by Jane Smiley
I nodded.
“He was born at the end of January and I was born the following Christmas. They didn’t make that mistake again.”
“I think my problem was that when I was growing up I never actually knew a baby. My cousins were all older, and I was an only child. No one younger ever came into my area. Maybe I didn’t think it was possible.”
“You sound regretful.”
“Well, I never think I might have lived my life differently. But I sometimes wonder if I would have enjoyed someone else’s life more than mine.”
She laughed.
I said, “Would you do it now?”
“What, have kids?”
“Yeah.”
“No. Frankly, I would rather raise dogs. Train dogs. Seeing-eye dogs or tracking dogs. That’s my fantasy. You should have seen me eyeballing the pink kennel lady when we were at that meeting last winter. I thought about calling her afterward, but in the end, she didn’t project an image I trusted. Would you do it now?”
“I’m wondering about that.”
“Ah. Well, you know, don’t act out of desperation. At least, not yet.” She gave me an amused smile.
I was still turning these things over a few days later when I was crossing the Cheltenham Park lot between my car and the front door, and I saw, only for a moment, Marcus and the landlady, Mary King. They weren’t doing anything suggestive—no kissing or touching or possibly even smiling—I only saw them for a moment, and I didn’t register their facial expressions, but I knew instantly that they were having an affair. I kept walking, and I did not turn my head to try and catch another glance. My main thought was that they should not realize I had noticed them or that anything at all had been communicated from them to me.
I went upstairs and sat down in my office. It was late in the day, and Jane had gone home. Marcus’s office door was closed and the lights were off. Perhaps he was done for the day too. I sat behind my desk, which was clear, and I set my briefcase on top of it and straightened it so that it aligned with the edge of the desk. I put my hands behind my head and leaned back in my chair so that my hands were against the wall, and I looked out my window at the alley behind Cheltenham Park. There was nothing natural or scenic to see back there. I missed my old office, which at least looked out on traffic and a planted field and my own fence and strip of lawn.
I wondered how naïve I was that I should find this eventuality so surprising. Nothing Marcus actually said about himself implied that he disapproved of or condemned adultery. If he had failed to talk about it, or to reveal through implication or demonstration that he could, would, or had done such a thing, wasn’t that discretion? And wasn’t Marcus a master of discretion first and foremost? And if I were married to Linda, wouldn’t I be tempted to refresh myself elsewhere? And if he was otherwise a good and attentive husband, which I had reason to believe he was, did it make any difference? Not to me, of course, but to her? How was I to know? Maybe, in fact, they had an arrangement. Maybe that was the reason she had said various things to Felicity, who had, after all, told me Linda was an unhappy woman. Marcus sleeping with Mary King. Was that the effect of the unhappiness or the cause?
But it rattled me. I sat there for a long time not exactly liking Marcus or respecting him—I, Joe, who had thought nothing of sleeping with Felicity whenever I could manage it, and who had no feelings about Hank at all except a desire not to get caught. I fiddled around my office, putting things away, then I noticed I was putting things away and I stopped. I told myself it was not a guy thing to care who your friends were sleeping with, and then I put it out of my mind. I did not empty my wastebasket. Instead, I turned out the light, locked my door, and went to my car. Of course, I stared at the Cheltenham Court management office as I walked past it, and then I had a reaction I recognized. I was turned on.
That night I called Susan Webster. She had a soft, melodious voice; I noticed it the moment she answered her phone. She seemed pleasantly surprised to hear from me, and she thought a Saturday-night movie would be fun. Something about her manner on the phone was a relief. Perhaps she had been doing something, painting something, and I had disturbed her briefly. Perhaps she had a busy life and perhaps she was happy no matter whether someone called her or not. Perhaps she wasn’t looking for any kind of change, only to expand the life she already had, friend by friend. We laughed a couple of times for no reason. She had a cheerful laugh, too.
When Marcus heard I was taking Susan Webster to a movie, he came into my office and leaned against the edge of a table I had beside the window. He crossed his arms over his chest and grinned at me. “She called Linda, you know. She called—before you ever called her—and said you were cute.”
“I am cute. They’ve been saying I am cute for years. Cute but untrustworthy. Skittish. It’s a good thing Susan Webster was living in Spain for ten years, because maybe she doesn’t realize what a known quantity I am in these parts.” Was this true? I hadn’t thought of it before, but it seemed true as I said it. “And there’s a whole group of Sherry’s friends who have really got my number.”
“But I’m telling you—I’ve been telling you all along—no man is a hero in his own hometown. This is a turning point for you. This girl is a really unusual combination of sophistication and sweetness. It’s like she turned twenty and then got put away for ten years. She’s behind the times, but she knows lots of things. She’s a prize.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you, Marcus. But what about the humble shortcomings of yours truly?”
“That’s the beauty part. She tried the exotic and it was wrong. She tried someone her own age, and it didn’t work out. Now she’s looking for something homegrown and more mature.”
“We’ll see. We haven’t even gone out. I’ve never been alone with her.”
