A Week as Andrea Benstock

by Lawrence Block

  And caught her eye again. And did not quite smile.

  She knew he would call, and was surprised when Monday came and went without word from him. By the time he did call, the following afternoon, she had rehearsed the conversation endlessly. In some of the versions he apologized and they agreed that nothing like that would happen again. In others he swore that he had always loved her and begged her to leave Mark. But in the little imaginary conversations that she thought of as realistic, he called and tried to coax her into an affair without success.

  But the conversation did not go like that at all.

  “Andrea, I’d like to see you.”

  “All right.”

  “Can you get free for an hour or two Thursday or Friday? Say in the early afternoon?”

  “Thursday would be better. I can leave Robin with the cleaning woman.”

  “I’ll be at the University Manor motel. That’s at Main and Bailey. Park your car at the shopping plaza around the corner.”

  “Isn’t there parking at the motel? Oh, I get the point.”

  “You don’t want the car to be seen.”

  “Of course not. You’ll have to bear with me. I’m not used to having to think this way.”

  “Can you get there around noon?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Just call me at the motel when you have the car parked and I’ll tell you the room number.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll see you then. That’s Thursday, that’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “Yes, the day after tomorrow.”

  She kept the date that Thursday, leaving the car in front of the bookstore on University Plaza, then taking the trouble to buy a book at the store to justify her presence. (A book she saw but did not buy was the paperback edition of John Riordan’s novel. The thought of purchasing that particular book on this particular occasion appealed to her, but she had already taken the book out of the library.)

  She called him from a booth and he told her what room he was in. She walked around the corner, hoping no one saw her turn in to the motel. That was the dangerous moment and there was not much she could do about it, but she went on and turned and if anyone saw her she never knew about it. She found his room and knocked on the door and he opened it and closed it quickly as soon as she was inside.

  While she was lighting a cigarette he asked her if she wanted a drink. She nodded and he put ice cubes into a glass and added Canadian Club. “All the comforts of home,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything. She looked at him for a moment and thought that there ought to be something to say. But she couldn’t think what it might be. She took a small ladylike sip of her drink, put the glass down on the dresser, took a puff of her cigarette, stubbed it out in an ashtray, and began removing her clothes.

  Since then they had been together perhaps a dozen times, maybe a little more than that. Their meetings usually took place on Thursday, when a sullen thick-bodied black woman named Lucinda arrived by bus to clean Andrea’s house. She would drive to the shopping plaza, park her car, walk briskly and nonchalantly around the corner to the motel. She would knock, a door would open, and within five minutes she would be out of her clothes and in bed with him,

  The ease with which she did this surprised her, and went on surprising her. Not the ease with which the deception was accomplished, because of course it was simple enough to steal an hour or two in the course of a week. She was mobile and her schedule was flexible, She had her own car and did not have to account closely for her time. On those weeks when Thursday turned out to be inconvenient for one or the other of them, it was usually possible to arrange something on another mutually convenient day. Robin could be dropped at her mother’s house, at Mark’s mother’s house, at Eileen Fradin’s.

  In the novels she read, women caught up in adultery found themselves doing a lot of limit testing, becoming increasingly flagrant in their behavior, either because they wanted their husbands to catch them or because they wished to establish for themselves the extent of their husbands’ gullibility. From the beginning she watched herself for signs of this pattern, and she was reassured when they failed to appear. She and Cass did not attempt to see each other more frequently, or for longer periods of time, or in more public and hence dangerous situations. On the contrary, their relationship adhered quite rigidly to the pattern originally established. In all their time together, they never skated on thinner ice than they had that first night, when he had touched her in her kitchen with Mark a matter of yards away from them.

  On an emotional level, too, they were both automatically cautious and conservative. One time, after they had made love, he poured himself a drink and said, “You know, this whole business is almost too secure for an affair.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re so accomplished at this and so cool about it. One thing I knew at the beginning was that this was going to be safe for us. Neither of us was going to fall in love with the other. Neither of us was going to think we were in love.”

  “No, hardly that.”

  “In books and movies the cheating people go into these mad passionate clinches whenever they’re alone together. And there’s this whole if-only number. If only we could spend a week on a white sand beach in the Caribbean. If only your husband and my wife could get swallowed by a runaway brontosaurus. If you were the only girl in the world and I was the only boy. That whole romantic routine.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “What?”

  “You’re putting it down, the romance routine, but you sound almost wistful about it.”

  “Well, of course. It’s crap, and I know it’s crap, but some of the time you have to wish you were capable of believing in that kind of crap. Listen, my mother went to Mass every morning until the day she died. I never stopped thinking that was total nonsense. I couldn’t have been much more than ten years old when I figured out that religion was baloney. The only hard part was making myself realize that other people really took it all seriously. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t occasionally envy my mother for being able to believe in it all. Not that I would want it for myself. Not that I would willingly be the kind of simpleminded person who could swallow all of that. Religion, romance, it’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “How?”

