by André Aciman
“What are you telling me?”
“What am I telling you? It’s not as if you didn’t know things were a shambles here. I’m telling you that all the years I was his wife, part of me was elsewhere. All the years I stayed home and did homework with the children and took his mother to the doctor and was the partner’s wife at so many tedious banquets, and the years I helped with his wine parties, and the summers we all traveled together, and the nights I slept by him at the hospital after they’d scraped him clean of everything he had, poor man—all this time my heart was elsewhere.”
“Now you tell me?”
“Now I tell you.”
My mother stands up and fills a bowl with pistachios, obviously they’re meant for me. She brings another bowl for the shells.
“What is it that you two had that was so special?” I finally ask.
“We had the real thing. Or the closest to it—maybe even better.”
“And what’s that?”
She takes a moment, then smiles.
“Laughter. That’s what we had.”
“Laughter?” I ask, totally baffled.
“Who’d have known. But it was laughter. Right now we’re feeding off old jokes. In a few months we’ll find them stale. But put us in a room together and we start laughing.”
She stands up to put our cups and saucers in the sink. All that stands between us now is the bowl of pistachios and the bowl with shells.
The years she stood by him at the annual party and helped order the food for guests she couldn’t have given a damn about, and the years she beamed when he delivered his annual speech in rhyming couplets before the chime of twelve, the years and years of it without laughter.
“Do you miss him?” I ask.
“Why are you asking me like that? Of course I miss him.”
I look at her. She averts her eyes. I must have offended her. “Now look at you, you’ve managed to clean out this entire bowl in less than five minutes.”
She takes the emptied bowl and the one containing the shells. I thought she was going to empty the bowl and leave the other on the counter. Instead, she replenishes one with pistachios.
Left alone in the dining room, I stand up, open the glass door, and step onto the balcony. A mound of snow makes the passage difficult. It makes me want to summon old times for a second, see what it was like back then when we had guests and chilled the wine out here. Were those better days because he was still alive, or were they better because they belonged to the past? I want to think that Livia is with me now, or that he is right outside with me here in the cold, baring his soul about the grandchildren he wants, all the while looking past the windows into the living room, spotting his bickering wife catering to everyone but him, and beyond our windows to the neighbors’ party in the other tower. He had always known about her, though God knows if he’d ever cared or been able to put his finger on the demon that snuffed out his life but kept him alive so many decades later. And I’m thinking of the other Livias in my life as well, Alice and Jean, each trying to help with the wine tasting as best she could, laying out the bottles on the balcony after they’d helped me wrap the mystery labels around each one, while some of the guests kept guessing, the blind test always getting out of hand, which happened every year, the crowd agreeing that bottle no. 4 was as good as no. 7, but that no. 11 was the best, the usual suspects always disagreeing with everyone else, Father refereeing, some people no longer really caring, because the test was always a success, would always be a success, was just another way of putting a good spin on the certainty that part of us always dies in December, which is why it was the only holiday he celebrated each year, because the part that didn’t die by year-end was as thrilled with the extended grace period as he was that something like love had not entirely run out of his life, though where he went scrounging for it and where he found it, if find it he did, no one knew or wished to know; the black snows of yesteryear, I didn’t miss them a bit.
If I were a better son, I’d do what the father of that dying princess promised he’d do for his daughter each year. I’d bring out his old bones so that he might feel the winter sun again and shiver at the thought of good mulled wines and thick, warm butternut soups sprinkled with diced chestnuts, bring out his body to savor the elegy of moonlit snow as he dreams of an old Weihnachten world that went under and of a love that addled before its time. It didn’t addle, it never happened, he used to say, and for all he knew, the other woman never knew she was the light of his one short, unfinished life—a love most chaste, a love most chaste, Your mother never knew either, and no point telling her now.
Mother asks me not to dump the glass bulb down the chute. I lie and say I’d never dream of such a thing. How empty the apartment looks with all the doors shut now: How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow. I must bring Clara here.
