by Robin Black
“Oddly enough, I’ve never lived alone.” I was wondering whether I too would keep my doors locked in broad daylight, if I did.
“Well, I never had either, until I left Paul, but now I do, blissfully so, except for missing Nora. And the odd touch of loneliness, now and then. Which will get some relief when she visits.” She smiled, delight at the thought immediately evident. “Are you here for a reason? Have I been too loud?” she joked.
“Yes, that’s it,” I said, looking around. “Too many wild parties.” In the time since our dinner there, she had made the house seem much more like a home. There were books in the bookshelves, throw rugs on the floor. “No, I just came by to say hello, to see how you’re settling in.”
“Shall we sit out back?” She shook out, then refolded the towel as she spoke. “A bit early for drinks, but I could brew some coffee …”
I noticed a narrow streak of paint, yellow paint, on her arm.
“Actually,” I said, “I would love … if you feel comfortable … I would love to see your paintings.”
“Ah.” Her sudden nervousness was visible, as was her quick resolve. “Well, in that case, why don’t we head upstairs?”
The work reminded me of Beatrix Potter right away. Not Potter’s bunnies and mice, but her botanicals. They were watercolors, gouaches, and some ink drawings, works only a scientist could do. Or anyway, the mind that could paint plants and minuscule parts of plants at this level of scrutiny and detail was a mind that would also be drawn to scientific studies. Though Alison was no miniaturist. That was inherent in the impact the paintings had. They were enormous, the petal of a flower spanning two feet. Nature writ large. But they weren’t wholly clinical. There was something oddly affectionate to them, which was perhaps what brought Potter to mind. The focus loving rather than cold, despite the obvious scientific bent. The mood warm, rather than grand.
“They’re wonderful,” I said, meaning it—and relieved. “And to think that you called my work precise!”
“Well, I make tiny things huge. You paint such tiny details. Different kinds of precision, I suppose.” She walked around the room, touching the canvases. Still nervous. On a long, narrow table half a dozen microscopes sat, lined up beside another row, jars with flowers and leaves in every one. “I’m just an amateur, I know. But I do so love doing it.”
“If you sell me a painting, you won’t be an amateur.”
She laughed. “No, I think then I become a dilettante. And you become an enabler. But you know what I mean. I’m not a trained artist.”
“Maybe not, but you’re obviously a trained something. Observer. Which is more than half the battle. And I barely am either—only a few college courses ahead of you, I’m sure. We’re all faking it half the time, don’t you think?” I walked closer to a large pencil drawing of a pinecone. “How long have you been at this?”
“Oh, you know. Forever. In one way and another. I had an aunt who gave me my first microscope when I was small. Nine or ten. She was appalled by the fluff of my upbringing. All princess pink and ballet class. My mum constantly telling me not to speak so much, as boys disliked it. The microscope got me interested in biology, or maybe in observing, as you say. The drawings followed quite naturally from that. In many ways, my life has been a chaotic one. These …” She indicated the pictures. “These have always been the calm at the center of the storm.”
I told her that surprised me, her description of a chaotic self. She seemed so pulled together to me, so orderly.
She laughed. “Well, you know those people who are better at living other people’s lives than their own? Wise about everyone else’s problems? But then a bit suspect about how they go about things themselves? I think I’m one of those. The tidiness is deceptive covering.”
“I guess that makes the rest of us the lucky ones.” I still wanted to talk about work, probe the depths to which we could talk about our respective processes. “I don’t know if this happens to you,” I said, “but there are moments when I’m so … I don’t know, so excited by a project, not that it’s going to be genius or even great, but just that it has me so by the scruff of my neck. I’m almost too excited to do it then. I can’t sit still. I have to calm down first.”
She seemed to think that over. “No, I’m not sure I’ve ever had that exactly. As I said, my work is … not the exciting part of my life. More of a centering activity. But really just a hobby.”
