Forever is the Worst Long Time: A Novel

by Camille Pagán

  The first few times this happened, I thought maybe she was giving me a return-to-me look. But one day I was shuffling across the Diag, a pile of papers in one hand and a travel mug of coffee in the other, when I looked up and saw Kathryn leaving the library. As our eyes met, it occurred to me at once that her expression wasn’t desire at all. No—it was pity.

  In the spring of 2002, I was informed that the university would not be rehiring me the following fall. Maybe it was because I was no longer tied to one of their star professors. The school had a formal employment system in place, of course. But then, and probably now, a strong suggestion from those who mattered—such as a good number of our colleagues, who greeted me with skeptical looks or outright frowns when I ran into them in the halls or lounge—counted for a lot.

  More likely, my separation from Kathryn was a tart cherry on the dirt pie that was my career. I was neither a standout teacher nor a published author. The dean of the department, who had been the one to deliver the news, said something along the lines of it’s a competitive field, you do have promise, you can apply again in the future, blah blah blah. And yet as soon as I sat down in front of him, I had already decided that my short and unspectacular career in academia had come to a definitive end; I had absolutely no interest in continuing to humiliate myself by being subpar.

  “I’m sorry, James,” said Pascal, who had stopped by as I was packing up the contents of my small shared office.

  “Yeah,” I said. I had just found a framed photo of Kathryn in a drawer, where I had shoved it months ago, and I set it facedown on top of a stack of reference books.

  “Listen, I know someone high up in development at the business school. They’re hiring a writer.”

  “What kind of writer?”

  “The kind who is paid to string words together in a coherent fashion,” he retorted. “Does it matter? The salary is probably twice what you make now. You can actually live and write fiction on the side, as surely you know this starving-artist crap is overrated. Apply and I’ll put in a good word for you. It’s that or try to find another teaching job making even less money in the middle of South Dakota.”

  “I’m glad you have faith in me.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not you I don’t have faith in. It’s the system.”

  “I don’t know a thing about business.” Further, I did not want to take a job at which I would, well, suck.

  “Obviously, or you wouldn’t be making peanuts at a public institution. Come on, James. Don’t be a dunce. I get it if you want to move to LA or New York. But correct me if I’m wrong: you don’t actually want to live anywhere else, no?”

  In the future, sure. But pack up the apartment I had just settled into? Find a new bagel place, a new dry cleaner, a new set of friends? “No,” I admitted.

  He clapped me on the back. “Then thank me and apply.”

  I did, and I got the job—not so much because of my interview, said Craig, the rangy, energetic man who was to become my new boss. Instead, they chose me because I had aced the writing test, and because Craig’s supervisor’s boss had known Pascal for years and trusted his recommendation. I began in mid-July.

  “A businessman,” my father said with approval when I had dinner with him that August. We were at his favorite Cuban place, which was not as good as a real Puerto Rican joint, he claimed, but which served a decent ropa vieja and a flan he spoke about in a way that he had never spoken about my mother.

  I leaned back in my chair. “Not exactly, Pops. I’m still writing.”

  In reality, I had set aside the spy novel and was tossing around an idea about an ill-fated pair of lovers—except I wasn’t sure I had it in me to start another book. And the fund-raising materials I spent the better part of most days drafting were less like writing and more like patching a wall with a bunch of wet plaster that was routinely thrown at me over the course of two-hour meetings (which were inevitably ninety minutes longer than necessary). Really, the closest I had come to artful prose was in a three-paragraph-long brochure detailing design plans for a new wing of the school.

  My father speared a stringy piece of beef and pointed it in my direction. “When are you going to learn, James?”

  How’s never for you? I thought. I was almost thirty years old, but when it came to my father, I may as well have been thirteen. The lessons he wanted to teach me were not the kind I was even remotely interested in. “Learn what?” I said, draining my soda.

