You Lost Me There (21 page)

None of us was special, I fell asleep thinking. Everyone performed as programmed, leering and wanting as intended by nature. Progress was time’s measure, not effort’s. The only surprise was when the unknown got bigger, just when we thought we’d reduced it some.

 

 

 

Friday night, I got home from work around ten-thirty. Because Betsy was out on Little Cranberry, we spoke on the phone in lieu of our regular date. She and Joel had spent the day fishing with a friend of his, a commercial fisherman whose son had recently been arrested for drunk driving. Betsy had promised to get her lawyers on the case.

“It’s going to cost you. You don’t know the guy.”

“Who asked you? Mike Wallace, you know, did a brilliant piece last week on methamphetamine, did you catch it? Trouble, Victor, and not just for the addict. We’re not talking cherry soda. If that girl’s mixed up in this, she’ll burn your house down.”

“Is that right?”

“Why don’t you call me more often?”

“Darling—”

“I had a dream last night,” she said. “You were working on my roof, the roof caved in, and you broke your legs.”

“Charming. Did I make it out okay?”

“Don’t make me regret you, Victor,” Betsy said, and clicked off. The house was empty. Cornelia was done with her training at Blue Sea and had begun working the dinner service six nights a week, fixing salads. In my home office, there was a new message from Regina, though not addressed to me. I’d been included in a group e-mail sent to all Soborg employees, an invitation to a poetry reading that she was giving in two weeks for her new book.

The title of the book, I read, was
Fair Merman
.

I went out for a night swim. The dark was ravenous, swallowing up the road. At that hour, Long Pond was black and silver and grooved with ripples. No one was around, so I swam naked, a habit I’d picked up that summer years ago in Connecticut, when Jimmy Carter upset Sara and the nation with his betrayal.

No one ever told you that you could measure progress in a marriage by language. Say the two of you are in bed late one night. She’s engrossed in a biography and you’re reading a detective novel. She belches and you say as a joke, “You begin to interest me, vaguely.” Later, you employ it randomly and it becomes something fine and cute, part of a marriage’s filigree.
You begin to interest me, vaguely
. Then one day you drop it. For no good reason, it’s passé. Thirty years go by, other phrases come and go, but one night, a late-summer evening in Maine with the bedroom window open, with the air full of honeysuckle and pine needles, you’re both watching an old movie in bed,
The Big Sleep
, when Humphrey Bogart walks into a bookstore and a girl says to him that exact same phrase, the pet phrase you used to say to your wife, and the bookstore girl says it exactly the same way
.

And you stare at the side of your wife’s face, the same you’ve known, though now framed by short hair, touched attractively by crow’s-feet. And she says without turning, “You didn’t realize that’s where it’s from?” And you think, all those years, it was just a reference in her mind, a synapse, a junction between two points, whereas for you it was something the two of you had made up from scratch, not just a step, but a path you’d forged together.

I dried off and drove down to the beach in my towel. The parking lot was empty, dark except for the one-tone glare from a streetlight. In the bay, dozens of masts gleamed like pins stuck in the water. There was a couple on the beach, over the dune, I could see them screwing, the man on top until he paused, turned the woman’s body around, and she backed into his thrust. Or maybe it was another man, Sara’s gay lovers grown up. It was hard to tell by the shapes involved. Either way, under the towel, I wasn’t hard.

I thought, watching, in a marriage you’re like two ships, two tankers crossing trade lanes in the dark, never knowing what cargo the other carries.

I watched the couple until they finished, donned their clothes, and walked out of sight. One moment I knew they were gay or straight, and the next I couldn’t remember. I didn’t trust my memory. I couldn’t turn the ignition or tune the radio. After a few more minutes, I called information from a cell phone I kept in the glove compartment for emergencies. Information gave me the number for Dr. Carrellas. I got voice mail again.

 

 

 

Lucy caught me in the kitchenette, crouching in front of a vending machine. I was trying to decide between chips and yogurt for lunch.

“Hey, I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

“It’s Saturday, Lucy. Good idea.”

