Then We Came to the End (23 page)

Then a night would come along — hey, not unlike this one — when enough time had passed that the specifics of their last conversation grew vague, when Lynn discovered that in the intervening days her anger at Martin had shifted toward understanding, which had spilled over, that night, into regret for how she had reacted when he canceled their plans. It had always been an understanding we share, the thought went, how important work is, and when we get together it’s what we talk about — this frustration of mine, that fascinating case of his, how we’re succeeding and failing and working hard. She would reflect back and think how selfish she had been, and slightly childish, too — and she would call. Or a few days would pass and
he
would call. “You were right, I fucked up, we had it planned,” he’d say. “Can we do it this weekend?” How good it was to have her hands on his chest again, how good to trip over his shoes again on the way to the bathroom.

But not this night — no calling him this night. Not after their last conversation. No way to shift any of that emotional content. That back-and-forth is frozen like a mastodon in ice, and the rider on top, with his spear and animal urges, he is their year together, suspended forever with his mouth gaping wide, his whoop and howl finally silenced.

WHOA — SUDDENLY
it’s like something in a science fiction movie: how’d she get
here?
Just a second ago, she was sitting on the sofa with the cats, eating Chinese. There was television, and the last of the ice cream. Next she knows, she’s dressed and sitting in a public place, seeing and being seen. A delicately lit wood-paneled wine bar new in the neighborhood. She feels on display for being the only one actually sitting at the bar. The crowd’s in back. What was that she kept repeating to herself? Here is the right place to be, alone at this bar, and this thing I’m doing, having my, what, fourth? my fourth or fifth glass of wine for the night, what a wise and prudent thing to be doing. Not any more convincing here than it was back home. She can’t even work up a conversation with the bartender, who seems fixated on the contents of his wallet. Jeez, don’t let me distract you. No need for a little conversation, what they used to call the human touch. By all means, keep looking through your ATM receipts. She’ll just content herself with mulling it over again: the fact that there
is
some place — she’s absolutely certain of it — one place that is the
right
place to be tonight, and
one
thing that is the right thing to be doing. Is it really sitting in Martin’s office, under very familiar fluorescent lights, amid all those oppressive document boxes, watching Martin read Westlaw downloads, just so she can be in the presence of Martin? No, goddamn it, no — that is bullshit. There is something else, something that is Lynn Mason’s, that belongs to her and to her alone and is not contingent upon the existence of Martin Grant. But what? Only thing she can say for sure,
it’s probably not here.
Amazing how quickly a glass of wine goes when you’re the only one at the bar. Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be saying good night now, you won’t be seeing me tomorrow. “Another one?” asks the bartender. “Just the tab,” she says.

One day she said to him — they were on again — “Hey, come here, will you, and feel this for me?” She was in the shower. It was a workday, one of the rare occasions Martin slept over during the week. He came to the shower door. “Hey, I’m going now,” he said. “Have to get home to shower.” He was standing behind the opaque glass. “Did you not just hear me?” she asked him. “What?” he said. “I asked you to feel something.” He didn’t move. “What is it? I’ll get wet.” And instantly, she had a thought. More like a suspicion. It was when he said, “I’ll get wet” — what sort of thing was that to say?
Roll up your fucking sleeve then, you jerk!
It led her to believe he
had
heard her, heard her all too well. It can’t be helped, when a woman is in the shower and says,
come here and feel this,
that a tone creeps in. Not fear, not just yet. Concern, and she’s looking to unburden some of it. She’s looking for somebody to say,
that feels to me like it’s nothing.
But Martin, Martin was quick. Martin would immediately grasp the implications of a request like
come here and feel this,
and he would pick up on the tone, too — and knowing what that tone implied, all it might lead to and all it might require of him, he came to the shower door with his own agenda.
Have to go home, have to shower.
Was it true, or was it just her suspicious mind? “What is it, Lynn?” he said. “What is it you want me to feel?” “Never mind,” she said. “No, what
is
it?” he said, with an impatience intended now to make her believe that he was eager for it, really wanting the opportunity. “It’s nothing, forget it, get out of here,” she said. He opened the shower door, startling her. She slammed it shut. “Get out of here! Go home and shower.” He already had his keys in his hand. They jangled as he spun them around on his finger. “Okay,” he said — and that was the extent of his protest. She hated the disappointment she felt when, with the water off, she heard the front door slam.