“I don’t know that you should be alone with her. You know, arranged marriages in Japan and places like that work out fine. Just as well as American marriages, in general, or better. It’s a marriage, for God’s sake! It’s a formal arrangement for which there are numerous models. It’s like any other contract. You follow the rules, and it works well enough.”
I thought of Mary King.
“And the difference between well enough and great isn’t very much, in the end. When kids come along, they take so much of your attention, you can’t really tell the difference, and when they’re gone you have to start over anyway. I think myself that people take all of this much too seriously. Life is too short. That’s what rules are for, so you don’t have to reinvent everything.”
“Easy for you to talk.”
“Do you doubt what I’m saying? You know, I do want to meet your parents, because they must be really good parents or you wouldn’t have such a romantic idea about marriage at this point in your life.”
“My parents are the perfect example of the idea that you can live up to your ideals every single day of your life, absolutely follow the book, and still get the wrong child.”
He laughed. Then he looked at me and laughed again. He said, “Well, look at Jane and me and my sisters. My parents broke every rule in the book and got four bonus babies—no drunks, no shirkers, no ne’er-do-wells.” He shook his head.
I said, “Jane said you have a brother.”
His grin vanished and he stared at me, then broke his gaze and said, “Sorry. Yes, of course we do. I’ve pretended for so long that he’s just another one of my father’s brothers that I let myself forget about him. He was a scary one. Animal torturer and all. Jane says he wasn’t that bad, but he was frightening to me.” Marcus sighed. “I was so glad Amanda was a girl. And then I was even gladder that Justin was a sweet-natured kid. Still is. Anyway—”
“Anyway, if I follow the marital rules, everything will be fine.”
“As long as you make a rational choice, and, provisionally, Susan Webster looks like a rational choice. I also don’t hold with deciding yes or no early on. Some people, they go out with someone once and they already know whether they’re going
to marry that person or not. Very dumb. Not only are you likely to say yes unwisely, you’re even more likely to exclude good candidates before you’ve really gotten to know them. So I’m not urging you to decide prematurely—just to recognize that, for now, Susan Webster looks very very good.” And then the phone rang and Marcus left and it was Betty calling. She said, “I hear you’re finally going out with Susan Webster.”
“Who did you hear that from?”
“Felicity heard it from Linda Burns.”
“I should have known.”
“It’s about time, dear. That’s such a nice family. Very interesting, all of them. Not just your run-of-the-mill landowners and lawyers. You’ll like her.”
“I will?”
“Oh, of course you will. She’s a very kind person. Original mind. Kind of a sly quality underneath it all that’s very appealing. She’s one of the ones that grow on you, I think. Starts out good and gets better.”
“What about me, Betty? What sort of references am I getting?”
“What do you think, dear? Sterling ones, of course. Everyone is very prejudiced in your favor, you know that. Apart from my granddaughter Peachie, who was going to keep you to herself. She told Susan’s mother you have a black fungus between your toes that is very contagious and Susan should stay away from you. Then she confessed to me that she had read about that in a comic book and was just trying it out to see if it would scare them off.”
So, in short, my first date with Susan Webster was as public as possible.
All of this was on my mind when I picked up my phone to call Susan to tell her I was going to be ten minutes late and discovered that my phone was dead. It was Saturday night, very inconvenient, but I didn’t think about it again. When I got to her place, she was sitting on her front stoop, lit by her porch light, smoking a cigarette. She had her elbow on her knee and was gazing pensively up at the cigarette. Smoke rose in a lazy curl toward the light. She was wearing a hat. Her hair, which she had worn up for our dinner with Marcus and Linda, spread out from under her hat along the angle of her neck and down her back almost to her waist. She saw me when I pulled up, and took another luxurious drag on her cigarette before stubbing it out and standing up. She dropped the butt into a flowerpot sitting on the concrete banister of the porch and approached the car with a smile. She opened the passenger door and leaned into the car. “Is that you?”
“It is.”
Her hair fell forward in a graceful mass, and she pushed it back. I was impressed. She had a sensuous quality I had forgotten, or possibly missed. I wondered why I had been so reluctant. She got into the car and closed her door. I said, “I used to smoke. Watching you take that last drag made me wish I still did.”
“Did it? I just started when I got back to the States. I only smoke a pack a week. But my mother is scandalized. It took her years to quit.”
We drove along. She said, “It’s very nice, isn’t it? I see that people do it for a reason. I never realized that before.” She fell silent for a moment, then said, “How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“I’ve noticed there’s a kind of hushed, anticipatory quality about this date. I can only attribute that to the fact that my mother and aunts have been praying steadily since you called, and they’ve succeeded in changing the weather this time.”
I laughed and said, “What are they praying for?”
“I suppose that I will be rescued at the last minute from a life they can’t imagine—or, rather, another life they can’t imagine. The first one was bad enough. When I got home from Spain, I was just sort of pulling myself together and trying to remember words for things like bread and won’t you please sit down? and my Aunt Nona came up to me and said, ‘Oh, Susan! What can I say? Your mother was so upset when you got married, and then, my land, you got divorced! You know, it broke her heart, but don’t tell her I told you!’ And now I’m single!” She threw up her hands and grinned at me.
