by Sue Miller
She can hear him in there, shifting. She feels she can see him looking around. The rotary dial on her mother’s phone seems slower, noisier than ever, and she hangs up as soon as she hears Cameron’s recorded voice start his message again.
When she comes into the living room, Lawrence is sitting, leaned back in one of the chairs – the first person, it occurs to Lottie, to somehow manage to look comfortable in here. His feet are stretched out in front of him, crossed at the bare ankle. His shoes are light-brown loafers of a leather so soft-looking it seems a dully shining fabric. Lottie can see the shape of his toes through it. He drinks, a long swallow, and sets his glass on the floor under his dangling fingers. He rests his head against the chair back and looks around. ‘Your son is helping you in this … enterprise?’ he asks.
‘Yes. Ryan.’
‘And then you’re back to Chicago?’ She nods. ‘To your husband too,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she answers. She slides one of the chairs across the floor and turns it, sits down almost opposite him. The light from the dining room falls in a long rectangle that slices across his pants’ legs. Lottie rests her toes exactly at the rectangle’s edge on the other side of the room.
Lawrence is watching all this carefully. After she’s settled herself, he says, ‘So. It was an unhusbanded summer for you and our Liz.’
Something in his voice makes Lottie feel uncomfortable.
‘She seems to have flourished,’ he says.
Lottie doesn’t answer.
‘For you, of course, I have no way of knowing. No baseline, as it were.’ His face is back in shadow, but Lottie can see he is smiling again. He has improbably white teeth.
Lottie shrugs. ‘She has, I think. Flourished.’
‘Not you, then.’
‘It’s been a different kind of summer for me.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I’m not sure. I don’t want to talk about it, really.’ Outside, behind Lottie, a car drives by. ‘Hard,’ she says. ‘It’s been a hard summer for me.’
‘And not for Lizzie?’
Lottie smiles across the band of light at him. ‘Well, she got you back, in the end. And I think that’s very much what she wanted, all along.’
He lifts his glass again, raises it slightly as if to acknowledge Lottie’s point, and drinks, a quick, small sip. He says, ‘And you were all … great friends, as children.’
Lottie makes a face. ‘I don’t think children have “great friends,” do you?’
‘Elizabeth is someone who did have great friends as a child. You can’t believe the numbers of them.’
‘Yes. Well. That is Elizabeth. What I’d say, I think, is that we played together and loved each other and hated each other in almost equal measure. Certainly, at any rate, we knew each other well.’
‘And this summer you’ve sort of picked up where you left off.’
Lottie laughs. ‘Oh, it’s been lots better than that, I hope.’
His bright smile flashes. Then his head lolls again, left, right. Lottie sees his eyes slowly measure the room. He says, ‘You guys had no dough.’
‘Zilch.’
‘See, I hadn’t got that part. Your brother … confused me, last night. I saw him as a kind of tweedy, academic guy. I saw him the way I saw Elizabeth’s father.’
‘Well, he is a tweedy, kind of academic guy. You’re not frozen forever the way you were when you were ten. Thank God.’
‘But he’s not an academic.’
‘No,’ Lottie answers. ‘He owns a bookstore. Part of a bookstore. I think it’s pretty successful, actually.’
He nods. ‘He’s an interesting character.’
‘I suppose. It’s not quite how I think of him.’
‘But you’ll grant …’ One hand swings up toward Lottie.
‘Well, I’m not sure what you mean: “interesting.” ’
‘Oh, just a guy like that, driving a car like that, at his age. Our age. Intense. A little humorless. Sort of on the fringes.’
‘But there are lots of people like that. Particularly in big cities, or near universities. He’s not really that unusual. You know that Randy Newman song.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘It’s about people who hang out in bookstores, as he puts it. Who work for the public radio. Who carry their babies around on their backs.’ She lifts her shoulders. ‘Mostly, it’s about people who just don’t know how to make money.’
He seems amused. Then he regards Lottie for a moment. ‘He’s different from you in that regard.’
‘I wouldn’t say so. I’ve never made much money either.’
‘Haven’t you? That’s not the way Elizabeth tells it.’
