Blue Angel

by Francine Prose

  He says, “Want to go out to dinner?”

  A flicker of wariness glints in her eyes. So this is what it’s come to. He can’t even ask his wife out to dinner without her suspecting him of having some secret agenda.

  “Are we celebrating something?” Sherrie asks.

  “A day without disaster.”

  “That’s worth celebrating.”

  “Maybelline’s?” says Swenson.

  “Yikes,” says Sherrie. “Burlington? We might want to save that for a month without disaster.”

  “There won’t be any months like that,” Swenson says. “We might as well go tonight. Want to go now?”

  “Ted, it’s four in the afternoon.”

  “Oops,” says Swenson. “Alzheimer’s. Sorry.”

  Sherrie’s almost finished her shift. Arlene can take over. It’s arranged they’ll meet at the house so Sherrie can shower and change. Swenson rushes home, determined to get there first, as if there’s some evidence of wrongdoing there that he needs to clean up fast. He feels like a kid who’s had a party with his parents gone, except that he’s a middle-aged man who’s spent the day in bed. Alone. Sherrie doesn’t need to know that yet. Who can tell where that revelation might lead?

  He makes and unmakes and remakes the bed, but still it doesn’t seem convincing. He feels like the victim of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. He gets back into bed, still clothed, though this time he takes off his shoes. He can admit to this nap, but not to the last one, though this nap is the phony one—clenched eyes, watchful awareness, listening for Sherrie’s car, a state in which he finds himself frozen even as he hears Sherrie call his name. She tracks him to the bedroom. He keeps his eyes closed tight.

  Sherrie goes into the bathroom. He hears the shower running. He waits a few minutes, then follows her. He knocks, makes a point of his presence. Sherrie hates being surprised.

  Through the veil of the shower curtain and the cloud of steam, Sherrie’s body works on him: that old Pavlovian magic. They regard each other through the haze. Sherrie steps out of the tub. In the moments before he stops having second thoughts, or any thoughts at all, Swenson thinks how this might look to someone watching from outside: a man who can sleep with his wife on the evening he’s going to tell her that he’ll probably lose his job for sleeping with a student. But what would be harder for those stranger’s eyes to see are the depths of desperate love that Swenson feels for Sherrie.

  At seven on a weekday night, Maybelline’s is almost empty. But as luck would have it, Swenson and Sherrie are seated next to a young couple so madly in love that they’ve left their food untouched and can hardly speak, or move, but stare at each other tremulously over the tops of the wineglasses from which they are too preoccupied to drink.

  Would they notice if Swenson grabbed the wine from their table and drained the bottle before the waitress has time to bring him his own? He needs it more than they do. Ordinarily, Maybelline’s sound system plays its signature mix of Chuck Berry and Vivaldi, another symptom of the bipolar disorder that has inspired the fairly new, successful restaurant to serve its expensive chef-driven takes on Vermont farm food. But tonight the CD player is silent, out of order perhaps, ripping away the cover of background noise under which Swenson had imagined confessing to Sherrie.

  In his dread and confusion, Swenson has reverted to the conventional wisdom that if you’re going to deliver shattering information to a loved one, it’s best to do it in a public place that will preempt or at least forestall tears, recriminations, hysterical scenes, murder attempts, and so forth. Instantly, he sees the numerous pitfalls in the plan. But it’s too late. He’s made up his mind. He’s going to see it through. If he doesn’t do it now, he will have to eventually, and the longer this goes on…. He should have come clean months ago.

  How much luck can one guy have? The waitress could be Angela’s slightly older sister. As she extends one skinny hand to pass out their menus, Swenson glimpses a flower tattooed between her thumb and forefinger.

  Swenson studies the menu. Everything costs a fortune. If Sherrie ever stops hating him for what he’s about to tell her, she can hate him all over again for spending so much to do it. In spring and summer Maybelline’s specializes in hard-to-find items—morels, fiddlehead ferns—gathered by local hippies hired to comb the woods, but now, in the dead of winter, the “seasonal” dishes are mostly game birds and forest creatures glazed with maple syrup.