“So you keep insisting,” I said. “But I’m sure there’s more to it than that.”
“I’m afraid it’s really true. I’m a dabbler. I just … I just do it. I don’t much think it through.”
“Well, we’re all different,” I said. “I have certainly been accused of overthinking it. And Owen is …” Saying his name out loud, I felt a wave of sadness; then of anger; distinctly both. “Owen is in a very rough patch now,” I said. “With work, I mean. But when he’s working well, he isn’t manic at all. Just calm. And happy. All smiles. Not me, I’m like a windup toy that’s been over-wound. Of course, I haven’t seen that mood of his in a very long time.”
She asked me why, and I told her more about Owen’s bad months, about the muse that had abandoned him, the ways I had to tiptoe around his fragility, the stress of that, the tension. I could feel myself abandoning my intention to speak to Alison about work, and creeping further into an area in which I might share secrets about my marriage instead; and as I crept there, I felt accompanying twinges of guilt and of entitlement. But Owen had left me bereft of meaningful conversation, and in the presence of that vacuum entitlement won out.
“Do you think Alison is very beautiful?” I asked him over dinner, a juicy spit-roasted chicken he had picked up in town.
His face was unreadable. “Have we already established that she’s beautiful?” he asked. “So you’re only asking about the very?”
I rolled my eyes. “I think she’s very beautiful,” I said. “I was just wondering if you do too.”
He waited a moment before speaking. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do too.”
“It’s her eyes, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “She has nice eyes,” he said. “There are an awful lot of very beautiful women in the world, Gus.”
And if I had wanted to marry one … He didn’t say it, but I said it to myself.
“She wears lipstick when she’s home, by herself. I think that may mean she and I are of different species.”
“But you like her.” It wasn’t a question.
“I suppose.” I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “Don’t you?”
“I’m getting used to the fact of her. I’m not sure I like that, but yes, I like her. I’m just not sure I like having someone so close.”
I didn’t say anything beyond “Huh.” I couldn’t bring myself to agree and it seemed insulting to say I was glad for the company. “So, are you heading back out to work?” I asked.
“You mean, to try and work?” He nodded. “Yes. I am.”
“Excellent,” I said—just a little too brightly to sound genuine. “Don’t worry about the dishes. There’s not much and you did all the hunter-gathering stuff today.”
“Hunted rotisserie chicken and gathered toilet paper,” he said.
“My brave one,” I said. “Yes. You are definitely off dish duty tonight.”
Later, as I looked out our bedroom window toward the barn, I thought: maybe this is what a mother feels like at times. When she can’t help one of her children. When she has to just stand by and watch her daughter strike out on the softball field, watch her son fail at math despite whatever effort he may put in. This ache. This defining double bind of roaring, passionate protectiveness and its equal, weighty, leaden uselessness. And even the impatience with it all; and then the guilt about feeling impatient, about finding it a bit oppressive despite the immeasurable love. Maybe this is what mothering sometimes feels like, I thought.
6
For the next week or so, as I made more rough sketches of scenes in the house, I
didn’t cast them with specific soldiers—aside from Jackie Mayhew, who had emerged as a kind of emblematic figure. I left room only for the boys in the scenes. I wasn’t yet taking on the task of humanizing the figures, as I thought of it; I was just placing them there, these empty people-shaped placeholders, postponing the task about which I was most anxious.
But the postponing itself wasn’t without its unsettling qualities. I fidgeted a lot through those workdays, taking frequent breaks, for walks, to weed patches of garden, to visit Alison, and to check my email—where one afternoon I again found Laine’s name, newly arrived.