‘Elizabeth doesn’t know.’
‘I thought she did. I thought you and Elizabeth were great friends. Had become great friends, this summer.’ He sits up a little bit; his knees bend, and his legs slide apart.
‘She misunderstands. She thinks to be published in certain slick magazines is to have a certain slick amount of money. And that’s not the case.’
‘But your husband has a dime or two, I guess.’ Lottie shrugs. ‘He’s … what? A cardiologist?’
‘No. Cancer. An oncologist.’
He nods. ‘Elizabeth thought heart. Cardiologist. But there you go. Everything comes back to the heart, with Lizzie.’ He taps his chest, and then he smiles at Lottie. ‘Not like you, eh?’
‘What do you mean?’ Lottie asks.
‘Just that you seem tougher, I’d say.’
This is so unexpected that it takes Lottie’s breath for a moment. Finally she says, ‘I find Elizabeth tough. Tough as nails.’
He laughs. ‘Do you? Well. I’d have to disagree.’
Lottie gets up to refill her glass. On the way across the room, she looks over at his. He appears to be nursing it. As she leaves the room, then as she returns too, she’s aware of his eyes on her, on her legs and hips.
After she’s sat down again, she says, ‘Isn’t Elizabeth going to be worried about you?’
‘Should she be?’ He’s smiling at her.
‘Oh, come on,’ she says. She’s not surprised, she realizes. ‘Don’t start that stuff.’
‘But this is fun, isn’t it?’ he asks. ‘Lots better than the Harbour parlor, at any rate. You and I, we understand each other, I think.’
‘Do we?’ Lottie asks. ‘I think you think you understand me. And maybe you partway do. But I don’t much understand you. Why you’re here, for instance.’
‘I’m here for Elizabeth.’
‘No, I mean here, in my mother’s living room.’
‘I’m here so I don’t have to be there.’ He nods his head at the windows, the street. ‘Elizabeth and I need to get off her turf. Her family’s turf. Her mother’s turf.’
‘I like Emily.’
‘I like Emily too. I like her a lot. But to be around her and Elizabeth together …’ He shakes his head. ‘It’s like drowning to someone like me.’ Lottie grins in recognition. She feels this way around Emily too. ‘So I’m here,’ he says. ‘And I’m curious.’
‘About what?’
‘About you. About your brother. About what’s been going on here this summer. I thought maybe you’d care to enlighten me.’
‘I’m not sure I could.’
‘Oh, come on, Char.’
‘It’s Lottie.’
‘Lottie?’
‘Yes, Elizabeth and my brother and mother are the only ones who still call me Char. I prefer Lottie. By a country mile.’
‘All right then, Lottie. And I’m Larry, by the way. Elizabeth is the only person who calls me Lawrence. Elizabeth and Emily.’
‘Larry,’ Lottie says.
‘Right.’ He lets a little silence fall. ‘So, Lottie. Clue me in.’
‘As I said, I’m not sure I can.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well. I’m not sure what you’re asking, for starters.’
‘Who’s zooming who? That’s all. What’s been
going on? Your brother, for example: he was involved with the baby-sitter?’
Lottie is startled. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘I know it’s not so.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Elizabeth thought he might have been.’
Lottie laughs, a sort of admiring laugh. ‘Did she?’
‘Yes. You’re surprised by that.’
‘I sure am. I think Elizabeth knows better than that too.’
‘Well, as I read it, there was something funny going on.’ He tilts his head. ‘Could it be he was involved with my wife?’
Lottie looks levelly at him.
‘Or maybe there’s some other possibility I’m not picking up on. But I think you know. So I’d like to know.’ Lottie shifts in her chair. ‘Is all. Fair, don’t you think?’
‘He wasn’t involved with Jessica.’
‘What about Elizabeth?’
She sips some wine. ‘Why don’t you ask Elizabeth?’ His eyes are steady on her. She crosses her legs, aware of the sound of her sliding flesh. ‘You know, I probably wouldn’t tell you he was sleeping with Elizabeth, even if he was.’
‘But you’d tell me if he wasn’t, I bet.’
