Cruel Beautiful World

by Caroline Leavitt

  “Honey, we’re both near champion players. You’d be lost playing with us.”

  “We could fix Rick up with one of my friends,” she said. “We could double-date or something.”

  Doug laughed. “Rick has plenty of girls,” he said. “Leave the man alone.”

  “Really? He has girls? I never see them at the house.”

  “Iris—please. It’s not our business.”

  One night she woke up at three in the morning and Doug wasn’t there. She had had enough. She got dressed and combed her hair. She was going to go over there and bring her husband home. She stepped on the wet grass and headed to Rick’s front door. She was on the side of the house, and she glanced up, and there she saw the two of them, standing together, almost like a seam. Rick moved closer and then he kissed Doug. And then Doug was unbuttoning Rick’s shirt, his hands greedy in a way they had never been with Iris, his mouth on Rick’s neck, his shoulder, his open lips.

  Iris turned around, her heart rocketing. She grabbed onto the hedges to stop the dizziness, the pain. She wished that she were blind.

  She went home and sat in the living room, giving herself over to heaving sobs. Everything about Doug made sense now. He wasn’t incapable of love or tenderness. He just wasn’t capable of it with her or with any woman. Instead of making things better, it made it all worse. What would she do now? Where would she go? Nobody divorced, and she certainly couldn’t tell anyone the truth. They’d be run out of town, and then what? How would she live? Would Doug even be able to get a job if people knew about him? Doug didn’t make enough money to support her in a separate household, and the only jobs she could get would be waitress or receptionist, and she knew those didn’t pay very much. She could confront him, but then, with the truth out, he might leave her. He might move away with Rick, and she would be here alone again. But would that be so bad? Hadn’t she been fairly content before Doug came home?

  The door creaked open and she sprang to her feet. When Doug saw her, he started. “What are you doing up, honey?” he said. As soon as she saw him, so relaxed, she wanted to scream, What about you? What are you doing?

  “Couldn’t sleep,” she said, and he bent to peck her cheek.

  SHE HATED HERSELF for it, but she didn’t bring it up. She stopped trying to get Doug into her bed, and he never asked. She told herself, as she lay awake at night, that at least she had a home. Doug had bought the house, and she didn’t have to worry about money, and maybe that was the best that life was going to give her. Every time Doug went over to Rick’s, she felt a frost sweeping through her. Every time she saw Rick playing badminton with her husband, her heart seemed to puddle in her chest. When she saw Rick going to work or coming home, she smiled curtly and then turned away. She had nothing to say to him. When Rick called the house to ask whether Doug was around, she barked, “No,” even though Doug was really right there, and then she abruptly hung up, feeling both ashamed of herself and triumphant.

  But Doug never asked her why she didn’t like Rick, and when she brought him up, wanting to know why he didn’t seem to have other friends at his house, Doug changed the subject.

  One day, a few months later, she walked into the house to find Doug crying. “What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting beside him, and he shook his head. “Allergies,” he said, but two days later she saw the FOR SALE sign on Rick’s house. She heard his company was transferring him to London. That night, when Doug came home, she put one hand on Doug’s shoulder, waiting, but he still didn’t tell her the truth.

  There were no letters from Rick. No calls. She couldn’t help feeling hurt for Doug. He sat on the couch, staring into space. “Let’s play Scrabble,” she said impulsively. “I’ll let you beat me.” He got up and they played for hours. She saw that funny tightness in his mouth loosen. Every day, she tried to think of something they could do together—a movie and ice cream afterward, or a free dance lesson at Arthur Murray. To her surprise, not only was he willing to go with her, but she had fun with him. She liked his company, and he seemed to like hers, the way she could make him laugh by imagining what people were thinking (“That guy in those awful, loud plaid pants is thinking, I know these pants look sharp on me”). She never asked for more. She wasn’t even sure she wanted it anymore. Instead of cuddling on the couch, they played Scrabble for hours. Then they each lay in their separate beds and talked across the space about their childhoods, their day, the best meal they had ever had. He told her jokes and made her laugh, and then she thought up a few, too. It wasn’t perfect, but whose marriage was?

