Next Life Might Be Kinder

by Howard Norman

  “She was so elegant, so beautiful. Very tired-looking, though. I think she’d been ill recently. She made some reference to that, some hint of it. But the great thing was, she didn’t think my questions were stupid. She took each question to heart. At least that’s how it felt. She mentioned she was doing some work for the Oxford English Dictionary. ‘I quite enjoy it,’ she said. And this was embarrassing—she picked up on me staring at her at one point. Like I was trying to memorize her appearance or something. And that’s when she said, ‘Sizing a new person up in midconversation is an odd business, don’t you think? Friends tell me I’m quite obvious about it myself.’ I was pretty embarrassed.

  “But the thing is, Sam, it changed me. Just the chance to talk in person with her changed me. It made The Victorian Chaise-Longue mean even more. She was so forthright. In fact, she told me she’d done very few interviews. ‘Nobody of late is really interested, you see.’ I mean, there was Marghanita Laski in the flesh. I flew back to Halifax full to bursting with ideas.”

  We talked about her meetings with Marghanita Laski for a long time. We got very little sleep. And because she left the hotel so early in the morning, we didn’t even have breakfast together. So Lizzy’s visit to London turned out to be the subject of our last conversation together. In the Essex Hotel, that is.

  Who Ever Said You Were Supposed to Be Happy?

  With Dr. Nissensen, July 25, 1973:

  Late in today’s session, I read Dr. Nissensen the list of books that were missing from the Port Medway Library. “A child’s reading,” he said. “All the titles connected to Wales. Let me give that some thought.” I told him I’d ordered new copies through John W. Doull Booksellers.

  “Why would you feel obligated to replace the books?” He paused. “Good citizenship alone?”

  I allowed three or four minutes to pass in silence. “Dr. Nissensen,” I finally said, “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’d like to end our work together. I don’t want to drive into the city anymore. I need to be away from Halifax, I’m thinking for at least a year.”

  He took some notes, closed the notebook. He removed his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief. “It’s called terminating,” he said. “In my parlance.”

  “Does that mean stopping?”

  “It means you no longer come to my office. However, as to the things we’ve discussed, I hope they continue to be part of your thinking.”

  “Does my terminating surprise you?”

  “Truthfully, not in the least. You’ve been drifting off in our sessions. They’ve lost some focus for you. In a year, God willing, I’ll still be here. Should that be of interest to you, Sam.”

  Silence.

  “Is one of the reasons you want to terminate that you finally feel you will never convince me?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “In our time together, I’ve deepened my understanding of the extent to which you are capable of maintaining Elizabeth’s presence. Your wife being the organizing principle of your grief-filled imagination. But convince me she’s other than that? You are correct—it’s unlikely to happen.”

  “Elizabeth is my wife. She is the love of my life. She is not an organizing principle of anything.”

  There were again a few moments of silence.

  “I’ve come to enjoy the silences between us so much,” I said. “Maybe I’m terminating because then I can enjoy them all the time.”

  “Lately,” Dr. Nissensen said, “I’ve been reading Emily Dickinson. She said, ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes.’ It may be a statement about grief, about what comes after an important loss. I wonder if by ‘formal feeling’ she means a peaceful clarity. Perhaps a clarity that allows peacefulness of heart. Perhaps coming to peace with the realization that mortality cannot always be explained. Perhaps I’m looking for a whole theology encapsulated in just one line of poetry. I don’t know.”

  Silence for a moment.

  I said, “Have I told you that every day I want to strangle Alfonse Padgett all over again?”

  “‘All over again’? But you’ve not killed him a first time, Sam.”

  “Wrong. I strangle him every day. I’ve gotten a lot calmer about a lot of things, some thanks to you, Dr. Nissensen. But in a way, the thought of Alfonse Padgett puts more poison in my veins the more time that passes. That probably doesn’t reflect well on me, huh? But most things don’t.”

  “That’s funny. I’ll miss your humor. Some of it.”

  Silence.

  I said, “You live with someone in a marriage and yet so much of what the other does happens out of your immediate experience.”

  “Yes, that’s just normal.”