Lottie recognizes that this is true, and she’s uncomfortable. ‘Why don’t you ask Elizabeth all this?’ she says.
‘Why would Elizabeth tell me the truth?’
‘Why should I?’
‘You seem to me like a truthful kind of person.’
Lottie feels confused, suddenly. It’s a few seconds before she answers. ‘I don’t think I’m the right person for you to talk to. To talk to you. If you have doubts about Elizabeth’s … fidelity. Though I’m not sure you’ve got much of a leg to stand on. So to speak.’
‘No, no. You’re certainly right, there. But I love Elizabeth. I do.’ He smiles. ‘And I understand her so well. I understand what she needs, maybe more than she does.’
‘What does she need?’
‘Romance. For life to be romantic. She has to have things very … intense, all the time. In a way, she’s kind of a phony, you know what I mean, but she’s alive. I get a genuine kind of charge out of her. I always have. So maybe you’re right. Just drop it. Be glad she’s coming home. That life is back to normal.’ He sits up suddenly, hunches forward over his knees in the chair. ‘The thing is, I gave up a lot for her. To get her back.’
‘Your girlfriend.’
‘It was a lot of girlfriend.’
‘Hmm.’
‘You’ve been there, I suspect, haven’t you, Lottie? You seem like someone who likes to fool around a little bit.’ He waits. His voice, when he speaks again, is intimate, urgent. ‘I couldn’t keep away from her. She was a wonderful, a very dirty girl. I liked that a lot.’
Lottie doesn’t say anything, and after a moment he sits back.
He pulls out a cigarette. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
Lottie shakes her head. ‘No. Go ahead.’
‘Thanks.’ He lights the cigarette and inhales deeply, as though he’s been rationed for a while.
Lottie walks in front of him again, enters the band of light. She goes through the dining room and fetches a chipped saucer for him from the kitchen. She squats to set it on the floor by him; and then feels uncomfortable, servile, as she gets up again. Stepping back to her own chair, turning, sitting, she is suddenly ashamed and angry. Is he doing this? Is she? He watches her across the shadowy space for a long time, smoking. Lottie notes that he holds the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, with the lighted end turned in toward his palm; like the tough guys, the hoods, in high school. What is she doing? Lottie thinks. What is this man doing here?
Emily – big Emily – had answered the door earlier this evening, and her plump face had puckered at the sight of Lottie. ‘Oh, Charlotte, my dear.’ She stepped forward and embraced Lottie on the porch. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered in Lottie’s ear. She smelled of talc, and her hands were damp on Lottie’s arms. She stepped back after a moment.
‘Well,’ she said. Lottie saw that her eyes were glittering, but she’d clearly decided they were to have the usual chirpy conversation. She launched herself, her watery, lapping voice: ‘Elizabeth said you might drop by, and I’m so pleased to see you, just come in, come in, we’re all sort of drifting around aimlessly, postprandial I guess you’d say, but we’re about to have coffee and tea and that sort of thing …’ Lottie was following her into the gloomy front hall. ‘… and little Emily and I made some dessert this afternoon. My dear!’ Her voice lowered abruptly. ‘How is Cameron?’
They had paused on the threshold of the living room. Lottie could hear voices, adult voices, in the kitchen. ‘I think he’s fine. I haven’t actually been able to reach him, but they’ve talked to him at the store.’
Her head bobbed. ‘Poor man, that’s Elizabeth’s experience too, and I want you to know that I am so sorry for him, if you speak to him please tell him so.’ As Elizabeth emerged into the long hallway from the kitchen, Emily squeezed Lottie’s elbow again, for emphasis.
They had sat in the immense, cheerless living room, decorated in its faded liver colors. Lawrence was a slender, compact man, with shining flat hair and smooth skin. He was beautifully dressed, Lottie noted, in loose, crushed-looking clothing Lottie guessed to be ridiculously expensive. He and Lottie were drinking decaf, Emily and Elizabeth tea, and the children had soft drinks.
The children seemed chastened to Lottie, scared. They sat silently and listened to the adults. Little Emily pulled her legs up on to the couch – you could fully see her white underpants – and leaned against Elizabeth, sucking her thumb.
