Wives & Lovers

by Richard Bausch

  “Dad,” Brian said, louder this time.

  Henry said, “What? What, Brian?”

  “Look at me. I want to get this taken care of between us—whatever it is.”

  Henry only glanced at him.

  “What’s this about, anyway?” said Norman.

  Henry looked across at Norman and said, “You’ve got me.” Then he turned to Brian, and the two of them were simply staring at each other. “Well?”

  “Nothing,” Brian said. “Forget it.”

  “You’ve had too much to drink.”

  “No, actually I haven’t.”

  “Look. Have you got a grievance, boy? I just came from my mother’s wake.”

  “I’m not a boy, Henry. And yes, as a matter of fact, there are one or two grievances.”

  “Okay,” Natalie said. “Well, this isn’t the time.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what your grievances are, there, Brian, while you’ve got enough liquor in you to do it.”

  “Both of you stop it,” Aunt Natalie said. “For God’s sake.”

  “What’s going on?” said Norman. “I thought we were remembering Elena.”

  “We were,” Henry said. “I’m not the one calling up crap.”

  “Who’s calling up anything?” Natalie said.

  Henry turned to Brian. “You want to call up something, let’s talk about you fooling around on your fiancée, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Okay,” Brian said. “Let’s. Let’s talk about fooling around.”

  “Stop this,” Natalie said. “I want you both to stop it.”

  Henry ignored her. “What was her name, there, champ?” His voice had taken the tone of casual sarcasm that Brian was always receiving from his younger brothers. It angered him, while it hurt and depressed him.

  “Her name was Rose,” he said. And with a shaking in his chest, went on: “Do you remember your last girlfriend other than my mother?”

  “Don’t get cute, boy.”

  “Hey,” Norman said. “Come on, guys. Let’s cut this out.”

  “The woman’s name was Rose,” Brian went on. “That was her name. She’s gone now.”

  “Rose,” Henry repeated. “And you say she’s gone?”

  “That’s right. That’s right, there. Champ. Like Lorraine.”

  “Whoa—hey. Look what are we talking this shit for?” Norman said.

  Henry, without quite looking at him, muttered, “Watch your mouth.”

  Norman brought out his flask and drank directly from it, then offered it to Brian, who refused it with a gesture.

  Henry turned to Natalie. “You’d think she would at least call. You’d think Tommy would at least want to talk to his brothers.”

  “Lorraine did call, Henry.”

  He seemed not to understand the import of the words at first. Then he looked at his own hands, cradling the cup of coffee. “She did?”

  “I spoke to her, yes. I asked if she wanted to talk to you and she said she didn’t. There wasn’t anything I could do. I wasn’t going to tell you—but then—well, I wasn’t going to tell you.”

  He sat there shaking his head.

  Natalie poured whiskey into his coffee cup. “There. Have a drink. Have ten drinks and calm down.”

  He pushed the cup away with a gingerly motion, then leaned back in his chair.

  “What the hell did Brian do that you haven’t done, anyway?” Norman said to him. “Why are you mad at Brian?”

  “You’re perfectly right. Forget it.”

  “I started it, I guess,” Brian said. “I felt like there was some—hell, you’re right. Let’s forget it.”

  “We’re supposed to be remembering Elena,” said Norman.

  Henry made no response. For a brief space they were all unnaturally quiet, not making any eye contact at all. Brian filled his glass with whiskey and drank it down.

  “Well,” Natalie said. “She’d be so proud of all of us.”

  Henry poured coffee into the whiskey in his cup, concentrating on it, muttering to himself. He lifted it to his lips and drank, then put it down and buried his face in his hands. “I’ve been through it,” he said. “Forgive me. Just please, if you can, forgive me, all of you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Brian said.

  “No, no. It’s my fault. All of it. I don’t have a right to judge anybody.”

  For what seemed a long time they all waited for him to gain control of himself. Natalie stood at his side and held him, tears running down her cheeks. The two brothers drank their whiskey and kept their eyes mostly averted. When the spasm was over, Henry took some more of the whiskey-coffee and wiped his face with a dish towel. Natalie blew her nose, and spoke of the good fortune of a long life. “This ought to be a celebration. Elena wouldn’t want us moping around.”

  Brian took hold of his father’s shoulder and felt the slightest tensing of the muscles there. He took his hand away. Norman had begun talking about the Navy, being on a submarine under the ocean. He chattered, going on in the silence, looking from one to the other of them. “I’m always thinking I hear music in the walls, and there’s no music, of course. Just the hum of that thing under all the miles of water. We went under the polar ice for six weeks in one run. I thought I’d go out of my mind. And that phantom music playing the whole time. The same song over and over. I didn’t mind hallucinating the music, but I would’ve liked being able to change the station, you know? Put a mental quarter in and choose some other song. You know what the goddam song was? “Anchors Aweigh.” Can you imagine that? “Anchors Aweigh.” I almost went to see the shrink about it, except he was crazier than the rest of us. He was on about six different medicines for high blood pressure, and he had this look about him, like a guy who is about to break into gibberish and start posing as Napoleon.”

  Brian stood up and pushed the chair in under the table.