Hey, Augie, Do you remember you owe me a full report of your summer? I’m going to bug you until you send it. And you know I will be relentless. So consider yourself bugged. Also, I HAVE to tell you about the critique I had last night because I think it’s such a good example of how MORONIC people are when they think it’s their job to tell you how to do your own work. Especially boys who are convinced that they are the next great artistes of the world.…
It went on like that for a good while, a full account of her long night of fools and pretenders. But none of this is surprising, I suppose, she wound up. We both know that many people who paint are idiots. And there were also some decent points made, so all in all, for all my whining, I’m glad I’ve taken this class. But mostly I am sick of talking about myself and really you do owe me a better email than the last one. Please!
And then:
Looks like I’ll be back in Philly for the wedding at the end of October. I did tell you Dad’s marrying Miriam, right?
I deleted it.
I went into the trash folder and opened it again. Reread those words. Then closed it and restored it to my inbox. Then signed out of my email, shutting my laptop, keeping my hands pressed there, as though it might just pop open again.
I hadn’t known. I hadn’t even known there was a woman in his life. Laine may have thought she’d mentioned it, but she had not.
Miriam. Jewish presumably. Like me.
But not me.
Laine knew nothing, of course. Our affair had lasted just beyond the span of her first semester at NYU. Georgia never knew either. No one knew. No one ever would have known had I not told Owen in a fit of guilt that March, just over a month after I broke it off. Guilt. And also fear. Fear that it would start up again. That without making myself accountable to someone beside myself, I would run right back to Bill and accept what he could offer—which were moments. Moments that seemed apart from all the harsh realities of my life. But still, only moments. He had his son at home. He wasn’t going to be that guy, he said. That guy who breaks a family up, who tears a family down. It was bad enough discovering that he was willing to be the man he had become.
Almost two years later, when he and Georgia finally threw in the towel, he phoned. But I had already put Owen through hell, already watched him turn his heart inside out, like some sort of great deep pocket in which he might just find enough of some quality I could barely imagine: generosity, compassion, forgiveness, love. And like a miracle, he had.
I told Owen about the call. So scrupulous had I become. I told him that Bill’s marriage was over, and that he had phoned about picking up where we had left off. And that I had told him I was 100 percent in my own marriage—a marriage, as we had finally exchanged vows—and I had no interest. Not that I felt too guilty to do it or that I was afraid of getting caught. But that I had no interest. And I told Owen I had asked Bill never to call me again.
Along with whatever scruple I felt to be forthright, I’d also expected Owen to view my unambiguous dismissal of Bill as a gift of some kind—which he did not. That phone call cost us about two weeks of misery. What I thought would mark an end, for Owen just dredged it all up again. Bill still existed. Bill was now single. Bill had the ability to pick up a phone and dial. If I had ever thought of telling Owen about my contact with Laine, those weeks put an end to that thought.
Laine. Laine who had no reason to predict the impact of what she had written me.
Sitting with my palms still on the lid of my laptop, I felt dizzy, slightly ill. I didn’t think I would cry, though I wondered. But I didn’t even know yet if sadness was in play. At that moment, it felt more like being slapped.
Eventually, I stood up and walked to my easel, where I stared at a drawing for some time, or maybe at a few drawings, before realizing I couldn’t possibly focus on work.
Alison, in her doorway, said yes, of course, she would come for a walk.
“How’s the pond?” I asked. The pond was fine. “Seven times around is pretty much exactly a mile,” I said. “Owen measured absolutely everything when we first moved in. He can tell you the precise distance between our houses, I’ll bet.”
Alison laughed. “I doubt I’ll ever need the information,” she said. “But in case I ever want to build some sort of walkway, I’ll know who to ask.”
We made our way past the barn, through the thicket of spruce at the lawn’s western edge. The day was cool and cloudy. No threat of rain, not anything serious, anyway. Maybe it would spit a little later but nothing like the downpours to come later in the summer.
“If you stay about four feet out from the edge,” I said, “there’s less mud.”
“Is something wrong?” Alison asked, as she adjusted her path. “Or is this really just a walk around the pond?”
“Points for perception,” I said. “You’re pretty good.”
“Maybe you haven’t seen your face, Gus. I’m not that good. You look like someone’s died. Has someone died?”
