by Kim Wright
I could go back, I think. Daniel is probably waking up now.
Instead I buy a latte from a Starbucks and sit down on a bench.
When Elyse and I brought her here, all these years ago, Tory was scared of the ghost belles. At first, when we had begun the tour in broad daylight, on the sidewalk, she’d thought it was a grand adventure. She’d wanted to have her pictures taken with all of them, even Scarlett O’Scara. But later, when darkness had begun to fall and we were deep among the gravestones, her nerve had faltered. She had said “mommymommymommy” in that fretful droning way she had. She still has it. She still calls for her mother exactly like that whenever she’s sad or frightened. And Elyse had stooped and carried her, even though she was seven. Tory’s legs had locked around her mother’s waist and Elyse must have become exhausted almost immediately. I volunteered several times to take her, but Tory wouldn’t have anyone but her mother that night. She didn’t want to leave the tour, even though we suggested it, but neither would she release Elyse and thus we had stumbled along behind the group in the darkness, always on the verge of getting left. I knew Elyse was moving as fast as she could but even so, I was a little frightened too. We’d wandered so long that I was no longer entirely sure where we were or which direction would lead us back to the street. Each time I would reach for Tory she would shake her head and clutch her mother even tighter.
This is just one more thing I’ve lost, the right to be clutched by a child with such fierce certainty. As many times as I’ve heard Elyse and Tory snap at each other through the years, I have just as often heard that anger fade into laughter and I know that no amount of distance or disappointments can ever truly dissolve the bond between a mother and her child. I don’t have this and never will. I’m the end of a line.
A church bell rings ten and there’s more life in the streets now. People at café tables eating pancakes, families, a young man alone on a park bench singing along with his iPhone, slapping his hands on his knees. I pause before the window of an art gallery and stare at my reflection in the glass, flicking a final rose petal from the side of my hair. The galleries are all full of pictures of Charleston—watercolors of the bay, pastels of the houses, oils of the gardens. It’s a little self-congratulatory, like a beautiful woman who keeps portraits of herself all through her house, but in this particular shop window my eye falls on a collection of pottery that seems out of place among the landscapes. There’s a small, squat bowl in the middle, and inside the bowl there’s a kachina, with a picture of the artist propped above it all. Elyse, looking startled, as if she has just turned, or more likely the photographer had told her not to blink, because I know Elyse. I know how often she has ruined photographs by shutting her eyes at the last minute. So he said “Don’t blink,” and here she is, looking surprised to find herself in Charleston, in this window. The prices on the card shock me. I keep forgetting that Elyse is a real artist, that people pay money for her strange little gods.
I stretch my arms over my head and turn back toward the inn. Why am I out wandering the streets when Daniel is just blocks from here, probably stretching too right now and rolling over, facing my side of the bed? He won’t know where I am or when I’ll be back. He won’t know if he should go down to breakfast. I have waited for him so many times. This may be the first time he has ever waited for me.
HE REFUSES TO UNDERSTAND why I went walking. Why I left him, even for an hour.
“I’ve failed you,” he says. “What happened to me last night has never happened before, I swear it. I just drank too much.”
And when I say that none of that matters, which it doesn’t, he asks, “Did you think everything was going to be the same?”
That I can’t answer.
“I did,” he says. “I thought everything was going to be exactly like it used to be. But I failed you.”
“I kept your letters,” I tell him.
He is promptly distracted. Daniel was always easy to distract. When I knew him at twenty, at thirty—and now at fifty-three—he could be coaxed into changing his mood in an instant and I wonder fleetingly if he has that adult sort of ADD. “You really kept them?” he asks, rolling over and reaching for one of the white cotton robes. “I’m glad.”
“Yeah. For years I carried them around in the glove compartment of my car. I’d see them every time I looked for a map. Of course I didn’t see them often because you know me, I hardly ever go anywhere new. But then I had to get rid of them.”
“Because you got married.”
I nod. He picks up the champagne bottle and shakes it, but I could have told him that everything inside was long gone. “I know your husband died last year,” he says. “I hope it doesn’t freak you out or make you think I was stalking you, but through the years I got curious from time to time so I’d search you on Google. And then Facebook, yeah.” He laughs. “The old boyfriend’s weapon of choice. I found a magazine article about a rose garden. Was that really your house?”
“It still is.”
“It’s freaking huge.” He pauses, just long enough for a brief spasm of grief to grip his face. The first real emotion he’s shown. “Were you happy with him? Or did you . . . you know . . .”
“Did I what?”
“Look for something else.”
I shake my head. “I never cheated on Mark.”
“Good for you,” he says, and by the tone of his voice I’m not sure if he believes me. I don’t ask if he’s had affairs through the years—other than the one with me, that is—because I already know the answer. Men either cheat or they don’t, just as Mark tried to explain to me before we married. It has nothing to do with the women. The wives, the girlfriends, the attractiveness of strangers. How much they love them, how much they don’t. It’s simply a decision a man makes at a certain point, and he makes it alone, in the privacy of his own mind.