  “Where you going?” Henry asked. “You didn’t finish your whiskey.”

  “Norman’ll take care of it. I’ve got to get home.”

  “You okay to drive? You can stay here, you know.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Aunt Natalie came around the table to embrace him. “I still say it’s nice having this much of us together.”

  “Brian, I’m gonna stay here,” Norman said. “If that’s okay with you.”

  “It’s fine with me.”

  Henry stood, and took hold of Brian’s arms above the wrists. “You sure you’re okay to drive, now.”

  “I’m okay, really.”

  The older man nodded, but didn’t let go. “We okay? You and me?”

  “I hope so,” Brian said.

  His father nodded, letting go and turning away. “It’s all square, then.” He moved to the kitchen sink and, retrieving a glass from the cabinet, filled it with water.

  “See you tomorrow,” Norman said, and took another long pull of the flask.

  “Tomorrow,” said Brian.

  ON THE PORCH, ALONE, he looked at the frozen lawn. He walked into the crust of snow, out into the light from the porch, and on to the limit of the light, turning in a wide circle and coming back, trudging along.

  When his father had called him at the height of the storm to tell him that Elena was dying, he tried to get the car out of the driveway. He shoveled the snow and put pieces of wood down from the stack along the fence, and it kept snowing and there was no getting out, and finally he went back inside the house—the place where, in the nights, he had lain awake and thought of suicide, Tillie gone, everything falling apart yet again—went back inside and knelt by the empty bed and prayed for Elena not to suffer. Soon he was crying, head down between his outstretched hands. It seemed to him then that it was all one loss, Elena dying and this latest failure, a chain of hazy evenings being drunk in a bar and playing little sordid games, Tillie talking about leaving—for months she talked about it—and he had gone into the thing with Rose telling himself, with the old booze-blurred conviction, that he would make up for everything later, would d
eal later with whatever happened, whatever price there was to pay for it all. Elena was dying. Elena, whose accepting and humorous eyes always looked into him and knew him for what he was, what he had been—a boy ten years old, seeing his father with another woman—understood the fear and weakness out of which so much of his repeated troubles came, and she loved him anyway.

  He drove into the old part of Point Royal, to a side street, across from the tall row house flanked by an antique store and a law firm, where Tillie was staying now. Lights glimmered in the upstairs windows. He got out of the car and walked up to the end of the block, then turned and came slowly back down. It was so cold; the air stung his face.

  He went up on the stoop, rang the doorbell, and waited. No one came. He rang it again, and waited again. Nothing. The wind moved the bare treetops on the other side of the street. He knocked—once, twice. In another moment, there were footsteps on the other side of the door. It opened, and a woman he did not recognize looked out.

  “Is Tillie here?”

  “Who wants to know.”

  “Tell her Brian.”

  The other stared at him with an uncomprehending frankness. Then she closed the door and he heard her on the stairs. In another moment, he heard someone coming back. The door opened again, and the same face looked out at him. “She was in bed. Wait there.”

  The door closed. He walked to the edge of the stoop and looked out at the night. Stars, a partial moon, no clouds, a beautiful snow-laden scene. In a little while, the door opened again, and Tillie looked out at him. “She didn’t ask you in?”

  “No,” he said.

  Tillie stepped out. She had put a robe on, and held it closed at her throat. “I went by the funeral home today, did Henry tell you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll miss Elena. I already do miss her. Above everything else she knew how to be kind.”

  “I guess we talked ourselves into thinking she’d always be here,” he said.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer today.”

  “I had to go pick up Norman at the bus station.”

  “How’s he taking things?”

  “He’s okay.”

  A car went by on the road, and they heard the radio blaring through closed windows. The car went on up the icy street and turned.

  “I’m cold,” she said.

  “I guess—” he began. “Would you—can we go somewhere and get some coffee maybe? It’s not that late is it?”

  “I have to get up early and go to work.”

  “But it isn’t that late.”

  “Brian.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Oh, what’re you doing here?”

  “I—I was sorry I missed you. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Okay.” She waited.

  “Tillie,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  All he could think to say was, “I love you.” His voice broke.

  She said, “Brian.”

  “No,” he said. “I do—and that has—look, I know I screwed up—I’ve screwed up everything I’ve ever touched—” His voice broke again. He took a breath. “And—and I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I do love you. And that—that has to count for something, doesn’t it?”

  She looked at him a long time, and her eyes shone. “You’re still such a little baby, do you know that? And the odd thing is—that’s what drew me to you in the first place.”

  He took a step toward her, then stopped because she had retreated. She seemed to recede into the shadows of the porch, moving to the doorway. She stepped up into the frame of it and turned to look at him. “It’s late.”

  “I know you still love me,” he said.

  She nodded sadly. “Yes.”

  “We still love each other.”

  “No. I no longer believe you do. What is her name? Rose?”

  He looked down. “That’s over. I told you—I don’t know what that was. But it’s over.”

  “Until the next time.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on, Brian. That’s the pattern, isn’t it?”

  He said nothing.