One day, I’ll come to clean the place out, picking up the shards of her life, of his life, worse yet, of my own life here. God knows what I’ll find, what I’m not prepared to find. His alarm clock, his address book, his pipe tools. A large ashtray bearing his yellowed meerschaum pipes with their engraved turbaned Turks scowling like two bookends who can’t stand each other’s sight. His vintage Pelikan pen and Caran d’Ache silver pencil lying, like camp inmates in the same bunk bed, head facing toe, like a dessert fork and spoon, his lacquered lighter, and, first among them, waiting cross-armed, running out of patience, his horn-rimmed specs, probably folded ever so warily, yet abandoned without false pretenses at the last minute when he said, Okay, let’s go face that witch doctor now. I can just see the resigned admonition in his gesture when he placed his glasses right smack in the middle of his emptied, clean glass desktop, meaning, Now watch the fort and be good to others, which reminds me how he’d take out a twenty-dollar bill and tuck it under an ashtray before leaving a hotel bedroom, meaning, You’ve been good to me, now be good to the next fellow. He was good to things, good to people. Listened, always listened. Somewhere, I am sure, Mother has stowed away his wine tools.
I remember the care with which he laid them out one by one on the sideboard in the dining room, cleaning and polishing his huge collection of antique corkscrews and foil cutters, Mother saying in front of everyone he reminded her of a mohel laying out his tools for a bris. Last time I laid out my tool, tell me, where, in which land that was—Someone immediately interrupts and cracks a joke about Abélard’s tools and Abélard’s love. It was Héloïse did the deed, I know wherefrom I speak, my father says, Héloïse and wedlock. Laughter, laughter, and all the while we’re laughing together, there she is two-timing him, while sorrow addles his heart for someone he’d met decades elsewhere, a love most chaste. These were the words with which he marked time in that private little ledger where we measure what we lose, where we fail, how we age, why we get so little of what we long for, and whether it’s still wise to hold out for something as we sort the life we’re given to live, and the life not lived, and the life half lived, and the life we wish we’d learn to live while we still have time, and the life we want to rewrite if only we could, and the life we know remains unwritten and may never be written at all, and the life we hope others may live far better and more wisely than we have, which is what I know my father had wished for me.
“Who is this man?” I ask my mother.
“You’ve met him before.”
“What’s his name?”
“If you want to know, come before midnight.”
She smiles, but she still won’t tell me. There is nothing to say.
“Are you going to be all right?” I ask.
“I’ll be fine.” Lambent and resilient Mother. I’ve seldom seen her like this.
“You’ve never told me any of this.”
“No, I’ve never told you.”
A long silence, during which my mother makes a face at a bad pistachio.
“She must be a knockout.”
“How do you know?”
“I ju
st know. You’ve been killing time here, haven’t you? You should leave.”
She was right. I was killing time.
I wish her a Happy New Year, just in case we don’t see each other tonight.
Yes, yes, she says, but she knows there’s hardly a chance I’ll show up. At least I hope you won’t. We hug. “I’ve never seen you like this,” she says.
“Like this, how?”
“I don’t know. Different. Good. Maybe even happy.”
On our way to the door, she turns off the light in the dining room, then in the kitchen. She’ll head back into her bedroom the moment she closes the door behind me, like Ulysses’ mother slinking back among the shades. This is what I’ve come to, she seemed to say.
I heave a sigh of relief when I finally shut the door behind me.
As usual, I reach into my pocket and hand the doorman his annual tip. The second doorman, who doesn’t know me, receives something as well, just in case Mother forgot to tip them.
•
The gust of wind that greets me as soon as the doorman opens the front door could not brace me more or stir greater joy. It shakes off the stuffy and oppressive torpor weighing on me ever since I entered Mother’s home.