  “Are there any specials?” Sherrie asks.

  “No.” The waitress shrugs. “I don’t think so.”

  “Think so or know so?” asks Swenson.

  “No,” says the girl. “There aren’t any.”

  “Fine,” says Swenson, “We’ll take a bottle of the Chardonnay. Now.”

  “Organic?” says the waitress.

  “Toxic,” Swenson says. “Please.”

  The waitress smiles unhappily. The sympathetic look with which Sherrie watches her slink away hardens as she turns back to Swenson. “Christ, Ted, you promised.”

  “Promised what?”

  “To take it easy on people. That kid could be one of your students.”

  Swenson looks at her, terrified. But this is not about Angela. Sherrie’s just stating the obvious.

  “Maybe that’s the problem.” Anyway, he doesn’t remember promising any such thing.

  “You knew she meant there weren’t any specials. She just didn’t want to disappoint us.”

  “She doesn’t think there are any specials. Is everyone’s brain turning to jelly? You don’t think some kid has strep throat? Try getting away with that. Someone has to set them straight. Just once.”

  “My God,” says Sherrie. “You sound like you’re about eighty.”

  “This is great,” says Swenson. “We’re spending a hundred bucks to talk about whether the waitress did or didn’t think there were specials.”

  On cue, the waitress brings their wine and pours it, sloshing a little ice water out of the bucket into which she plunks the bottle. “Are you ready to order?”

  “I’ll have the venison,” says Sherrie.

  Please, prays Swenson, let the deer be tough and claim so much of Sherrie’s attention that she’s not even looking at him when he says what he has to say. Swenson orders the salmon, realizing, the minute he does, how far it would have had to swim to Vermont. He doesn’t have the energy to change his mind, or his order.

  Sherrie raises her glass. “To nothing getting too much worse.”

  “That’s probably impossible,” Swenson says. “Let’s drink to…let’s drink to patience.”

  “Absolutely.” Sherrie clinks glasses. “To patience.”

  They drink rapidly and without speaking, then smile gratefully at each other. The mood is almost mellow as Swenson pours out two more glasses and says, “Listen, today I read this weird story in the science section of the Times about a new disease, some brain function thing.” Despite all his intentions and resolutions, he seems to be lying again. He read it in yesterday’s paper. He didn’t read the paper today, he was too busy finding out that his life is over. He fully expects Sherrie to say that the science section was yesterday, but mercifully, she lets it go, and he proceeds with his story, though without the slightest memory of why he’s telling it. “Anyhow, some part of the brain gets damaged or something, and the result is that the patient is constantly smelling fish.”

  “Fish?” asks Sherry.

  “Fish.”

  “I don’t believe it,” says Sherrie.

  “You don’t believe it? It was in the Times. Why don’t you believe it?”

  “Because fish is so obvious. Why couldn’t it be like…diesel fuel? Coffee? Nail-polish remover? Lilies?”

  If Sherrie thinks that’s obvious, what will she think of the fact that he’s taking her out to dinner to confess having had an affair with a student? Well, not exactly an affair, a distinction she might miss, especially when she finds out that a complaint has been filed with the school.

 
Sherrie says, “I thought Thanksgiving went pretty well. With Ruby, I mean. What do you think about Christmas?”

  “I can hardly remember Thanksgiving,” Swenson mutters darkly. “I hardly remember anything.” Swenson hates knowing something Sherrie doesn’t, something that will change everything. It’s as if he’s watching her, a character in a movie, about to turn the corner behind which the killer waits; he feels a childish desire to cry out and warn her, even though he is the murderer lurking around the bend.

  “This is not about the past,” Sherrie says. “This is about the future. Look into your crystal ball. Do you think she’ll come home for Christmas?”

  “I hope so,” is all that Swenson can say.

  After a moment, Sherrie says, “I’m so glad we’re in this together.”

