The Widower's Tale (52 page)

"I am so very glad we're meeting in a proper fashion at last!" said Maitre Fougere as he gripped my hand. I could only hope that he was not alluding to the few occasions, the previous summer, on which we had
almost
properly met, on which I had seen his car glint past a window and had hidden somewhere deep in the recesses of my house. Evelyn, with whom I did speak often that summer, said that her husband was sorry he kept "missing" me.

Close up, he looked no less attractive than he had in the PBS documentary about modern architecture which Clover had forced me to watch after my first tour of the repurposed barn. His skin was so glossy and evenly tanned that it rivaled the sheen of an expensive handbag. His dark hair was thick and alert, his teeth even and bright (hadn't he grown up in fluoride-free Europe?).

I did note that I was definitely taller.

Looking up at the face of the house, he said, "Yes." And again, "Yes."

I cleared my throat. "I haven't said that word to you, not yet. Let's get that straight."

He turned to me again. "We have much to discuss, I know this."

I led him through the front door. I wanted to get him seated, pinned down, but he wanted to roam the place immediately. His designated inspector had been through the house two weeks before, banging, prying, peering, frowning. I had tried my best to ignore the fellow as he clomped upstairs and down; I'd even gone running in the middle of the afternoon.

The resulting report was a hefty document, though such is the norm for a house with deep history--rather like the medical file of any elderly patient. And indeed, when I read the first sentence of the opening summary, I couldn't help recalling Sarah's jest that the house
was
me. I like to think that my doctor would assess me in terms parallel to those of the house inspector, who wrote:
The foundation remains sound, and though many angles in the premises, particularly in wooden structures, would indicate extreme alteration from original building lines, nearly all such structures (see exceptions in Sections E and K below, related to cellar stairs and purlins supporting rear roof) appear to have settled solidly, without significant compromise to overall integrity
.

Fougere strode eagerly through the living and dining rooms, with a detour through the study. I followed on the heels of the master (shod in black hightop sneakers), unable to find any conversation to halt the exuberant stream of nonverbal praise flowing from his mouth. In the kitchen, he faced me once again, put his hands on his hips, and said, "Percy, my friend, I am ready to proceed with a contract, and I hope that you are similarly disposed. I am in love with this house, and I will treasure it like a child."

"Well," I said, resisting the urge to point out the grammatical ambiguity of his statement. Would he or the house be the child?

From inside his jacket, he extracted an envelope and placed it on the table. "Herewith is my offer. I find it more civilized to give people time to consider numbers in private, wouldn't you agree?"

"Well," I said again. "Well, yes. I'd say that's wise. Although ..." I was puzzled that he had no desire to walk through the second floor again, to reassess the closet space (almost nil) or the state of the roof from within.

"You do not succeed in my business without being bold about what you like
--eh bien
, what you love--and what you want. I do not teeter on edges."

"No teetering." Except that our business wasn't funny, I'd have laughed.

This was when Clover walked in the back door. She wasn't carrying the mail, and the surprise she expressed when she saw Fougere was transparently phony. I'm sure she'd spotted his shiny, pert little automobile.

They exclaimed about how happy they were to see each other, exchanged French pecks on their cheeks.

"Maurice, will you be here for the auction?"

"It has been on my calendar, in red, for months," he said. "Which is to say, my good wife would assassinate me were I not present!"

He grinned. Clover grinned back. I saw her glance at the envelope on the table. Unlike the envelope that had carried his first letter to me, this one bore the printed return address of his firm; my name was typed in widely spaced italic capital letters across the open field below.

M. PERCIVAL DARLING
.

Did the extra air between the letters lend me greater importance?

An awkward silence preceded Fougere's declaration that while he regretted his hasty departure, he had to catch a flight to Washington.

"Remaking the National Gallery?" I said.

"Ah no, but the Phillips would like a consultation. We shall see!"

Clover followed us as we retraced our steps out the front of the house. As we approached Fougere's car, Mistress Lorelei advanced on it as well. "Maurice! Hello, hello!" she called out as she crossed from her yard to mine.

