by Dale, Lisa
Lauren was transfixed by him, by the way he’d opened up since she’d arrived at his house last night. He told her more now: about being poor as a child—the dizzying contrast of so much scarcity in a house that was full of so much love. He’d mentioned to her in passing that he’d hoped to have a family someday, and then, to her amazement, he’d blushed slightly and changed the subject, as if he’d just confessed the most intimate desire of his life.
As they talked, her mind occasionally wandered back to the second story of his house, where she’d seen the forgotten printers and schoolroom desks, handkerchiefs and bowling trophies. He was letting her into his life as much as he dared—and she admired him for that. She too had felt that it was easier to open up than it had been a day ago. After all, she was leaving. She could share her deepest secrets with him, if she wanted to, with no more repercussions than tossing a handful of petals into a strong wind.
They ate slowly, and when the food was gone, they ordered second cups of coffee and laughed about needing to stay awake. Over the rim of her coffee cup, she watched him.
She’d once met an analyst who worked as a marriage counselor. He’d conducted an informal study of as many couples as he could find—a scientific parlor trick mostly for colleagues and friends. He put the couples in a room, recorded their behavior. For two minutes he asked them to talk about each other: Tell me the story of how you met. Tell me what you like about your fiancé. Tell me what drives you crazy. Within two minutes of watching—reading the micro expressions that flashed fast as lightning bolts through otherwise placid smiles—he could predict with an accuracy of 80 percent if the couple would separate within the next few years. The talent was frightening. She wondered: If that man were here now, watching, what would he say?
In their booth at the diner, Lauren thought she and Will might have looked like lovers of months, weeks, or years. They might have been husband and wife, or just friends. To outsiders, they were no more noticeable or memorable than the pictures of movie stars framed on the walls. And yet, Lauren could feel that this was important—this moment—branded on her memory.
“What are you thinking?” Will asked.
She smiled, the edge of a straw between her teeth. “What are you?”
“I’m wondering what I can do to talk you into staying another night.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“A standing invitation,” he said.
She thrilled to think of it—that she could stay, and more, that she might always be welcome in his bed. In the back of her mind, she was captive to the fantasy of a different kind of future: one where they had breakfast together like this often, one where she wore jeans to work instead of panty hose, one where she and Will lived together and fussed about what color to paint the upstairs bedroom, one where they had children who played in the sprinkler in the front yard.
She put down her mug, rubbed her eyes for a moment. How ridiculous she was being. She’d known Edward for months before she’d let herself begin to trust him—with terrible results. And yet here she sat at a diner, like some college kid after a night of gluttonous indulgence, mooning over the future and everything that could be—with a man she’d known for a mere handful of days.
Will noticed her hesitation. His eyes were fathomless, honest and open, all the way down. “You don’t need to make a reservation.”
She smiled. “No reservations, then,” she said. For this one morning, she could let herself imagine what it would be like to spend the night with him again, to spend many nights with him. What would it hurt—really—to momentarily pretend?
The waitress brought Will’s change. He reached for Lauren’s hand as they walked to his car, like any two people who had been together so long that holding hands was second nature. Somewhere beyond the noise of the roadway, sirens blared.
Eula and Arlen talked of old times. Arlen wanted to know: What ever happened with the new washing machine that the family had bought her sister for her birthday? Had she liked it? And what about the neighbor who played his music so loud all night? Had Eula ever called the cops?
They went out for an early lunch—a big meal of pasta and sweet white cheese. They’d forgotten to bring wine, but the sodas were effervescent and for all Arlen knew they might have been champagne. Sconces on the walls cast a soft glow over the hand-painted stucco, scenes of gondolas and bell towers and small ships out to sea. Eula’s rings caught the light and sparkled gold as she picked up her glass.
Eula. Sitting across from him, right there. Sometimes, he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying because his brain was too filled up by her to take it all in at once. He felt as if he’d just picked up a book that he’d stopped reading in the middle; he could remember the basic premises, and the details came back with prompting. Eula was patient in answering his questions: Yes, her sister had liked the washing machine. No, she’d never called the cops on their noisy neighbor. Shortly after Arlen had “left,” the man moved away. Eula couldn’t remember his name.
He was glad she was so willing to talk—she’d always been generous with her thoughts. She’d never shied away from telling people the intimate details of her life—and Arlen relished everything: whether she was talking about paying off the mortgage or how loud one of her coworkers blew his nose.
But for all the questions that he’d asked about her life, she’d asked him none. He knew what she was wondering. If she were a different woman, she might have said, What was prison like? with the same look of wonder in her eyes as if she were asking what it had been like living on the moon. She, like everyone, probably wanted to know: What kind of violence had he seen, had he faced? What kinds of killers, robbers, and rapists?
But she asked none of those questions. She just talked. And talked. And Arlen’s heart was filled up by her talking, as if she poured herself right into him and he thought he might overflow. It wasn’t until the waiter brought dessert—a tiramisu that looked like God Himself had come down and beaten the eggs—that her look changed and her voice grew soft.