  “Doesn’t matter what something is. It’s what you call it that counts.” He stuck the beef in his mouth, then sat back in his chair, pleased with himself.

  “Is that so.”

  “It’s so.” As he lifted his chin proudly, I was deeply sad to the point of wanting to weep or smash something. In that moment, my father looked ancient, and I felt that surely he would die seeing the world in his own set way.

  And within that particular version of reality, I would remain defined not by who I was, but by what I was not.

  SIX

  2003

  “You’re too close to the eighth hole, James!” hollered Rob.

  “Good God!” I ducked to avoid the golf ball vaulting through the air toward me.

  “You’re not that close!” He motioned for me to move toward where he and his friends were standing. “Get over here, whack job!”

  I stood slowly as the ball landed with a thud approximately half a mile from my person. “Right,” I muttered. Whose stupid idea was it to go golfing?

  It was Rob’s, and it was my stupid idea to agree. It was his thirty-first birthday, and apparently using titanium rods to hit resin-covered rubber spheres across a grassy knoll was what men who had amassed great fortunes early in life did to celebrate the passage from one gilded year to the next.

  Well, at least I was able to afford it. I hated that this was what cheered me as I wheeled my borrowed bag across the green. Pascal had been right: it was good to be making a living wage. My wardrobe was now less sloppy scribe and more business casual. My savings account had gone from malnourished to pleasantly plump. (My ego had fattened a bit, too; being good at my job had erased some of the shame I had experienced from failing as a teacher.) And when Rob called to see if I might want to fly to New York to join him, Aidan, and Max on a golf outing in Hastings-on-Hudson, and stay in the city for a weekend, I was able to say yes without having to calculate what it would cost.

  I didn’t need years of psychoanalysis to understand why padded biweekly paychecks were of such comfort. My parents didn’t fight often, probably because it might have required my father to speak to my mother in full sentences. But when they did, it was about money. I vividly recall him, red-faced, holding up a grocery store receipt. “We don’t have this kind of cash to blow on food!”

  My mother was crying, and she motioned to where I was sitting at the kitchen table. “How do you expect me to feed two men and a little girl on what you give me?”

  I was in grade school then, and under different circumstances would have been thrilled to be identified as something other than a child. Instead, all I could think about was how I was responsible for their rift. For days afterward, I ate half of what my mother served me to demonstrate that I didn’t need much, until she pinched the back of my arm and told me to stop being wasteful.

  A few years later, my father became a supervisor at his factory. Our rusty station wagon was traded for a new sedan, and our bland green kitchen doubled in size and was painted pale yellow. My father subdued his complaints about my mother’s spending habits, and he continued to move up the ladder right up until his retirement. But like my mother, I never stopped double-checking price tags and receipts, tallying up totals, wondering if the money I had would be enough—and if so, for how long.

  Maybe that was why I preferred Rob’s house. It was larger than mine, and nicer, too. But it was the feel of the Logans’ that I loved. They were just regular old middle class (which, at the time, did not often require racking up credit card debt to stay afloat).
There were always freshly baked cookies or brownies on the counter, though. Nancy bought extras of everything, so if we emptied a bag of chips or box of cereal, it didn’t matter. Like Rob, they were generous and secure, and being with them made me feel that way.

  “There you are,” said Rob as I rejoined their group. “See how easy it is to be in the right place?”

  “I resent you mocking me. And I resent that your birthday outing may result in my needing dentures.”

  “Stop wandering around like you’re tripping on shrooms and you won’t lose any teeth.”

  “Boys!” said Aidan. “Let’s move.”

  Rob had been playing golf for a good long while and was able to expertly swing and send the ball swiftly toward the hole for which it was intended.

  Not so for me. My father had urged me to learn the game so I might better network and seal deals in my imagined career in the automotive industry. I had played a few times over the years and was always left with the impression that I had just wasted several valuable hours of reading time. Now I regretted not at least visiting a driving range near home before I showed up in New York to make a fool of myself.