"
Salut
, Laurel," he said, and they, too, enacted the kissing ritual.

"Maurice, I am dying to talk to you about joining in our historic architectural awareness program," she said. No beating about the bush.

"Oh yes? What an honor. We must make an appointment to discuss this, absolutely," he said. "And will I see you at the auction next week?"

She giggled. "Much as I love the little ones and their cause, I think it's a good occasion for me to scoot. Edgar and family will be in New York, so I'll join them. I hardly ever get to see my grandchildren--speaking of little ones. Though if I could corner our very own Frank Gehry, it might be worth staying!"

"Laurel, you flatter me to excess." Fougere was at the wheel, starting his car. How much fawning could the man endure--or did he thrive on it?

Through the window, he told Clover that he liked her dress, told Busybody Lorelei to call his secretary, then turned to me. "We will emerge from this as comrades, I assure you." One of his celestial eyes actually winked.

We three inferior beings watched Fougere drive away, his left arm, in its designer denim sleeve, bidding us a backward
au revoir
.

I found it easier to address Laurel than Clover. "So, barely back, and you're off again?"

"Percy, I've been back now for ages," she said. "Are we overdue for a shared supper, perhaps?"

"Perhaps we are," I lied, thinking about one more advantage of moving.

Clover watched Mistress Lorelei retreat. "So what was that about?"

"Well, it wasn't about a budding romance, let me set you straight on that." I assumed that news had traveled through E & F about my estrangement from Sarah.

"Daddy, I mean Maurice."

"No romance there, either. Alas for me. Is that man irresistible or what? Those eyes. Do we suppose he wears tinted lenses?"

"Daddy, you are so impossible sometimes. I just wondered what in the world you'd be doing with Maurice over here. I mean, you treated him like a leper when he was around making plans for the barn...."

"Yes, and that was childish of me. Just making amends."

She stared at me as one might examine a specimen through a microscope.

"How are you, daughter? We're passing ships these days."

"Overwhelmed. That's how I am." She looked away.

"I hope to see more of Lee and Filo soon. When do they finish school?"

She frowned slightly. "Middle of June. But before that, I have a small mountain to move." She sighed, as if in a play. "And I'd better get back to it."

As she walked away, I thought about Clover and Sarah in unison, about how gratitude--for something enormous, something seismic--can sour into resentment. I've never seen myself as possessing a generous nature, yet if called upon to give something to someone I love--a favor or concession, even a sacrifice--of course I would always say yes. Yet what if such acts led to my feeling as if I'd betrayed the people I love? What then?

I did speak with Sarah, once, after our terrible conversation about Gus. She phoned me the following week, the day after my birthday. She had to, because I'd been scheduled to drive her into Boston for a checkup with Dr. Wang, who wanted to "start the dialogue" about Sarah's surgery, which would take place after the chemo, to be followed by radiation. (Never an end to the rides at this amusement park! I'd already remarked to Norval that his cancer ordeal had been, by comparison, a sunset picnic at Tanglewood.)

"I should have called you to say happy birthday," she said. "I'm sorry."

"I spent my birthday with the courageous Mrs. Miniver. Both of them."

"Percy, why are you always so arch when things get serious?"

"Because arch," I said, "is like a straightback chair. Dependable. No give. The easiest seat from which to rise."

"Okay. I guess that tells me something. Me, I always choose the soft chair, the couch." I waited for her to scold me. "Percy, I'm in a miserable place here."

"I know that, Sarah." I tried to say this gently.

"Don't condescend. I am talking about me and you. Not me and the cancer. Me and the insurance people. Or me and ... Gus's parents, who think--"

"I don't want to hear about Gus's parents. Or Gus."

"Okay."

"Good."

"I'm asking somebody else to drive me to my appointments."

"I think that's a good idea."

"Well, that makes one of us. Or one and a half."

I waited.
No give
, I reminded myself.

Sarah said quietly, "Did you talk to Trudy? I mean, tell her?"

"I have not spoken to Trudy about anything of late. I have not spoken to much of anyone. Except Maurice Fougere. I think I'm going to sell him the house. He wants to write me a very large check."