  “What happened that day to Elizabeth was out of my immediate experience. But I believe that soon she’ll tell me about it. I sense it coming. And then I’ll know.”

  “Well, especially considering this may well be our last conversation, I can only, for the thousandth time, suggest that you are both seeing and not seeing Elizabeth each evening. You are both hearing her and not hearing her. This bifurcated reality is sponsored by your intractable grief. And I’m quite aware you despise my use of such language. Yet I want you to at least know that I cannot subscribe, even after hearing the remarkable specificity, the stenographic detail, of your experiences on the beach at Port Medway, to your seeing Elizabeth there. I simply cannot responsibly suggest anything other than that we continue with our sessions. That we should deepen our work. I will cut my fee in half, if that is a concern. I am not interested in persuading you out of your condition, Sam, and never have been. I am only interested in lessening, to whatever extent possible, your torment. And I feel thus far I’ve failed to significantly lessen it.”

  “Well, the way I see it, it’s not you who’s failed me, it’s me who has failed,” I said. “Week after week I fail to get the truth across to you. I’ve failed in that. I can’t write, I can’t sleep, I can’t stand people—well, there’s Philip and Cynthia—and I can’t get the truth across to you. You once quoted the Russian poet Akhmatova—or did I quote her? ‘Who ever said you were supposed to be happy?’ Nobody in their right mind would expect to be. Personally, I never considered happiness a given. Probably never will. But I can say that definitely, definitely I’m happy when I’m with Elizabeth on the beach at night.”

  “Elizabeth’s presence keeps declaring that she is not coming back,” he said. “Bardo doesn’t return people, it eventually allows them a further passage. From my recent reading about it. From my understanding of it.”

  “Stalemate all along for months. And now, truce.”

  Silence.

  “I drowned Peter Istvakson. I thought you should know.”

  Dr. Nissensen waited for me to say more. After a minute or so, he said, “If I thought that were true, I’d be obligated to report it to the proper authorities. And while I believe you had violent feelings toward Mr. Istvakson, did you act on them—other than in thought?”

  Silence.

  “Naturally, you might wish to discuss this. Should I pencil you in?”

  I stood up and held out my hand and he shook it. “Thank you, secret sharer,” I said. “For your kindness and intelligence. But no, don’t pencil me in.”

  Outside on the street, I checked the notebook Dr. Nissensen had given me: my pickup was parked less than a block away. I was home in my cottage by one-thirty in the afternoon.

  Just a Regular Marriage Conversation Before Bed (Last Lindy Lesson)

  THROUGH ALL OF everything, Elizabeth had maintained her devotion to the intermediate lindy. She practiced a lot and got me to practice a lot. She even came up with a pun: “When it comes to the lindy, I’m completely unflappable.” Not bad, I thought. Half an hour before the last scheduled lesson, as she was fitting herself into the black dress again, she said, “The advanced lindy lessons start up in just two weeks. We definitely qualify now, Sam. I’m getting the final installment of my stipend, and I’m going to pop for the lessons myself, so, not
to worry. What with your bonus for the radio writing, we’re in good shape money-wise, sort of. There’s one catch, though. I’d like to purchase a new dress for the advanced lessons. That way I’ll feel I’ve, you know, advanced.”

  “I understand completely,” I said.

  “Of course you do. And, I already bought the dress.”

  Before the lesson began, Arnie Moran stood on the bandstand and announced the dates for the advanced lindy lessons. Then, in singsong, “Tell your friends, tell your cat and dog, tell the birds in the trees, it’ll be a big time! Yowza! Yowza! Yowza!”

  Predictable in his routine, he punched up the Boswell Sisters on the jukebox. The lesson went well. Elizabeth was especially pleased. She said, “Sam, you’ve really caught on.” From Lizzy, a direct and simple compliment was all I needed, and not even all that often.

  Most of the couples went home right after, but Elizabeth and I stayed to drink the spiked punch that Arnie Moran had provided to celebrate the end of the lessons. Moran walked over and said, “Rocky start, what with Mr. Padgett and all, but we managed, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, we did,” Elizabeth said. “I’m signing us up for the advanced class.”