  Swenson has to tell her now. But he makes himself wait until their dinner arrives. He hopes that the food will increase Sherrie’s sense of well-being and somehow cushion the shock. He’s glad to see their plates come, not because he’s hungry, but because it seems to insure a long stretch of time before the waitress will bother them again. He’s repulsed by the oily ease with which the layers of salmon divide. He spears a tiny piece on his fork and can barely choke it down.

  “Your tooth still hurt?” says Sherrie.

  “Sometimes.”

  “You’ve got to get it fixed. I can’t even offer you any of this venison chop. And it’s really delicious.”

  “I promise,” Swenson says. “I’ll call the dentist tomorrow. Speaking of promises…” He takes a deep breath. “I’ve got to tell you something. Do you promise not to hate me no matter what?”

  Sherrie says, “I can recognize a lose-lose deal when I hear one.”

  “I mean it.” Swenson’s tone causes Sherrie to put down the rib bone she’s been sucking.

  Her gaze is cool and level. “Have you been sleeping with a student?”

  Well, that certainly solves the problem of how Swenson’s going to put it. And somehow the fact that Sherrie has said it herself makes it sound less serious. She knows about it already.

  “I didn’t exactly sleep with her,” he says, and sees, too late, that she didn’t know.

  “And why didn’t you…exactly?”

  “My tooth broke.” It’s the worst thing he could have said, attaching his sin to a specific time, a memory, to a specific lie, to something that Sherrie does know about, and about which she’s so far been sympathetic.

  “Let me get this straight,” Sherrie says. “You were going to sleep with her except your tooth broke.”

  “Something like that,” says Swenson.

  “So what did she do? Punch you in the mouth?”

  “No,” says Swenson. “She should have.” Maybe then she wouldn’t have needed Dean Bentham to do the punching for her. Only now does he understand that he’s made a huge mistake, telling Sherrie in public, as if she were some new girlfriend whose stability was so dubious that he dare not risk doing it in private—where Sherrie might at least have retained some shred of dignity and grace. The drastic speed with which all traces of pleasure and relaxation drain from her face is as obvious, as hard to ignore as a scream, so that even the transfixed lovers beside them turn to watch the train wreck in progress at the next table.

  “How did you know?” asks Swenson.

  “You think I’m stupid,” Sherrie says. “You’ve always thought I was stupid.”

  “Never,” says Swenson. “That’s not true. You’re the most intuitive person I know.”

  “Go fuck yourself!” says Sherrie, and now the happy young couple is staring nakedly at this painful soap opera of true love gone bad.

  “Look at me, goddamn it!” Sherrie says. “Why are you looking at them?” The couple scans the room for the waitress. “Tell me something. One thing. Was she the one who called that day you were supposedly in New York?”

  “I think so,” Swenson says. “I was in New York.”

  “And do you think that’s who you went to see that day when you told me and Ruby you were going to New York?”

  “I was in New York. Having lunch with Len.” How glad he is for each occasion to tell the truth. “I’d never lie about something like that. I’m way too superstitious. Suppose my plane had gone down—”

  “Too bad it didn’t.” Sherrie is way beyond being amused by a personality quirk that once—ten minutes ago—might have extracted a smile. “Is she pretty?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then what is it? Youth? Great body? What?”

  “Nothing like that. She…can write.”

  “She can write? This is about writing? And it never once crossed your mind that your wanting to sleep with this kid might have clouded your…literary judgment?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Swenson says. “I don’t think I would have thought twice about her if not for the book she was writing.” He shouldn’t have said thought twice. Once would have more than Sherrie could bear, more than he could ask her to bear.

  “Oh, I get it,” she says. “You didn’t fuck a student. You fucked a book. You’re like some groupie, like one of those chicks who used to come up to you after readings and be all over you because they thought you were some famous writer.” Now it’s Sherrie who shouldn’t have said thought. “You’re worse than a groupie. You’re like some kind of vampire, sucking this kid’s blood. A guy whose own daughter won’t talk to him because he forgot she existed, he was so self-involved, so in love with his own problems, so interested in his own little ideas about this or that meaningless bullshit, so the only way she can get his attention is to start going out with a guy whose reputation is so bad even her father will have heard about it, even with his head so far up his ass.”

