by M. J. Cates
When he was sure he had them all he closed the bag and left the apartment. He was feeling good again, as if he had drained a wound. His old life, his burdened life, was in a paper bag about to be dumped into the garbage can out front. He even sensed the beginnings of joy building like a head of steam in his chest. He had got over Imogen before; he would get over her again. Confidence and optimism, the fire and fuel of creation, were burning inside him and he knew he would write many novels.
He went down the stairs two at a time, whistling under his breath, allowing himself a touch of pride—just a touch—that he was strong enough, had the emotional wherewithal, to choose a better life for himself. Perhaps in London he would meet a delightful English rose, or in France a dark-eyed angel who could envision no greater life than one shared with a neurotic and modestly successful novelist. Imogen had her life, and he wished her continued happiness; now he would have his.
He swung open the heavy inner door, went through the vestibule, and grappled with the outer door, which had a loose handle. He managed to get it open and stepped out into the dazzling October light.
“Hello, Quentin.”
Quentin stopped at the top of the steps.
Imogen was looking up at him, a half smile on her face and in her eyes an expression that was to him utterly unreadable.
“My God,” she breathed, “you really are alive.”
Quentin stared at her the way a kitten stares at its first human, swaying with the impact. He raised the bag to his chest and squeezed it there.
Faced with his silence, she hurried on. “For so long—well, for two years, anyway, I just assumed you would not be killed. It just did not seem possible that someone like you—someone so alive to me, in my mind, in my heart, in my memory—that someone like that could be killed. Then, when Jack told me you were dead, I—”
“Jack told you.”
“Yes.”
“Jack Wisdom.”
“Jack Wisdom. When he told me, it was as if the world had been torn. As if a great rip had opened up in it. I—egoist that I am, you see—I’d never realized how important you were to me. I was like a child who thinks that my Papa and Mama and lovely home always were and always will be; they are mine forever and ever, and I deserve them. But clearly I didn’t deserve you.”
“Imogen.”
“And so I’m here to tell you that I’m just so glad you’re alive—glad does not begin to cover it. I’m just…And now I can’t stop talking because I’m afraid if I stop it’ll all turn out to have never been. And I wanted to say how sorry I am, how stupid I was—how mean, and pompous, and just so—”
“Imogen.”
“I was afraid I was going to hurt you—well, I was hurting you—and more than anything I wanted not to hurt you. And also I was excited about starting a new life.” She hit her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Oh, I was such an idiot.”
“You were young,” Quentin finally managed. “Very young.”
“You were so beautiful toward me, so generous and kind, and I don’t believe you ever asked me for a single thing until—”
“No, don’t blame yourself. I don’t. I was pushing you too hard for something you didn’t want. I was too…too everything.”
“You must be cold,” she said, gathering her scarf about her neck. “And I’m sure you want to get on with your life.”
“No, no. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll just—wait right here and I’ll get my coat. We’ll go for a walk, shall we? Would you? Do you have time?”
“Yes, but I didn’t mean to intrude, I—”
“Wait right there. Don’t move.”
He went back inside and placed the bag with its cargo of smithereens on the kitchen table; he had forgotten he was carrying it. He pulled his coat and scarf from the closet and ran back down the stairs, ignoring stabs of pain from femur and fibula.
“Were a lot of people misinformed about you?” Imogen asked when they were in Riverside Park. “Did your family get a black telegram? I know it happened to others.”
“I believe, in my case, the black telegram was Jack himself.”
“He went around telling everyone you’d been killed?”
“Just you, I believe.”
Quentin walked more slowly than he used to, his left leg dragging a little without quite amounting to a limp. Imogen kept her own pace in check.
“Why would he do that?”
He told her about Jack’s confession of love, and about his misery.
“He swore that he felt about me the same way I felt about you. I suppose his letter to you was a kind of wish fulfillment—that you would lose me forever and he would have me all to himself. Am I using the term correctly? Wish fulfillment?”
“Yes, indeed. Maybe you’re right.”
“I was harsh with him, I’m afraid. I was stupid. You should just accept a friend for what he is.”
“You were worried he was asking you to reciprocate.”
“He wasn’t asking for that—at least he said he wasn’t. He just wanted me to know his feelings. I see now that he felt the friendship was false as long as I wasn’t aware. Now you’d think that I, if anyone, could understand this. But I didn’t.”
“Because of your feelings for me, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“But the situations were quite different. Jack had changed into something completely other all of a sudden. It was a shock.”
“He killed himself not long after.”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes, it was quite a—quite horrible. I was a bad friend.”
“How long after your letter was it that he killed himself?”
“Seven or eight months.”
“So, hardly immediate. If he were still alive you’d probably be friends again. You were such great pals.”
“It’s kind of you to say.”
“But it’s true. It’s the sort of person you are. He didn’t live long enough to discover that about you. He deprived himself of you. Just as I did.”
“No, God, I was so callow. I was too much for you. You did absolutely the right thing. Speaking of which—is it quite proper for us to be talking like this?”