“But I did find something else,” I say. “Completely by accident.” I rummage in my small overnight bag and find my dance shoes. I hand him one and Daniel stares down at it, mystified.
“Why did you bring this?” he finally asked. “Did you think we were going to go dancing?”
“No, I just wanted you to see what my life is now.”
“So . . . why don’t you dance for me?” he says, lying back down on the bed and smiling that syrupy smile that used to melt me. That smile that always seemed so innocent, even when whatever we happened to be doing was so dirty, that smile that always reminded me of farm boys come to the big city. “Show me what you’ve learned.”
“It’s not like that. I dance ballroom. Waltz, tango, foxtrot. The slow, elegant stuff.” I pause, looking at him stretched over the pile of pillows. “One of the women at the studio says it’s better than sex.”
“That’s a sad thing to say.”
“No it isn’t. You’d know if you danced.”
“And is she right? Is it better than sex?” His face is wary. He’s still thinking about last night and he fears the answer.
I start to tell him that all those times we lay down together—on picnic tables and in cars and boats and now on this beautiful bed—my desire for him had been genuine. That I had felt true excitement in his arms, certainly more than I had ever felt with any other man. And that if somewhere in that process something clicked off in my head . . . if I started to become Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe or Elyse or anyone else who I thought I should be, that the fault was fully mine. I was the one who gasped, who shuddered, who rushed to make it easy and quick for the man, who was willing to almost leave her own body in the moment of pretending. It’s not that I just don’t come, I think. The real problem is that . . . I go.
“Why are you smiling?” he asks, smiling too.
I could tell him the truth, all of it—that for me, saying that dancing is better than sex really isn’t setting the bar very high. But I don’t. Such a statement would only make him determined to try agai
n, to pull off everybody’s clothes and go through the whole rigmarole one more time. To do everything longer, and harder, or maybe just at a slightly different angle, until we’re both just tired and sore and somehow even farther apart.
His hand is on the knot of his white cotton bathrobe, ready to undo it at the slightest provocation, ready to pull me back into the bed cloud once again. This is why he thinks we’ve come here, for sex, and I guess I thought that too on the drive down . . . that maybe in some belated, last-gasp way, I was going to figure out how to truly tryst. He is still handsome. The things that drew me to him once are all still there—the dark hair, mixed with silver now, but relentlessly full and soft and mussable. The crinkles at the edges of the eyes, the lopsided smile. Even his body, lean but lightly muscled, retains a buzz of erotic energy and I think that Daniel has held up well. Middle age becomes him. But now that we are finally here in this dreamy room, looking at each other face to face, with no impediments or implements between us, I can see that sex isn’t why I drove to Charleston at all.
I’ve come to forgive him.
And I’ve come to say good-bye.
He stands up from the bed and goes to the window. Yanks the curtains open and lifts the glass. The sun hits us like a wave. We jerk, both of us older in the sudden light.
“Are you hungry?” he asks. “I think they throw in breakfast as part of the deal.”
“I said I kept your letters,” I tell him. “But that’s not completely accurate. The truth is, I gave them to Elyse.”
“How is Elyse?”
“She never liked you.”
“Ah,” he says, looking out the window, pondering the garden below. “Well, I’m glad someone has them. Because I worked really hard on those letters. I copied them with a genuine fountain pen, did you ever notice? That it wasn’t plain old ballpoint but a real pen? And good paper. Linen.”
There is a moment of utter silence.
“You copied them?” I ask.
“Yeah. Very carefully, word by word. My college roommate Davis . . . he was traveling with me in Europe that first summer. Do you remember him?” I shake my head. “Well, he was the English major, he was the poet of the group, and he gave me some ideas.”
“Somebody named Davis wrote those letters. He wrote them for another girl.” My voice is flat. I can hear it myself. Daniel turns from the window and looks at me.
“Oh no, they were for you,” he says quickly. “I gave him all the ideas, he just helped me spiff up the wording.” He grins. “If anything, some other girl probably got your letters. I think Davis messed around with them after I was finished, changed the hair color and place names and stuff like that, and then sent them to whatever girl he was currently trying to seduce.”
And then I gave them to Elyse and she used to pretend they came from Gerry, I thought. I imagine the letters, spinning around in the air, catching the breeze like butterflies, floating from one woman to another. It seems futile and ridiculous and a little sweet, like something in a foreign film.
“I was in love with the guy in those letters,” I say.
“I’m sorry that I hurt you,” he says, the words suddenly tumbling out. “And I know I did. Especially when I left without saying good-bye. If I could take the whole thing back, I would.”
“Truly? I wouldn’t. Not the whole thing. You mattered tremendously to me.”
“You never answered my question,” he says, his hand still on the knot of his robe.
