The Twoweeks

by Larry Duberstein

“I began suggesting we go home early, the kids wouldn’t like us being out so soon after—”

  “After what? What did you call it?”

  “Cal’s sabbatical. Carrie named it.”

  “Did she know?”

  “She did not. That became the big joke, my sabbatical. Maybe Cal should take an annual sabbatical, maybe everyone should . . .”

  “Because you came back so invigorated. How did it go in bed, by the way?”

  “I can’t believe you are asking me that.”

  “Yet I am.”

  “I can’t believe you would think about it, or want to hear about it.”

  “I certainly refused to think about it at the time. But I would like to know now.”

  “It changed, of course. It was never right. Even when it went well, it felt wrong. Sometimes I had to get prepared for it the way I would for a scene. Get ready to play the love scene.”

  “Good old technique and training.”

  “What can I say? People must do that anyway—act, I mean. Sex can’t be totally spontaneous for someone married forty years, can it?”

  “Don’t ask me, ask someone who has been married forty years.”

  “All right, ten years then. How long were you and Ian married?”

  “Five years.”

  “And? You don’t have to answer.”

  “I don’t know the answer, or rather the question doesn’t resonate with me. Personally I never acted, with anyone. I never prepared myself for a ‘scene.’ To be honest, I’ve always found myself surprised by sex.”

  “How so?”

  “That it could be not-happening and then suddenly be happening so emphatically. I have always found sex to be a very strange transaction.”

  “What’s the novel where someone catches a glimpse in the mirror, as he and his lady are going at it? And he starts laughing at how ridiculous they look.”

  “What novel is this?”

  “I was asking. It doesn’t matter, it’s just the idea. It’s along the lines of what you were saying, no?”

  “Not really, no. I can’t say I ever pictured it. Plus, people do it in the movies all the time and it’s usually not that funny-looking.”

  “The book was written in the ’50s, before anyone was allowed to do it in the movies. Back when Rock Hudson and Doris Day stayed on their assigned sides of the bed, in their incredibly thick pajamas.”

  “Only later did we find out why.”

  “Rock being gay, you mean? Or Doris being stuffed?”

  “Calvert, I’m afraid we have wandered far afield by now. Why don’t we turn the page and finish up?”

  “I’m not so sure I want to relive that last day.”

  “It’s okay, sweetheart, really, it’s okay now. But I appreciate the compliment. My journal must be mighty vivid to have such a powerful effect on you.”

  “It’s not your journal, Lara, it’s you. I don’t want to lose you, even thirty-two years ago.”

  ON DAY 14, the theme was emptiness. Even the fridge was empty. We had let it go down to zero, or past zero, to green cheese.

  A more serious emptiness was looming, although the fridge led us briefly into distraction, via the long, unlikely, mildly diverting tale of Fitz’s brother. As C. told it, this person Philip Fitzgerald once evaded arrest by hiding inside a refrigerator.

  “He wouldn’t fit, Cal. Not to mention that he would be awfully cold.”

  “He had emptied it out and unplugged it. Really empty, I mean, took out the bins and shelves. He had done this before, you see.”

  “What had he done? I mean, what crime did he commit?”

  “He robbed a chain of liquor stores. Well, no. The liquor stores were unaffiliated. It was more a chain of stickups.”

  “That’s an important distinction.”

  Phil Fitzgerald’s life of crime was the topic: drugs, robberies, refrigerators, prison. It was a topic that did not touch on our situation, was in no way related to our final day together, and could therefore forestall the reality we both were dreading. It would have cut closer to home, I said a bit dramatically, if Philip Fitzgerald had been on death row, about to order his last meal.

  We alternated that morning: whenever he drooped, I tried cheering us up, whenever I drooped, he took a crack at it. We agreed there was no point in wasting “fully seven percent” of The Twoweeks—and then continued wasting it. Continued morbid.

  “Do you think anyone can enjoy a last supper,” I said, “knowing the executioner waits at dawn?”

  “I was hoping to enjoy my breakfast first, until we went and opened the damned fridge.”