“I no longer have a husband, if that’s what you mean. Carl left me.”
In the days leading up to this meeting Imogen had feared many things: that Quentin would slam the door in her face, or say a string of hateful things, or burst into tears. Or, if they should spend an hour together, that they would not know what to say, that they would find each other unrecognizable. Quentin looked much older—far more than ten years older—with streaks of grey in the hair that curled around his ears. And he now walked in this careful, hesitant way. But she felt him to be essentially unchanged and wanted nothing more at that moment than to open her heart to him.
She told him about Carl and their short, unhappy life together. Quentin listened, turning to her now and again with those hound dog eyes full of sympathy and concern. Even though he was a man, she sensed that he was understanding her better even than Donna did. Donna was a woman, and a psychiatrist, but she did not love in the way Imogen had and Quentin had. Indeed, that was part of her immense value as a friend. But Imogen found the tale of her misguided passion for Carl rolled easily off her tongue, and she could tell Quentin with neither exaggeration nor understatement exactly how it went wrong.
“I’m sorry you went through that,” Quentin said. “I wish I—I want to reach back in time and save you from it, steer you away from him.”
“So do I sometimes. Of course, that would steer me away from the twins, too.”
“Ah, yes. Your twins.”
“You know I have children?”
Quentin nodded. “I saw you. In Baltimore. Well, I didn’t just see you. I followed you.”
“No.” She stopped on the path. “Quentin. You weren’t—you aren’t…”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry. As soon as I saw you were happily married I resolved to stay away.”
>
“Happily!”
“I know. I’m often wrong about people. It’s a terrible failing in a novelist. I suppose psychiatrists aren’t allowed to be wrong either.”
“It doesn’t bear thinking about, in my case. I think I’m pretty good in reading my patients, but I’ve been wrong about everyone else, it seems.”
“Seeing you so, I don’t know, ensconced in your life, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt. Couldn’t bear the thought of history repeating itself. But every now and again, I admit, well, since I learned you were here in New York all this time…”
She searched his face. He was a character from one of his early novels—innocent, passionate, resolute. “I love your books,” she couldn’t help saying. “Even before I knew they were by you, I loved them.”
“Oh. Well, writing my last book involved thinking about you a lot. Not the healthiest thing for me to do.”
He looked away across the river. Imogen very much wanted to hear what he was going to say, but at the same time she was struck by his gentleness and honesty.
“Then, when I found you were here, I began to get excited again. And I knew that wasn’t good—for anybody, not just me. And actually, the way I’m dealing with it, I’m planning to leave the country. I have my ticket.”
He turned to look at her again. “So you see, you mustn’t worry. I’m quite prepared to remain out of your life. Had you not shown up on my doorstep I would in fact be out of it.”
“You’re so certain you couldn’t remain in it?”
“How do you mean? As a friend? No, I think we’ve proved that beyond all doubt.”
“ ‘Men and women are not friends.’ That’s what my mother says. She says everyone knows this except me—well, this was years ago.”
“And what does Dr. Freud say?”
“Love objects. Sex objects. Friendship doesn’t enter into it.”
“How sad. I wish I could prove him wrong this minute, but I’m afraid we’ll have to leave that to others.”
“I really do like your books,” she said again a little while later. They had passed the boat basin and Grant’s tomb was not much farther. “More than like them,” she added. “They stay with me long after I’ve read them. Your characters, and the passion of your protagonists. They’re so like you that—”
“Easy, now—some of them are quite mad.”
“No, they’re not. I’ve worked with mad people and, believe me, your characters are not mad. Eccentric, yes. Volatile, certainly. But so loving, so generous, and so strong in the way they remain true to themselves and what they aim for. I should have realized long ago that Jeremy West was you, but it never occurred to me. One or two of the male characters reminded me of you, but—”
“I refuse to ask which ones.”
Imogen smiled. “But it was only in reading the last one that I knew these characters had to come from you, even though I knew you were dead. I thought someone else must’ve got hold of your work or a diary or something. Frankly I suspected Jack Wisdom.”
Quentin picked up a small stone and turned to face the Hudson, contemplating the grey swirl of the river. Then he hurled the stone into the water where it vanished with an inaudible splash.
“It’s funny,” he said. “Just as you’re talking I’m realizing that I probably meant If True as a kind of message in a bottle. Not consciously, I swear. But I realize now I was hoping you’d read it. Obviously you’d have to realize it was me, if you did.”
“Why don’t you write under your own name? Quentin Goodchild—it’s a marvellous name for a writer.”
Quentin shrugged. It was the same gesture she remembered, a collection of spare parts hauled into the air by a magnet, then released. “I felt—as Goodchild, I mean—I felt I was obliged to write about the war. Stupid idea, no doubt, but I believed it. I still believe it.”
“But you have the war in this one.”
“Well, a little bit.”
“It’s powerful. This incredible mass violence offstage, so to speak, but affecting all the characters in these terrible ways.”
