The Year of Pleasures (20 page)

For the first time, I’d felt old. It hadn’t been only because of Matthew’s
Save the Tiger
questions; it hadn’t been the way that, in the presence of the other young couples there, the fact that I could be his mother was accentuated. It wasn’t the background music that Matthew hummed along with that I’d never heard. It was that tonight I’d felt the sudden collapse of a kind of internal support wall that heretofore had offered me a certain protection, a wall built and maintained by my husband, I now realized. No one could ever be for me what John had been because he had known me
when,
and that had kept me away from the true reality of my years. I’d joked about bifocals, about memory loss, about the losing battle with gravity. But I hadn’t really felt my age until now. Was I ready for the rocker? No. But was I as young as I’d thought? No.

Sitting at that table and smiling falsely, my mouth had gone dry. I’d seen that I was in for many more grim discoveries, psychological land mines. I’d known when I met John that he was uniquely suited to me in hundreds of ways. But there’d been the knowing in his life, and there was the knowing after his death.

The restaurant, optimistically called Lucky’s, was a small, storefront place, the owner from some eastern European country. He spoke almost no English. Matthew went there often—the food was cheap, the servings large, the décor charming, in its way. Personal, at least, with black-and-white family photographs on the wall. Near the cash register was an absurd little grouping of porcelain dogs and cats. But the meat had been tough, the vegetables watered-down, the laminated menus fingerprinted with grease in a way less funky than disgusting. One hopes to discover something in restaurants like this: Waiters full of character and charm. Fabulous food at rock-bottom prices. Neither of these had been there. The food had been awful, and the staff silent and sad beneath a veneer of pleasantness.

Or maybe it was just me.

John had talked, soon after he was diagnosed, about a sense of separateness, of seeing through cancer glasses, thus having distorted vision. He was not
among
the rest of us anymore, he’d said; he felt irrevocably apart.

I felt apart now, too, looking at the world through widow glasses. The mantel clock chimed ten. I stood up and moved to look out the window, wrapped my arms around myself, and noticed, dully, that I’d lost more weight. I thought,
It’s true that when someone you love dies, part of you dies, too. And then must be reborn.
And many people were reborn, they suffered through their pain and emerged victorious: their love for the lost one revered but put away, their lives now open to a separate course. Others never did quite recover. I’d made a promise—many promises—to John to be among those who not only survived but thrived.

I was trying, in what I supposed were haphazard ways. Move to a new town; befriend the child next door; eat dinner with a tortured young man afloat in the restless sea of his own young life; entertain the notion of creating my own business, in my own way. Reestablish contact with the girlfriends of yesteryear.

What luck that I had found them again. I had been thinking of having them all here, inviting them for next weekend. I had envisioned us sprawled out in the living room, talking, talking, talking, without fear of censure, without embarrassment of need. Now I didn’t know if I was up to it.

I went to the Chinese chest and pulled out a slip of paper:
Iron grates.
I had no idea. Quickly, I pulled another:
Japanese tea ceremony.
Again, I had no idea.

I went upstairs to my bedroom, got the packet of photos from my nightstand drawer, and pulled one out. It was of a courtyard in Portugal where there was a statue of a man whose mustache seemed intent on flying off his face. I remembered John taking that shot, remembered, too, that we’d just had lunch and he’d gotten a stain on his sweater, an unusual occurrence for such a fastidious man. The picture showed two old women dressed in black, sitting and talking, kerchiefs on their heads. One stared directly at the camera, her black-stockinged legs wide apart; the other sat in profile with her hands clasped in her lap, her knees together. I remembered that it was only after the picture was taken that the women smiled; one had had no teeth. Behind the women were buildings with walls the colors of apricot and burnt sienna and sage green. There were lace curtains at the window of one apartment, and draped over one of its wrought-iron balconies were white shirts, drying in the sun. Above that, a clothesline stretched from one window to another, full of more laundry, which probably was the reason John had taken the photograph; a gift to me and my odd predilection.