“The coffee isn’t very good,” she said.
“Compared to what?” He laughed. “One thing about prison—you learn to appreciate things more. In some ways.”
She looked down. The tiramisu was between them, powdered sugar on the plate. “I have to tell you something.”
Arlen braced himself. He was desperate to know: Was she seeing someone? Did they still have a chance? Could she love a man who’d been in prison?
She cleared her throat. “I went to your mother’s funeral.”
Arlen held the coffee cup in his hand; the handle was too tiny for his fingers. He didn’t know what to say. He supposed that whether she had or had not gone to the funeral service, neither decision would have been wrong. “Was it … nice?”
“They had it at her church. Everybody who knew her came. She wore her blue dress with the yellow flowers.”
“Yeah. She loved that dress.”
Eula arranged her fork in a line even with her plate. “I tried to help her, when she was sick. But she wouldn’t let me.”
“No, probably not. She might not’ve let me help her either, if I was there. You know she was proud.”
When Eula looked up at him, her eyes were slightly wet. “Arlen, do you think she would have been mad that I went—to the funeral, I mean?”
“She would’ve wanted you there.”
“I went partly because I needed to say good-bye. Because I owed her that respect. But also, I went because I felt like, in some little way, I went for you too.”
Arlen scratched the side of his nose. “You went for me, meaning, in my place?”
“No. I mean, I went to say good-bye.” She dabbed at her eyes with her napkin. “You were only supposed to have been gone for three days. Three days. I would have done things different if I knew I wasn’t gonna see you again.”
“They wouldn’t let me out,” he said.
She laughed through her tears. “Prisons are like that.”
“For the funeral, I’m saying. The superintendent had a thing against me because nobody could make me admit that I was innocent. See—a lotta guys say they’re innocent when they first come in. They’ll look you square in the face and say, ‘I didn’t do it,’ and you can tell they believe every word. But eventually, they fess up to being guilty.”
“But not you,” Eula said.
“No, not me.”
“So the superintendent wouldn’t let you out for the funeral.”
Arlen bit the inside of his lip before he spoke. He hated to talk about prison; he’d said very little about it since they let him out, because he thought if he could keep from talking about it, it would disappear. But now, he wanted Eula to understand at least one small thing of what he’d gone through. His mind flashed an odd image, one in which he was breaking himself out of his own mind like a prisoner digging with a spoon.
“They might’ve let me out,” he said. “If things had been different. But I was in the isolation unit. I knocked out a guy who tried to … well … Let’s just say I didn’t take any nonsense.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
He looked at her, her soft hair, her pert nose that was wide at the nostrils and dipped between her eyes, her mouth that was plush and red. He wanted to put his hand on hers, but he didn’t.
“I’m glad you went to the funeral,” he said. “It makes me feel better. Knowing you were there.”
“Even though I went to say good-bye?”
“You can say good-bye to me now, if you want to. It’s up to you.”
She sat still for a moment, then reached out her hand for his. He took it—an awkward, suspended handshake. “I’d rather say hello again.”
Arlen felt tears come to his eyes—damn and blasted tears. He hated to cry in front of Eula. But he couldn’t help it. The tears came. “I’m gonna be a better man,” he said. “Believe me. I promise I am.”
Her smile was like the sun on a winter’s day. “Arlen. You couldn’t be a better man if you tried.”
In the afternoon, Will made love to Lauren again, though she was half-asleep and turned on her side. He simply couldn’t get as much as he wanted from her. Afterward, he dropped beside her into a deep and exhausted sleep, only dimly aware of her hips nestled against his thighs, the heat of her under his arm.
When he woke again, the light in the room had changed, the square of afternoon sun on the hardwood having stretched into a rectangle. He got up sleepily. The first floor of his house had central air, and the hair on his arms stood on end as he crossed the bedroom, stepping over discarded shirts and shoes. Lauren was not in the bathroom; no light shone under the door. He walked down the long hallway that led to the kitchen and when he did not see her at the table or the sink, he began to worry that she’d left.
Only afterward did he realize that should have been his second worry, not his first.
He walked up the stairs slowly, running his hand along the banister. And though the hair at the back of his neck stood on end, he felt oddly empty. The fact of the moment confronted him; the meaning of it did not.
He found her sitting in the middle of one of his more recently filled-up rooms. She’d cleared a space for herself on the floor in the center of the heaps. She was cross-legged, wearing an old pair of his shorts and one of his tees. It fell from her shoulders like a slack sail.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice flat.
“Looking.” She picked up a child’s toolbox—a plastic hammer and screwdriver were on the floor. “I used to have one of these when I was a kid.”
“I still do,” he said.
She smiled; to his surprise, he didn’t see any traces of judgment or disappointment there. He didn’t even see repulsion. He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. He didn’t want her to know he was trembling. “So now you know.”
