by Teri Emory
“We were very happy our first few years,” he went on. “We didn’t have a dime, but neither did anyone we knew. All of our friends were students, most were still single, and when Oliver came along, he was everyone’s baby. He was healthy and beautiful and our friends would fight among themselves for the right to babysit. We loved New Orleans. It’s a great city to be young in. Have you ever been?”
“Never. One year in college, Sarah and Beth and I planned to drive from Buffalo for Mardi Gras. It was an insane idea to begin with, and then a snowstorm killed our plans.”
“Mardi Gras is the worst time to be there. New Orleans is pleasantly decadent most of the time, but during Mardi Gras it’s just loud and vulgar. I lived in that city for nine years, right through my Ph.D., and I never got tired of the place. And then, as you know, I came back to New York to work in my family’s business.”
“The Dr. Drainpipe years.”
“Right. The grind of that work made me crazy. Six long and tiring days a week. Trudy hated our life in New York. I was at work most of the time, and I wasn’t very good company when I was at home.”
“You? You’re so easy to be around.”
“Depends on whom you ask. Trust me, I was no fun. Emotionally detached. Eventually Trudy found other . . . diversions.”
“She had an affair?”
“A series. I was too caught up in my own unhappiness even to notice. What does that say about the state of a marriage? But she had started drinking, and that I noticed. She was hanging around with some younger women she met through work. They didn’t have kids so they went partying every night. Trudy would get a sitter for Oliver, who was about ten at this point, and run around with her friends. Sometimes there were drinks at lunch, too. I’d find Trudy passed out when I got home from work, or she’d smell boozy. We’d argue, she’d get defensive, and then we’d have what is commonly known as make-up sex, and we’d both swear we were going to try harder to get our marriage back on track.”
“No therapy?”
“Not at first. Then Trudy lost her job. The dentist she was working for fired her when she returned from lunch one day with liquor on her breath. That was the first time I came to grips with the fact that I was living with an alcoholic.”
“What did you do?”
He looked down and shook his head. “Everything. Everything! For the next eight years, I never knew how I would find her when I walked in the house. We fought. We went to AA and Al-Anon meetings. We made up. She stopped drinking; we celebrated; she started drinking again. I threatened and pleaded. She apologized and promised. We went to more AA meetings and couples counseling and family therapy. It was in a therapist’s office, by the way, that I found out about Trudy’s affairs. One of the Twelve Steps is that you’re supposed to level with people you’ve been dishonest with. So she leveled. By that time, our marriage was already too battered to recover. I was having plenty of vanishing-wife fantasies, hoping I’d wake up one morning to find that Oliver and I were living alone. But Trudy and I stayed married until Oliver was out of the house. I don’t think we consciously planned it that way, but once he was grown, nothing remained to keep us together.”
“How has Oliver done?”
“He’s been through all the children-of-alcoholics therapy, and I know he has scars, but he functions all right. He was such a bright kid, but the worst of our family dramas took place when Oliver was in high school. He lost interest in school then, and though he gave college a try to make me happy, he dropped out after a year. I’m crazy about Moira, but I wasn’t thrilled that Oliver got married so young. One of my life’s many ironies is that my son now works with his in-laws. I swore I’d never see my own child chained to a family business. I’m wracked with guilt about Oliver. I keep thinking that I was in absentia for so much of his childhood, working all the time, and focused on problems with Trudy when I was home. “
“It seems as if Oliver’s life has turned out fine, even if it isn’t the one you would have chosen for him.”
“It’s a complicated mix, the emotional brew, so to speak, in an alcoholic household. Anger, shame, guilt, hope, remorse—all emotions competing. At this point, I’m trying to be the best father and father-in-law I can. And I’m hoping that my grandchild will give me another chance to be a patriarch.”
“I’m trying to understand why you blamed yourself for Trudy’s problems.”
Gabe looked away and was quiet for a few moments. Then he said, “Oliver was already a teenager when Trudy informed me that she deliberately got pregnant with him. I thought it was just one of those accidents that can happen, even when a woman is on the Pill. Turns out she had stopped taking the Pill on purpose. For all those years I had thought that I was at least half responsible for her having to drop out of school. And if we hadn’t become parents so young then maybe I wouldn’t have needed to work for my father.”
“You must have been furious.”
“You bet I was. But then I’d realize how much she cared about Oliver and I’d think about how in love we were in the early days in New Orleans. I had dragged her to New York, which she hated. I was always working; she was always alone. I’d get enraged when she drank, especially when I saw the effect on Oliver, but then she’d be so contrite and I’d feel guilty and I’d dare to think, ‘Maybe she means it this time.’ She’s not a bad person, and I hope she gets well, but I’m not in the business of taking care of her anymore.”
“No more thoughts of violence and mayhem, then? You don’t want to do her in?”
“You have to be involved, to depend on someone, in order to get that angry. Once I gave up on my marriage and my personal investment in Trudy’s recovery, my evil thoughts about her disappeared. It took years, of course. Now I’m just sad for her.”