  “You know, Elena said something about you and Henry—and Norman and Tommy, too. I thought it was so shrewd—it was when I knew I wanted to be close to her. She got that look she used to get when she knew she was about to say something startling. You remember the look.”

  He nodded.

  “She gave me that look and said the men in this family use each other’s sins as excuses—like there’s—how did she put it—like there’s some kind of innocence in collective guilt.”

  “Tillie, I’m freezing here. You’re freezing. Can’t we go somewhere and talk about it?”

  Tillie gazed at him a moment, almost as though she were trying to remember something she had meant to let him know. There was a faintly confiding element in it. But then she stepped back and held the door open for him to enter. In the room it was warm, and he breathed a powerful odor of cooking cabbage and cigarette smoke. He heard the roommate cough in the kitchen, the shuffle of slippers there. Tillie indicated the couch, and he went to it and sat down.

  “Drink?” she asked.

  He shook his head. She crossed to the small portable bar on the other side of the room and poured herself a glass of sherry. She called into the kitchen. “Renata? Sherry?”

  “No, thanks.”

  She stood there and sipped it, and appeared to collect herself.

  “Is he gone?” Renata’s voice from the kitchen.

  “No, Renata, he’s not gone.”

  Silence.

  “Renata, you remember me talking about Brian. Brian, that’s Renata in the kitchen.”

  Renata came briefly to the entrance of the room, someone unprepared for company. “Nice to meet you, Brian.”

  “Hello, Renata in the kitchen,” Brian said.

  Renata was not amused. “Heard a lot about you,” she said.

  “It’s only half true.”

  She had gone out of the doorway, but she called back. “Even half true’s pretty terrible, there, Brian old boy.” They heard her laughing to herself.

  “Renata thinks she’s a comedian,” Tillie said, loud enough for the other woman to hear.

  “I’m an observer of the human comedy,” Renata called back. Then, as if to preclude any rejoinder from Tillie, began to hum to herself.

  Brian looked at the room—most of the décor was apparently Renata’s: a regulator clock on the wall, several large department store prints, and two tall particle board bookshelves stuffed to overflowing with paperbacks and coffee table books and stacks of paper. Between the bookshelves was a computer on a desk crowded with more paper and books. The screensaver was a slow floating of fishes in green water along a coral reef.

  “Renata’s a graduate student,” Tillie said.

  “What’s she studying?”

  “Gender issues in popular culture.”

  He nodded.

  “You don’t have any idea, do you?”

  “Actually,” he said, “I think I do.”

  “Well.” She walked over and sat down on the love seat across from him, crossing her legs, pulling the gown tight over her lap. She sat there, holding the glass of sherry, and regarded him. It seemed evident that she was enjoying having the upper hand. He felt himself give over to the thought, and then tried to reject it.

  “Tillie,” he began.

  But then Renata came into the room in her robe and slippers, carrying a plate of cabbage and ham. Her hair was stringy and unhealthy looking, though her face had a pleasant flawless quality and her features were sharp, intelligent, and rather attractive. Her eyes were the antithesis of Tillie’s: cloudy blue, and wide, as if she were in a state of unexpressed excitement. “There’s food in there for anybody who wants it,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” said Tillie. “Brian?”

  “Nothing for me,” he said.

  “Sorry to hear about your grandmother,” Renata said.
/>   He glanced at Tillie, who shrugged.

  “How old was she?” Renata asked.

  “She was very old,” he said.

  “I’d hate to live past sixty.”

  He left this alone.

  Renata sat at the computer, with the plate on her lap. She touched the keyboard, and the screensaver dropped away, revealing a page of text. Staring at this, she squinted, spooning cabbage into her mouth.

  Brian gave Tillie a pleading expression, and Tillie shrugged, as if to say that there was nothing to be done. So they sat there and watched Renata and her computer and her plate of cabbage.

  “What do you call the French knot we used to have to tie our hair in at the back?” Renata asked. “My mother was always doing my hair like that.”

  “A chignon, isn’t it?” said Brian.

  The other woman was silent, and hadn’t moved. Finally she turned and looked at Tillie. “Well? Is that it?”

  Tillie nodded.

  “Why didn’t you answer me?”

  “Brian answered you.”

  “Okay.”

  They watched her eat, and peck at the keyboard. Tillie finished her sherry, and got up to pour some more. “You sure you don’t want some of this?” she asked Brian.

  “Not me,” Renata said, chewing.

  Tillie poured another glass and sat down.

  Brian leaned across and said, low, “Let’s go get some coffee or something.”

  “He’s asking you for a date,” Renata said.

  “No,” said Brian, and he heard the defensive note in his voice.

  “I don’t want to go out,” Tillie said, concentrating on her sherry. “It all looks threatening outside now.”

  Renata said, “You’re depressed.”

  “No, I’m not depressed. I’m sad. There’s a big difference.” Now the defensive note was in Tillie’s voice.

  “Do you think it would be all right,” Brian said to Renata, “if Tillie and I had a little time alone?”

  She gazed at Tillie. “You want to be alone with him?”

  Tillie didn’t answer right away.

  “Say the word,” Renata said.

  Tillie spoke to Brian. “I asked Renata not to leave me alone with you.”