  One night, a few months later, Doug went out on his own. “Poker game,” he said, but she saw how anxious he was, how he checked his hair in the mirror, straightening his tie. She knew what he was probably doing, but she knew, too, that she loved him, that part of him was better than none. When he came back home, before midnight, and saw her waiting for him, he looked distraught. Was this really how it was going to be for them now, Doug hiding his secret, and Iris helping him do it? She saw how pained he was, and she knew he needed to talk, and the person he talked to most now was her.

  “Want a late night snack?” she asked, and he nodded.

  They ate in the kitchen, toast and eggs, and she felt how wary he was. She had been growing out her hair, and it tickled the back of her neck. “We need to talk about this,” she said quietly.

  “Talk about what?”

  “Doug, it’s okay,” she said slowly. Her hands faintly shook.

  His fork stopped in midair. “What are you talking about? What’s okay?”

  She reached over and put one hand over his. “I saw you with Rick one night at his house. I should have told you, but I didn’t know how.”

  He stared at her, shocked, bumping up from his chair, but she kept hold of his hand. “You don’t have to leave. You don’t have to do anything—or not do anything. We have a routine. We have a life.”

  Slowly he sat back down.

  “I know, Doug. And I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Iris—” He put his head in his hands.

  “I’m telling you, it’s all right. We can deal with this.”

  He looked up at her. “How?”

  “Well, you can keep going out—” She swallowed hard. “And always, you come back to me.”

  When he started to cry, she scooted over closer to him, resting her head on his shoulders. “I do love you,” Doug said. “In my way.”

  “I love you in my way, too,” Iris told him.

  THEY STAYED TOGETHER. He signed them up for tango dancing, and her hair was now so long she could flip it while she danced. They took a painting class and made funny bets on who was going to do the worst that evening. The loser had to belt out a song on the subway. The winner got to eat the rest of the ice cream. Every night, when he came home from work, he had a new, silly joke for her (“What do cows like to do in their free time? They go to the mooo-vies”). He remembered her birthday and their anniversary and brought her windup toys just for fun. He went out sometimes, all spiffy in a new shirt and tie. He never told her where he was going and she didn’t ask.

  Sometimes he came home in a great mood, his smile wide. Other times, he was quieter. “Come on, let’s go get pancakes,” he said, and they would drive to the all-night diner and order tall, syrupy stacks.

  When Doug began to tell her about his relationships, Iris was surprised how little she minded, how this talk seemed more intimate and important to her than any caress. She was moved by how much he trusted her, by how open he was with her. “We’re best friends,” Iris said to him.

  And then, one day, she turned fifty, which amazed her, and then sixty. Her mother died, and then Doug’s parents, and time rushed by so fast she wanted to shout at it to stop. Her hair had grayed and then turned white already, and she wore it braided now, pinned to her head. Nineteen fifty-six, and she and Doug were still best buddies. They had weathered two wars (his high blood pressure kept him out of World War II) and gone to Europe together and were n
ow such expert dancers they could have won contests if they had wanted.

  One afternoon, she went outside to hang clothes up on the line, thinking about making meat loaf for dinner. She saw Doug watering the garden, taking good care of the plants, something they both liked to do. Maybe after dinner they could take a drive to Walden Pond and walk around the lake.

  He turned to her, splashing her skirt with the hose. “Hey!” she said, laughing. “Who said we were having a water fight?” She tried to get out of the way of the spray, but it was making the blue cloth of her dress navy. “You’ll be sorry because I’m going to fill the big pot from the kitchen,” she warned, gathering up the skirt of her dress. The water was cool and lovely, but when she looked at him, his face was blank. “Doug!” she called. The water shot down onto the grass, sprinkling her ankles cold. “Doug!” she called, but Doug crumpled gracelessly onto the lawn, and by the time she got to him, he was dead.