“I’ve forwarded my calls to my cell phone. I just need a couple of hours.”

“Lucy, what’s going on?”

She sighed through her nose, like a bull. “Promise me, you can’t tell anyone.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I’m serious, if you tell anyone,” she said, digging into her pocket, “so help me God, Victor.”

The flyer said that evening’s performance would take place at an art gallery in Bar Harbor. Lucy shoved me when I laughed. As far back as New York, where she’d played violin with a highly competent quartet of other amateurs from NYU, Lucy always got a bad case of upset stomach on performance days.

I called Cornelia from my office.

“What are you doing?”

“Sunbathing. As though you’re not completely jealous.”

“What do you know about Shostakovich?”

“Sounds like a supermodel,” she said.

“You’ve got the night off, right?”

At seven on the dot, Cornelia posed in the doorway. I was shocked to see her dressed up, wearing a strapless ruby red dress that stopped at the knee. Gold dangling earrings matched the color of her dreadlocks, worn long down over her shoulders. But what really threw me were the brown leather work boots that came up to her knees, as though she were prepared for an evening of mucking stalls.

“You’re pretty for a farm lass,” I said as she got in the car.

Even furry, she had very nice legs. Cornelia wrinkled her nose.

“Who says lass? It’s not my fault you don’t keep up with fashion.” She flipped the visor down to inspect her hair. “I assume this is a concert?”

“Well, you look terrific,” I said.

Cornelia widened her eyes and stared away from me. “Whatever, you’re forgiven. So,” she said, ducking her head and putting up her hair, with a hair band in her teeth, “I listened to some of Shostakovich.
Shostakovich
. So, I mean, it wasn’t mind-blowing.” She finished with her hair and fell back against the car door. “Can we go? I’m seriously starving.”

We ate dinner at a Cuban restaurant. Near the bar was a three-piece band: a piano player, a drummer, and an overweight woman who sang in Spanish. During an interlude, the piano player said into the microphone, “My wife, ladies and gentlemen, she sings these sad songs because she is married to me. She says she would be selling me up the river tomorrow if she could.”

Everyone laughed and Cornelia whispered, “I am feeling so
cultured
right now.”

When the waitress took our orders, Cornelia insisted on tequila shots.

I asked Cornelia about work, and if she’d made any new friends. I focused on remembering their names, though mainly I noticed how terrible her posture was. I finally had to do something. I went around and straightened her shoulders, pulling her back against the chair.

“You’re like Russell to a T,” she said when I sat down. I noticed, though, she didn’t slump again before we left.

The gallery was a short walk away under the streetlamps through downtown Bar Harbor, past knife and taffy shops and crowded outdoor restaurants, and a buckboard hammered from copper. I could tell we both were a little drunk. We passed a Native American museum, and I explained to Cornelia how, before the Europeans showed up, Bangor’s Abnaki Indians would camp out on Mount Desert Island’s shores during the summer months. How the common upper-crust use of “summer” as a verb probably had a longer history than we realized. Cornelia feigned interest, slung her arm through mine, and clomped forward in her boots. People stared at us, probably mistaking us for some May-December couple.

The art gallery was built like a chapel with a glass ceiling. Everyone was pale and overfed or pink and over-exercised, in bow ties or yellow shawls, boat shoes or lime-green flip-flops. Lucy was nowhere to be seen. The other musicians were mingling and shaking hands. I seated Cornelia in the back row and left for the men’s room, nodding to a few colleagues on the way out. More than one glanced back at my date, who at that moment was applying lip gloss from a pink tube.

A minute later, at a urinal, reeling from the alcohol at dinner, I heard quiet sobs through an air vent just above my head, cries I r ecognized.

“Lucy?”

A moment later: “Victor?”

I waited in the hall for three minutes before she came out, patting her face with a paper towel. Lucy was wearing a red dress similar to Cornelia’s, but with shoulder straps, and high heels rather than farm boots. Her cheeks were damp.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Just my pregame ritual. Now it’s ruined, along with my mascara. Thank you. Enjoy the show,” she said, and waved and started to walk away. Perhaps it was the tequila, but I was overcome with tenderness. I reached out and grabbed Lucy’s arm and, when she let me, hugged her tightly. She resisted, but relaxed a little.