  “We did close it pretty fast,” I offered.

  Hypothetically, we had two ways of evading the executioner. I could weaken (and sign on for an affair) or Cal could strengthen and break with Winnie. Not a word was spoken of either possibility. The deathwatch continued to inform all our maunderings.

  For instance, should we make love under the circumstance, or would that prove “too sad?” We actually discussed this. We could easily have found out, and eventually we did. The answer varied. No tears in the afternoon, copious tears at midnight, then back to no tears in the morning when with a grim sobriety we set about memorizing eyes, memorizing skin.

  There was a baseline absurdity to reckon with, in that we were doing this to ourselves. It was “unbearable” to part and yet we were about to do it. At times, I was overwhelmed by the stupidity of it. Why undertake to do this (The Twoweeks) if it was only going to depress us? The most obvious response to this question, of course, was that we should not have undertaken it. We were idiots who made a major miscalculation.

  All we had by way of rebuttal was poetry—variations on Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, the carpe diem defense. Gamely, we summoned every romantic cliché known to man that day. Pretty much every sentiment we uttered was a cliché—we were a cliché, though it was hardly a help to know that. The jukebox at Charlie’s Kitchen that night was a veritable archive of cliché, the ultimate repository.

  We had gone there for our final meal. It would be Charlie’s double cheeseburg special, $1.99 including the salad and the frosted mug of no-name beer. We sat in a booth and played the cantilever game with their saltshaker, sliding it back and forth whenever we weren’t clasping hands or feeding quarters into the jukebox.

  Our delightful battle-axe of a waitress, who knew her job well, told us not to worry, she could always tell when it was true love. Told us that whatever our current problem was (she could see there was one, wouldn’t “nose around after the details”) we would get through it just fine. Time cures everything. Love conquers all. Clichés on the half-shell, cheap beer by the pitcher.

  “Nice of her not to insist on the details,” said C. “Since she isn’t really our mother.”

  “She is perceptive,” I said. “You have to give her that.”

  “Perceptive? You mean she picked up on our jukebox selection?”

  “It may have given her a clue.”

  We had taken to playing one song over and over, a great song, magnificently rendered by Linda Ronstadt, bodying forth an editorial stance we had thoroughly internalized:

  I’ve done everything I know

  to try and make you mine . . .

  And I think I’m gonna miss you

  for a long long time.

  So gorgeous, so sad, and such a cliché. If country and western music didn’t already exist, we would have had to invent it that night.

  At some point we realized we were trying to get drunk, needing to, and so switched from no-name beer to rotgut bourbon. We joked about finding a veterinarian who would agree to put us down.

  “On to a better world,” said C., lifting his glass at the prospect.

  “Heaven, this would be?”

  “Sure. Don’t you insist you still believe?”

  “Heaven is a tough one. And the idea of you and me getting in? We have already discussed those odds.”

  “No shot, you think?”

  �
�Unless we reform. Radically.”

  “Radical reform is coming, babe. Tomorrow at sunup.”

  “Hush,” was all I could say as the song concluded yet again:

  And I think I’m gonna love you

  for a long long time.

  Somehow (maybe it was the bourbon) we managed to sleep that night and wake to a world that did not outwardly resemble death row. It had rained around midnight and now a mist was burning off. The backyard was a pool of bright fog. This sequence, late rain and early sun, had sweetened the scent of Mrs. Ridley’s roses and honeysuckle. The chickadees, nearly as populous as leaves in the Japanese maple, sang their two-note song. The gallows was nowhere in sight.

  We woke to this handsome, fragrant world. We were young and strong and fortunate in every way. There were people waiting who loved us, there were things we loved to do. There was no justification for the terrible sinking emptiness we felt.

  We hugged, or clutched, for five minutes at the gate before I pushed him away. Launched him. He brushed my cheek with his hand and drifted toward Western Ave. I did not stay to monitor his progress.

