I heard the door shut. I kept my palms pressed against my eyes. Because I couldn’t face opening them. I couldn’t face anything right now. I was in a nose dive.
The door opened again. I heard George softly say my name. I removed my hands. He came into focus. He was very pale, and looked like he hadn’t slept for days. Standing next to him was his mother. I suddenly heard myself say: ‘I don’t want her here.’
Mrs Grey blanched. ‘What was that you said?’ she asked.
‘Mother …’ George said, putting a hand on her arm - a hand which she immediately brushed away.
‘Get her the hell out of here now,’ I shouted.
She calmly approached the bed. ‘I will forgive that comment on the grounds that you have been through a traumatic experience.’
‘I don’t want your forgiveness. Just go.’
Her face flexed into one of her tight little smiles. She bent down close to me. ‘Let me ask you something, Sara. Having self-induced this tragedy, are you now using disrespect as a way of dodging the fact that you’ve become damaged goods?’
That’s when I hit her. Using my free hand, I slapped her hard across the face. It caught her off-balance, sending her to the floor. She let out a scream. George came rushing forward, yelling something incoherent. He helped his mother back to her feet, whispering, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’ in her ear. She turned and faced me, looking disoriented, dumbfounded, robbed of her triumphant malice. George put an arm around her and helped her out the door. A few minutes later, he came back in as rattled as someone who had just walked away from a car wreck.
‘One of the nurses is looking after her,’ he said. ‘I said that she took a turn and fell.’
I turned away from him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, approaching me. ‘I can’t begin to tell you how sorry …’
I cut him off. ‘We have nothing more to say to each other.’
He tried to reach for me. I put my arm up to fend him off.
‘Darling …’ he said.
‘Please leave, George.’
‘You were right to hit her. She deserved …’
‘George, I don’t want to talk right now.’
‘Fine, fine. I’ll come back later. But darling, know this: we’re going to be fine. I don’t care what Dr Eisenberg says. It’s just an opinion. Worst comes to worst, we can always adopt. But, really …’
‘George - there’s the door. Please use it.’
He heaved a deep sigh. He looked rattled. And scared.
‘All right, I’ll be back first thing tomorrow.’
‘No, George. I don’t want to see you tomorrow.’
‘Well, I can come back the day after …’
‘I don’t want to see you again.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I’m saying it.’
‘I’ll do anything …’
‘Anything?’
‘Yes, darling. Anything.’
‘Then I want you to do two things. The first is, call my brother. Tell him what’s happened. Tell him everything.’
‘Of course, of course. I’ll call him as soon as I get home. And the second request?’
‘Stay away from me.’
This took a moment to sink in. ‘You don’t really mean that,’ he said.
‘Yes - I really mean that.’
Silence. I finally looked at him. He was crying.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
He rubbed his eyes with his hands. ‘I’ll do as you ask,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’
He was frozen to the spot, unable to move.
‘Goodbye, George,’ I whispered, then turned away.
After he left, a nurse came in, carrying a small ceramic bowl, containing a syringe and a vial. She placed the bowl on the bedside table, inserted the needle into the rubber top of the vial, inverted it and filled part of the syringe with a viscous fluid.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Something to help you sleep.’
‘I don’t want to sleep.’
‘Doctor’s orders.’
Before I could object further, I felt a quick jab in the arm. I was under within seconds. When I came to again, it was morning. Eric was sitting on the edge of my bed. He gave me a sad smile.
‘Hi there,’ he said.
I reached for his hand. He moved closer down the bed, and threaded his fingers through mine. ‘Did George call you?’ I asked.
‘Yes. He did.’
‘And did he tell you … ?’
‘Yes. He told me.’
Suddenly I was sobbing. Immediately Eric put his arms around me. I buried my head in his shoulder. My sobs quickly escalated. He held me tighter as I cried. I was inconsolable. I had never known such wild, unbridled grief. And I couldn’t stop.
I don’t know how long I carried on crying. Eric said nothing. No words of consolation or condolence. Because words were meaningless at this moment. I would never have children. That was the terrible fact of the matter. Nothing anyone said could change that. Tragedy renders language impotent.