“I still have trouble recognizing the Gabe I know in what you say about your life with Trudy,” I said. “Even given your responsibilities at your father’s business, I can’t imagine you—how did you describe it?—emotionally detached.”
“And I can’t imagine ever feeling detached from you.”
This is my chance. Tell him it’s a little too stifling, a little too much. Tell him to go slow. Tell him that we could use a little detachment here. “Is that why you take such good care of me?” I began.
He looked puzzled. “What in the world do you mean?”
“Come on, you can’t be serious. Coming to see me in Florida? Never leaving me for a moment when my mother was dying? Giving use of your house to store my mother’s things?”
“I used a free plane ticket that would have expired and spent a weekend in Florida with you, Aunt Sylvia, and Adam’s Rib. I had the privilege of getting to know Celeste. And I’m one of the lucky few in Manhattan who has a house with more space than furniture. Nothing I did was a burden to me,” he said sharply.
“I’m making you angry,” I said.
“No,” he said, too quickly. And then, “Just a little frustrated. Look at us, Miriam, don’t you see how good we are together? Everything is working here. We’re so well matched. Why won’t you just let things happen?”
“I just feel, sometimes, as if it’s hard to breathe.”
“I’m smothering you?” He sounded hurt.
“A little, yes. You’ve done so much for me, and I do love you, but I feel a little—off-balance. Our relationship is uneven.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” he said. “Uneven? Are we talking about equality?”
“You don’t let me do enough for you. Take that look off your face; I’m not talking about what we do in bed.”
He smiled. “I wasn’t thinking about sex, though let me go on record as one very satisfied man in that regard. I was thinking about how amazing it is that the most obvious things can sometimes elude us.”
“What am I missing, then?”
“I meant myself, what I was missing. All of this time, I’ve been ce
rtain that I’d done a good job of communicating what you mean to me, but now I see I left out the most important part.”
“Which is?”
“I think it was Fitzgerald who said that there are no second acts in American lives. But I’m out to prove him wrong. I’ve finally got a career that means something to me, and maybe being a grandfather will give me a shot at the family life I didn’t have in my First Act. In a way, that’s where you come in.”
“How?”
“The thing I most want is a second chance at giving Oliver good family memories, to compensate for the childhood he endured. I realize he’s grown, and it may be a little late, but I still harbor a fantasy that my son and I can be more than passing acquaintances in each other’s lives.”
“What do I have to do with any of that?”
“I can’t do it alone. I don’t want to. In a way, I closed myself off emotionally when my marriage started to fall apart. Being with Trudy became nothing but work, and I was too exhausted to give anything to Oliver. Years of therapy and I learned one important thing about myself: I do better in all aspects of my life when I have a woman in it. Not just any woman—someone who’s loving and honest and, especially, in light of my marriage, responsible. An adult. I need you, Miriam. I need you so I can feel my life. And I’m sorry if I pushed you away in my eagerness to hold on to you.” He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, and he whispered, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
__________
I think often about how sad it made my mother that I hadn’t married while she was alive. I hope wherever she is that she knows I’ve found my bashert. “Took you long enough,” she’d probably say.
Sarah and Beth have insisted on throwing us an engagement party. They’ve reserved Windows on the World for a night in the late spring. Violet and Grant have promised to be here for it. Violet called the other day and mentioned that Peter had shown up at an ecology conference in Acedia Bay, and she told him I was getting married. He wished me the best, she said. Then she quickly apologized for bringing up Peter’s name. “I don’t mind at all,” I told her. “I’ve moved on to the Second Act of my life.”
Gabe and I are still working out the details of how and where we’ll get married. I’m only half joking when I tell him that I wouldn’t mind a honeymoon in the midst of a film festival somewhere. Meanwhile, I’m researching appropriate attire for a middle-aged bride. We’re planning to live in Gabe’s brownstone, of course. Manhattan real estate being what it is, we can sell my apartment and buy a beautiful weekend house in the country. We’re looking in Connecticut, around where Beth and Jim live, for a place with a big backyard and enough bedrooms for when our grandchildren visit.
Beth:
Truth and Consequences
“Now I’m no longer doubtful
Of what I’m living for”
—Carole King
The Manhattan apartment that Gillian Investments bought for Jim is functional and sterile, furnished by the building’s management company with more money than imagination. The color scheme is an orgy of neutrals, nothing to startle the senses. Tweedy Berber carpeting goes wall-to-wall in the living room and two bedrooms; the kitchen and bathroom floors are covered in stark white tiles. The furniture is upholstered in fabrics of unrelenting beige tones. Generic silk plants in straw baskets abound. The only items that save the place from looking like a hotel suite are family photos on a console table in the living room and Jim’s NordicTrack in the spare bedroom.
Jim has met few of his neighbors; most of the apartments are corporate owned and change occupants frequently. The building has a doorman and a concierge and a staff of at least a dozen young people who will happily procure theater tickets, airport limos, nannies, and housekeepers for residents willing to ante up an arm and a leg. The lobby leads to a parade of shops offering the kinds of products and services that suggest transient, rushed lives: a one-hour dry cleaner, a gourmet carry-out place, a Kinko’s.