  Back inside the apartment, I started cleaning for no reason. Took a shower for no reason. Fidgeted and paced, fighting off every thought that attempted to enter my head. Suddenly life, which had been so full, was empty. No other word captures it. And this emptiness was visceral; I felt eviscerated, hollowed out.

  I wanted to believe the condition was temporary. That final night at Charlie’s Kitchen, Gladys had assured us that time cures everything and why would Gladys lie? I continue to believe her now, a month after she brought us our check, with a frownyface scribbled at the top and a smiley-face, the antidote, at the bottom.

  Maybe I will go consult her, when we get back to town. It’s always darkest before the dawn, Gladys will reassure me. It’s better to have loved and lost, she will remind me, than never to have loved at all.

  “KIND OF a weak curtain, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not a play, Calvert. It was never meant to be seen, much less evaluated.”

  “It could easily be a play, though. The Twoweeks? All it needs is a stronger curtain.”

  “Do you have specific suggestions?”

  “Not me. I play ’em, I don’t make ’em up. But I should think a high holy hush ought to fall on the two figures as they part. Snow maybe? Falling fast, blanketing the ground?”

  “In July?”

  “Well, it doesn’t have to be July. It could be set in December.”

  “You would lose the water leitmotif.”

  “Freeze it. They ski. They skate down frozen rivers and canals.”

  “You’d lose the sex scene, on the island.”

  “They ice-fish. There’s a bob-house, with a woodstove. Snug little ice-fishing hut. They huddle inside for warmth.”

  “It seems you do make ’em up after all, old chap.”

  “Or you could set it in autumn. The hush could be October leaves rustling in the wind, as the camera pans to a streaky salmon sky. A large bird flies over, an eagle—no, I’ve got it, an albatross!”

  “Camera, did you say? Am I to understand that our play, which was a journal, has now become a movie?”

  “Why not? And here’s an even better idea, a stronger close. Want to hear it?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Let’s say you do. It involves the Missing Day. Remember the Missing Day? We put it at the end and let it stand, saying whatever it is you didn’t want Ian to read.”

  “I didn’t want him to read a single word of this.”

  “Okay, then, whatever it is you don’t want me to read. Or yourself, perhaps, to ever read again. Whatever it is, that would be the finale.”

  “What’s so bad about the real finale? The clock ticking down to zero, Linda Ronstadt singing through the credits, the two of us going back to our respective lives . . .”

  “You went to Maine.”

  “A bit later, yes. Where did you go?”

  “Home. Visited for a few days in Bearsville, then started looking for a job the next Monday. I had the Beckett to prepare for, but I had no real paying work.”

  “That’s when you started at the bookstore?”

  “Eighty dollars a week, for thirty hours. I kept telling Pete Wellington it was an invitation to embezzlement. If he paid that poorly, everyone would rip him off and feel completely justified.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t fire you on the spot.”

  “He thanked me. Assured me that everyone would rip him off anyway, and at least now he knew I wouldn’t.”

  “Brilliant. So you were free to rob him blind.”

  “No, Pete won that one. He was pretty damned good at psychological chess. And it was an okay job. The people were fun. It was a lot like working at the gallery, except minus you.”

  “There must have been someone.”

  “Someone like you?”

  “Someone to distract you from me.”

  “There was one reasonably attractive girl. I forget her name. Nice blue eyes, wrote short stories. Apart from me, everyone there was trying to be a writer. A bookstore, you know. But I wasn’t looking for a girl. My goal was to survive my obsession with you and not take it out on Winnie. Going off the rails altogether was not my goal, and it isn’t fair of you to suggest it would be. Did I accuse you of looking to replace me with meaningless, transient love affairs?”

  “You didn’t accuse me, but I did try that. I tried to replace both you and Ian with them, though that’s another story.”

  “Tell it to me.”

  “Forget I said that. There’s no story to tell.”

  “The same way there is no entry for the Missing Day?”

  “Will you please stop with that, Cal? Just let it be?”

  “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll let go of the Missing Day if you let me read about how you tried to replace both me and Ian. Is that it there? The blue folder?”

  “That’s private. You cannot read it—or you may not, I should say.”