  “Easy answers. Jesus, especially with the if-only number. ’Life would be terrific if only we could be together forever, but it wouldn’t be fair to everybody else.’ So you get to feel that things could have worked out if only, and you get to feel very noble for denying yourself, and you never have to face the fact that there’s nothing that’s gonna make everything work out well because people’s lives just don’t work out very well.”

  “Not ever?”

  “They don’t add up to happily-ever-after, do they?”

  “No,” she said. “I guess they don’t.”

  “I stopped believing in happily-ever-after around the same time as Heaven and Hell and the Immaculate Conception. It’s all the same kind of bullshit.”

  “And you’re a tower of strength who can survive without all that.”

  He looked thoughtfully at her for a moment. “No,” he said. “No, I’m just a cynical son of a bitch. That’s all.”

  Why did they go on seeing each other?

  One Thursday afternoon she asked the question aloud. They had made love and were still naked in bed. He had made himself a drink. She had lit a cigarette. It was late July and their affair, if that was the name for it, had been in progress for about two months. She sat for a moment watching the smoke rise from the tip of her cigarette, listening to the rain lashing at the window of their room.

  She said, “We haven’t had this room before.”

  “Huh? Haven’t we?”

  “No.”

  “Not the kind of thing I would remember. The rooms in this motel don’t have all that much in the way of individuality. If you’ve seen one you’ve seen ’em all.”

  “I was wonder
ing something,” she said. He waited, and she said, “I was wondering why we bother with this. You and I.”

  “Because it feels good.”

  “Is that all?”

  He swung his legs up onto the bed, balanced his glass on his stomach. “The sex is good,” he said.

  “It’s not bad for me. But it’s not really the thrill of a lifetime for you, is it?”

  “I always have a good time.” He sounded just the least bit defensive.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, considering this. The sex was always good for her. He always knew how to hold and touch her, and her response was always powerful, almost too intense. And yet this power and intensity did not always add up to pleasure. It was a physical reaction, a response on the part of her body which did not seem to involve more than her body, so that she was paradoxically capable of having positively electric orgasms without feeling herself to be a participant in them.

  “There’s something beyond the sex.”

  “Well, we enjoy each other’s company. That’s hardly a revelation.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she said. “What makes us come to this room is the people who aren’t in it.”

  “That’s a little too cryptic for me.”

  “Your wife and my husband.”

  He looked at her.

  “It’s the relationship,” she went on. “If you and Mark weren’t partners, if Ellie and I weren’t friends—”

  “You’re not.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t stand Ellie,” he said. “You think she’s a stupid cow with brains in her tits.”

  “That’s an awful thing to say.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But why? If Mark and I didn’t happen to be partners you and Ellie would never have known each other. The two of you are cordial to each other and that’s really all that’s necessary. There’s no reason why you should pretend to have something in common.” He reached for his glass. “I don’t think Ellie particularly exists for you. You represent something to her, as it happens. I think she sees you as the sort of woman she ought to be in order to be the ideal wife for me.”

  “In what way? I mean what is it about me she finds admirable?”

  “Oh, you’re educated, you’re polished, you’re sophisticated.”

  “I am like hell.”

  “In her lights you are. And you’re witty and verbally agile and she thinks these are things that are important to me.”

  “Aren’t they?”

  “No, not really, but she doesn’t know that. As it happens she’s very much the kind of wife I want and need. You look surprised.”

  “A little.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe it was the way you said that, so matter of fact and all. I don’t know. I suppose I’ve always wondered why you married her.”

  He seemed about to respond to her last remark. Instead he said, “You know, what you said a minute ago is probably fairly accurate. It is other people that keep us coming back here. And more than anything else it’s your husband.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think we got here the first time under our own steam. That business in the kitchen, there was a strong attraction between us, physical and otherwise. And we were both of us ready for an adventure.”

  “You’ve had adventures before, haven’t you?”

  “That didn’t keep me from being ready. And you were ready, it showed all over you.”

  “I didn’t recognize it myself, though.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So that was enough to get us into bed once.”

  “But not enough to keep us coming back for more.” He darted a glance at her. “You know, this is probably the best way to kill the whole thing. By talking it to death.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let’s forget it, huh?”

  “But I’m enjoying the talk.”

  “Anyway it’s getting late.” He was out of bed, getting his undershorts from the chair.

  “You really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Maybe it’s already talked to death. Maybe we can just forget about seeing each other any more.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “Hey!”

  “Oh, hell,” she said. “Why is everything always so fucking complicated? Why does everything get messed up? I screw up everything I touch.”