On the evening of the day I spent with Andrew, Jim is already at the apartment when I arrive. He’s on the terrace, on the phone. His coat and suit jacket are thrown over the back of one of the dining room chairs; he’s in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a loosened tie. I rap on the sliding glass door. Jim holds up his index finger, and mouths, “One minute.” I put the bag of food and a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, and I toss the shopping bag with my new sleepwear—sheer, lacy and black—on the bed.
“So, what got into you today?” Jim says on coming in from the terrace. “Not that I ever mind when you stay here with me. How long has it been?”
“Can’t even remember the last time. You have a good day?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. How come you’re in town?”
“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable,” I say. “Then we’ll talk.”
Jim’s eyebrows knit in worry. “Everything okay?”
“Entirely okay. I promise.” He still looks tense. “Go change your clothes, and I’ll get the champagne,” I say.
“I recall a promise of food, too,” he says. “I hope you’ve brought some. I’m starving.”
“I’ve got it,” I say. “You know me, Jim. I always keep my promises.”
We sit on one of the beige sofas; Jim pours champagne into two flute-shaped glasses. I ask him not to interrupt, to let me tell him everything before he speaks. He agrees. I begin with Andrew’s phone call before the weekend, and I’m acutely aware of how, involuntarily, I am editing what I say. I hear myself talking, and I am watching Jim’s face, and I know that no matter how prudently I choose my words, they are bound to unhinge him. I say nothing about my fantasies involving Andrew, not a word about the flood of memories that surged in my brain as I dressed that morning, as I drove to a hotel to meet my first love. I position the rendezvous as if I were talking about an appointment with one of my patients—Andrew sounded desperate and depressed, et cetera. I can’t find the boundaries of truth; I don’t know what I should be saying, not saying. The words keep coming, and I feel like a fraud.
I can tell that it takes effort for Jim to keep his word and not speak until I am finished. He doesn’t say anything, but his feelings register on his face. His jaw clenches, he squints as if he’s trying to get me into focus. He sips from his glass every so often, but he never takes his eyes off me. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this is agonizing.
“Is that it?” Jim says. I nod. “I guess it was inevitable,” he says.
“What?”
“That sooner or later you’d figure out a way to get Andrew in your life again.”
“Jim, he called me . . .”
“And you answered the call,” he says. “I’ll tell you something, Beth. I’ve felt for years that on some level you have always been sorry that you didn’t marry Andrew.” Oh, Jim, I thought. I’ve never been sorry that I married you. I felt a longing for my youth, for the life I had before terrible things happened.
My heart sank. “Andrew broke up with me,” I say. “He didn’t want to be married to me.”
“That doesn’t say that you were really finished with him. In your head, I mean. As long as we’re being honest here—we are being honest, aren’t we, Beth?—tell me, weren’t there times when you would have preferred to be with Andrew? Exciting, talented, bohemian Andrew? Instead of me, your dull, businessman husband? The life you have with me must seem so pedestrian compared to living in a palazzo and traipsing through Italy with a musician—”
“I never compared you to him,” I say. “I told you about Andrew when you and I first met. I’ve never talked about him since. And there’s nothing dull about you, or our life.”
“Doesn’t mean you weren’t thinking about him.”
“You know how much I loved being in Italy. I do think often about my life then, about Rome, and he was there. I can’t change my history, any more than you can change yours.”
“Andrew is no longer just historical. You were with him today.”
“And I’ve told you, nothing happened.”
“You mean you didn’t sleep with him. Did you want to?”
Not exactly. I wanted him to want me; I wanted to feel young and lighthearted again. For one afternoon, I wanted a man to look at me with the kind of desire that a husband of three decades can’t possibly summon. It wasn’t love, it was . . .
I took too long to respond.
“Guess I’ve got my answer,” Jim says. “And what was that little phone-sex exercise with me this afternoon? Did you think you could come here tonight and seduce me into forgetting that you spent the afternoon with the man you wish you had married?”
“I don’t wish I’d married anyone but you,” I say. “And I told him that today.”
“So the subject came up, did it? What do you wish, Beth? You want to play same-time-next-year with your old boyfriend? You expect me to believe you’re finished with him?”
“I believed you,” I say slowly. “You had an affair, and I forgave you. I took your word when you said it was over.”
“Ah,” he says sharply. “So now we’re even.”
“Hardly,” I snap back. “I didn’t go to bed with Andrew.”
“That’s not the only kind of cheating there is,” he says. “You were probably more intimate with him today than I ever was with—with anyone besides you.”
“Patricia. Patricia Remlin. I haven’t forgotten her.”
Jim puts his champagne glass on the table and he stands up. “I’m going to the office for a while. I’ll be back, but don’t wait up for me.” He puts on his coat.
“Jim, please. Stay, let’s talk.”
“Dr. Gillian always thinks talking makes things better,” he says in a mocking tone, throwing his cell phone into his briefcase and snapping it shut. He’s speaking in code—a reference to our arguments about Adam. Jim is so furious with me that nothing is off limits.