  SHE SAT SHIVAH for him, and the neighbors came over with casseroles and plates of food that Iris would politely take and put in the kitchen, lacking the appetite to eat. They told stories about Doug, how funny he was, how smart. “He was devoted to you,” Mary Curtis, from down the block, said, and Iris started to cry. “Yes, he was,” she sobbed.

  Widow. She didn’t like saying it out loud because of the way people looked at her. The sad eyes. The pity. “I know how you feel,” people said, but how could they? Doug had left her the house, and his insurance policy gave her enough money that she’d never have to work.

  She missed him. She couldn’t seem to get it into her head that he was really gone. She kept expecting him to turn up, the way he always did, to tell her that it was a mistake, that the hospital had revived him. She heard his voice in every room, calling her to come play cards or go out bowling, and at night she dreamed about him, the two of them salsa dancing, being so good everyone else in the ballroom stopped to watch them, to applaud. She woke up, her face streaked with tears.

  AFTER A WHILE, the neighbors stopped coming over. She repainted the whole inside of the house, every room a bright color, and she bought herself a whole new wardrobe, too, but none of it eased the wound inside her. She went out almost every night, with her friends Eliza and Dorothy, to the movies, the theater. But after a few months, she found she’d show up at a dinner and her friends would have an extra man there for her, nudging the two of them together.

  Iris was always polite, but the men left her cold, like second helpings after a meal, when your appetite was gone. She had stopped yearning for romance a long time ago. And anyway, none of these men were as funny, tender, and bighearted as her dead gay husband.

  “I’m too old for this,” Iris said.

  “Oh, that’s such baloney,” Eliza said, after Iris turned down a date from an architect. “What was wrong with the banker I introduced you to? What was so bad about the dentist? You could be happy, you know, if you let yourself.”

  “Who says I’m not happy?” Iris said.

  One day, Iris was in downtown Waltham, browsing the windows of the shops, on her way to get an iced coffee, when she passed Fly Away, a travel agency. The whole front window was one big poster of a woman in a bathing suit standing under a waterfall, her dark hair sluiced back, the water so blue it was like a chip of sky. Iris walked inside, something prickling along her spine. Ten minutes later, she had a ticket to Paris for a two-week stay. It wasn’t even that expensive. She had enough savings that she could go someplace every few months if she wanted to. She didn’t have to decide on anything now. Voulez-vous. It was the high school French she remembered. Do you want? Yes. Oui. Yes, she did want.

  She got a passport and guidebooks and began planning more of her trip. She saw herself walking the Louvre, sitting in the cafés, sunning herself in an outdoor garden, pleased as a cat. She bought a little tape recorder, and every night she listened to a perky female voice repeating phrases to her, waiting while she parroted them back.

  “You’re going alone?” Eliza said. “Don’t you even want to take a tour? At least you’ll be with other people.” Iris just laughed. “Well,” Eliza said doubtfully, “I hear the French like older women. Maybe you’ll meet someone.”

  “All I want from cafés are chocolate croissants.”

  Two days before leaving, Iris was already thinking about her next trip. A week in Spain. After that, maybe Istanbul. The whole world was opening for her. She didn’t want to take her sensible clothing with her, so she had gone shopping for all-new outfits. Instead of her usual shirtwaist dresses, she bought silky sheaths. She tossed aside her comfortable tie shoes for a pair with slim little buckles, and she had even found the perfect coat, slim fitting, in an almost scandalous acid green. As she packed, she repeated to herself phrases she had learned. Où se trouvent les toilettes? Combien, s’il vous plaît? When the phone rang, she scooped it up.

  “Iris Gold?”

  Since Doug had died, she got calls every day from insurance companies, from brokers, from anyone wanting to take her money, to convince her that they could take care of it—and her—better than she could. But this voice said, “I’m the lawyer for your father,” and then she straightened up. “Excuse me?” she said. “My father?”

  “I’m so very sorry.”