Eventually I subsided. I let go of Eric and fell back against the pillows. Eric reached out and stroked my face. We said nothing for a long time. I was still in shock. Finally, he broke our silence.
‘So …’ he said.
‘So …’ I said.
‘My sofa’s not the most comfortable bed in the world, but …’
‘It will do fine.’
‘That’s settled then. While I was waiting for you to wake up, I spoke with one of the nurses. They think you’ll be ready to leave in about three days. So - if it’s okay with you - I’ll call George and arrange a time to go to your house in Old Greenwich and pack up your things.’
‘It was never my house.’
‘George was pretty emotional on the phone. He begged me to get you to reconsider.’
‘There is absolutely no chance of that.’
‘I intimated that to him.’
‘He should marry his mother and get it over with.’
‘Why didn’t I think of that line?’
I almost managed a small smile.
‘It will be good to have you back, S. I’ve missed you.’
‘I’ve fucked it up, Eric. I’ve fucked everything up.’
‘Don’t think that,’ he said. ‘Because it’s not true. But do keep using language like that. It dents your refined image. And I approve.’
‘I landed myself in this entire disaster.’
‘That’s an interpretation - and one which is guaranteed to cause you a lot of useless grief.’
‘I deserve the grief …’
‘Stop it! You deserve none of this. But it’s happened. And, in time, you will find a way of dealing with it.’
‘I’ll never deal with it.’
‘You will. Because you have to deal with it. You have no choice.’
‘I suppose I could jump out a window.’
‘But think of all the bad movies you’d miss.’
This time, I nearly managed a laugh. ‘I missed you too, Eric. More than I can say.’
‘Give us two weeks together as roommates, and I’m sure we’ll end up never talking again.’
‘An asteroid will hit Manhattan before that happens. There’s a pair of us in it.’
‘Nice expression.’
‘Yes. The Irish have all the right lines.’
He rolled his eyes and said, ‘Yez lives and yez learns.’
‘Too damn true.’
I glanced out the window. It was a perfect summer day. A hard blue sky. An incandescent sun. Not a single hint of an inclement future. It was a day when everything should have seemed limitless, possible.
‘Tell me something, Eric …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Is it always so hard?’
‘Is what always so hard?’
‘Everything.’
He laughed. ‘Of course. Haven’t you figured that out yet?’
‘Sometimes
I wonder: will I ever figure anything out?’
He laughed again. ‘You know the answer to that question, don’t you?’
I kept my gaze on the world beyond. And said,
‘Yes, I’m afraid I do.’
Part Three
Sara
One
THE FIRST THING I noticed about Dudley Thomson were his fingers. They were short, stubby, fleshy - like a link of Polish sausages. He had a large oval face. His chin was augmented by two tiers of fat. He had thinning hair, round horn-rimmed glasses, and a very expensive three-piece suit. It was dark grey with a thick chalk pinstripe. I guessed that it was made-to-measure, as it carefully encased his bulky frame. His office was wood paneled, with heavy green velvet curtains, deep leather chairs, a large mahogany desk. It struck me as a small-scale approximation of a London gentlemen’s club. In fact, everything about Dudley Thomson reeked of Anglophilia. He looked like an overweight version of T.S. Eliot. Only unlike Mr Eliot he wasn’t a poet, dressed in the raiments of an English banker. Rather, he was a divorce lawyer - a partner at Potholm, Grey and Connell; the white-shoe Wall Street firm of which Edwin Grey, Sr, was a senior partner.