“Am I the only one?”
“Other people have their suspicions, but I’ve never acknowledged it to anyone. Obviously, you’re the exception.”
“Then we’re even,” she said. He must have looked confused, because she put a hand over her heart to remind him. Last week, she’d told him about her palpitations, when he’d been the only one to know.
“Even Steven,” he said, flat.
She got to her feet; her toenail polish was chipped now. He could picture her talking into her cell phone to schedule a pedicure when she returned to Albany. “How long has it been like this?”
“Probably since forever. But it only got bad since I bought the house.”
She stood before him, looking up. He realized she wasn’t going to ask him the hard question: Why? She’d come to know him over the last week—know him and understand him. He should have been angry by her intrusion; instead, he felt relief.
“Does it disgust you?” he asked.
“It’s dirty. There’s a lot of dust.”
He nodded. She stepped away, bent to look at an old diploma frame. He’d thought, at one point, he might need it. He still could.
“Can we go downstairs?” he asked.
She took his hand, and they walked to his kitchen. She sat on a high stool, tucking her feet beneath her on a silver bar.
“Cold?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“You should have napped; you’ve got a long drive tonight.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
She pushed her hair back with two hands; it curled neatly around her ears, a comma at her earlobe. “Just … thinking.”
“About?”
“Whether I’m making the right decisions.”
He leaned against the kitchen table, pleased that she was willing to direct the conversation away from his illness for a time. “Do you mean decisions about your job?”
“I’ve been working toward getting this promotion since I was first out of college.”
“Why do you want it so bad?”
She hesitated. “So many reasons. I want it because I can want it. I hate the feeling of my time belonging to someone else.”
“Like a boss.”
“If I get this promotion, I make my own decisions from now on. I’ll be the only person in charge of me.”
“And you’ll be in charge of all the people who will work for you.”
“That too,” she said. “Plus, my family will be absolutely thrilled. My dad’s planning a run for the Senate one of these days. Maybe.”
He paused, thinking. Over the last twenty-four hours, she’d told him more about her family: her ambitious father, her retreating mother, her brother whom she loved like a best friend. He wondered if she felt any need to compensate in her family for Jonah—who probably wasn’t considered presentable in public among the Hudson Valley elite. But he wasn’t going to make that guess aloud.
“Those aren’t reasons for wanting the promotion,” he said. “They’re excuses. The only reason for wanting one is that you enjoy the work and love what you do.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to know,” she said.
He went to her, put his hands on either side of her neck. He looked into her face. When she’d first come into his shop, he’d thought she was hard and calculating. Now there was not even the slightest shadow of that hardness there anymore. The last vestige of it had melted away in the night. “Stay here a little while longer. You shouldn’t make snap decisions. You should think things through.”
“They’re voting tomorrow, and I have to be there. Besides, the reason I came to Richmond was to see Arlen. And he doesn’t want me here.”
“I want you here.”
“Will … ”
“I do. I want you here. You know it—even if I don’t say it aloud.”
“My life’s in Albany.”
“Your job is in Albany.”
“And my family.”
“They can visit,” he said.
“This is crazy.”
“It’s not crazy.” He took her wrists, gathering her hands between them. “Do
n’t go back. If you go back, what’s there waiting for you? A life where you have to walk around pretending to be perfect all the time? That’s not a life at all.”
“It’s my life,” she said, and he saw a flash of anger in her eyes.
“It’s a fake life.”
“And you know that from personal experience.”
He dropped her hands. The barb had struck.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No. You’re right. It is a fake life. The first floor of it, anyway.”
She reached for him, then let her hand fall, empty. “I don’t want to spend my last hour here fighting with you.”
“Why were you upstairs? What were you doing up there?”
He thought he saw her blush. “I guess I wanted to get to know you a little better. Some part of you that no one else sees. While I can.”
“This doesn’t have to be over. Albany isn’t that far.”
“You told me it was Oz,” she said.
He winced, remembering his own words. How hard he’d tried to make her seem so much different from him during those first days. He knew that it couldn’t work between them; they would struggle. They would be separated not only by miles, but by the strata of society, and by the bulwarks of things that were useless except that Will clung to them for dear life. Perhaps they might try for a while to be with each other, but inevitably, as with all the women Will had ever thought he might connect with, it would come to an end. Her sense of duty was a double-edged sword: it had brought her to him, and soon it would take her away.
“You have to promise me something,” she said. “You have to get help. You can’t keep living like this.”
“What’s the difference to you?”
“I care,” she said.
“You won’t have to see it. You’re leaving.”
“So let me leave knowing that you’re going to take good care of yourself. I know how this must feel … ”
“No, you don’t. You have no idea how it feels. You have no idea.”
“What I mean is, I think I understand.”
“Why? Because you have your own baggage? Because you’re hoarding all these invisible things like I’m hoarding bread boxes and skateboards?”