The First Warm Evening of the Year: A Novel

by Jamie M. Saul

  Marian stood up, walked around the table, and stood behind me. I turned my head and saw her hands resting on the back of my chair. She’d moved a little closer to me now, and I could feel the soft warmth of her torso near the back of my neck.

  She said, “Summer is still a long way off. But I’ll tell you. If you like.”

  I turned my head toward her. Her face looked a little flushed.

  I told her, “Yes. I’d like that very much.” My voice wasn’t any firmer than hers.

  She took a step around and leaned her hip against the side of the chair. “You probably saw the woodland garden when you parked your car. Buddy and I started building that right after we got married. If you walked in you’d be able to see the trillium that’s starting to come up, primroses, and soon the spring bulbs will start blossoming, you know, daffodils, crocuses . . . Around the side of the house, the lilac bushes start flowering, but not until late May.” She raised her eyes toward the door. “And white peonies. In the moonlight, they give off their own light. Which is why you plant them.”

  There was a change in Marian’s voice, an airiness, a pleasing enthusiasm; and when she described the shapes of the gardens, an animation. I wished that I could see what she was seeing.

  She brushed her hand across the back of the chair, just below my shoulders, as though she were daring herself to touch me, at least I enjoyed thinking she was.

  Marian was speaking slowly now, telling me about the different grasses that came back every year, and what flowers appeared in June and July. “The delphiniums— tall and spiky. You’d recognize them if you saw them. A true blue. A very hard color to achieve in the garden palette.”

  “They’re your favorites,” I said, leaning my head back and turning just enough to look at her. “Or maybe roses. You must have roses.”

  “I’ve talked too much.” She pulled the sleeves of her sweater over her wrists and said in a tone that was more playful than I’d have expected, “What about you? What great loves have you lost over the years, Geoffrey?”

  “I’ve never loved anyone enough to miss them when they’re gone.”

  “Then you were never really in love.”

  “That may have changed.”

  “You’re a dangerous man, Geoffrey, saying dangerous things.”

  “I don’t know when I’ll have the chance to say them again.”

  She grinned. “It isn’t like Laura didn’t talk to me about you and your collegiate conquests.”

  “My conscience is clean.”

  “Claims the condemned man as they march him to the gallows.”

  “Condemned without a fair hearing.”

  She wasn’t grinning now; in fact, all expression had come to a halt. “If I told you to go back to New York. Today. Now. Please don’t think it’s because I don’t appreciate your . . . Well, your being interested in me. God, that sounds so immodest. But I really don’t want to get involved with you.”

  “Because you think I’m a dangerous man?”

  “I want you to go back to New York and forget about me.”

  I told her, “I don’t know if that’s possible.” She was still standing close to me, but she looked as though she were about to tell me to get the hell out of there. What she said was, “I don’t know what you think is happening here,” and pressed her lips together in a tight smile, “but I’m sure you’re not a person who assumes what he wants to about people to fit his own—” She walked away from me and leaned against the side of the sink. “Buddy had a cabin in the Adirondacks. With a lake. He used to go ice fishing in the winter. He loved ice fishing.”

  “That’s very solitary.”

  “He usually went with his friends. He didn’t the last time.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stared down at the floor. “The cabin had an old gas heater. Propane. A wind blew the flame out during the night and Buddy died in his sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning.” Her voice was as flat as winter ice, and she hurried her words with what sounded like a great fatigue, and sorrow.

  “I sold the property and never went there again. Buddy was thirty-two years old.” She turned her face to the window. “So, if you came here thinking that I was someone you might be interested in, someone who might be interested in . . . a stupid, avoidable accident, alone in a crappy little cabin.” Marian did not turn around.

  I couldn’t keep staring at the back of her head, I didn’t know where to look, so I glanced at the desk just behind my shoulder. Along with the telephone and laptop was a stack of envelopes, all with the letterhead that bore the same logo that was on the pickup truck. It made me think of the hotel stationery you take with you for a souvenir, a reminiscence; and I wondered if Marian’s life was nothing more than reminiscences and souvenirs; living in the same house she’d lived in with Buddy, driving that old truck. Like a fly in amber.

  I looked up and saw Marian staring at me.

  She said, “People in town used to say that one of the joys of spring was watching Buddy’s designs come back to life. It’s still one of my joys. You won’t understand this, probably, but having that to look forward to is part of a routine, one of the habits of living. Like the year that Buddy died, it was attending to the business of being Buddy’s widow. And after that was finished, it’s anything I can do to—I don’t know— It’s all—”

  “A distraction?”

  She opened her eyes a bit wider, as though she’d just been revealed.

  “I don’t know what I was doing when we were at Laura’s. You can think I was flirting with you, if that’s good for your ego. Okay, I liked flirting with you. Maybe it was the tension of the moment, but whatever, it wasn’t me. And if that’s who you came up here to be with, it’s not me. Anyway, what I’m telling you is that you can’t just step into my life as though nothing went on until you showed up.”

  I got up and stood next to her. She stepped away from me.