For reasons that were unclear to Lottie, Emily was explaining at great length about the flowers on the living room rug, which had come from her family. That they had been part of a punishment ritual when she or her sisters misbehaved: they had to sit silently on a rose for a designated number of minutes while their father read the paper. ‘Oh, I remember him as clearly as if he were alive today,’ she said. ‘The way the paper would drop as soon as we began to wiggle or be the slightest bit restless, and Father would say, “Emily, hold that rose.” Emily, hold that rose,’ she echoed. ‘I used to say it myself later, still do, sometimes, when I’m impatient or have to endure something: “Emily, hold that rose.” ’
Was there any situation, Lottie wondered, that Emily couldn’t talk her way through? She took another bite of the cake the two Emilys had made. Her portion was iced in a violent purple, little Emily’s choice for half the frosting on the cake’s top. Others had a yolky yellow. She wondered if her teeth were staining.
Now Elizabeth was telling the children about how she had been disciplined: her father had set her to memorize passages of poetry, the more serious the infraction, the longer the passage.
‘Bummer,’ Michael said; and Lottie thought instantly of Ryan earlier this afternoon, his anger at her, hers at him.
‘How ’bout you, Daddy?’ Jeffrey asked. There was shy eagerness in his voice, a remnant of his summer’s sorrow. ‘What was your punishment?’
Lawrence had an odd smile on his face as he looked from one of his children to another. ‘My father beat us,’ he said quietly. ‘With his belt.’ He looked at Lottie then. It felt to her as though her eyes must be open too wide, and she looked away quickly. The room seemed to have lurched slightly.
‘Oh, Lawrence, how terrible!’ Emily cried. ‘Surely it isn’t true – that lovely man, I so enjoyed him, to think of his raising his hand to you, to any of you. It just breaks my heart, dear, I wish you hadn’t told me.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ Lawrence had said; but Lottie could see that he wasn’t, not a bit.
Now he pulls on the cigarette, and Lottie can hear the air slide between his lips. ‘You knew the sitter,’ he asks quietly, finally.
‘A little. Her name was Jessica.’
‘It’s a tough thing. For your brothe
r too,’ he says. Then, lightly, ‘How’s he taking it?’
‘I don’t know, really.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just I haven’t been able to … he hasn’t been home since last night. I’m a little worried, actually. I’ve tried him on and off all day. Right up until I came over to Emily’s house tonight.’ Lottie had left another message just before she crossed the street. ‘And the call I made here. When we first got here.’ She lifts her helpless hands to indicate that he wasn’t there. ‘But he’s called in at his bookstore. So I have to assume he’s just walking it off. Or drinking it off. Or avoiding me. Or all of the above.’
‘He’ll turn up. He’ll turn up.’
Lottie feels, oddly, a sense of comfort in this. ‘What makes you think so?’
‘Just … there was something last night. There was lots of nervous tension in the room. Lots of life, in some way, when the cops were there with your brother and so forth. He was upset, sure, but not … not depressed. I thought, to be honest, he might have been on something. But Elizabeth said no, he doesn’t. That’s when I asked her whether he was balling the sitter, actually.’
‘And she said he might have been.’
‘She said she didn’t know, but that he might have been. Right.’
‘Well, he wasn’t. That’s all. He wasn’t.’
‘He wasn’t.’ It’s a question.
‘He wasn’t “balling the sitter.” Okay?’
‘Okay, I believe you.’
He puts the cigarette out. A long but somehow comfortable silence falls in the oddly lighted room. Lottie is startled when he speaks again. ‘Tell me the hard part.’
‘What?’
‘Of your summer. You said it was hard.’
Lottie lifts her hands. ‘Won’t this do?’ She means Jessica, Cameron.
‘But you implied it was hard before this.’
‘I suppose. But I think I also said I didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘It’s funny.’ He waits for her to respond, but she doesn’t. He purses his lips and then continues anyway. ‘Elizabeth portrayed you as so happily married. But I don’t think that’s the case, is it, Lottie?’
‘I really don’t want to talk about it.’