Quentin winced as she spoke, clearly uncomfortable with praise. He pointed toward Grant’s tomb. “You know, the Civil War was the crucial event of Henry James’s lifetime. I’ve always found it hard to respect him since he never wrote a word about it.”
“But it’s hard to imagine a Henry James war novel. He probably sensed he’d be no good at it. I mean, isn’t part of being an artist knowing your own strengths?”
Quentin looked doubtful. “Perhaps. Anyway, it certainly didn’t harm his career, so what do I know?”
A mother and stroller passing by reminded Imogen she had better get home. Quentin insisted on walking her to the subway, and they turned toward Riverside Drive. Along the way Imogen told him about her work, her break with the Phipps, and her current frustrations with her supervision and her single, unpleasant patient.
“But this is what you want to do—be a psychoanalyst.”
“Very much.”
“I thought you’d always be in a lab, trying to find a cure for dementia praecox.”
“So did I. But I don’t see any cures on the horizon, and analysis offers a way to help people now.”
“Not the same people.”
“Just because you’re not on a back ward doesn’t mean you’re not suffering.”
“I wasn’t being dismissive. Just trying to picture your new milieu.”
The noise of the city seemed tremendous after the quiet of the park.
“When is your ticket for?”
“Two weeks from today.”
“Oh, that’s soon.”
Quentin nodded and looked away.
Imogen put out her hand. “It was wonderful to see you again, Quentin. I only wish it had happened sooner.”
Quentin shook her hand. His was intensely warm, as if he’d been resting it on a radiator.
“Maybe I’ll just come down the subway with you—do you mind? I don’t want to walk all the way back. Walking isn’t what it used to be for me.”
He moved slowly down the stairs, keeping his left arm close to his side as if clutching something under his coat.
“I hope someday you’ll tell me about your war experience.”
“First I want to know how you found me.”
“In the city directory, of course. It’s Jeremy West that’s hard to find. Quentin Goodchild is right there for anyone to see.”
* * *
—
The next two days were heavily occupied for Imogen. For reasons no one could fathom, the juvenile and family court systems came up with a surge of referrals for her, including five blond sisters ranging in age from five to fifteen. In addition, her training patient missed two appointments, both of which had to be rescheduled, forcing Imogen to shuffle everything else in her life. Meanwhile, her supervisor demanded she reread The Interpretation of Dreams, as he did not believe she had a firm grasp of its principles. It was just bullying, but Imogen’s resentment burned inside her and made it difficult to concentrate. Charlotte came down with an earache, requiring a babysitter Imogen could ill afford, and copycat Aubrey developed his own imaginary earache that made her lose her temper.
Yet all the while this was going on, Imogen was very aware that her world had changed. She found herself thinking when I see Quentin or I must tell Quentin. Some part of her had evidently decided that they would be seeing a lot of each other; the matter was settled. While worrisome, it also felt as if she had been living in a house with slanted floors and crooked windows and now some alteration in the footings had canted everything back into its proper place.
On the third day she broke every rule she had ever learned about correct relations between men and women and telephoned Quentin. “I want to see you again,” she said into the phone.
“Why?” Quentin said. “I don’t mean that rudely, but I mean, I just really would need to know.”
“Because you’re alive. Because I need a friend. Because you make me h
appy.”
Quentin laughed.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Why? Because it’s wonderful to not be dead!”
She met up with Quentin often over the next few days. They had lunch in the Automat, a place that amused him highly. They met at the New York Public Library, where he was making notes toward a new novel. The courts didn’t care where Imogen wrote up her reports, as long as they got written, so she wrote a few of them in the library, typing them out later at the court office. So here they were, face to face in a library again, what seemed a century after their student days.
They fell into their old pattern of camaraderie with frightening ease. Imogen marvelled that she could have ever let this person go from her life. How had she missed her own physical attraction to him? She had always loved his tallness, his angularity, his slouchiness, his asymmetrical face, his mouth, and those expressive hands. How, then, could she have fallen for the spurious manliness of a person like Carl? She had been studying the human psyche for many years, and it always filled her with wonder, but her own psyche left her, at this juncture, aghast. Imagine being so warped by your treacherous father that you reject the kind man who is utterly unlike him in favour of one who is all too like him. Perhaps this was one of the things that drew her to Freud, the way he gave you a thousand different ways to avoid calling yourself what you were: a fool.
Well, if she had been a fool, she also had the feeling she might soon be punished for it, sensing as she did that this time she was the one beginning to fall in love, while Quentin remained aloof. He wasn’t giving himself over to this shared experience with the same abandon she was, but why would he? He’d been burned before—and he had a ticket to Europe in his pocket, just as she had had a ticket to Baltimore in hers.
Imogen and the twins met him at the Central Park Zoo where he delighted the children by doing imitations of the animals. That weekend they went to the roller rink, and afterwards over hot chocolate Quentin recited “Jabberwocky” from memory, the twins calling for encores. On Tuesday he asked Imogen to go and see Steamboat Bill. She scrambled to find a babysitter.