  “I wear a different suit for those,” Moran said, and Elizabeth and I fell apart laughing. “Glad I’m so entertaining.”

  “No, no, you’re a sharp dresser, Arnie Moran,” Elizabeth said.

  He bowed decorously, then left to talk to the other remaining students.

  “Let’s go upstairs, Sam. I had a nice time tonight.”

  “You’re the best lindy dancer in the history of lindy dancers.”

  “You came to this determination how?”

  “By believing it,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’re, I’d estimate, the ninety-four-thousand-two-hundred-and-sixth-best lindy dancer in the history of lindy dancers.”

  “I am just so flattered by that. I don’t know what to say.”

  When we got to the apartment, Elizabeth, in the kitchen, unzipped her dress and let it fall to the floor. “It might be a scam, the advanced lessons,” she said. “I mean, where’s there to advance to once you have the basic steps down? Maybe we shouldn’t put out money for it.”

  “It’s a night on the town, Lizzy. Even if we don’t leave the hotel, a night on the town. And you have such a great time. That’s really nice to see. You’re at your desk all day.”

  “Come to bed.”

  “What do you think comes after advanced?” I asked.

  “Advanced advanced, I think. Maybe Arnie Moran’s lessons will go on longer than the dance craze itself lasted. After all, it’s his moonlighting, right?”

  “I wonder if he’s got a day job.”

  “Oh, I already found that out. I asked Derek Budnick, and Derek told me Arnie Moran works at the post office. He sorts letters. By the way, I’m in bed, darling.”

  “I’m just getting a drink of water.”

  “Know what? I watched an old movie the other night after you fell asleep. I couldn’t sleep. Usually with us it’s vice versa. I forgot the title. It starred Myrna Loy. You know she’s my favorite. Anyway, Myrna got all hot and heavy with somebody—they didn’t actually show anything in those old movies, except maybe the bedroom door closing, then the bedroom door opening first thing in the morning. Still, I could tell Myrna’s temperature had gone up. And the next day, when her best girlfriend asked her how the evening with Mr. Right had gone, Myrna said, ‘Oh, we went from 33⅓ up to 78, then back to 33⅓ for a long, long time.’ And the girlfriend says, ‘What about 45?’ And Myrna got that smile and said, ‘Oh, too, too in between.’”

  “There’s no movie writing like that anymore,” I said. I sat on the end of the bed. “Do you wish you had a girlfriend like Myrna Loy to talk things over with?”

  “Are you worried about me, Sam?”

  “No, of course I’m not worried about you, Lizzy.”

  “Do you think I need a best girlfriend? Are you worried I’m lonely for friends or something?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Probably you are, which is sweet. I’ve got Marie Ligget. But if I can’t have Myrna Loy, I’ll go it mainly alone.”

  Serious Scholar

  FOR SOME REASON, this morning I woke thinking about what a serious scholar Elizabeth had become. Introspective, funny and teasing, and naturally elegant, my wife. She could not always say why The Victorian Chaise-Longue struck such deep chords, and kept striking them with every new reading. She knew the book wasn’t great literature (“Marghanita’s no George Eliot, I know that”), but it filled her imagination like great literature, and that was enough. And Elizabeth didn’t suffer any illusions. “In some ways, writing a dissertation is like making a point that doesn’t really have to be made,” she said. “But it’s required just to move on in the academic world I’m wanting to be part of. It’s pretty straightforward. In this thing I’m writing, I guess I’m trying to say something about the provocative nature of certain so-called minor writers, Marghanita Laski in particular. I’m really into literary obsession. So this dissertation, it’s trying to include stuff about what it’s like to read a single book over and over and over again. Like the zillion times I’ve read The Victorian Chaise-Longue. And in the end I have no idea if my professors are going to accept it. Yesterday I had a kind of panic attack about this. Today it’s better. Seesaw. Seesaw. Seesaw. And I guess there’s nothing to be done about it except finish the goddamn thing and see what happens.”

  “What might most please Marghanita Laski? You said you keep asking yourself that.”

  “But my point is, I can’t expect special dispensation just because I have this personal way of writing. Just because I’m demonstrating my passion for The Victorian Chaise-Longue. I’ve pretty much lied to my professors—”

  “Come on, not really.”