"And have you told Trudy--or Clover--about that?"

I wanted this conversation to go on forever, yet I knew it mustn't. "Sarah, are you planning on continuing to give me advice? I can't think of any reason for my continuing to take it." I forced a laugh. "If I ever did."

"Percy, I don't want this to be over."

"I'd like to tell you, Sarah, that I'm wise and mature enough to handle this marriage-for-insurance deal of yours, but I am not. There, that wasn't so arch, was it?"

"No."

"My dear," I said, wanting for a change to sound as old as possible, "timing is everything."

"Oh Percy, what the hell does that mean?"

I wanted to say that it meant she couldn't have her cake and eat it, too, that she ought to have faith in true love, that God laughed when you made plans.... I wanted to level every proverb in the book at her wish for saintly forgiveness, to tell her that I was sick of lying down on my alarmingly rut-riven driveway to let myself be driven all over by every woman I'd known since losing my wife. But I said, "What it means, for now, is that I'd like you to call me after your appointment with Dr. Wang and tell me how you're feeling. Call me when you need to. I'm not going anywhere." Or maybe I was. "And I'm not going to be calling you." It felt good to sound definite. Resolve begins as a matter of persuasion.

I have always been an avid and fairly ecumenical reader of fiction: I relish the pretend, the invented, the convincingly contrived. Some will regard this affinity as Oedipal--my choosing the mother's turf over the father's--but as I have said before, I had a docile, ingrown childhood during which, as the years passed, I became increasingly conscious of how grateful I should be, if only for the harmonious cohabitation of my parents. Like everyone else who knew them, I tended to see them as a single unit: Alva & Betsy, Betsy & Alva. Only after I moved away did I contemplate the wonder of their sharing a workplace as well as a home. Perhaps they were more like siblings than spouses. In certain novels I have read, that is what they would have turned out to be. (In one sort of novel, they would have lived chastely, I their secret foundling. In quite another, I would be a clandestine sailor's knot of genes that knew one another far too well.)

One of the more heated arguments I'd had with Sarah was about the way in which I viewed my youth. Sarah believed firmly that the happy childhood is a myth, that in order to grow not just up but out and away, children must reach a point of conscious discontent. Ideally, she said, that point comes late, or gradually, or with the turgid hindsight of adolescence.

"You," she said, "are turning a blind eye to how incredibly lonely you must have been at times--even shut out, left out, by parents who seemed so perfectly matched. Don't tell me you weren't lonely a lot of the time, didn't wish for a sibling."

"Didn't," I said. We were eating in my kitchen. My mouth was full.

"Probably, you buried that loneliness in books." Sarah pointed a fork at me. "In fact, it occurs to me that your parents might have been doing the same with their own loneliness. I doubt it was the perfect marriage you envision."

"And why do you suggest I dredge up all this alleged discontent--excavate these artifacts of sorrow?"

"To know yourself better. That's part of the momentum of life, isn't it?"

"My momentum is running, swimming, and getting up and down that staircase several times a day." I pointed at the steep stairs leading from the kitchen to the bedrooms.

Sarah sighed. "For my sake, I'm so glad you never remarried, but I'm willing to bet that if you'd fully faced the solitude your parents enforced on you--not that they did it meanly, I'm not saying that--then you would have found another wife within a few years of Poppy's death."

I chewed my food to calm myself. After a moment I said, "Speculate all you want about my childhood, but leave my marriage alone."

"All right, Percy. Then let's just say you belong to a club of one. The Club of the Perfectly Happy Child. Don't tell me
that's
not lonely."

"Let's change the subject."

"By all means." We finished our spaghetti in silence.

This was during the week before Thanksgiving, when she knew she was to meet my daughters--and they to meet her--and when I was trying to coax her to see a doctor. Sarah had told me about her own childhood: raised by grandparents from age five, after her parents were killed in a fire at the hotel where they worked in the rooftop ballroom. No siblings, no nearby cousins; three uncles with whom she lost touch in her thirties, once her grandparents died. "And Worcester. Do you know how much fun it was to grow up in Worcester in the nineteen-sixties?" she said.