The Lake Shore Limited

by Sue Miller

  He sighed, and they readjusted themselves so they were lying next to each other. She had a sudden imaginary picture of what they would look like from above, the two long figures side by side on the bed, not touching.

  It was moonless, that was some of why it was so dark. They had no curtains on their bedroom windows—there was no need of them, since they faced a wooded hill that rose up behind the house. Leslie saw the windows as rectangles of a lighter black than the room. Or maybe you’d describe them as the darkest possible gray, she thought.

  She turned her head to look at him, a blurry form on the light sheet. His body still radiated heat from making love. “I talked to Sam today,” she said.

  “Your friend Sam.”

  She wasn’t sure of his tone, of what he meant. She said, “Your friend, too.”

  “Mmm,” he said.

  And abruptly she was wondering again, as she did from time to time, how much he had ever guessed at. Sometimes it seemed to her he knew nothing of her inner life, and sometimes it seemed he might know all of it.

  He cleared his throat. “He was calling to say thanks?”

  “Yes. And to get Billy’s number.”

  “Aha. Your magic trick worked.” His voice had changed. It sounded as if he was smiling.

  “Apparently.” She sat up now and pulled the covers over both their bodies, arranging them so they had equal amounts. She lay down again. After a moment she said, “If it had really worked, though, she would have given him the number herself, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose.”

  He sounded distant, maybe sleepy. She wondered if he was even interested in any of this. She wondered what had kept him so long at the hospital, what he was preoccupied with. He seemed preoccupied. She said, “I was awful on the phone.”

  After a pause he said, “I bet you weren’t.”

  “I was. I said I thought the play was about Billy and Gus. That it revealed how she felt about Gus.”

  He was quiet for a long time. “Well, that’ll break the spell, all right.” His voice was dry.

  Is that what she’d been trying to do? Break the spell? Undo giving him to Billy? Take it back? Take Sam back?

  But she couldn’t take Sam back. She didn’t have Sam. She hadn’t had Sam, hadn’t had him for ages.

  No, she thought. She’d never had him. She was a wish of his, a dream, at a time when his marriage was coming apart. That was all. She knew that. A younger wish at that, she reminded herself. She’d been pretty then. Her hair was dark brown; she was slender.

  Well, not slender, but not like now.

  And she supposed Sam had been a momentary dream of hers, too, one she allowed herself from her place in a marriage that was never going to fall apart.

  Abruptly she was thinking of the play again, of the man, Gabriel. Of his marriage. He had seemed fond of his wife as he spoke of certain things. What had changed for him in his marriage, how, in order for him to feel as he did? In order for him to be glad, at least for a moment, that his wife might be dead.

  Leslie looked up at the invisible ceiling. She was trying to imagine how it would be if Pierce died, how her life might change. Maybe it would open out somehow, maybe she would turn away from all the practiced routines they shared. Maybe she’d get a job. A real job.

  She thought of the conversation they had with Sam at the intermission last night. He had asked her about work, and she had tried to make light of the fact that she didn’t have any anymore. Standing in the lobby with the two men, she had said, “One needs love and work, isn’t that what Freud said? Anyway, I guess I’m down to love.” She looked at Pierce when she said this. She supposed she’d wanted him to do something. Defend her choice somehow. Say in front of Sam that he loved her. That love alone was enough.

  No, she couldn’t have wanted that. She knew that was nothing Pierce would ever say in front of anyone else. She had wanted something from him, though.

  But he’d ignored her signal, if she’d even given one. He started talking about Freud, about the odd things one remembered he was supposed to have said. “There was the cigar, of course. Altered forever now because of Monica Lewinsky. By God, it isn’t just a cigar, after all.” He had grinned, beckoning Sam’s smile. She had probably smiled, too, he looked so goofy, so eager.

  Then he told a joke, one Freud was supposed to have liked. The old couple, talking. “‘When one of us dies … I think I’ll move to Paris.’” He’d laughed, loudly.

  Well, it was funny, but it was painful, too.

