The First Warm Evening of the Year: A Novel

by Jamie M. Saul

  “It’s how you keep your equilibrium.”

  “Ten years.”

  I wanted to walk out. Walk out on why I’d come to see Eliot. Walk out on telling what I wanted him to know; leave him unchallenged and unenlightened about my five days in Shady Grove. If Marian had more to say to him, then that was between the two of them. If she kept quiet, well, didn’t Eliot just tell me that’s how they are? It would have been convenient to leave Eliot alone with his myth intact, and mine intact as well: my myth of trust, the trust in my silence. But that would have been no different than what I’d done to Simon when I’d kept him away from Laura’s wedding, the secrecy of that day was not unlike my secrecy now, my reluctance to tell Eliot what I wanted him to know.

  I’d never doubted the integrity of Laura’s confidence in me; but what we had done to her brother was nothing but an ungenerous act, a conspiracy in deception and cruelty.

  Was I keeping silent because I thought Marian expected me to? An extension of Laura’s confidence in me? Just another act of cruelty? An adherence to an adolescent’s ethic? Was this my attachment to the past? Where I thought I’d find the best part of myself? Tricking an eighteen-year-old kid out of his sister’s wedding? Treating Eliot to my own sleight of hand? My act of misdirection?

  What would have happened if I’d broken Laura’s confidence that afternoon? Who would have been harmed, except Simon, who was harmed already? And now, if I broke Marian’s confidence, what would I be doing except urging a conversation she’d been avoiding for ten years?

  I came there thinking that Eliot and I were in love with the same woman. But we weren’t. She wasn’t the same woman. And I would have to tell him who I was in love with.

  I told him, without inflection, making sure the narrative sounded as objective and impersonal as possible, about the things Marian and I had said the day I’d come to empty Laura’s house, and the afternoon when I drove up, and Marian described her gardens to me and we talked until it grew dark about her loneliness and sadness. And the time Marian took me to the overlook and we sat together on the stone wall and talked about the madness of love and its dangers. And when I came to Marian’s nursery and she told me all about Buddy and their gardens and how the two of them had lived together and how he died, and how empty she felt without him. And about our impromptu lunch on the wooden bridge by the waterfall.

  Eliot never interrupted. By the time I finished, I was standing across the room, my back to him, looking at the alley outside the window. I didn’t want to look at him or see the expression on his face. But I heard the sound of his breathing.

  I was watching a little girl trying to teach her puppy to sit on command. Every time she pushed down on the puppy’s rump, he leapt forward and licked her nose. I watched her for another minute until she gave up and carried her puppy out to the sidewalk.

  When I turned around, I saw a tightening around Eliot’s jaw, other than that, he showed nothing. I’d said as much as I was going to say. He had the facts now. What was he going to do with them?

  Eliot was holding a ballpoint pen in his hand, clicking the top over and over again. His throat made a sound, like the inversion of Marian’s laugh, and for a moment I wished I hadn’t said anything. I felt as though I’d just stolen what purpose he’d claimed; and why didn’t he grab me by the shirt and clock me, which I wasn’t too sure I didn’t want him to do, or would have done in his place. I could have even argued it was what I deserved.

  “Well, you certainly gave me something to think about, didn’t you?” Eliot let go of the pen, and watched it drop on top of his desk. “I guess she needed to tell you these things.” He did not sound unhappy when he said this. “It’s not like—” He picked up that ballpoint and started clicking the top again, over and over. He said, “I think it’s a good thing that she can talk to you the way she does. I mean, it’s like with Laura—now that she doesn’t have her to talk to and you being Laura’s old friend . . .” There was a discomfort that appeared in his expression that was equally discomforting to witness.

  I might have told Eliot that it was my intention to make him uncomfortable; that I knew I was being manipulative, and that I wanted to coax him toward the conclusion of his relationship with Marian, and this was the way I thought I could do that. Alex would have recognized at once what I was doing. He would have said that I was practicing without a license.

  A few more clicks and Eliot dropped the pen on the desk and this time pushed it out of his way.

  “Necessity isn’t need,” I told him.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s something I just thought of.”

  “You do the things that need to be done.” He unbuttoned his collar and relaxed his tie, leaned his elbow on the desk, rested his chin in the cup of his hand, and lowered his eyes. “But you can’t look at things— You can’t— I don’t know where this is going or what you want.” Eliot had not looked up while he said this, or when he said, “So just drop it.” Now he lifted his head, pushed his chair back from the desk, and when he started to stand I thought he was getting ready to kick me out, but he sat back down and said, “She just came out and started talking to you about Buddy.”

  “I told you, we talked about a lot of things.”

  “Hell, skating at the park? That was a long time ago.”

  “It was all a long time ago.”

  “I don’t know where you get these things.”

