B

by Jonathan Baumbach

  It is the kind of remark, B thinks, that invites applause. He announces in an equally assertive voice that there are certain shows he can see with his eyes at half mast, and that this may be one of them. A minimalist show requires a minimalist response.

  Sometimes I think you confuse cynicism with wit, she says. I’ll wait for you out here. I have a book in my purse I can read.

  Why don’t we just go, B says, catching his reflection in a mirror sculpture in a far corner of the lobby. His cast off image has a kind of dignity that surprises him.

  Oh go see the show, she says. You might even like it. At your pace you’ll be in and out in under ten minutes.

  B leaves the museum and the woman trails after him.

  After walking a block and a half in silence, he says, Did you go to Italy or didn’t you?

  I told you I went, she says. You seem not to want to believe it. Once I told George I was leaving, I virtually had to go whether I wanted to or not. Do you understand that?

  How is it I never knew you lived in Italy? he asks. I’ve known you for almost five years.

  His question seems to annoy her and she quickens her pace, walks on ahead. I don’t think you listen when I talk, she says when he catches up. I’m sure I mentioned something of this to you.

  I would have remembered, he says. I hear most of what you say.

  Most of, she says. From now on when I tell you something I’m going to test you on it afterwards.

  Let’s go into the park, he says. Is that all right?

  Whatever you want to do, she says.

  They cross Madison against the light, find themselves facing the Metropolitan Museum as they move toward the park.

  I wish you weren’t so acquiescent, he says.

  That’s an odd complaint, she says. Would you like it better if I were difficult?

  You are difficult, he says.

  I don’t know if you’re joking or not, she says. How am I difficult? I’d like to know what you think is difficult about me.

  The most difficult thing about you, he says, looking behind them as if he sensed they were being followed, is the difficulty I have putting what’s difficult about you into words.

  So you’re joking, she says. I don’t like it that you joke about everything. I really don’t.

  I’m joking and you’re also difficult, he says. The two don’t exclude one another. Why did you leave your family and go off to Italy with that fop?

  I can’t believe you said that, she says. If I thought you were going to judge me, I wouldn’t have told you any of this....I went off with him because I thought I was in love with him. I don’t think you want to hear any of this.

  I’m trying to understand you, he says. Did you believe you were in love with him before he asked you to go with him?

  They go around the museum into the park, the woman a half step ahead of B, walking at an unusually quick pace.

  I’m not saying any more, she says in a sulky voice. You don’t want to hear any more of this story.

  B puts his arm around her waist. I want to hear the rest of the story, he says. If you won’t tell it to me, I’ll tell the story for you.

  You’ll get nothing more from me, she says. Not a word.

  B puts his hand over his eyes, imagines the elegant man and the beautiful younger woman waiting at the airport for their flight to Rome, which is not yet available for boarding. Waiting for their plane, B says, the woman is full of enthusiasm for the prospect of her new life, doesn’t allow herself to be in touch with whatever feelings of regret exist under the surface of her exuberant manner. She chatters, is mildly hysterical. The elegant man, whose manner is at once comforting and distant, tells her that if she wants to change her mind, the option remains open to her. She is under no pressure to do anything she doesn’t want to do. The woman says that she has made her decision and it is irrevocable.

  Are you absolutely sure? her host asks. He repeats the question again when they arrive in Rome.

  The first two days are the hardest for her, the period of most intense regret. She reads books, practices her Italian, sleeps fifteen hours a day. What am I doing here? she asks herself as she stares out the window of her apartment at the unfamiliar streets. Her companion is busy setting up his office, seeing people. A month passes, and she readies herself for her daughter’s arrival. A friend of hers is accompanying Caroline on her flight to Rome in five days. Everything is arranged, or everything seems to be arranged.

  She gets a call in the middle of the night from her friend in New York. Her husband has decided at the last minute not to let the daughter come. In a fury the woman calls her husband and demands to know what’s going on. I’ve decided not to let Caroline go, the husband says. I’ve talked to my lawyer and he says I’m perfectly within my rights. His tone is icy. The woman is devastated, hangs up on him in frustration, calls back, reminds him of his promise to send Caroline after she finished school, reminds him of what’s best for their daughter. Her husband is unmoved by her appeal.

  The woman says, The reason I left you is because I sensed you were capable of this kind of treachery. You have no character. It is her parting shot, her acknowledgment of defeat.

  The next step has a certain inevitability. She has to go back to the states to recover her daughter. Still, she delays her trip, delays telling her companion of her decision, delays until her anxiety threatens to implode her into fragments.

  2.

  The woman looks at her watch, says, I really have to go in a few minutes.

  You never said anything about going anywhere, B says. I thought we’d have dinner together.

  I have another appointment, she says.

  I’ll cancel my appointment if you cancel yours, he says.

  They are in the park behind the museum, walking so slowly they seem to be standing still.

  I know you’re not being serious, she says. Am I right?

  I have no other appointment, he says, but if I had one, I would have canceled it to have dinner with you.

  She thinks about it, seems to be thinking about the implication of his remark. I like that you would have broken your date for me, she says.