  Therein, Pierce would have said, lies the joke.

  But that’s what the play was about, she was thinking abruptly. At least in part. The wish to imagine what life could be, how it could change, if you were unencumbered.

  Now there was a peculiar word. Unencumbered.

  Pierce’s breathing had thickened. He was asleep.

  Did everyone who was married do this from time to time, imagine an unencumbered life? She wondered if Pierce did. If she died first, he could move to Paris. She saw him there, walking—no, loping—down a narrow street, looking around avidly, taking things in, asking strangers questions in his terrible accent. He would have the energy, the vitality, to do that.

  She wouldn’t. If he died first, she might shed their routines, yes, but she wouldn’t be able to do what he would do—start anew, make a new life.

  Of course, there was grief. Pierce might be changed by grief if she died, as she had been when Gus did. Grief might waylay him. Belay him.

  She thought of Billy again. Billy and the play. Billy and Gus. She’d been wrong to say that to Sam. Why should it matter to him whether or not Billy had for a moment—for some moments, for days even, or months—wanted to be free of Gus? Wanted to imagine that. That was what Billy had a right to. Whatever that feeling was. The feeling of wanting more, as Gabriel had said. Wanting to be free of everything too familiar in life. Wanting something new.

  “We want,” the man had said. “When we stop wanting, we feel dead and want to want more.” Something like that.

  All her life, she had tried not to want. To be content. To be at peace. Safety lay that way, she had thought. You couldn’t be hurt.

  Then Gus had been murdered and his death had opened a way for her to want even less, to make her life even smaller. She didn’t know anymore whether she was content. Whether she was at peace.

  But all she wanted was right here. Here was where she felt safe. Next to Pierce. In their bed. Here, where she lived—safe and quiet and dark.

  THE EVENING AFTER RAFE WEPT onstage for the first time, Edmund came to his dressing room before the show to talk to him. He sat down in the other uncomfortable chair there, groaning a little as he settled his weight on it, his legs splayed wide, his feet in their immense sneakers turned out: first position. Rafe wondered what size his shoes could possibly be—was there such a width as a quintuple E?

  “Guess why I’m here,” he said, his hands already busy in his beard.

  “I know why you’re here.”

  “Okay. Then you know what the big question is. Are you going to be able to do it again?”

  “I think so. Or it’ll be close enough.”

  “The tears, too? I assume they may be the iffy part.”

  Rafe looked at his own impassive face in the mirror. “They may not be as tough to produce as all that.”

  Edmund nodded several times. “That’s the good news and the bad news, I guess. Handy for us that that’s the case. Maybe too bad for you that you have a reservoir to call on. As it were.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay then.” He heaved himself up. More groaning. “I’ll go talk to Faith and tell her that’s how it’s going to be.” Faith was the actress with the ten-second Elizabeth part. “And maybe Serena.” Anita. “The conversation you had with her was a little different, too. You must have had a notion about what was coming up for you at the ending.”

  “Yeah.” He was looking at Edmund in the mirror. “I felt a little bad, springin
g it on everyone. But I thought she responded great. I thought it really worked, whatever Serena was doing. Both of them, actually.”

  “Yeah, it did.” He turned at the door. “Well, onward. The last preview. And then we’ll all talk tonight, after the show.”

  As promised, Rafe had done it again that night, and he knew that it wouldn’t ever be a problem after that. It was true that it didn’t surprise him, it didn’t sweep over him the way it had the first time, but it worked. He made it work.

  He made it work by thinking of Lauren. He imagined Elizabeth as Lauren, and his betrayal of Elizabeth became his betrayals of Lauren, all of them, thought and word and deed—and then, too, the very thing he was doing at that moment on the stage, the betrayal of using her to make himself cry. He thought of her long, slow dying and how grateful he would be if she could just come back and stand before him as Elizabeth did—as Faith did—at the end of the play. Just a little bit damaged. Only slightly wounded. And the tears came.

