lila, “you, reassuring me that your husband really did desire me.”

“I guess that’s just the kind of man Oscar was,” said Abigail.

“Actually, I think it’s more that that’s the kind of woman you are,” said Lila.

“That I’ll take as a compliment,” said Abigail, “although I don’t know why.”

“Yes you do,” said Lila.