The Story of a Marriage (26 page)

It had been folly for Buzz to think he could force old love to return exactly as it was. Just like the sensation of awakening in the middle of the night, torn out of a pleasant dream. You try to thread yourself back into that dream. You convince yourself it can be done: you close your eyes, remembering just where you left off—a rosebush, a picnic, a long-dead mother. So you fall asleep, and sink into a dream—but never, never back into
that
dream. It is always gone forever. For we can no more revive old love than we can return to that awakened dream.

An old love, an old friend. The man in the chair; I knew so little of his life. A wealthy man in New York City, a political donor, sitting in a room full of other well-dressed men, laughing, and a lover’s hand on his knee, patting it gently. He could not have thought of me much in that time, not with people, worries, illnesses, and death. No more than I had thought of him. And now, to revive it all.

Some do try. Is it folly—or the best use of our lives to try?

I would walk down those three steps to the lobby and approach the chair. I would wait for a moment behind him, steadying myself, feeling the strange contraction of time taking place. A hurry in the heart. Then I would step into view—
Hello, Buzz
—and he would rise in astonishment—
Look at you!
—and we would both laugh at how the years had altered us, and everything around, and left us here, just as many travelers had laughed before us, meeting overseas and finding each other in this very lobby, these same worn leather chairs. We would embrace, and talk about our present lives, happy enough. That slightly broken nose, those sapphirine eyes still flashing, his hand on mine. And then we would talk about the past.
I’m sure Sonny told you that Holland died
. An old wound, like shrapnel, would twist inside us both. An old door, bricked up and plastered over years ago, would be revealed again; another life; each of us would stare at it, move our hands along the surface until we could feel the edges.

So we would come around at last to the real purpose of his note. I’m sure seeing my son’s name at a fund-raiser was a shock and delight to old Buzz; surely it seemed like a chance, in old age, not to be missed. The little boy, grown into middle age, who did not remember him. An innocent conversation, some harmless prying into the past, and then the note, an impetuous leap. I’m sure he took pleasure in the thought of seeing me, his old accomplice in a failed endeavor, just to go to that memory once again and this time touch the bottom. But he had not come all that way merely to see my face. He had come, I knew, to put an old question to rest. Sitting before me and smiling, a tremor in his one good hand, old age nearly disguising him. But I could not answer it for him. I couldn’t say:
In the end, he loved me more
. That would not be kind, or even really true. Leaning forward in his chair, those blue eyes fixed on me: “Tell me, Pearlie, why did Holland do it? Why did he stay?”

How could I possibly explain my marriage? Anyone watching a ship from land is no judge of its seaworthiness, for the vital part is always underwater. It can’t be seen.

Why did he do it
? we ask of the conventional professor who runs off with his student. And of the doting girl who breaks her engagement:
Why didn’t she
? It’s what we always ask of others’ lives. Luck was all before them, fortune and happiness; for some reason they turned and stepped off the precipice. What vision did they see there? Passion and beauty explain nothing—these stories are everywhere, and few of us are beautiful. The balance tilts both rich and poor. It might be the folly of youth, or the whims of old age, but this madness does not discriminate: an old widower about to remarry might change his mind, his middle-aged children in the pews, and be unable to state his reason. What could he say that would not sound like folly? We think we know people, and dismiss the scenes as aberrations, as the lightning strikes of madness, but surely we are wrong. Surely these are the truest moments of their lives. Why did that old man in the chair, Buzz Drumer, sell off his family’s property, and fortune, and legacy to be with one man, long ago? Why did my husband, at the last hour, stay rather than leave? We cannot know until one day the vision appears to us: that chances are few, and death comes soon enough. Take rapture if it’s in your grasp; take love if you can reach it. For Buzz, the love was Holland. For Holland, it was Sonny and me. Not madness. Perhaps: in commonplace lives, our single act of poetry.

“Happy enough,” my son had said.

I sat a long time at my table. People came and went but the old man waited in his chair. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the silver balloon dip low and the young man leap to catch it. The girl beside him clapped each time he did this, jumping fruitlessly, once, twice, arm stretched to the sky. And then, losing his hat, he caught it. He pulled it down. He handed it to the girl beside him, laughing. At that, as if it were the signal I was looking for, I stood and walked to the door, stepping out into the startling day.

Andrew Sean Greer is the author of
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
, the story collection
How
It Was for Me
, and the novel
The Path of Minor Planets
. He lives in San Francisco, California.

novels
The Path of Minor Planets

The Confessions of Max
Tivoli

stories
How It Was for Me