  Afterward they all sat onstage in the living room, closed in by the lowered curtain, and Edmund gave them the pep talk for opening night. They were in great shape. This last preview had been terrific. The audience had been incredibly responsive. He said that with Rafe’s new version of the final scene, “the last piece has fallen into place. It’s going to be a fantastic show.” He stood up and did a little jig for them. He was surprisingly graceful and light in motion, but everything wiggled absurdly, and they all laughed. When Rafe followed him backstage, he could hear Edmund’s heavy breathing, the air sibilant and ragged in his nostrils.

  For three weeks, for the play’s run, he did it every night, summoned up his dying wife and his sorrow over his life with her. And then, almost as soon as the curtain dropped, he changed back into his jeans and T-shirt and sweater and went home.

  Twice he went out with Edmund, but that was it. He turned down the other groups that sometimes formed to have a drink together, including, once, Billy. She made a kind of funny face at him as they were leaving—Come on—but he shrugged and lifted his hands: How can I?

  It wasn’t that Lauren was awake when he got home. She wasn’t. The Round Robin, one of whom came just as he was leaving for the theater or just after he’d left, tucked her in early. When he opened the bedroom door, there was the sound of the humidifier and, under it, her breath, occasionally her light snoring.

  So he checked on her, checked on the cat, sometimes he read the paper, sometimes he watched television. Politics, mostly. ’Tis the season. They talked about it all the time at the theater, too. Almost everyone in the cast and crew was for one of the Democrats, mostly Obama or Clinton. Serena, who was a Republican, liked Giuliani, but no one was willing to discuss this with her.

  Rafe had decided he liked Edwards. It had something to do, maybe, with his working-class background, his populism. Or maybe it was just that he had a sick wife. Identity politics at work.

  Late in the run, he was offered two plays to read for, so there was that, too, in these solitary evenings—reading these plays, preparing the lines that might be his. It was good news, of course, probably due to the fine reviews the play had gotten. And Rafe’s reviews were better than that. There had been mention of an Eliot Norton Award.

  Well, Edmund had mentioned the possibility to him a couple of times.

  Still, he was restless. He looked forward to Gracie’s long holiday visit, coming up right after the show closed. He looked forward to sitting up late with someone else, talking, watching television. Gracie liked to play gin rummy, too, something she’d taught him. He thought with pleasure of their long series of games, the way he got lost in them. He’d bought green visors for both of them for Christmas.

  For Lauren, he’d signed up for audiobooks that he could download, and bought her an iPod to listen to them on. Just as he handed over his credit card to pay for it at the checkout counter, he remembered Lauren’s speaking of the miracle of her speech-enhanced computer program. “The digital age,” she had said, making what passed for a wry face. “What a fantastic time to be an invalid.”

  At the party closing night, held in a windowless, dramatically lighted room at the back of a local restaurant, Rafe stood, drink in hand, and watched the group assemble and move around. The actors were all there, and Edmund, of course. Some of the sound and lighting and set folks had come, and the costume designer, Madoka, wearing something that seemed less like clothing than fabric samples pinned on her randomly. There were some unidentifiable people, husbands or wives or lovers of someone involved with the show and along tonight for the fun of it. Ellie, the stage manager, was talking to one of the backers—maybe the one who was paying for the room and the trays of hors d’oeuvres and wine in elegant glasses being passed around. Edmund had said he wasn’t “at liberty” to reveal who had sprung for the party.

  Bob, the actor who played Alex, came up to him and they talked for a while about Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bob’s god, perhaps partly, Rafe thought, because they were built so much like each other. But Rafe agreed, he loved Hoffman, too.

  When he went to get a fresh drink, Serena cornered him. They talked about what came next. He told her about the possible plays. She said she was glad for him. She said, “It’s just great to see you come into your own the way you have.”

  “I’m fucking forty-five,” he told her. “I better have come into my own.”

  She looked flustered. “Well, but you know what I mean.”

  And because she had meant it kindly, because she’d been good in the show, he said, yes, he did know what she meant. He thanked her.