I remembered that after the shot was taken, those two women had asked John if he would like them to take a picture of us. Oh, no, we’d both said. We’d explained how neither of us liked to be photographed. Oh, no. What need did we have of photos when we had each other?

I dumped the rest of the pictures out on the bed. Façades of churches, a group of pigeons at the feet of a smiling old man, a lovely sunset. Not one of John. But here was one taken in Venice, and I remembered it distinctly. It might be good to revisit that particular memory.

The photo was of a gondola we’d ridden in. John hadn’t wanted to go for a gondola ride. He said he would feel like an idiot. I said, John. We’re in Venice.
Everybody
who comes to Venice rides in a gondola. Precisely, he said. I stood blinking at him. Finally I said, SO? So you can’t do something just because other people do? Since when? Do you sit alone at the opera? Did you invent fishing? This is different, John said. It’s too much a display. And it’s pedestrian, really; we can find something much better to do. Yes, I said, let’s go and find something none of the idiotic
tourists
do. We’d jousted back and forth, I far more angry than John—he was actually amused—and I think it was that air of superiority, Ricky smirking at Lucy, that made me so furious. When the gondolier pulled up to the pier where we were arguing and asked if we wanted a ride, John said, “Why, yes, we were just talking about that!” and he jumped into the boat and offered his hand to me. What was I to do? I had no idea where I was; I spoke no Italian; and John had the room key with the hotel name and address. I vowed never again to travel without my own key.

I remembered seething, sitting in that gondola with my arms crossed tightly over my chest as we glided along. Some better part of me had wanted to shrug off my vile mood and point to the many things that delighted me, to share with John what my friend Marianne had said about Venice: that it was like an aging beauty queen in need of some serious dental work. Instead, I took in the sights frozen-faced, and John eventually positioned himself so that he would not have to see me. And that poor gondolier, clueless as to what our problem was, wanting only for us to attend to his weak tenor and the charm of his navigation. I would have none of it. At the end of the ride, we tipped him extravagantly—each of us—apparently agreeing at least on this point: Someone so ill treated ought to get some kind of reward at the end of his ordeal. The irony, of course, was that John had ended up enjoying the ride and I’d hated it. When we disembarked, he’d snapped the photo in a move of ironic sentimentality that had only made me more angry. The red velvet seats festooned with gold plastic flowers! That evening had not ended well. We’d gone to bed angry and had slept as far from each other as possible.

I sat still, the photograph in my hand. The memory had not helped so much after all. It had not reminded me that life was not perfect with John. Instead, it had made me long for him with a deep and specific desire; I could feel it from my hips all the way up into the back of my throat. I would never stop longing for him. I would never be happy without him. I was the kind of person who needed to share something in order to fully experience it myself. But I had lost my partner, and I would never find a relationship even close to what I had. What was the point in pushing myself through the rest of my days?

I slid off the bed and onto the floor and put my hands over my face. “Please,” I said. “Oh,
please.
”

I felt suddenly that something had come into the room with me, a presence, and I held stone still. I looked at the chair in the corner of the room, and there he was.

“John?” I put my hand to my chest, clenched at my sweater. “Are you here?”

He was smiling. His legs were crossed; he sat relaxed and looking over at me.

I began to cry. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, and there was such radiant love on his face, my pain disappeared. I felt pleasantly hypnotized, caught between worlds. “Are you hungry?” I asked. “You must be starving.”

His face, looking back at me.

“I don’t know why I said that.”

I started to get up, and he shook his head no. I patted the floor. “Can you come here, then?” He stayed still. “Then I’m coming over there.”

He disappeared.

I stared at the chair and listened to myself breathing. Then I reached for the phone and called Lorraine. When she answered, I started bawling.

“Betta?”

“Lorraine. I think I’m going crazy.” More bawling.

“Go ahead and cry,” she said. “It’s all right.” I continued to weep, and after a while, she said, “Okay, hold on. Let me get a cigarette.”

When she returned, I told her what I had seen. “Don’t ever tell anyone I told you this,” I said between hiccoughing sobs. “But what should I
do
?”