  “Easy, now.”

  “Don’t call me any more, all right? Oh, shit, do I mean that? I don’t even know. I’m using you to get even with Mark and I don’t know why I’m mad at him. He never did anything to me. Nobody ever did anything to me. I’m the one who does everything, I fuck up other people and I fuck myself up. I love Mark. He’s my husband and I love him.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “So what am I doing here? That’s a good question, isn’t it? If I love him so damn much what am I doing here?” She had been striding around the room while he went on dressing, not looking directly at her. Now he turned slowly toward her and she felt suddenly vulnerable in her nakedness.

  “Cass? What should I do?”

  “Better put some clothes on for openers.”

  “I’m serious. What should I do?”

  But he had no answer for her. That evening she decided that she would definitely not see him again. Whatever roles they were playing for each other, whatever itches they scratched in that motel, she was certain they were doing each other more harm than good. He probably realized as much himself, she told herself, and it was more than possible that he would not call her again. But if he did call she would not see him.

  That night Mark made love to her. It always bothered her when they made love on the same day that she had been with Cass, and yet it seemed to happen that way more often than not. This particular time their lovemaking was intense and exciting, inordinately exciting, and it left her with a feeling of profound fulfillment that still blanketed her when she awakened the following morning.

  So it was over. She had had a fairly stupid and pointless affair for reasons which she might or might not sometime examine, and it was over.

  A few days later she decided she would see Cass one more time. Not to go to bed with him—she would definitely not go to bed with him—but because there was a conversation they had not quite gotten around to having and she felt it was one that ought to take place.

  And then he did call. They had their usual quick conversation, agreeing to meet at the usual time and place. And she met him as agreed, and they went to bed, and they did not talk about any of the things she had decided needed to be discussed.

  In the middle of the afternoon of her thirtieth birthday, Andrea sat at the kitchen table. There was a cup of coffee on the table in front of her, and a cigarette burned in the ashtray alongside the cup. The ash on the cigarette was almost two inches long now. She was letting the cigarette burn up, and she was letting the coffee grow cold, and it seemed to her suddenly that she was letting everything burn up or cool off, that things went on without her, that all the parts of her life were running away from her.

  No, not running. Walking, and walking slowly, stepping off in slow motion. And all she could do was sit and watch.

  She was alone in the house now. Robin was at the zoo, her little hand firmly gripped in her grandfather’s hand. About half an hour ago David Kleinman had pulled his car into the driveway, first to give her his birthday wishes in person, then to attend to the more important matter of taking Robin for a ride.

  He had been an enthusiastic grandfather from the day she was born, always anxious to spend time with her, but since his heart attack he had devoted a much larger portion of his time to Robin and seemed to take more delight than ever in her company.

  “Warnings change your outlook,” he had told Andrea. “I heard this all my life but you have to experience it to recognize the truth of it. You always start out convinced you’re going to live forever and over the years different things come along to give y
ou little clues of the truth. Little hints of your own mortality. And each time you think, well, now I know what there is to know about it, now I have a realistic perception of it all. And each time you find out that there’s more to it than you quite appreciated. I wake up in the morning and see the sun and I experience this sense of wonder. It’s hard for me to describe it. A sense of great joy at being alive. A sense of the magnificence of life and of how fragile it all is at the same time. A little blood clot breaks off, a little muscle in the chest doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to work, and all at once everything stops. It’s a riddle, isn’t it? And the years go by and you find out that the answer is that there’s no answer.”

  “The philosopher.”

  “The philosopher,” he echoed. “Kindly old Doc Kleinman with his cracker barrel philosophy. All I know is I find myself with a great urge to spend my time in a way that gives me satisfaction. To be with your mother, not doing anything in particular, not even talking. To go for a ride, just to look at all the streets I’ve known so well for so many years. I think Robin’s beginning to know Buffalo better than you do. We drive all over, you know. And I always tell her the name of the street and point things out to her, and do you know something? She remembers from one time to the next.”

  Sometimes, watching the two of them together, Andrea felt something that verged on jealousy. Oh, she was not jealous of her daughter. She was surely not capable of that. But she did envy Robin the effortless closeness she had with her grandfather. She saw in this closeness echoes of her own childhood, when she’d gone to the zoo with her own little hand wrapped in her father’s large one. (You were never as secure again as when you were a little girl and your father held you.)

  So in one sense she saw her own childhood in Robin, and wanted it back again. Robin had that little-girl security not only from her father but from both her grandfathers as well. (Harry Benstock did not come around as often as David Kleinman, but it did seem as though he spent more time with Robin than he had before Andrea’s father’s heart attack.) Robin had three older men who cherished her with that total and unquestioning kind of devotion, and how could Andrea help envying her a little for it?