  She said, “I’m trying—the day of Buddy’s funeral, there were a lot of people in the house. I didn’t want to be around anyone, so I sat out there.” She pointed to the porch. “Eliot came out. He didn’t say anything. He just stayed with me. It was cold, and I wasn’t wearing a coat. I liked the way the wind chilled my blouse and my skin. It seemed like the most appropriate way to feel. I kept on thinking the same thing, over and over: That I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t know Buddy. I asked Eliot to burn down the cabin for me. I never wanted to see it again. Eliot said he couldn’t do that, but he’d clean it out, sell it for me, and I wouldn’t ever have to go there again. And that’s what happened.” She said, lowering her voice, “If it wasn’t so dark outside, you’d be able to see all the gardens we built together. We were supposed to do more.” She looked over at me. “Just about this time of year, Buddy and I would prepare the furniture for outside. We’d start putting down mulch. He used to say that I had a better feel for the gardens than he did. That women were closer to the earth, the soil, than men. Now I’m going to tell you why I’m telling you this.” She closed her hand around my wrist, and I put my hand on top of hers. “This really has as much to do with Eliot as it does with Buddy—it has more to do with Eliot and me, really. You see, as long as I’ve known him, and that’s a long time, Eliot was just someone who was always around. He was just a guy in high school, then he was the guy who owned the hardware store, the guy who entertained the kids in the hospital with his magic tricks. Then he was the guy keeping me company after Buddy died, when I visited my friends, so I didn’t feel like a charity case, an appendage. Then we started meeting for lunch once in a while, then dinner. As far as I was concerned, Eliot was just doing a good deed.” The tone in her voice went deeper than simple kindness. “I can remember the year and the day when I first kissed Buddy, and where we were. I can remember the first time we made love. But not the first time Eliot and I went out. Or what we talked about or where we went. What I always remember, the thing t
hat I am most aware of is this: I prefer loving Buddy to loving anyone else. I prefer missing him to being with anyone else. Not from a sense of loyalty, but because no one compares to him. And I’ll never want to replace him. Eliot knows it. He’s told me that he knows this, and it doesn’t matter to him. That’s a hell of a thing, Geoffrey. I should have told him from the beginning that it shouldn’t—it shouldn’t be enough for him. It shouldn’t be enough for anybody.”

  “You can still tell him.”

  “It’s too late for me.”

  “It’s not too late.”

  She shook her head. “Are you ever afraid of growing old? I mean, actors worry about losing their good looks, of course, unless you’re George Clooney. But what you do for a living really doesn’t have much to do with the way you look. Only the way you sound.”

  “I’m sure I should be offended.”

  “No. I only meant . . .”

  “I’ll know it’s time to leave when they offer me the Depends account.”

  Her laughter was the sound of complete appreciation.

  “I think youth is overrated,” I told her, “and vastly overmarketed.”

  “You’re right about that. But don’t you ever worry about it?”

  “The consequences, I suppose.”

  “And you won’t try to recapture your youth by dating twenty-somethings?”

  “I don’t complicate other people’s lives, and I don’t try to recapture my youth with twenty-somethings I wouldn’t have been interested in when I was twenty-something.”

  “You know, I can’t believe that.”

  “Which part?”

  “It’s different for men.”

  “Different, not easier.”

  “Anyway, I’m too old to take chances.”

  “Chances?”

  “You come here and say you can’t stop thinking about me, and expect me to—what do you expect me to do?”

  “What do you expect you to do?”

  “What would you have done if Eliot had been here, you know, when you first got here?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about that, actually.”

  “You didn’t consider that before you drove up?”

  “It’s a long drive. I thought about a lot of things. Maybe I would have told him I had to see Remsen and thought I’d drop by and say hello. Maybe I’d have told him what I told you. I really don’t know.”

  “I’m not so sure I believe that. You impress me as a man who always knows what he’s doing.”

  “I told you I’ve changed. And I’ve never been so over my head before, and yet so confident about what I want.”

  She went to turn on a couple of lights. I liked feeling her body heat when she went past me and watching her move in her sweater and jeans. Supple and assured. I enjoyed the way the expression on her face changed, the intonation in her voice, not only when she’d made the “condemned man to the gallows” comment but even when there was no levity, when she talked about Buddy and Eliot. When she talked about her sadness. No matter what Marian was saying, there was the same familiarity that she’d shown that day at Laura’s, the look of recognition in her face that had made me so certain about what I was feeling and saying to her.

  I said, “Don’t you ever do anything on the spur of the moment?”

  She didn’t answer right away, but looked like she was making that calculation again.