“This won’t improve my makeup.”

“Break a leg,” I whispered.

“Hey, that’s me, Miss Invulnerable.”

Back in the gallery, Cornelia snapped around in her seat so I wouldn’t see that she’d been watching for me to return. Her program was folded on her lap into an origami crane. A hush went through the crowd when the musicians sat down and tuned their instruments. A few latecomers arrived, going up the center aisle and squeezing themselves past people’s legs, greeting their friends with whispers and small embraces.

I glanced up from my program just as Regina walked by, straight to the front where she took an aisle seat, sat down, and placed her program on her knees.

A Russian folk piece started. After a few minutes, Cornelia sighed loudly through her nose. I forced myself to look away, to look anywhere but at Regina, fearing that by some intuition she’d realize I was staring at her neck. Those shoulders. Those ears. Absolutely it was her. I’d known it when her ankles went past. I knew it from the cascade of her hair.

My Regina, or at least her ghost, but what was she doing there? Had she followed me, was it because of my e-mail? Had Regina heard about Cornelia somehow?

After fifteen minutes, Cornelia pretended her program had come alive as a paper bird, and flapped it around in circles. She leaned into my lap and whispered, “It’s like so
cultural
in here.” I shushed her and tried to concentrate on the music and ignore my stomach. By then, Lucy’s group had engaged with the score, they were leaning in and sliding back and forth over dynamics. I had half a mind to call Cornelia a taxi, half a heart to save her seat and invite Regina to sit down.

The group concluded for a brief intermission. Cornelia and I both quickly stood up. I followed her outside, daring a look back from the entrance. Regina was talking animatedly with the cello player, a man my age.

Then I remembered: Richard Cajal, senior scientist in the lab where Regina worked, married with triplet teenaged sons. Cancer survivor, very tame. Doubtful.

Cornelia had disappeared. I found her around the side of the building, smoking under some trees, leaning against a bronze sculpture of a seal.

“So can we leave yet?”

“You know that will kill you,” I said quietly, pointing to the cigarette. A few other people had come out to smoke, one man with a calabash pipe.

“Victor, whatever,” Cornelia said, supporting her elbow on her hip. “Seriously, do they at least serve wine during intermission?”

I tried to remember what I’d told her about the concert, but my mind was unavailable to external control; it had found a panic loop and was cycling, picking up speed. “You really should give it a chance,” I prattled. “There’s an interesting backstory. Now
Time
magazine, actually they put Shostakovich on the cover smack-dab in 1942, which of course—”

“Fine,” she said. “I get it. So you’re staying.”

“What?” I paused. “What?”

“No, obviously.” Cornelia turned in a circle on one toe. “You know, you don’t have to wait with me out here.”

“I want to wait with you,” I said dully. She didn’t respond or look at me. I stood there waiting until she finished, then followed her in, trailing by five feet.

Regina was nowhere to be seen. Cornelia seemed calmer, though. Perhaps nicotine was good for something. The musicians resumed. Someone, an older woman in a lemon-colored pantsuit, took the aisle seat near the front, where Regina had been sitting. She must have left at the intermission, I thought. Probably she had somewhere to go, someone to see. Performances of her own to enact with gratitude for an audience who met her halfway.

Looking centered and happy, Lucy was lost in the music, smiling at certain phrases, moving her upper body in time. During the seventh part there were several fast, aggressive sections, and the group attacked them in unison, taking the turns together, as if on the hunt.

Cornelia bucked in her seat, leaned over, whispered, “Victor, I need to go.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll see you at home.”

The music entered a gentle passage. Lucy closed her eyes. Cornelia placed her paper crane on the floor and squeezed past my knees. My heart sank. A moment later, quietly as possible, I went after her, seeing in the last row, on the aisle, Regina slightly smiling, noticing us leave, blankly registering us pass, her face otherwise a mask.