“Which one?” I ask, dropping my dance shoe into my suitcase. I am suddenly ravenous. Hungry in a way I haven’t been in weeks, months, years. I can smell bacon wafting up from the kitchen below, and beneath it, the fainter aroma of cinnamon and burnt sugar.
“Are you still you?”
“No,” I say. “And I never was.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SO YOU JUST ate breakfast, and packed, and walked out?” Elyse says. I called her the minute I was back on the interstate. “What on earth did he think?”
“I’m sure he thinks it was because we didn’t have sex.”
“But I mean, does he think you’re going to meet him somewhere again? That the affair is back on?”
“Maybe. I was vague. It’s easier to leave when the other person doesn’t know that you’re leaving. He taught me that much, at least.”
She pauses for a moment, considering this. “Are you disappointed?”
“Not really. He was pretty much exactly who he always was. I’m the one who’s changed.”
“No, I mean, are you sorry because it wasn’t the . . . you know, the big love affair. All that stuff we build up in our heads.”
“I’m not sure. I feel funny today. But really alive, you know? Like I’m noticing everything. I saw one of your bowls in an art gallery window, by the way.”
“The shop on East Bay? What did they have it priced at?”
“Three hundred and eighty dollars.”
“Good.” There’s a moment of silence and then Elyse says, “So . . . I’m trying to ask you something and it’s something big, but I’m not sure exactly how to phrase it. I guess what I’m saying is . . . Do you feel like you’ve lost something?”
“Not anything that I ever really had.”
“Yeah, but you always knew he was out there. That you might suddenly see him in a Whole Foods, standing there holding an artichoke. Standing like David, just waiting for you to find him. It sort of sustained you.”
“He wasn’t worth it.”
“I know. They hardly ever are. I guess what I’m saying is that maybe losing the dream of the man hurts more than losing the actual man.”
I laugh. “These things you say. I know them all.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I say. “You’re afraid I’ve given up on love, and I know I probably sound a little weird today. But don’t worry. Whether it looks that way or not, for the first time in a long time, my life is full of romance.”
She goes silent. This is one of the flukes of our friendship, that we do not talk the entire time we’re on the phone. At some point we stopped saying the alphabet back and forth and both became willing to sit, just like this, connected but not speaking, holding a certain open space between us. My eyes flick from one side of the highway to the other. Interstate 26 between Charleston and Columbia is not the most scenic drive in the world, but today it is interesting to me . . . the bumper stickers on the cars, those little flares of anger or sarcasm or humor, the billboards urging me to give my heart to Jesus or stop for gas. Is the dream really gone? I’m not sure, only that the world seems somehow different. The sunlight has a greenish cast and each thing I pass, from the trees to the shredded tires in the median to the mileage markers, seems sharp-edged and clear. As if my whole life is starting to come into focus.
“Elyse?”
“I’m still here.”
“There’s something that I’ve been meaning to tell you for the last thirty years.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“I don’t really like sex. At least not the way that you do.”
“Well, sure, as you get older it definitely—”
“No, what I mean is that I don’t have orgasms. Not just now. I don’t think I ever have.”
Another moment of silence and then her voice, tentative and slow. “You’ve never exactly mentioned this.”
“I know. I’ve been faking with you longer than anybody.”
“But I don’t understand. Why would you—”
“I guess I was embarrassed. And once you start with a lie, it’s hard to stop. Wait a minute, I’ve got another call coming through.”
“Don’t pick up. It’s Daniel. Trust me, they call you like, three or four times on the day after they’re impotent.”
“No, it’s Carolina’s number. Hold on, this won’t take a minute.”
B
ut it’s not her. It’s a nurse.
“Mrs. Madison?”
I know at once. My heart freezes.
“I’m on I-26. About ninety minutes out. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
It’s the young nurse who’s calling. The freckled one with the high, thin voice. “That’s all right, ma’am,” she says. “There’s no need to rush.”
The road swims before me. My ears begin to buzz and coffee rises in my throat, bitter and warm. No matter how ready you say you are, you’re never ready. My eyes jump from mirror to mirror, looking for a way to ease over and get out of the traffic, but of course that’s impossible. This is the interstate, the road for people who are going somewhere fast and hard. I have slowed down, instinctively taken my foot off the accelerator, and trucks are whizzing around me. The sound they make as they pass is like a scream.
“Mrs. Madison?” says the young nurse. “Have I lost you?”
She’s asking if she’s lost the connection, that’s all. Around hospice, I’m considered a seasoned volunteer and I’ve had . . . what? A dozen clients die? More? Twenty? There’s no need to break it to me gently anymore. I’m a pro at death, well versed in the protocol of what it takes to transition from one world to another, someone who knows a thousand ways to say good-bye. And yet the road still trembles and the edges of my vision have burned away, so that it seems that I am looking through a spyglass. A car behind me honks and I realize I am drifting into their lane.
“They say she went real easy,” the young nurse is chirping along. “She was watching a movie and somebody went in with her lunch and saw she’d just slipped away. No pain or panic or anything.”