I had been summoned by Dudley Thomson to a meeting at his office. It was three weeks after I had been discharged from Greenwich Hospital. I was staying with my brother at his apartment on Sullivan Street, curling up every night on his lumpy sofa. As one of the senior nurses at the hospital had warned me, I would probably go through a period of depression and grief after my release. She was right. I had spent most of the three weeks inside Eric’s apartment, only occasionally venturing outside for groceries or an afternoon double feature at the Academy of Music on 14th Street. I really didn’t want to be around many people - especially those friends of mine who were married with children. The sight of a baby carriage on the street chilled me. So too did passing a shop which sold maternity outfits or infant paraphernalia. Curiously, I hadn’t cried since that outburst in Greenwich Hospital. Instead, I had felt constantly numb, and wanted to do nothing more than sequester myself within the four walls of Eric’s place. Which, with my brother’s tolerant encouragement, was exactly what I had been doing - squandering the days with a stack of pulp thrillers, and working my way through Eric’s extensive record collection. I rarely turned on the radio. I didn’t buy a newspaper. I didn’t answer the phone (not that it rang very much anyway). Eric - the most patient man on the planet - didn’t worry out loud about my solipsism. Though he made subtle enquiries about my well-being, he never once suggested a night out. Nor did he pass a comment about my dazed gloom. He knew what was going on. He knew it had to run its course.
Three weeks into this period of self-incarceration, I received a letter from Dudley Thomson. He explained that he would be representing the Grey family in the divorce settlement and asked me to arrange an appointment with him at my earliest possible convenience. He said I could have my own legal counsel present at this meeting - but suggested that I not go to the expense of hiring a lawyer for this preliminary discussion, as the Greys wanted to settle matters as quickly as possible.
‘Hire a lawyer,’ Eric said after I showed him this letter. ‘They want to settle for as little as they can.’
‘But I really don’t want anything from them.’
‘You’re entitled to alimony … or at least a sizeable settlement. That’s the very least those bastards owe you.’
‘I’d rather just walk away …’
‘They exploited you …’
‘No, they didn’t.’
‘They used you as a battery hen and …’
‘Eric, stop turning this into a class warfare drama. Especially as the Greys and ourselves are basically from the same damn class.’
‘You should still take them for every penny possible.’
‘No - because that would be unethical. And that’s not my style. I know what I want from the Greys. If they give it to me, then this entire matter can be settled without further grief. Believe me, what I want more than anything right now is no further grief.’
‘At least find some tough divorce lawyer to have in your corner …’
‘I need nobody. That’s my new credo, Eric. From now on, I’m depending on no one.’
And so, I made an appointment to see Mr Thomson, and walked into his office without a legal entourage. He was rather surprised by that.
‘I actually expected to see you here today with at least one legal counselor,’ he said.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘After advising me that I needed no counsel present at this interview?’
He flashed me a smile, showing bad dental work (a true sign of his deep Anglophilia). ‘I expect no one to really follow my advice,’ he said.
‘Well, I have. So - let’s get this over with. Tell me what you are proposing.’
He coughed a bit, and shuffled through a few papers, trying to mask his surprise at my directness. ‘The Greys want to be as generous as possible …’
‘You mean, George Grey wants to be as generous as possible. I was - am still - married to him, not his family.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he said, sounding a little flustered. ‘George Grey wants to offer you a most reasonable settlement.’
‘What’s his - and your - idea of a “most reasonable settlement”?’
‘We were thinking of something in the region of two hundred dollars a month … payable up until the time you remarry.’
‘I’m never getting married again.’
He attempted a benevolent smile. He failed. ‘I can understand you’re upset, Mrs Grey, given the circumstances. But I’m certain an attractive, intelligent woman like yourself will have no trouble finding another husband …’
‘Except that I’m not in the market for another husband. Anyway, even if I was, I am now, medically speaking, damaged goods - to use my mother-in-law’s kind words.’
He looked deeply embarrassed. ‘Yes, I heard about your … medical difficulties. I am dreadfully sorry.’
‘Thank you. But back to business. I’m afraid two hundred dollars a month is unacceptable. My salary at Saturday Night/Sunday Morning was three hundred a month. I think I deserve that.’
‘I’m certain three hundred dollars a month would be agreeable.’
‘Good. Now I have a proposal to put to you. When I told you that I am never planning to marry again, I’m certain you realized that George will, in effect, be paying me alimony for the rest of my life.’
The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) Page 32