I’ve always loved the lights of the city in the winter, the view of the midtown buildings towering over the skyline, the hail of brightness erupting like a galactic storm over Manhattan, while the sweep of weaker lights elbowing the old residential buildings on Central Park West speak of quiet, contented lives and quiet, contented New Year’s parties. I love watching the surfeit of lights blanket the city, something unseen and unrivaled since the night Pharos beaconed antiquity and mariners came out to watch, saying, There is nothing can rival this in the world.
If I were a good son, I’d have met Clara ages ago and brought her here. If I were a good son, I’d have picked Clara up earlier today and said, I want you to meet my mother, because I wish he’d been alive, he would have loved you. With her, for an instant, I’d walk into his study and disturb the restless sleep of his things: his Pelikan, his Caran d’Ache, his scowling Turks, his glasses, and she’d rouse them back to life, the way she’d shaken the slumber of my kitchen, my rug, my bathrobe and made me find love in my things, my life.
I’d bring her in, as in the old days, and, before introducing her to the guests, simply take her onto the balcony and ask her to help me cover the wine labels. What are we doing? she asks. We’re hiding the names of the wines. “I know!” she replies. “I meant, What are we doing?” I know exactly what she’s asking, even if for a while I’m pretending not to, because I find it no less difficult to tell her why I wanted to bring her to my parents’ home than it was to ask her to stop the car and take a quick walk with me to my father’s grave, because there are so many things I find so difficult to ask, Clara, because in asking the small and simpler things I reveal more than when I ask for the big ones. And if he’s not there to meet you any longer, well, let’s drop in anyway tonight, before you and I get naked together, and we’ll uncork Mom’s Champagne, and if staunch Don Juan happens to be there tonight, we’ll be a merry foursome as we toast the New Year and then rush back to 106th Street, leaving la Veuve Clicquot and good Dom Pérignon to sort out the good from the bad in their lives. In the cab, I hope you’re not zombified, I’ll say. I am so not zombified, you’ll say.
I am so not zombified. It sounded just like Clara.
Say it again, Clara, I am so not zombified.
I am so not zombified. Happy?
I am, I am.
The wine store where I’ve been hoping to buy a few rare bottles for tonight’s party turns out to be mobbed; the line horseshoes the length of the counter. I should have gone in with Olaf. He was right to panic this afternoon.
Skip the bottles, then. Flowers? I’ll send flowers tomorrow. Actually I should have sent flowers last week. Skip the flowers as well.
All I want is to ride the M5 bus as I’d done last week during the snowstorm, scarcely able to see anything outside, and yet grateful for the snow, which seemed to expire in exhausted, pallid puffs no sooner than it brushed against our widows. From time to time, through the lighted Riverside Park, I’d catch a glimpse of ice floes bearing down the Hudson like stranded elks quietly working their way downstream. Crick, crack, crack. Tonight I won’t even go to Clara’s apartment but will head straight to Hans and Gretchen’s. I’ll get off at 112th Street, as though by mistake again, try to lose my bearings as I did that night when I walked up the hill by the statue of Samuel J. Tilden and, for a second once again, think myself in France because of a St. Bernard, or because the city seems so strangely medieval tonight, or because a confluence of dream making and premonition has made me feel I’d stepped into a film of my own projection where snow falls so peacefully that everything it touches feels at once spellbound and imperishable. I’ll arrive at the party, be greeted by Gretchen, who never budges from the entrance door, hand my coat to the coat check, make sure I keep the stub this time, dawdle about in the living room by the piano before ordering a drink, stand by the Christmas tree exactly where I stood a week ago, and who knows, perhaps we’ll play at being total strangers, because she likes this as much as I do, and while she’s about to reach out to shake my hand, I’ll interrupt and say, Aren’t you Printz’s friend, to which she’ll say, And you must be the voice from last night’s télyfön? I am, I am. And we’ll sit by the same window, and she’ll bring me something to eat, and together we’ll roam from room to room in this large apartment and drink something light like punch, though we hate punch, and we’d head downstairs, as we did last time, through the crowded staircase, open the door leading out onto the terrace, and stand there together, watching the New Jersey shoreline, trying to catch the same beam circling over Manhattan and think of Bellagio, Byzantium, St. Petersburg, and remember we saw eternity that night.