He spent the next month in California on a case. He left messages but she didn’t return them, and then he stopped calling. It was two weeks after his return that they next saw each other, and they should have been thick in a fight before even taking a step inside the restaurant — about the calls put in and not returned, the monthlong silence, the insult of the two additional weeks. But being across from him again was where she wanted to be. She had missed his conversation. God — had she not realized how much? It was always the same thing — pissed-off judges and incompetent prosecutors and legal issues she needed explained. But the way he talked, his mannerisms, his inimitable masculine mannerisms — she had missed them. And he had missed her company, too, it seemed. He listened to her talk about the difficulties the agency was facing and the miserable experience of laying people off. Later that night they went back to her place and it was even better having him inside her than it was having him across the table from her. She had to interrupt it briefly to tell him not to touch there, not the left breast, to spend his attention on the right breast but not to touch the other one, and he guessed appropriately that it would not be the time to ask, “How come?” and so said nothing.

But at breakfast the next morning, at a place in the neighborhood where they sat in a courtyard on a wrought-iron table under the new spring sun, he surprised her. “I’m putting two and two together,” he said, “and it may come to equal five, but I thought I might ask. How are you feeling, healthwise?” “Why are you asking me that?” she said. “Because last time we were together you asked me to feel something. And this time you tell me not to feel something. Is it just a monthly . . . a matter of bad timing? Or is there something else going on?”

Martin, who cared only to talk about the law. And when it wasn’t the law it was jazz — the history of jazz, how to listen to jazz, this one particular recording that changed jazz forever. “Everybody would disagree with me, but it was Louis Armstrong’s ‘St. Louis Blues.’ There had never been anything like it.” She knew it by heart by now. Oh, god — had she misread him? Had her decision not to return his phone calls when he went to California been based on a presumption that when he came to the shower door, he thought,
Reach in, and I’m doomed.
Two minutes of sexless inspection of the thing he lavished his attention upon at certain convenient hours and he was in it for months, maybe years. He was in for meeting the doctors and learning the terminology and driving her back and forth and holding her head as she retched. If he wasn’t likely to commit to something that included security, love, protection, how eager was he for a commitment like that? But was it possible
he had in fact simply not heard her?
“I have a lump in my breast,” she said. “I found a lump.” He raised his eyebrows. “A lump,” he said, looking down, suddenly toying with an empty cream container. “What’s . . . what’s a lump?”
What’s a lump?
He hadn’t expected that answer, had he, even if it was the obvious one — not here, not at breakfast in the sun. “Why don’t you just forget about it?” she said. “No, I mean, of course I know what a lump is,” he said. “But what have you done about it? That’s what I mean to ask. What do the doctors say?” “I’m doing fine,” she said. “Is that what they say?” “Martin,” she said, “I’m fine.” “Were you ever going to tell me?” “I told you last night,” she said. On a dime he turned into the litigator. “No, you didn’t tell me last night. You told me not to touch last night. You didn’t tell me you found a lump.” “Why don’t you not worry about it, Martin — because I think you’d rather not worry about it than worry about it.” “I brought it up, didn’t I? Wasn’t I the one who brought it up?” Well, she thought — wasn’t he? Just where did Martin stand? Who was this man she had been fucking for the past year
really,
and how would he react with his back up against the wall? Let’s find out. “Okay,” she said, “go to the doctor’s with me.” He returned to futzing with the creamer. He didn’t look up for some time. “So you
haven’t
seen a doctor?” “I just asked you to go with me,” she said. “So obviously I haven’t.” “Why not?” he asked. “Because I need someone to go with me,” she said. He returned his attention to the creamer. “Sure,” he said, not looking at her. “I’ll go with you. Of course.” She smiled at him. He looked up. “What?” he said. “I’m fine,” she said.