  Iris sat down, the phone still in her hand. She looked around her kitchen. There was the red clock, the white fridge, everything real and familiar, and all she had to do was reach out and touch it. She hadn’t heard from her father in years, not since she was a little girl. She hadn’t even known whether he was alive. “He’s dead,” she said in wonder.

  “He and his wife.”

  “His wife,” Iris said. She pressed the receiver against her forehead. “How did it happen?”

  “A club fire.”

  A club. Her father would be an old man now, in his early eighties. She couldn’t imagine him at a club. “How old was his wife?” Iris asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “His wife. How old was she?”

  There was a funny silence, a rustle of paper, and then the attorney cleared his throat. “Forty,” he said.

  Of course, Iris thought bitterly. Oh, of course. He must have kept marrying younger women, trading them in when they didn’t work out. She knew he had had two other wives besides her mother. He must have married again, and who knew whether this wife had been his fourth wife, or even his fifth or sixth? She felt dizzy just thinking about it. But what could a younger woman see in an old man unless he was rich? She wondered whether he was one of those men who wore toupees and dyed the gray out of their hair.

  “Where was this?”

  “Phoenix,” the lawyer said. Iris wrapped the phone cord around her wrist. Her father had hated heat.

  “I don’t need his money, if that’s what this is about.” If there was a funeral, she wouldn’t go. A gravestone, she’d never visit.

  “This isn’t about money,” the lawyer said. “There is some, but that’s not the point. It’s about his two little girls.”

  Iris could hear something hissing through the wires. Her father hadn’t been interested enough in Iris to keep in touch with her. He had wanted young wives, not kids. But here it was. Little girls. Her father was an old man and he had young children. Had the wife talked him into it? Did he think children would keep him young?

  “Were there other children? From other wives?” she asked.

  “No others,” the lawyer said, which made Iris wonder even more. How could someone that old have kids? He must have had Charlotte and Lucy in his seventies. She knew it was possible. She had even known another couple like that, the aged father, the young wife, the young kids. But what kind of a thing was that to do to children, to bring them into the world just as you were headed out of it? Iris had half sisters she didn’t even know about and they were young enough to be her granddaughters. How could that be possible? Iris swallowed.

  “Six and a half and five,” the lawyer said. “There’s no other family. Which is why I’m calling you. Y
ou don’t have to adopt them. They just need a home.”

  Iris looked over at the table where her travel books were. She thought of her father, how little he had known about her, how little he had cared. These little girls were strangers, and she was old now, too. She doubted he had told them anything about her. What was she supposed to do with them? How could anyone ask this of her, especially now? “I’m sixty-seven,” she said.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell foster care to take them in.”

  Foster care. Living with a family who took money to care for you, who didn’t love you. But would she love them? Was she even equipped to take in children? They were so far away. If she didn’t take them in, she’d never see them.

  “If you change your mind, give me a call,” he said, and he barked out a phone number, and then the dial tone rang in her ear. Iris jotted down the number on a slip of paper, folding it up into a tiny square, sliding it into the bottom of her sock drawer.

  She needed air. Grabbing her cardigan, Iris headed out for a walk. But halfway down her block, she began to feel as if there were some kind of conspiracy going on. Before, she had never noticed mothers with kids. Today, she spotted them everywhere. A woman tugging a little boy by the hand while the boy neighed as if he were a horse, scuffing his heels against the sidewalk, hurling his body backward. A woman wheeling a crying baby in a carriage, her own face soft as pudding; the woman bent down and whispered something, and the infant sneezed and stopped wailing. She observed these other mothers as if they were some experiment. She remembered how she had yearned for her own child, how disappointed she had been when it didn’t happen, and how Doug hadn’t wanted to adopt.

  What did her father’s little girls look like? she wondered. Did they have her father’s eyes, large and lashy, just like her own? She wondered what power those girls had that she didn’t, the thing that made her father love them. Or had he loved them? Maybe he had just doted on their mother and had agreed to have kids to keep her. Iris was ashamed that the thought made her feel better. There was no use thinking about this, she told herself, and she turned to head home.