  I was watching him, but I was thinking about Buddy’s down-from-the-mountain look, as Marian had called it. And how Buddy would have found clarity in quoting Tennyson, right then, or Wordsworth or Frost. Then I recoiled from that and for having thought it, for I was doing what most everyone else did, watching Eliot through Buddy’s eyes. It always came back to Buddy. Like the town you have to drive through to get to wherever you’re going.

  “I don’t think anyone ever considered what it must have been like for her to be in that house by herself.” There was no expression of revelation when Eliot said this, but something had changed. There was a tone of animus when he said, “They took her at her word, I guess. She was going to die alone, just like Buddy. I didn’t want to let that happen.”

  The room felt hot and airless with the masculine smell of sweat and stress. Eliot got up to open the window, and asked me if I’d mind hitting the switch for the ceiling fan. “It isn’t like ten years is—like there’s a shelf life to all of this.” He walked the length of the room, opened the door, and looked into the store for a moment. It was still busy out there, and he kept watching for another moment or two longer before he closed the door, leaned against it, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Marian told you they were going to leave Shady Grove and not come back? She and Buddy?”

  I lowered my eyes in affirmation.

  Eliot unfolded his arms, raised himself up, his body heaving forward just a little bit.

  “She’s not going to let herself die like Buddy,” I told him.

  “Is that what you think?”

  He moved away from the door and came forward until he was standing in front of me, staring down.“Let me ask you something. How do I know that this isn’t just for your own amusement, or to build up your self-esteem? How do I know that’s not what you do?”

  I didn’t bother with an answer. I only looked back at him.

  “I won’t lie and say I never wanted her to talk to me like that,” Eliot said, “or how she talked to Laura.” He took a few steps away and sat on the edge of his desk. “Marian wanted you to know. And it occurs to me, just now, that she must have given a lot of thought to talking to you.”

  Eliot didn’t say anything else for a moment—pausing the way a musician might, holding a beat longer than you expect. You might think it’s an affectation, or the preparation for the diminished note to follow, but sometimes it’s the moment preceding the crescendo. He started to speak and stopped. Started aga
in and again stopped, and put out his hands, palms up.

  “And now that I’m over my initial reaction to what you’ve been saying, I have the impression that you’re just trying to help. But, to be honest, I have nothing to say to you.” There was no longer the timidity, the man afraid of losing his balance, in his voice. I wanted to think our conversation was supposed to bring us both to this moment. Eliot was standing up and telling me, “I’d like you to leave.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and showed me the door.

  I walked along Main Street, where the shops were emptying and business had slowed, and down narrow sidewalks, past quiet lawns at afternoon, on my way to Laura’s house.

  I began to consider what Eliot and I had talked about today, what we’d been talking about all along, actually, when I remembered the question I’d left behind with the Ballantines: Why had Marian let Eliot in?

  The following morning, I was downstairs making coffee, thinking about the automatic espresso machine in the kitchen in my apartment, the patisserie around the corner with the warm chocolate brioches, and how simple my life used to be, when Marian called. Maybe I thought about this just before her phone call, maybe right after.

  Marian didn’t bother with hello: “What did you tell Eliot?” Her voice was soft with sleep, and silky. I hoped she was still in bed. “Did you tell him what we’ve talked about?”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “Something very weird. As soon as the weather gets warm, he wants us to play tennis together.”

  “That’s not so weird.”

  “I don’t play tennis.”

  “Can we continue this face-to-face?” I said. “And not in Laura’s house.”

  Marian was waiting on the back deck, the kitchen door was open behind her. She was grinning at me and as I came closer, she put her hands inside the pouch of her sweatshirt and said, “Well, we’re face-to-face.” She sounded amused.

  “Eliot’s not intimidated,” I told her.

  She nodded toward the kitchen, and we walked inside.

  “Do I know what you’re talking about?” she asked.

  “The reason he was able to help you when no one else could is because he’s not intimidated by Buddy. And everyone else is, Charlie, his parents, you. But not Eliot.”

  “Eliot told you that?” She pulled a chair away from the kitchen table.

  “There’s this assumption everyone has,” I said, “that Eliot wants to be like Buddy.”

  She went over to the counter, started to bring the coffeepot to the table, and stopped.

  “Whose assumption is that?” she asked.

  “That he should want to be like him? You don’t need me to tell you. But it’s not only incorrect, it’s wrong and unfair.”

  Marian put the pot of coffee on the table and told me to help myself.

  “You’re explaining Eliot to me?”

  “If you think about it, everyone’s still seeking Buddy’s approval. And that doesn’t mean anything to Eliot.”

  “And my feelings about Buddy?”

  “But all the things that you, that everyone, love about Buddy and admire, don’t matter to Eliot. He doesn’t want to be like Buddy any more than Buddy would have wanted to be like him.”

  “Of course he doesn’t.”

  “But don’t you think people act like they expect him to? Except that deep thinking and introspection don’t impress him. All it gets you is a lonely death. Which he believes he’s saved you from?”