  “Yes, Samuel, I’ve pretty much lied to them. My proposal implies I’m writing about Marghanita Laski in a way that people write a traditional dissertation, but I’m really not. On top of that, I used some of my stipend for intermediate lindy lessons, for goodness sake!”

  “Don’t forget crème brûlée two times last week for dessert in restaurants.”

  “I don’t keep a secret crème brûlée bank account at the ready. Dessert comes out of petty cash, eh?”

  So there were pressures. Elizabeth often felt, as she said, “put under the gun” (unfortunate phrase, painful to write). Every doctoral candidate in her program was required to do a fifteen-minute presentation, designed to be a kind of in-progress report, and to some extent was supposed to demonstrate a sense of discovery, as if to prove that scholarship was by definition full of surprises. There again, when Elizabeth’s turn came around, she felt she had to fake it somewhat, because the surprises she experienced in writing about Marghanita Laski and The Victorian Chaise-Longue were more of a personal rather than an academic nature: how, through the writing, she was coming to a knowledge of herself, just as someone living a life. “But you know what?” she said. “Here’s the reward I’m giving myself when this is over and done with. We’re going to Hay-on-Wye and let my mum feed us for a week. We can walk to all the castle ruins in the area, just like tourists. I can show you my favorite makeout spots. I had potential makeout spots all mapped out at age fourteen. Some of them were quite near castles. It was more dramatic that way. I wanted my makeout sessions to be historical. Too bad I never got to use my map. Oh, except that one time.”

  Two or three days ago, as I neared completion in the organizing of her papers, I discovered Elizabeth’s presentation. It was titled “Marghanita Laski as a Third Person in My House,” and I read it straight through. I remember she had asked me to sit in the back row of the lecture hall. She started off with great confidence. After a two-paragraph summary of the plot of The Victorian Chaise-Longue, Elizabeth did a close reading of three passages. Then, after glancing nervously at Professor Auchard, and losing her place in her neatly typed pages, but quickly gainin
g it back, she delved into the more subjective (her word) aspects of working on her dissertation. At one point she provided an anecdote that illustrated what it was like to live in a small apartment with a husband and an outsize cat. Elizabeth said our cat was plump, that Maximus Minimum “practiced accusatory stares.” She went on to say, “For months and months I’ve been in this intellectual but also erotic conversation among three women. Me, Marghanita, and the fictional character Melanie.” When she uttered the word “erotic,” laughter could be heard here and there in the audience. Marie Ligget, who sat at the end of the front row, turned and looked back at me, smiling a tight, knowing smile and nodding her head in an exaggerated fashion. When Elizabeth’s presentation had ended, Marie, on her way out of the lecture hall, stopped, leaned down, and whispered, “No wonder Lizzy reads that book all the time.”

  It was dark out when Elizabeth and I left the hall. On the street, she said, “That went pretty well, I think. But I definitely noticed a puzzled look on Professor Auchard’s face. Except that’s his natural look all the time, so it’s probably okay. Maybe.” Pub-hopping, we both got very drunk that night and ended up at Cyrano’s. Marie Ligget was working the late shift, and, as there were few other customers, she sat with us for a while. “So, Lizzy,” Marie said, “if I buy a copy of your favorite novel, will you underline the parts that work best for you? You know, work best.” She made an obscene gesture, then got all serious and said, “You were great. You’re so smart, Lizzy. I was really impressed.”

  “It meant a lot to me that you were there, Marie.”

  “So, want to hear my grievances or what?” Marie said.

  “Yes, we do!” Elizabeth said. Marie, with great flair and with no holds barred, proceeded to work her way through (1) her “stupid” boyfriend; (2) her stupid boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, whom she suspected might not be ex; (3) her boss, whom she called a “complete dunderhead.” And then she hypothesized that the reason she was so upset at her boyfriend was not because she was convinced he was still sleeping with his ex, but because the ex, according to Marie’s boyfriend, had taught him so much about sex, so that deep down Marie was grateful to her. “See what I mean when I say it’s complicated?” Marie asked. “Like, for instance, the other night—”