  “About two years after Eliot and I started seeing each other, I went over to the hospital to pick him up, to go out for dinner. He was still upstairs doing his magic act for the kids. I decided to go up and watch. I’d never done that before. He was always downstairs waiting for me. I didn’t go into the room. I only stood in the doorway watching him make coins vanish, little plastic birds materialize. Magic. I saw a kind of assurance that he never seems to have when he’s around me, more masculine, and comfortable with himself. But I think it was the expression of pleasure I saw on his face that I couldn’t remember ever seeing before. For the first time since I’d known him, I was able to separate Eliot not just from the person I’d seen around town most of my life, but from the person I’d been going out with for two years. You see, Geoffrey, until that evening, I thought I’d understood our relationship. I thought I understood Eliot. I’d always had a clarity of feeling, but I was wrong. It was only after I saw him up there that I really understood that Eliot was doing more than a good deed there at the hospital, or being with me; and if I hadn’t gone up there to see him, I might never have realized it. I mean it took me that long to realize that Eliot wanted me to love him more than I could. And it made me, makes me, very sad. Is that what you meant by doing something impulsive?” She did not say this with bitterness. “There were times when I’d go back to the hospital to watch him, without him knowing about it, hoping I might get close to what I’d felt before. At least it was a feeling. Something. Maybe I thought I might convince myself— It comes down to what Eliot and I are willing to settle for. Like when he learned his first sleight of hand. He was still a kid and thought he was going to learn real magic, but all it was was a trick. Well, a trick isn’t magic, but it was what he wanted.”

  Marian came over to the table. She didn’t sit down, only put her hands on the back of her chair.

  “I’m not saying Shady Grove is teeming with available women, but Eliot could have the pick of the litter. Instead he’s with a forty-two-year-old widow who’s still in love with her dead husband, which may not be the bottom of the barrel, but it’s not exactly top of the line, either. A few years after Laura moved back, she said she wished she could fall in love the way she fell in love with Steve. Just once more, she said, before it’s too late. She didn’t want to re-create the life she’d had with Steve, she just wanted to feel that way again. I told her I wished I had her courage.”

  She said, “Laura told me some people hear the music and some people don’t. She said maybe it was because she’d lived in Paris, but she didn’t think a person could live without love. She wanted to hear the music again.” Marian stepped back and walked over to the window, and stood with her back to the panes and wrapped her arms around herself. “That’s when Laura first called us the young widows of Shady Grove. She said she couldn’t stand the idea of it.” She straightened up and let out a deep breath. “I told Laura I could never fall in love like that. Loving someone that much and losing him, again.” She shook her head. “That’s not it. Not all of it. If I’d gone up there with Buddy, he’d still be alive. I’m sure of it. I didn’t have to like ice fishing. All I had to do was be there with him. Guilty is just the beginning of how I feel. Guilty for that. Guilty for what I’m doing to Eliot. And I’d feel guilty if I left him, after all he’s done for me. Guilty for even thinking about you with Laura not even dead for more than—I’m a guilty mess, Geoffrey. And that’s not for you.”

  I said, “When I looked at Eliot that afternoon when he came by, when I saw how he looked at you, I saw a lonely man alone in love. You’re just as alone, and I want to take you away from that feeling and the fact of it, and, believe it or not, I find that intimidating.”

  She smiled at me now. “Tell me about your girlfriend,” she said.

  I listened to myself describe Rita and our relationship, and it sounded as though I were talking about two people I barely knew; as though I were recalling something told to me by someone else. Our relationship sounded so slight and without purpose that I felt like apologizing, or offering further explanation, but a moment later it wasn’t an explanation I was thinking about, or Rita, or Buddy and Marian. I was thinking about Marian and Eliot, because I realized that Marian and I had a lot in common, and I wondered if she knew it.

  “Does she buy things for you?” Marian asked. “Did she buy the cologne you’re wearing?”

  “My cologne?”

  “It’s very nice. Did she buy it for you?”

  “I buy my own cologne.
We don’t buy things for each other.”

  “Well, it sounds like a very New York romance.”

  The word romance made me think Marian was making a joke.

  “Why would you think I’d joke about something like that?”

  “I suppose I suddenly find it laughable.”

  “And living in New York?” she asked. “Is that laughable, too?”

  “It’s what I know.”

  “I’ve only been there a handful of times. Laura never wanted to go back there after she moved here. Although she said if you can’t live in Paris, live in New York City. Well, I don’t know about living in Paris, but I think New York is a very hard place. I don’t mean hard difficult, although it is that. I mean, hard.” She rapped her knuckles on the table. “It must wear you down after a while.”

  “When it does, I leave.”

  “Like today?” She grinned at me again, and I thought about telling her that it wasn’t at all like today, and about the past three weeks fantasizing about meeting her again somewhere in the city, and all the times I’d felt compelled to see her, but I figured that I’d scared her enough.

  “You know, I was in New York for Laura’s wedding.”

  “You were at the wedding?”

  “That’s right. I wound up being their witness while—I know what you did for her with Simon. And, no, if you’d been there fate would not have been tempted.” She sounded like she enjoyed saying this, and letting me know. “I was with Buddy.”

  Outside, the full moon spread its light across the ground, making everything look silky and unreal. I wanted to stand out there with Marian, hold her in my arms and feel her body against mine. Hold her in the cold until we couldn’t bear it, and wait, just a moment longer, so we could kiss.

  I was bewildered by what I was thinking and by all the things I was feeling. I didn’t know what the expression on my face was, but Marian was still smiling at me.