The Easy Way Out

by Stephen McCauley

  My parents stopped talking, and Ryan smiled hesitantly and expectantly.

  “There isn’t going to be any honeymoon to rearrange or marriage to meddle with or anything else. There isn’t going to be any wedding this July. Tony’s in love with someone other than Loreen, someone other than himself.”

  My father looked at me skeptically, and Ryan gave me a disapproving glance. The traffic was rushing past the huge windows across the room in a blur of lights. A drop of sweat fell from my armpit and rolled down the side of my body. I felt stranded on the island of our wide, round table. “Her name,” I said, “is Vivian.”

  Then, thinking I was making a stand for my two brothers and myself, I told them the rest of what I knew.

  My mother dropped her napkin onto her plate, my father shook his head in disgust, and Ryan excused himself and left the table.

  “We all know who’s to blame for this, Rita, don’t we?”

  “Oh, sure, let’s hear it,” my mother said. “Let’s begin.”

  I could tell by the way they were sitting up in their chairs they were indeed about to begin. I got up to go to the bathroom, thinking I could wash my hands of the whole messy affair.

  Thirteen

  In the men’s room, I turned on the tap full force and splashed my face with cold water. It was a cavernous bathroom, with gold faucets shaped like sea serpents, scalloped sink bowls, marbled mirrors, and floor-to-ceiling gray tiles, all gleaming in the bright light. There was an unpleasantly strong chemical smell in the air, reassuring the clientele, I suppose, that we wouldn’t catch anything from the toilet seats. Over the sound of the rushing water and the piped-in Muzak, I heard a magnificently loud sigh emerge from one of the stalls. I turned off the taps, looked into the mirror over the sink, and called out into the void. “Ryan? Is that you?”

  There was no response, but the sighing stopped. I went over to one of the stalls and knocked on the metal door. “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’m fine, Pat, I’m fine. I’ve just had a rough week, that’s all. I’ll see you back at the table.”

  “Come out and talk to me, will you?”

  “Is there anyone else out there?”

  I assured him the coast was clear, and when he emerged, his face pale and puffy, I put my arm around his shoulder. “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing, Pat. Nothing. One Big Nothing.”

  Ryan was such an unlikely candidate for an existential crisis, I knew he had to be referring to something specific. “I hope you don’t feel responsible for this Tony situation.”

  He pulled away from me. “Tony? That’s none of my business. It’s Elaine. I might as well tell you, since you’re going to find out sooner or later anyway. She’s seeing some new guy, someone she’s getting serious about.”

  I felt my shoulders drop. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I first heard about it from Stacy, but I didn’t pay much attention. The poor kid even told me the bastard’s name. Not that I know he’s a bastard; he’s probably a nice person.”

  He went to the sink and washed his face. “Christ, will you look at me,” he said, water rolling down his cheeks. “Fat, homely. Look at the bags under these eyes. I guess it’s time I joined one of those goddamned gyms. That’d be a laugh, wouldn’t it?” He wiped his face with a handful of stiff paper towels, straightened his jacket, and turned to me, shaking his head wearily. “She wants a divorce.”

  I leaned against the wall for support and tried to think of some consoling words. My mind felt emptied out, and all those gleaming tiles were beginning to make my vision blur. “Let’s go for a walk,” I finally suggested. “These tiles are corroding my soul.”

  “What about them?” he asked, motioning toward the dining room with his head.

  “They’ll be fine,” I said. “They’re fighting.”

  * * *

  Elaine Moody was the first real love of Ryan’s life. She was a plump, pixieish legal secretary, with a voice that could easily have belonged to an eight-year-old. Her face was so open, round, and plain, her features sometimes looked as if they’d been drawn on the bottom of a paper plate with a thin crayon. Her mother had died when she was fourteen, and her father, when last seen, was drinking himself to death in a furnished room in Portland, Maine. Elaine was the youngest of seven children and determined to be the survivor of a bad lot. She’d put herself through college by working long shifts at a variety of thankless jobs, and eventually she’d secured a position as the indispensable secretary to the head of a small law firm in downtown Boston.

  She and Ryan had glowed in each other’s presence. My brother couldn’t keep his shy hands off her. No one didn’t get misty at their wedding. Even Tony, who considered Elaine too bossy and ambitious, admitted that he’d felt a sentimental ache as the two walked down the aisle.

  The whole time Ryan was dating Elaine, Rita and James would smugly say of her, “She’s no dope, you know,” mostly because they felt reasonably assured, despite evidence to the contrary, that she was. Her voice and her pink cheeks had misled them. But after the marriage, Elaine proved that she really was no dope, especially when it came to my parents. She wasn’t interested in playing the dutiful daughter-in-law and wasn’t interested in watching her husband devote his life to filial obligations. Ryan had confided to me on several occasions that he’d felt torn between Elaine and my parents. When it became obvious that Tony was leaving town, Elaine lobbied strenuously and wisely for Ryan to stay out of the business, hang on to his job with the athletic-shoe company, and not take on my father’s illnesses as his own problems. Ryan wasn’t able to follow her advice. The birth of Stacy was the final blow. Elaine, my parents argued, was trying to keep them from seeing their grandchild. That she was continuing to work after the baby’s birth was proof that she wasn’t devoted to her own child and was just trying to make Ryan feel inadequate as a provider. “But what can you expect,” they’d say, “coming from that kind of family. It’s not that she wants to be like this; she just can’t help it.”