I see the evening unfold before me as all wishes do when we know they’re about to be granted: the walk from the balcony to the kitchen, then upstairs to the greenhouse, Pavel and Pablo, the three Graeaes, and Muffy Mitford herself with two daughters no one can stand as my mind drifts past the mound by Samuel J. Tilden’s statue, past last week’s blizzard, past Rohmer or the small slate-roofed town of Saint-Rémy, which had risen before me on the borders of the Hudson to suggest a floating city invented for Clara and me.
I want to step up onto the balcony with her again and watch her stub out her cigarette in the snow, watch her foot kick it all the way down to the cars lining up in double-parked formation, watch the snow close in around us like luminous white hands, timeless and spellbound. And there would be so many temptations along the way. Rollo would surely parley for Inky again: For the love of God, woman! And who knows, Inky himself might show up to plead, lean, dashing figure that he cuts, as he’d lead her away to a corner unknown to most guests, and all I’d do then is stand and wonder whether I should intervene or simply stand and wonder, trying to make out if the thing between them has dissolved into friendship, or hasn’t dissolved at all, or whether she couldn’t care less if he hurled himself off the terrace, friendship or no friendship; friendship there’s never any after love, scorched love, burn all bridges and the docks along with them. We’d stand together among the others, and suddenly Clara would ask me to give her a couple of minutes and, joining Orla and Beryl in the middle of the room, would, without warning, start to sing an aria from Der Rosenkavalier, while I’m trying to look the other way, because I know myself, and one more second of this singing and I’ll burst out crying, and if I do start crying, well, let it happen, she’ll come up to me and let the same hand that had held me so savagely the other day rest on my face and say, This song’s for you, Printz, this my overdue Christmas present for the man who may just love me less than I love him. And I know myself and know I won’t be able to resist, but will rush her into the crowded coatroom and, pressing her against a row of perfumed mink coats, ask her point-blank: Do you want to have children with me even though I’ve no idea wher
e my life is headed, yes or no? Yes. Do you think we’ll be happy together? Yes. At what point does this fantasy end? Don’t know, never did know . . . Have I answered all your questions? Yes. Are you sure? I think so. She’d ask me for another minute, and I’d say Fine, and watch her run off elsewhere in the house, and then I’d wait and wait and wait some more, until it would finally dawn on me, as it had last week, that she’d simply disappeared. Inky. Of course! I should have known.
Which is when I’d make up my mind to leave, leave if only not to show how smitten and desperate I was, or how much I wished the evening had taken another turn. I’d ask for my coat, put it on, and quietly step out, then walk briskly to Straus Park, hastening my pace, in case she’d spotted me leaving and was rushing to stop me. Once in the park, though, I’d slump down and sit there, as I’d done all week long, hoping that Clara had indeed followed me to ask me why I’d left so soon. Is that what I’d want, for her to follow me and ask why I’d left so soon? Just me, I’d say, just me doing my usual letting-go-of-what-I-want-most, because the things I crave are so rarely given that I seldom believe it when they are, won’t dare touch, and, without knowing, turn them down. Like turning off your phone? Like turning off my phone. Like saying Too soon, too sudden, too fast when I’ve been shouting Now, goddamnit, like saying Maybe when I’m shouting I’ll go all the way, like not going to the movies when you knew, just knew, you fucking asshole, there was no way I wouldn’t have gone last night? Yes, I would say, like not showing up, knowing you’d never forgive me. So? So, nothing. I come here every night to think I’ve lost you, because every night feels it could be my last, and all I do here, without even knowing I’m doing it, is pray the day never comes when I won’t have been without you. I’d take this park a thousand nights in the cold and on whatever terms you please rather than never not see you again.
Double negatives, future anterior, past conditionals—what’s all this, Printz? Nothing, this is nothing. Just counterfactual stuff from my counterfactual life.