  I’m not going to ask you to break your date for me, he says. He looks at his watch, makes a point of it. I always end up feeling angry at you. Why is that?

  That’s not a question I can answer for you, she says. If you’re suggesting it’s my fault, you’re way off base. I have no idea why you’re angry at me.

  He looks at her, shakes his head, walks off in no particular direction.

  Don’t do this, she calls after him.

  B walks about ten steps, then stops and turns around. He is not surprised to see the woman coming after him.

  You’re impossible, she says. That’s why there’s never been any hope for us. They walk for a while with their arms around each other.

  What do you want me to do? she asks him.

  I want you to do what you want to do, he says. You’re a free person.

  Whatever that means, she says. If I’m a free person, whatever, I’m going to keep my appointment. I don’t know what else you expect.

  He laughs. I haven’t had an expectation in years, he says. Well, I’ll see you around. He turns to go.

  I’ll walk with you to your car, she says. Are you angry at me? You have no reason to be angry.

  He walks quickly with his head thrust forward, as if he were countering some unseen force that would otherwise stop him in his tracks, and the woman asks him, her hand on his arm, to slow down please.

  I didn’t even know you were with me, he says, slowing down but not so it mattered.

  Maybe we ought to say good-bye here, she says, a half-step behind, trying to keep up. You’re behaving in a childish manner.

  Good-bye, he says.

  B slows down and they walk together in a desultory way to his car, neither quite acknowledging the other.

  Good-bye, he says again, not looking at her.

  Which direction are yo
u going? she asks. Could you drop me somewhere?

  I’m going downtown, he says, as if that settled the matter.

  She nods to herself in answer to some unspoken thought.

  I have some errands to run in the Village. Is that out of your way?

  He looks off into the distance. I’ll take you to the Village, he says without enthusiasm.

  B opens the passenger door of the car for her.

  On second thought, she says, maybe I’d better not. I really don’t have that much time.

  He is holding the door open for her when she says that and he closes it in slow motion.

  I’m going to have to pass, she says. I’m sorry. Thanks for the offer.

  He doesn’t say anything, offers no indication of his feelings one way or another, goes around to the other side and gets into the car.

  She is saying something to him and he has to unroll his window to hear her.

  I didn’t stay in Rome at all, she says. I went back to New York on the next plane.

  B nods, he knows what it is to sacrifice one desire for another, starts up the car, waves to the woman, who seems to be waiting for him to pull away before she leaves. Suddenly the woman walks briskly off in no particular direction. The car doesn’t move; B lingers, seems to be waiting for something to happen, the car idling. As she reaches the corner, the woman turns to look back, which at once surprises B and is what he has anticipated happening. She can’t give him up, he tells himself, perhaps projecting his own unadmitted feelings on to her.

  Since B is imagining the event, you might think the woman would experience a change of heart and turn around and run toward him, hoping to reach his car before he left the scene. It might even happen in tricked-up slow motion as in the fade out of a movie. Instead, the woman descends the subway steps and vanishes temporarily from our concern.

  XI. AN ANNOTATED HISTORY OF THE PAST

  1.

  Since retirement, a kind of authorized idleness, I read the obits every morning with my breakfast coffee. The death report has replaced the sports section in my life as the news of first urgency. I don’t know what I hope to find, whose death, whose life, whose unlikely story. It may only be that I’m confirming my own de facto survival by not discovering my name among the recent departed.

  I took early retirement on the advice of Dr. Goodenuv, an old friend of the family, himself partially retired, in order to relieve stress which does no one any good. The new stress-free regimen in my life, my days of idleness and ease, has been dispiriting so far. I feel like an impostor hanging out at home all day, cultivating my inner garden, which at the moment is mired in weeds. A former girlfriend says I need to have sex more often, though has also made it clear that she is not offering her participation along with the advice.

  Routine tends to establish itself among those of us who need the trappings of order. I tend to write for little more than an hour each morning, then talk on the phone until it is time for lunch. The afternoons are given over to checking out the movies on TV—I have seven (count them) commercial-free movie channels—followed by the after-lunch walk and the after-walk nap.

  After my nap, I tend to read the sports section to see what’s shaking in the world of fantasy. When I feel up to it, I reread a novel by Charles Dickens or Henry James or Thomas Hardy. My memory is bad enough that each rereading seems a maiden voyage. Besides, it relieves anxiety to sense the outcome in advance.

  It is still morning on this particular day. I am browsing through the obits while nursing my second cup of caffeine-free coffee. And bam! I have a discomforting, unsought, privileged moment. I find what I have apparently been looking for. Up to this point, I have been merely a browser in the neighborhood of grief. In small print at the bottom of the page it reads: Dolores Kovaleski (nee Winespot), actress, dead of cancer at 61. Played the eccentric nurse Hanna in the long-running soap, “The Lights of Our Days.” Survived by estranged husband Fred and two divorced daughters, Deborah and Deidre.

  Didi Winespot had been my first serious girlfriend, though I haven’t actually thought about her in ages. She had loved me, says tattered evidence of memory. I had loved her too but less unequivocally. I was unformed when I knew her. My feelings for her had been tempered by ambivalence and a free-floating sense of unworthiness. But hasn’t that always been my story?