  I brought my iron to the ball with little conviction and watched it lift weakly into the air and land entirely too close to where I was standing. I turned to Rob. “You were saying?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I’m worried. I think Lou is unhappy.”

  “Okay, why?” I asked.

  He looked at me like I was a dolt. “Because of me. I work too much, and she cries too much. And so on and so forth.”

  “Eesh, that’s not good. You talk to her about it yet?”

  “Have you ever tried to tell someone who’s unhappy that you think they should cheer up?” He squinted from behind his aviators. “You get one of two reactions: ‘Yes, and water is wet, now leave me alone,’ or ‘I’m not unhappy, I’m psychotic; move before I stab you.’”

  “Maybe she’s depressed. My mother was depressed,” I said, thinking aloud. It was true, though this was not usually what I focused on when I thought of her. When I was young, she cried a lot—while watching TV, when her friends asked her how she was doing, sometimes even in the middle of the store for no apparent reason—until my father made her see a doctor. An orange bottle of pills appeared on the kitchen counter, which was emptied, then replaced each month, and while she never really seemed happy, neither did she continue to burst into tears at random.

  “Really?” Rob said, incredulous. “She was always so . . . perky.”

  “I guess.” My mother thought Rob was a good influence on me, so she was pleasant when he came around. In fact, she was most genial when she was around people who weren’t her relatives (as we all are, I suppose).

  But domestic life disappointed her; I knew this even as a child. She sometimes told Victoria and me what a fast typist she was, and how she would have made a good secretary. She and my father had a deal, though: he worked, she took care of our home, and so it went for the rest of her days.

  “Maybe Lou would be better off getting a full-time job?” I speculated. The magazine where she had been working had been shuttered a few months earlier, and she had not yet found another part-time gig. “Maybe that’s why she’s down in the mouth.”

  Rob frowned. “She doesn’t need it, and it’s not like she has nothing to do. She volunteers at a center in the city, teaching kids how to write poetry.”

  “How often?” I asked as I watched Max nail his shot.

  Rob, Aidan, and Max all hooted. Rob turned to me, still grinning at Max’s success. “I don’t know. Maybe once a week? I’m usually working when she’s there.”

  I was surprised he didn’t know how often Lou volunteered, though I said nothing to this effect. “She’s probably lonely,” I told him. “And bored.”

  “But she has her writing! Don’t writers like to keep to themselves?”

  “Yes, well, a certain degree of solitude is required for writing. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good way for her to spend every single day.”

  “She sees her friends,” he insisted. “Elyse, Renee, Jennifer One, Jennifer Two.”

  I looked at him questioningly.

  “You can’t possibly expect me to remember their last names. Jennifer Two’s the one who’s a drunk. When she and Lou go out, the next day neither of them remembers what happened at the end of the night.”

  “That’s not ideal.”

  “Nope. And of course, she’s always even bluer afterward. You’re up, by the way.”

  I walked over to where my ball was, and this time my halfhearted attempt landed my ball beside the hole. “And you guys?” I ventured when Rob rejoined me. “Are things better? She’s not saying stuff like she wants a baby, right?”

  He gave me a strange look. “I’m over thirty. Lou and I will have been married five years in November. We’re going to start procreating at some point in the future.”

  “Oh. I thought you didn’t want kids until after forty?”

  “I once wanted to hop in a tin can and head to the moon if I could get a ticket. Now, staying alive sounds more interesting than space travel.” He surveyed the course. “Things change.”

  “All you, birthday boy,” Aidan said to Rob.

  “You’ll see,” said Rob. He walked forward, lifted his putter ever so slightly, and sent his ball rolling. He turned back to me before it had even dropped into the hole. “You’ll be in my shoes one day, and what you thought you wanted won’t sound so good anymore.”

  I was staying at a hotel in Union Square, not far from where Lou was throwing Rob’s birthday dinner. After showering off the layer of sweat and defeat I had accrued during the golf outing, I headed out.