“I don’t find what happened so unusual, Betta. You’re in a very vulnerable and strange place right now. And anyway, these things happen all the time—I’ve had hallucinations!”

I wiped at my eyes. “Yeah, but you used to take drugs all the time. This wasn’t a hallucination. He was really here!”

“No, honey, he wasn’t.”

I sat still, staring at the chair he’d been in. Then I said, “Could you come back here, and bring Maddy and Susanna? Will you bring them here?”

“Yes, actually, we were just talking about that.”

“Lorraine, I’m . . . I feel scared.”

“I know you do. Talk to me. I’m right here.”

“Maybe . . . I shouldn’t have moved. Maybe I shouldn’t have lived after he died—I don’t think I have the strength of character to do this.” I began to cry again. “I don’t want to
do
it anymore, and I’m so far from
done
! Oh, I shouldn’t have even met him! Or I shouldn’t have loved him so much. Or I shouldn’t have
relied
on him so much. See, Lorraine, you don’t know. You don’t know. I shouldn’t have thought I could recover so quickly.
’What an adorable town! What a pleasure to be here! I’m so strong, look at my new life, just falling into shape!’
No! I came out here and bought the house in this blind rush of confidence. But now I can’t seem to . . . I lost that store, Lorraine. Somebody else rented it.”

“Well, you can find another one. I’ll come back and help you. Just sit tight and I promise I’ll help you find another place.”

“It was supposed to be John and me together, not just me! Not just me! I can’t stay here; I’m going to have to move back to Boston, and now I’ve sold my
house
!”

I held the phone so hard it dug into my hand. I sobbed, making loud, ragged sounds that seemed to be their own, primitive selves, that astonished me with their utter authenticity. When I finally finished, I said miserably, “I don’t know. I don’t think I meant everything I just said. I don’t even
know
what I just said.”

I heard Lorraine blowing out a long column of smoke. Then she said, “I should think we could all be there by next Friday night, and stay for the weekend.”

“Okay,” I said. “Good.”

“We’ll get ourselves there, you just stock the cupboards. Okay?”

“Okay.” I hung up the phone and took in a deep breath, looked again at the chair, which seemed to look back almost defensively.

Well. Nothing like a good cry to reverse your spirits. I went downstairs and put the teakettle on, then put
Lyle Lovett and His Large Band
on the stereo. I stood thinking about John, real as life, sitting in a chair in the corner of my bedroom. I didn’t really believe these things happened “all the time,” as Lorraine had said. I turned the flame off under the kettle and walked back upstairs. In the hall just outside my bedroom, I hesitated, then walked in and sat at the side of the bed. Staring straight ahead, I slid off onto the floor and put my hands over my face. “Please,” I said, and snuck a glance at the chair. Nothing.
“Please.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and listened. Nothing.

When the doorbell rang, I turned quickly toward the sound, thinking,
John?
But it was Benny.

“Can I come over?” he asked. “My mom was supposed to be home at nine, but she’s not back yet.”

“Of course,” I said. “Where is she?”

“Work,” he said, shrugging off his jacket. “Sometimes she works late.”

He had no sooner positioned himself before the television in the guest room when the doorbell rang again. It was Carol, embarrassed and apologetic, holding the note Benny had left her. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Is he here?”

“Upstairs,” I said. “Come on in.”

She stepped over the threshold, came no farther. “I was . . .” She took in a breath, then whispered, “Okay. I went to a motel with a man I work with. I turned off my cell, just while we were . . . anyway, we both fell asleep and I . . . God, I’m so embarrassed! What must you think of me?”

“Mom?” Benny called from upstairs. Then he clattered down. “Hi, Mom. Where were you?”

“Honey, I’m so sorry I’m late. It will never happen again. You run home; I’ll be right there. I just want to talk to Betta.”

Benny thanked me and left; Carol stared at the floor.

“Don’t feel bad,” I said.

She looked up at me, her eyes shining with tears. “I just . . . I need to be with a man sometimes, and I don’t want to bring them home. And babysitters have gotten so expensive. This has never happened.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you give me Benny one night a week?”