BETTER THAN BEFORE,
anyway, because here is a good place to be, not a half-bad place, anyway, and this thing she’s doing may be a little uninspired, but certainly better than getting blotto at a wine bar. She parks in the underground garage and goes up by elevator and steps lightly into the bright and soothing atmosphere. Home, then bar, and now, a half hour before closing time, a department store — not a very fertile imagination on me, she concludes. She wishes to god she could think of the thing she knows is right. It probably isn’t shopping, but as she told herself on the way over, shopping’s not a bad interlude. And would you look at all the shoes? She wanders around the displays. Pumps, heels, sneakers, sandals — you know (thinking back on all those shoes she pulled from her closet when eons ago it sounded like a good idea to be cleaning), I don’t really need any more shoes. She doesn’t really need any more anything. But will you just look at all the hard work these good folks have put in to make you feel like nothing could ever be wrong when there’s so many pairs of shoes to buy! She hasn’t even gone into the main body of the store yet, it’s all so lovely and pleasant already.

And all of it soured by the lack of the one thing she wants: not likely to find Martin here in the women’s shoe department, is she? In any department of Nordstrom or anywhere else at this hour of the night. Nine-thirty — right now Martin’s walking the hallway toward some associate’s office. Is she really longing to be a part of
that?
She would replace these bright and open spaces full of the world’s best footwear, fashions, perfumes, and accessories — and for everything else, there’s MasterCard — just to join Martin in a hallway of bare walls and ugly carpet as he moves toward an associate’s office on some inconsequential item of business? Come on, be reasonable. So it is Martin, it is Martin’s body — he’s still standing in some boring jerk’s doorway talking about document production and privileged materials. Shop, for god’s sake! Buy something! Make this night memorable in shopping’s extremely cheap way. What she has in mind is something extravagant, something outrageously expensive. You wear it once and put it away forever. No, not
that,
not a wedding gown. She doesn’t want to marry Martin, believe it or not. She just wants to follow him around the corridors of his office, stepping into the supply closet with him to pick up some file tabs, or whatever. That’s a far cry from vows. It’s
not
not having Martin forever that makes her momentarily wacko for Martin; it’s not having him
tonight.

She passes the man at the piano. What’s he playing? Can’t name it. She drifts around the perfume and makeup counters, fending off the lab-coated jackals that want to spray her and paint her and make her look her best. Just looking, thanks. Which is what she’s been doing, for twenty years more or less, with respect to men. She doesn’t mind finding herself unmarried, it’s just how things turned out, and she’s not eager to marry
just
to marry. Only those with the most dull and conventional pieties, looking in at her from the outside, would suspect or pity her for being forty-three and still unmarried. Would they pity a man? They would
envy
the man. She heads up the escalators. That’s not to say that when she sees her friends marry, she doesn’t have moments of, not jealousy, but envy, though not envy of the friend for getting married but rather of that conviction both the bride and bridegroom seem to share that, well, this thing they’re doing is the right thing. Where does that come from? She did think for a time that she and Douglas would marry, and when instead it went in the opposite direction, because Douglas was not, in the end, what she wanted, she woke up one morning and thought, not unlike finding herself all of a sudden in that wine bar, “Whoa, I’m thirty-eight! Who’s playing tricks on me here?” And for a moment she thought along the conventional line herself, reflecting on what a loss it might be if she never married, and if she did, how old would she be by then — no younger than forty, if she got lucky — and so maybe too old to have children, and what a loss that might be, too. But do let it be known — what floor is she on? — let it be known in Women’s Apparel, at nine-thirty-five
PM
— dinner is probably being delivered to his office about now — on the night before she’s scheduled for major surgery and at the age of forty-three, that her marital status has not been, for whatever reason — because she is “cerebral,” because she is “cold,” because she is “ambitious” — it has
not
been the focus of her life. If she had spent a tenth of the energy finding the right man as she has building the agency she started with the other partners, she would be living in Oak Park right now putting dinner plates into the dishwasher.
Have you finished with your homework? Should I take the car in tomorrow?
With some circumspection, with some healthy amount of doubt, she can say that right here is a better place to be, in Nordstrom, and this thing she’s doing a better thing than loading up the dishwasher in Oak Park. And those people who think, Oh woman, oh sister, oh girl you have no idea what you’re missing out on, we just have to part ways, me and them, because I have made a good life for myself. I know what to do with my life. I just don’t know what to do with
this one night.