  The restaurant was tucked into one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it West Village blocks. It was a swanky place flanked by enormous ceramic planters in the shape of Buddha with bright foliage sprouting from their heads. There were floor-to-ceiling glass panels on either side of the restaurant door, and through one of these I spotted Rob and Lou. Her chin was lifted—she had to look up to make eye contact with him—but he was staring off to the side, scowling. She put a hand on his arm in what looked like a peacemaking move, but he shook his head and she took her hand back. I saw his lips form a single word: “No.”

  I had no idea what they were arguing about. But my pulse was a staccato in my throat, and I had already jumped to all sorts of conclusions, which could best be boiled down to No wonder Lou is blue. Rob is a jerk.

  “Hello!” I said loudly, even though I had not fully made it through the door; I wanted to jar Rob right out of his dickishness.

  Mission accomplished. “James?” said Rob, visibly surprised. He collected himself. “Early like a good Michigander should be.” He offered his hand, and I shook it firmly, then turned to kiss Lou on the cheek.

  “Jim!” she said with glee. “I’m so happy to see you. Next time you skip golf and come hang out with me, okay?”

  “I take it Rob told you about my performance.”

  “I may have,” said Rob.

  Already they seemed more relaxed; my decision to subtly insert myself into their squabble had been the right one, or so I told myself.

  “Was this joint your idea?” I asked Lou as we walked into the restaurant. There was a waterfall in the center of the dining room, pouring into a fountain filled with fish. The tables were made to look like cabanas, and the waiters appeared to be killing time between modeling gigs.

  She laughed. “Of course not. Rob loves this place.”

  I examined her for what I hoped was a quick minute and came to the conclusion that she looked different. Not visibly depressed, but different. She was wearing diamond earrings—big ones. Her nails were still too short, but they wore a fresh coat of pale pink polish. Everything about her was polished, in fact, except her hair, which had grown long and was sticking out all over the place.

  “You channeling Samuel Clemens?” I asked, motioning to her curls.

  “You channelin
g Truman Capote? That’s some suit you’ve got,” she shot back.

  I fingered the edge of my charcoal jacket. I bought the suit shortly after I was hired at the business school, and though I had purchased several others since, it remained my favorite. “You like? It really doesn’t look as spiffy without the bow tie.”

  “Come here,” she said, grinning, and opened her arms to me.

  Even through the layers of linen she was draped in, I felt her rib cage against my forearms. “Is that lug of a husband still stealing food from your plate?” I said, only half joking.

  She blushed. “I just get so wrapped up . . .”

  I did not get a chance to inquire what, exactly, she got wrapped up in because in walked the rest of our party: Max and his wife, Lubna, Aidan and his girlfriend—a cheerful redhead whose name has gone missing in my mind—and Lou’s friend Elyse.

  “You remember Elyse from our wedding, right, Jim?” Lou said.

  I did not, but I nodded.

  “So nice to see you again,” murmured Elyse, who had no doubt been forewarned about our setup. She was a song—tall and tan and young and lovely. I leaned forward to kiss her cheek, which she coolly accepted.

  The minute Elyse turned to greet Lubna, I narrowed my eyes at Lou.

  She smiled sweetly in response, then whispered, “Don’t get all worked up. Odd numbers are no good, and you deserve a nice dining companion.”

  “Thanks, I think,” I whispered back.

  Our party was seated at one of the dining cabanas. Elyse was to my left, and Lou was to my right. The two of them yapped back and forth, doing their best to include me in their discussion, but I ended up talking to Rob over Lou’s head.

  Sometime after drinks were served, a waiter set a small white plate in front of each of us—compliments of the chef, she said. Lou sniffed at her plate, which held a paper-thin wafer topped with tiny green leaves and what appeared to be miniature tadpoles. “Think it’s still alive?” she said, then laughed.