  Ryan began making secret visits to my parents with Stacy and got increasingly haggard and unhappy. Then, three years after he got married, one year after Stacy was born, six months after Tony packed off to Chicago, “the saint” moved into the recently vacated basement of my parents’ house.

  * * *

  We walked out of the bathroom and across the hotel lobby and into the cool night. What little snow there had been that winter had melted from the ground, but there were still patches of filthy ice in the corners of the parking lot. Ryan wrapped his sport coat around himself more tightly. “What a life,” he sighed.

  “I don’t want to criticize, Ry, but didn’t you think something like this might happen? It’s been almost three years you two haven’t been together.”

  “I’d say it’s obvious I wasn’t thinking at all, Pat. I’ve been coasting for three years. Let’s go stand over there by the highway and watch the lights.”

  The parking lot was up on a bluff, looking over Route 128. Benches arranged carefully around the edge provided, like the dining room, a glorious view of the cars whizzing by and the gargantuan shopping mall glowing in the distance like a newly landed alien spacecraft. We sat down on a bench and watched the light show for a while. I had to admit there was something exciting about all that speed and noise almost within reach.

  “I’ve been living in a dream,” Ryan said. “The only time I ever see Elaine is when I go to pick up Stacy, and I guess I read the signals wrong. I must have thought as long as we shared Stacy, it would all work out. What a joke. You know how much I love Stacy, Pat, don’t you? You don’t think I was using her, do you?”

  “I think you’re a good father.”

  “Time got away from me, that’s what happened. Three days, three years, who knew? I guess I was pretending we were still a couple. I certainly haven’t had any interest in anyone else. I knew Lainie went out on dates sometimes, but I never worried about it. I thought of her the same way I always had, so
I figured she felt the same way about me. Living in a dream. I always have been a sap.” He paused and caught his breath. “The lights are nice, aren’t they? Kind of like Christmas.”

  “All those cars,” I said. “All that pollution.”

  “Oh, come on, try to look on the bright side. It’s good about this house you’re getting. You know I always liked that Arthur. Tony’s life sounds all fucked up, mine too, but you’re doing all right now. Try to enjoy it a little, Pat. You don’t know when everything might change.”

  I wanted to tell him I was desperately, eagerly waiting for anything to change, but I was afraid it might make him more unhappy.

  “Poor Loreen,” he said. “She’s a sweet kid. She doesn’t deserve this. I guess that’s the whole point—no one deserves what they get in life, and no one gets what they deserve. Everybody’s barreling along in the passing lane, except for the saps like me, driving at the speed limit.”

  It sounded to me more as if he’d been in reverse for three years. “Do you plan to fight this divorce?” I asked.

  He slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket and shrugged. “Who knows? If she wants out she wants out. To tell you the truth, I’ve been in that basement so long, I don’t have a whole lot to offer her anymore.”

  “Don’t be such a defeatist,” I said, even though I could see his point. The fact that he’d lasted in the basement as long as he had made Elaine’s request for a divorce seem entirely justified. “You could at least tell her how you feel about her.”

  I had a sad feeling that even if Elaine wasn’t exactly the right person for Ryan, she was his only chance before he sank too deeply into his subterranean life.

  He got up from the bench wearily. “I don’t know, Pat. I’ve still got some pride, you know. We better go inside,” he said, “and make sure Romeo and Juliet haven’t killed each other.”

  Fourteen

  “You see,” Sharon said, rolling a cigarette between her thumb and index finger, “that’s what I’ve been telling you all along. Ryan is afraid your parents will literally kill each other if he’s not around to protect them from themselves. That’s why he’s stuck in that dungeon.”

  “Let’s not go overboard here.”

  “Frightening,” she said. “Imagine a man of thirty-six . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she blew a column of smoke rings up to the ceiling. “Really frightening.”

  Sharon was stretched out on the nubby blue sofa in her living room, her bare feet against one armrest, her head against the other, her dark hair hanging down to the floor. I was sitting behind her in a rocking chair—a piece of rusting metal porch furniture that had no business being indoors—and although I could see Sharon’s face and she couldn’t see mine, I felt like the patient in our exchange. I often felt like a patient in my discussions with Sharon. The living room had twelve-foot ceilings and was barely furnished. The walls and the tall, elegant windows were completely bare. Sharon found the idea of curtains laughable. “Let ’em look” was another of her mottoes.

  It was early evening, almost a week after the family dinner. I’d taken Sharon to see the yellow house, hoping she’d soften her strong objections once she saw the place. She’d conceded that from a purely-architectural point of view it was appealing, but she’d stuck to her advice to forget buying and to move back in with her. Only after we’d returned to her house did I dare confess that Arthur and I had made an offer and put down a thousand dollars two days before. She’d merely frowned her disapproval, almost as if I was too hopeless to bother with.