  This would not be Swenson’s version of Ruby’s adolescence. But when Sherrie says it, it sounds obvious. Simple common sense.

  “You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to see that this has something to do with Ruby.” Sherrie has put down her fork and is gripping her steak knife. “So you got a replacement daughter. Which is why it’s happening now. And I thought it wouldn’t happen because of all the times it almost happened and didn’t, all those pathetic little crushes you used to get on students, and you’d start simpering about how Little Miss Such-and-Such is really very talented, and you’d start asking me if anyone would still think you were attractive, as if you hadn’t asked this each time some little girl, some child flattered you for half a second…. And each time we dodged a bullet. You talked yourself out of it, took cold showers, I don’t know how you did it. But I knew what was going on. And I thought because it hadn’t happened that it wouldn’t happen this time, either. But I should have known better. Because every time you hear about some banal guy shit, don’t fool yourself into thinking that your guy won’t do it. The reason it’s such a cliché is because all you guys do it sooner or later. Guys turn out to be guys.”

  “I guess you could see it that way….” If you wanted to be cruel and reductive. Because it wasn’t that way at all. It wasn’t about Ruby, or daughters, or youth, or even about sex. It was, he thinks, about love. Which of course is the one thing he can never tell Sherrie. No desire to confess and redeem himself could tempt him to do that to her. And in return for being that large, he wants something larger, too. Forgiveness, some godlike, all-encompassing knowledge. That moment in a Chekhov story when a character sees that God and time are eternal, greater and more enduring than any human problems.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Angela,” Swenson says, carefully. “Angela Argo?”

  “You’re kidding,” Sherrie says. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “You know her?” Swenson asks, with such curiosity and enthusiasm that his feelings for Angela are suddenly, nakedly clear.

  “Of course I know her,” Sherrie says. “She spends half her life at the clinic.”

  “You do? She does?” Swenson’s having trouble breathing. “Is there some problem?”

  “She’s suicidal,” Sherr
ie says. “Oh, Ted. Jesus. How could you pick on the weakest, most vulnerable, most unstable girl on campus? How could I live with someone for so long and not know him, not know him at all—”

  Swenson says, “That poor helpless little girl is suing me for harassment.”

  “Good,” says Sherrie. “I hope they crucify you. I hope they make you pay.”

  They finish their dinner in silence. Finally, Swenson says, “So what’s going to happen now? Do we get to go on being married?”

  “Let’s see what happens.” Sherrie’s answer fills him with panic and the almost unstoppable impulse to cry out, like a child, What do you mean we’ll see? I want to know now!” Repeating it until the grown-up gives in…. For some reason, Swenson finds himself thinking of his father and how, near the end, even language fractured for him, words turned into pure sounds whose meanings he could ignore, enabling him to hear a parallel nonsense-conversation of puns and double entendres. At least Swenson was old enough not to bother trying to make sense out of what his father said.

  The couple sitting beside them seems to have gotten up and left. At some point when he and Sherrie were at once so engrossed and distracted, the lovers must have retreated into their cocoon of protection and light and grace, of chosenness, of being singled out and granted the singular blessing of being allowed to live in a world in which what’s happening to Sherrie and Swenson will never happen to them.

  Sherrie stays for two weeks, fourteen days that seem longer than their whole life together so far because time stretches out in a sequence of discreet, dreadful moments, no major blowouts, surprisingly, but a steady killing politeness. Every over-careful exchange is a boulder in their path, which they must either squeeze around or gracelessly stumble over. Every conversation dead-ends, every effort they make—Sherrie telling a story about the clinic, Swenson summarizing something he’s read—requires a heroic, futile effort to appear natural and normal. When Swenson reaches for Sherrie’s hand, he stops himself and draws back; every instinctive, affectionate gesture has come to seem like a calculated ploy, or worse, a heartless insult.