  “He said saved?”

  “He doesn’t want you to die alone like Buddy.”

  “I don’t believe— That doesn’t sound like Eliot speaking, it sounds like you.”

  “Eliot also made a point of telling me that Simon was a better ice-skater than Buddy, and Buddy wasn’t a very good athlete. ”

  “That would explain the tennis.”

  “It’s his way of saying he wants a more intimate relationship.”

  “He told you that? He said he wants a more intimate—”

  “My guess is, he thinks it’s something he should want. Maybe because he can’t talk to you about the things you and I talk about.”

  “Then you did tell him what we talk about.”

  “I told him about the things we talk about.”

  “That’s the same as telling him.” She didn’t sound angry when she said this, or disapproving. She said, “I’m a little bothered that you— I mean, they’re personal.”

  “Someone had to tell him what’s been happening. And wouldn’t you think he’d want to share something with you that you never shared with Buddy, never did together?”

  When she said, “Now you see what kind of person he is, and why I told you that I can’t hurt him.” Marian sounded exasperated. “And neither can you. I know you won’t let that happen.”

  “Is that what we’re talking about?”

  “Isn’t that why you’re telling me all of this?”

  “And so I can understand what’s going on between the two of us.”

  “You don’t need help with that.”

  “Is that what we’re talking about?”

  She reached across the table and took my hand. “We have other things to talk about.”

  I thought about what I wanted those other things to be, while Marian asked me to go outside with her.

  It was warmer now than when I’d arrived. We walked to the woodland gardens that she and Buddy had built, and down the white pebble path that she and Buddy had designed, past the benches and flower beds that she and Buddy had planned and placed, the groves of trees that she and Buddy had selected and planted; not that it had taken me until today to feel how imposing Buddy’s presence could be. Hadn’t I felt it yesterday with Eliot?

  I said, “I can’t talk to you here. The gardens, the house. Buddy pervades every conversation, every consideration. It wears me down.”

  “Wears you down?”

  “I never knew Buddy and he’s everywhere.” I shook my head. “It’s worse than that. It’s the two of you. Marian and Buddy.”

  “He was my husband. We were a couple.”

  “I know . . . I know . . . And I can’t talk with the two of you around, and you’re both always around. Like specters. I can’t compete with ghosts.”

  “Is that what you think I’m asking you to do?”

  “You keep the two of them around. Buddy and Marian. In the gardens, the house.”

  “But this is where I live.”

  “Yes.”

  Marian walked away from me, not fast, as though she were doing nothing more than extending our stroll. She turned around and said, “You’re saying that you want me to leave?” There was a note of incredulity in her voice. “Leave my home? What if I told you you had to leave New York?”

  I came closer to her. “What if you did? I’d have to take it seriously. If it was an impediment.”

  “An impediment from what—from doing what?”

  “Do I really have to tell you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You do.”

  “From being more than a clown on a trick tricycle.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Buddy’s a tough act to follow, and I’m not as confident as you seem to think I am.”

  “Oh, I think you are.”

  I told her, “I can’t talk about it here.”

  “Then where can you talk about it?”

  I hesitated for a moment. I could have told her that whatever she was looking for, whatever she wanted from me, was more than I could deliver. But when I spoke, I was looking only at her eyes: “Somewhere you have never traveled.”

  She smiled. “The nearest airport is Albany.”

  “And I left my passport in my apartment. I’d settle for some town nearby that you’ve never been to before.”

 
“No such place exists.”

  “Then Barcelona.”

  We stopped next to a dark green bench, but we didn’t sit.

  “I’ll give Eliot this,” I said, “he manages to block it out. Compartmentalize. Separate you from Buddy.”

  “He doesn’t think about it. And once you stop thinking about things, who know where that leads?”

  We started walking again.

  “Geoffrey, I won’t deny that we’re attracted to each other—”

  “I’d say we’ve moved beyond euphemisms. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “You’re asking me to run off with you?”

  “You once said you wouldn’t mind being sad about something besides Buddy and Laura. You can either be sad about breaking Eliot’s heart, or my leaving for New York without you.”

  “Is that an ultimatum?”

  “Marian, I really can’t talk here.”

  When we came to the edge of the path, Marian said, “I think I’ve figured out what your impediment is.”

  “I have one?”

  “New York City. The ex-girlfriend you hold up to me and say, ‘See? I can let go of someone.’ Your apartment, where I suspect you maintain a quite organized, compartmentalized life, and which I suspect you are so very attached to. And if I told you right now, okay, I’ll break up with Eliot, close the house, and fly off to Barcelona or wherever with you, but you’ll have to give up your place in the city, I bet you’d turn white and head for the nearest exit. This feeling of having to compete, this euphemism you mentioned is—I don’t have to tell you what it is.” She walked a little farther while she said, “I want to show you something.”