“Me too.”
“They know that. They prayed for that, and their prayers were answered, and so they are praying harder than ever.”
Her tone was lighthearted, casual. We passed under a streetlamp and I glanced at her. The expression on her face fit her tone. Once again I thought she was more interesting than I expected. Why wouldn’t Marcus and Betty be right?
It went like that for the rest of the evening, unexpectedly enjoyable and relaxed, and then something additional that was even more unexpected behind that. She had a self-assured and self-reliant sensuousness that become more evident when she talked about the art she liked to do. I liked that especially. It was like being shown a secret. We went to dinner. She ate heartily. We went to the movie. She laughed readily. We went for a drink, not at the Viceroy but at a fancier place in Deacon. She asked me in some detail about the project, looked right at me when I told her about the houses and the golf course and Marcus and Gordon. She had a kind of slow nod followed by a quick smile that indicated to me that she was interested or, at least, interested enough. I took her home about two. She didn’t invite me in. She didn’t even think about it, as far as I could tell. I liked that too. I said I would call her. She pushed her hair back and said in a low, musical voice, “I would like that.”
CHAPTER
22
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, when I picked up the phone to call Susan, the line was still dead, so I put on my clothes and a jacket and went outside to see if I could figure out the problem. One time before, a branch had fallen behind the condo unit, where there were some large trees, and severed the line. I had fixed it myself.
But out behind the condos, everything was fine. I knocked on my neighbors’ door. The wife answered and I asked her if her phone was working.
“Oh, yes, I was just talking to my daughter. Are some of the phones out?”
“Mine is.”
“Oh, I know. I saw them Thursday. They were here turning it off for nonpayment.” She looked carefully nonjudgmental.
“They were?”
“They were right out there. Nick, here, saw them, and I went out and talked to them.” She shook her head and closed the door.
I hadn’t seen a phone bill in four months.
On Monday, Jane told me I had better talk to Marcus. Marcus didn’t come in until late in the afternoon. By that time, I had ascertained that I owed the phone company a hundred and forty-six dollars, that my bill was owing from July, and that they had sent me two cancellation notices. I told them I would be passing their office toward the end of the day and would bring a check. Marcus was standing in the door to my office, listening. I hung up and said, “Why didn’t you pay my phone bill?”
“When did you notice it was off?”
“Saturday evening.”
“See? It was off for two days and you didn’t even realize it. What does that tell you? You aren’t using that phone. It’s an unnecessary expense.”
“A phone is necessary. What if there’s a fire or something?”
“Leave the house.”
I took my checkbook out of the drawer and began to write a check. Marcus said, “Are you paying that out of your own pocket?”
“Well, you didn’t pay it. Or Jane didn’t. My neighbor was very disapproving. The phone guy told her all about it.”
“We let it go a little too long, I admit.”
“I always pay my bills on time.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why do I always pay my bills on time?”
“That’s a very bad habit.”
“Pardon me?”
“You train them to consider you a patsy. You can’t believe how the collection agencies treat the ones who always pay on time and then get a little behind. Brutal.” He came into my office and closed the door. “I can see that you and I need to have a little talk.”
“About what?”
“About what we need to do here. Now, Joe, we’re trying to eke our funds out as long as we can, right?”
“I suppose.” I thought of that eight hundred
thousand dollars coming in for Jane’s Kansas farm, but I didn’t say anything just then.
“The permitting process isn’t going as fast as we thought it would, right?”
“Well—”
“Be that as it may, and I’m not blaming you or anyone, things go as they go and you have to accept that. Right? Right. Anyway, look, here’s the deal. Here’s the main life lesson I learned at the IRS. As long as you keep in touch, you’re fine.”
“What does that mean?”
“This is something everyone does. No one has enough money to follow his vision and also pay all his bills. That’s the point of a windfall. A windfall is like an overnight success. You work hard for it and sweat and then, all of a sudden, there’s plenty of money—more than you ever expected—and that’s when you pay all those bills you let accumulate. No one really cares that you let them accumulate. They say they do, and they yell and scream and even try to bully you, but everyone knows the same thing—they’ll get it eventually. So you string them along, pay them a little now and then so they don’t cut you off, and when your ship comes in you settle up. You know how they feel?”
“How?”
“Grateful. They feel grateful that you paid your bill. You know how they feel when you pay up every month, right on time?”
“How?”
“They feel as though they have a right to your money.”
“Don’t they?”
“Do they? Wouldn’t you rather they felt grateful?”
I looked down at the checkbook, in which I had written out a check to the phone company. I said, “I prefer having a phone, and believe me I can still afford to pay the bill.”
“Make it out for half and order a couple of new services. Whatever they have, then make out a separate check for those services. That way, they see that you’re going to be an even bigger customer, so they’ll extend you more credit. You could even get yourself a couple of more lines.”
“I don’t need any more lines.”