  Someone had brought music, an iPod with tiny speakers. Ellie and Nasim had been dancing for a while. Now Annie was, too, with her husband. When the song ended, Bob called out, “Do your dance for us again, Edmund.” A couple of people started clapping, started chanting, “Edmund! Edmund!”

  Rafe saw Billy turn from where she was talking to one of the set guys. She stepped quickly across the room toward Edmund, who was getting ready to launch himself. She said, “Eddie and I will dance together,” taking his arm. The song playing was “Such a Night,” by Dr. John. Billy turned to Edmund, raising her hands to dance in closed, ballroom position. He stepped forward, towering over her even though he was not especially tall, and they began to do what might have been a fox trot, with an exaggerated stylishness.

  This was kind of her, Rafe thought—rescuing Edmund from their laughter. Their loving laughter, to be sure. But what they’d wanted was to see him make a fool of himself again, and she’d shielded him from that. Rafe set his glass down and turned to Faith—Elizabeth—who was standing near him. He asked her to dance. And then a couple of others, Madoka, two of the light guys, also moved onto what constituted the dance floor—a small carpeted area next to the table on which all their bottles and glasses were set.

  Later, after a few people had left and the group was smaller—split up into intense or apparently hilarious conversations among two or three people—Billy came over to where he was standing, propped against the wall watching things. He’d stopped drinking by now. He was thinking about getting home.

  “You know,” she said, “I never got to tell you how fantastic you were.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  “That first time.” She shook her head. “That especially was the time that just knocked my socks off.”

  “Wordsmith that you are,” he said.

  Her face shifted—a kid’s pleasure. She laughed her quick, snorty laugh. Then she said, “It did, though. Even though I wasn’t even wearing socks. And I hear you’re moving on. Other stuff is coming at you.”

  “It may be. I have a couple of things I’m reading for.”

  “I’m glad. You really … you really made this one work, for me. You helped me know why I wrote it.”

  “Well, I’m grateful to you, too. For Gabriel,” he said, bowing his head. “I know it’s part of why I’m getting these other things now.”

  “I’d be pleased if that were true,”
she said, and she did a little curtsy back to him, holding her very straight skirt out as much as she could to each side. He thought of her body, her strong legs, opening them, and he felt a quick pang that made him aware, for a few moments, of his breathing.

  “What’s coming up for you?” he asked.

  “Not much. More of same, more of same, as our friend Gabriel says. Or as our friend Emily reports that Gabriel says. I’ve got a play I’m working on.”

  “But I thought this one was going out.”

  “Next year, it’s supposed to be. Next fall.”

  “Ah. So for the moment, a quiet life.”

  “Tomblike,” she said, and she smiled. He had read somewhere once that different kinds of smiles came from different parts of the brain, that a genuine smile, a smile of real pleasure, came from one site, and a polite smile, a smile only intended to signal pleasure, came from another. This smile came from there, that other part.

  It went away quickly, and she said, “You know, I probably shouldn’t bring it up, but I hope everything was okay after our”—she looked quickly around—“tête-à-tête.”

  “It was. Okay.”

  “I mean, I was sorry … I am sorry, if it caused any difficulties, at all. It was an easier thing for me, I’m sure. In my uncomplicated solitude.” She spoke the last words mockingly.

  He was remembering Lauren, sitting on the toilet, lurched slightly to the side, her face wrecked, crying. “There were, just a few difficulties …,” he began.

  “Oh! I knew it!” she said. “Ohh.” She shook her head. She seemed almost tearful. She might have been a little drunk. “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” Madoka was leaving now, calling good-bye from the door, blowing kisses. Everyone called back. Ellie went over to embrace her. Rafe and Billy waved. Then Rafe said, “You’re too quick with that stuff, you know.”

  “What stuff?”

  “That mea culpa stuff. Not every fucking thing is your fault. I mean it. People’s lives are”—he lifted his hands, palms up—“what they are. Not your responsibility.” She looked so stricken suddenly that he wanted to lighten things up. “Plenty is, of course. Your fault. Just not everything.”