“No. Nobody’s died.” I took a deep breath, filled my lungs with soggy air, thick with grass and mud. “It’s a long story, Alison.”
I had never told anyone. Whom would I have told? Charlotte was already gone. Jan was many admirable things, efficient, practical, intelligent, and generous, of course; but all of it held together with wires too barbed for her ever to have been the right confidante for my ribbon-sliced heart. And all of my friends back then were Owen’s friends too, back when we had friends whom we saw more than once a year, back before we ran away into the supposed safety of our solitude. I’d had no right to tell them anything so personal about us both.
And maybe I still had no right, but I couldn’t help myself. “I learned today that an old … an old … a man I once … I should begin at the beginning, I suppose. Five years ago, I had an affair … and Owen knows,” I added quickly—there still being a touch of pride in having fessed up, even though if I’d had it to do over, I might well have chosen to spare us both my unburdening myself.
Alison said nothing.
“It’s been over for a long time. And it didn’t go on that long. I mean, it wasn’t a weekend fling but it wasn’t years either. It was just one fall—in both senses, I suppose. One autumn though, is what I mean. And then into January, too.”
Because we were walking side by side, I couldn’t see her face. Maybe that was why my instincts had brought us outside, though it had felt more as though it would take all the vast sky, all that infinite space to make my disclosures feel small enough to bear.
As I told her the story, I sensed an elasticity to its form, realizing how very malleable a thing I needed my tale to be, how much emphasis I wanted on the terrible emotional state I was in after Charlotte’s death; how little I wanted to linger on the degree to which I knew exactly what I was doing. (That week between when Laine stopped taking lessons and when Bill finally called, how absolutely certain I had been about what was going on …) I could make it so much more comfortable a story with just a little stress here, a small elision there. It didn’t even matter that I knew I was editing, it felt good hearing it that way.
And then I told her what I had not told her before.
“Owen couldn’t have children. We’d just found out. A few months before Charlotte’s death. And that news, I didn’t handle it well. I mean, I said all the right things, and I felt terrible for him. I always did. I still do. But I just felt so bere
ft, and so confused. No excuses, I know. But everything was such an unbelievable mess.”
“It sounds like a lot. A lot of hard stuff all at once.”
“And today,” I said. “Laine wrote me today that Bill’s remarrying.” We took another couple of steps. “I have no right to … to have any reaction to this. I know that I don’t. And I don’t even know really what my reaction is.”
But it wasn’t quite true. By then I did know. He was in love. That was it. That was the truth exploding again and again. He was in love. He was having it—the fresh start, the moments of joy, maybe even the children, for all I knew; and not the tired, battle-weary, tattered and stitched-together love I had settled back into with Owen. Bill had fallen in love. Again. And not with me. With a woman named Miriam.
“I can see why this would be hard,” Alison said.
“I honestly don’t know why it’s upsetting me so much. We haven’t so much as spoken in years. And I should tell you, I can’t let Owen know I’ve heard this, and definitely not that it’s got me all riled up. And truly not that you know a thing. This really has to be just between us. The fertility stuff, too. All of it.”
“No, no, I understand. Of course. And as for why you’re so upset …” She took my arm, a gesture that felt both awkward and welcome. “I’m not sure who wouldn’t be, Gus. You fall in love with a man and want to run off with him. He stays with his wife, and then, however many years later, he marries someone else. It doesn’t help that he ran back to you after his divorce. You never came first. That’s the thorn in the rose right there. The wife didn’t exactly come first either, but now … I can’t imagine who wouldn’t be upset.”
It was difficult to hear. You never came first. But it was true. Maybe it had been temporary insanity on my part, but he had come first for me. I would have thrown it all over for him. “I didn’t have children to think of,” I said out loud. “We had completely different situations. Owen and I weren’t even married at the time. Maybe that did make it feel easier for me.”