  “I love the title.”

  “Hands off. And it’s not a title, it’s just some words I scribbled on the folder.”

  “I remember the phrase, though. You said it on the last day of The Twoweeks, when I was telling about Phil Fitzgerald hiding in the fridge.”

  “Remind me.”

  “You didn’t want to hear the story. Said you didn’t know the guy from Adam, and that anything Fitz’s idiot brother did was as relevant to you as the news that a man in Sicily had just changed his shirt.”

  “That wasn’t me, it was E. B. White.”

  “I’m sure you supplied the proper attribution. And I pointed out that if you went to the movies, and the opening scene happened to be a man changing his shirt in Sicily, you would be intrigued and want to know more.”

  “Maybe so. But a work of art has intrinsic interest, whereas the shenanigans of someone’s nutty brother may not. In any case, I did listen to the story. I was intrigued, and I did want to know more.”

  “Meanwhile, you haven’t chosen. What’ll it be, The Missing Day or your Shirts in Sicily folder? We’ll ‘pick up on one and let the other one ride.’ ”

  “I have so chosen—to go up to bed.”

  “Fine. As soon as you drift off to sleep, I’ll creep down and have a peek.”

  “Open that folder at your peril, Calvert. No means no.”

  “You have a point. It is late, and I too am a-weary a-weary and fain would lie doon. We’ll have plenty of time to discuss the Shirts tomorrow morning.”

  5

  Shirts in Sicily

  (1974–5)

  When The Twoweeks ended, I had no idea what would happen next. Ian had spent time with his brother and with old friends who no doubt ridiculed his tolerance. By now, they might have all convinced him to throw me out like yesterday’s fish.

  And Cal Byerly was gone. As the man on Charlie’s jukebox put it, “Gone gone gone and cryin’ won’t bring him back.” He might even love me, w
hatever that meant, and still he’d be no less gone. So instead of having two wonderful men to choose between, I might have neither—have no one.

  Which might not have been so terrible. Maybe I was too immature to understand that I must not love either of them, Ian or Cal, and that until I met Heinz, or Heathcliff, I would not know the true meaning of love.

  It seemed more likely that I loved both of them, Ian and Cal, and needed to move on all the more. Because whatever I felt for Cal, whatever he felt for me, he was not available. I did not have the option of choosing him. (Gone.) And while instinct told me I might still be permitted to choose Ian, I also might have destroyed the best of what we had.

  I did figure inertia would be on our side—not that inertia is the greatest motivation for lifelong commitment. Still, we were married. Even without children, without real estate or money in the bank, to become unmarried was a process, arduous and ugly. Who would allege what, as grounds for divorce? Who would get custody of the friends and relations? Would I get Ian’s mom on alternate Sundays?

  Whereas if we simply lapsed back into our old life (cooking side by side, strolling up to the Orson Welles and the Plough on Wednesdays, visiting his parents to whom we would present ourselves as happily married) divorce could shape up as arbitrary and unwelcome. I might be able to have him.

  Technically, as I say, I did have him: he was my husband. If he came back east and did not throw me out like yesterday’s fish, I could surmise he still loved me. Whether he could ever trust me again was another matter entirely. Even if we got past Cal Byerly, every man I met might loom (to Ian) as a potential relapse. If you let a woman get away with murder, what’s to keep her from killing again?

  Another fair question was whether I loved him in the way he deserved to be loved, as the kind and brilliant man who had never done me the slightest harm. I began by arguing the affirmative. After all (I argued) I would have loved him Forever (wouldn’t I?) had Cal Byerly never opened his big mouth. If I had lost touch with that older abiding love, why couldn’t I find my way back to it?

  The first obstacle on the road back was the extent to which I was in touch with my chaotic feelings about Cal. I was too involved there; embroiled would be a better word. One minute I would picture him content to be back with Winnie and be rattled by it, angry at the very idea. The next minute I’d picture him miserable with Winnie and want to rush over and save him. I knew I could make him laugh, even if she couldn’t.