  I was at Columbia, she was at Barnard. Having nothing better to do with my evening, I had gone to this freshman mixer, not usually my kind of thing, was sampling the punch when she came up behind me and said, –Hi there, as if we shared some intimate history. She was familiar looking, though I couldn’t remember having met her before. At 18, I generally avoided women who put me at a disadvantage.

  –Do we know each other? I asked her.

  –Not until you tell me your name, she said.

  I liked her style, though it also made me uncomfortable.

  When I asked her to dance, she said she had hoped when she came up to me that I was someone who, like herself, didn’t dance. Again she had me at a disadvantage. –I don’t dance either, I said. I just go through the motions.

  –Well, in that case, she said, I suppose I will accept your invitation.

  It may have been that she didn’t dance (as a rule), but it wasn’t because she couldn’t. She was better than good, which was what I thought of telling her and did in my understated (unstated) way.

  –Why did you say you couldn’t dance? I asked after the music had stopped.

  She corrected my misassumption. –What I said was that I didn’t dance, she said.

  I spent the rest of the evening in her company, which included taking her home in my father’s car. At some point, stuck at a red light, I wondered what she would do if I kissed her but I let the thought, a characteristic failing of mine, suffice for the act. I also didn’t get to kiss her goodnight when I dropped her off and I held her accountable for my reticence.

  When we crossed paths on campus for the next week or so, I looked the other way, embarrassed at how ineptly I had handled myself in her company. Then one day, I saw her coming toward me on the steps of Loeb Hall and there was no avoiding her. So I opened my arms to her as a grandiose gesture parodying itself and she, no stranger to play, accepted her role in my improvised charade. We hugged like some movie idea of lovers meeting again after an extended period of enforced absence. I lifted her off her feet and swung her about. I was the first to let go.

  –I’ve been meaning to call you, I lied.

  She had an extra ticket for the City Center ballet for tomorrow night, she said. Was that something that interested me?

  It wasn’t particularly, which is to say I didn’t know if it did or not. I had never even so much as entertained the possibility before. –Yeah, I said, sure. I considered asking what was playing, but decided it was probably not the appropriate question.

  Another couple accompanied us, Didi’s older sister and her fiancé. They all were so knowledgable about the dancers, even the sister’s smug lawyer boyfriend, that except for a few sassy remarks, I took refuge in silence. I knew myself out of my depth in this company on this occasion and so disguised my resentment by playing the secretly superior outsider.

  –You’re so quiet, she whispered to me in the back of the boyfriend’s car on the return drive to her dorm, punctuating the remark with a poke in my side. Tell me what you’re thinking.

  If one couldn’t keep one’s thoughts secret, what hope was there for the shy dissembler? As a way of changing the subject, I took her hand and kissed the palm. I felt aggressive and momentarily in charge.

  –If you don’t mean it, don’t do it, she said sulkily.

  We were both silent until they dropped us in front of the Barnard dorms.

  –You don’t have to walk me to the door, she said.

  –What if I want to, I said belligerently. My own voice surprised me. It was the first words I had heard myself speak since we left the theater.

  She laughed nervously. —Are you trying to be absurd? she as
ked. If so, you’re succeeding remarkably.

  –Let’s walk around the block, I said. I don’t want us to separate like this.

  She took my arm and we walked slowly down the street. At the corner, we stopped to kiss. –I don’t want to like you too much, she said when we came apart. You’re an angry person and angry persons are not to be trusted.

  I didn’t hesitate for even a moment of circumspection but issued a blanket denial of her charge. At 18 (a young 18 at that), I was prepared at any given moment to deny any aspersions against my character, that unfamiliar acquaintance that followed me everywhere.

  –Do you consider yourself trustworthy? she asked, looking directly at me.

  I dealt with the question by deferring my answer, by shrugging my shoulders, by pretending to myself it had not been asked. We turned around and walked back toward her building, our truce on fragile ground.

  –I know it’s an unfair question, she said, but those are the most fun to ask. Well, are you or aren’t you?

  –I think we need to get to know each other better, I said, before either of us can answer that question.

  –Oh, she said. And what if that never happens?

  After she opened the door with her key, she turned back to let me kiss her, but when I dawdled, thanking her dutifully for the ballet, announcing what a good time I had, which clearly she didn’t believe, she said, –Goodnight, and closed the door virtually in my face with decisive impatience.

  Her abrupt dismissal troubled me and I called the next evening to sound her out. What had I done to offend? She seemed so pleased to hear from me, so openly and undisguisedly pleased, that it made me think I had misread the gesture of her seemingly dismissive goodbye. We made a date for the following Saturday night, and after that we became an item on campus. For the next three years, hardly a day went by when we didn’t share each other’s time.

  She critiqued my poems with that rare combination of unsparing honesty and good will for which one is always, if grudgingly, indebted, and I in turn helped her learn her lines for the various plays she performed in. There was Laura in “The Glass Menagerie,” as I recall, and Tracy in “The Philadelphia Story,” and The Girl in “Outpost of Despair,” a blank verse play written by me of which there are, with good reason, no surviving copies.