  We’d gone into the kitchen to get drinks, and I started to tell her about the dinner at the restaurant. As soon as Sharon opened the refrigerator, her housemate, Roberta, had clomped down from the second floor.

  Sharon looked at me and groaned, rather blatantly, I thought, and Roberta immediately took center stage. She was dressed in a worn turquoise satin nightgown with lace shoulder straps and a pair of green flip-flops held together with duct tape. Her hair was done in a Bride of Frankenstein frizz and tied back with a filmy scarf. As she bustled around the kitchen, talking frantically and preparing a brew of thick coffee, she gave off the scent of some heavy and expensive perfume.

  After a second of penetrating eye contact, she said, “You must be the famous Daniel. I’m delighted to meet you.”

  Sharon raised a single eyebrow. “This is Patrick,” she said. “I don’t know any Daniels. My entire life, I’ve never known anyone named Daniel, Berta.”

  “Oh?” She contemplated this for a moment. “My mistake,” she said, as if there had been some doubt. “I’m sure Sharon’s told you all about me, Patrick.”

  “I haven’t,” Sharon said.

  “Please don’t believe a word of what she’s said. Ben’s worse than she could possibly describe.” Her laugh was desperate but good-humored and added to her air of faded glamour. “Did she tell you what I said to him as I was leaving him? Well, it’s a classic. I was walking out the door, this was a month and a half ago, the night I found out I could move in here, thanks to Sharon, my guardian angel. So, I was walking out the door with my huge suitcase, and Ben said to me, ‘Berta, you’ve turned me off women for the rest of my life.’ So I just looked at him and I said, ‘Well, Ben’ ”—here she clutched at her throat and swallowed hard as if to control an incipient fit of hilarity—“‘well,’ I said, ‘I figured that was the least I could do for my sex.’” She held up her hand: No applause, please. “And then I just strolled out.” This said, she doubled over laughing, as Sharon and I watched in silence. She composed herself and filled a tall thermos with her coffee.

  “What do you do for a living, Daniel? Patrick!” She stomped her foot and repeated my name three times. “Now I’ll never forget it again for as long as I live. You were saying?”

  “I work with Sharon.”

  “How nice. Married?”

  “Homosexual.”

  “Oh, good. I’d love you to meet Ben sometime and see if you think he’s gay. You and Sharon have the right idea. Stay single and you’ll never be lonely.”

  “I’m not single,” I told her.

  “I am lonely,” Sharon said flatly.

  I was taken aback by this sudden confession, but Roberta ignored it. “Believe me, kiddo, you don’t know lonely until you’ve tried living with Ben. You live with someone, and you get weak. You’re strong. I envy you, I really do.” She stepped up behind Sharon and gave her a hug, a sort of consolation prize.

  Roberta supervised a lab at a biochemical firm in Waltham. According to Sharon, she made a huge salary and was much sought after in her field. I imagined that every person working under her had heard the famous exit line at least several times.

  A few minutes later, the phone rang and Roberta grabbed for it. “What do you want?” she said. She winked at Sharon and me as if we were finally about to see the performance we’d bought tickets for. One of the lace straps had slid off her shoulder and lay slack against her thin, freckled arm. “I can’t, Ben, it’s out of the question. Because I have plans. Plans! You’ve heard the word before, haven’t you? Well, I’ve got them. I’m dressed and about to go out the door. That’s none of your business. And what if it was a date? As a matter of fact, it is. Absolutely not. He’s standing right here. I will. I intend to. Same to you.” She slammed down the phone. “See what I mean?” she asked no one in particular. She slid the strap over her shoulder and smiled at me warmly. “Fortunately, Ben’s a very small word in my vocabulary these days.” She gathered up her thermos and headed off to her bedroom.

  “Now tell me you’d want to live with that,” Sharon said as we listened to Roberta’s flip-flops clacking against the stairs.

  It was the first time I’d ever seen Sharon upstaged, and I found it worrisome. I counted on Sharon to stand out in any crowd. “I’m not sure. There’s something appealing about her, I suppose. Have you met Ben?”

  “Met him? He practically lives here. He’s one of those handsome liberated men; nice chest, no brains.
Some kind of crackpot shrink: Heal the Inner Child—that level of sophistication. So understanding about everything, he bleeds empathy every time I sneeze. Roberta claims he doesn’t take her career seriously because he wants her to have a baby. Of course, he’s so sensitive, he’d probably end up breast-feeding the kid himself. I’d get rid of Berta in a minute if she wasn’t so pathetic.”

  I’d nodded in agreement, but I hadn’t seen anything especially pathetic about Roberta.

  * * *

  Sharon’s house was a grand old Victorian summer cottage with a turret, a wide wraparound porch, and elaborate little brackets and gingerbread on every corner. It was at the top of a hill on a quiet one-way street in one of the better neighborhoods in Cambridge. All the houses around it had recently been spruced up in some drastic way, painted in elaborate San Francisco style or divided and converted to condos. Hers was the peeling gray wreck gentrification had forgotten. Sharon took care of the place in big expensive projects: a lawn service came twice a season to cut back the trees and hack through the weeds, a window-washing service blasted the grime off the huge windows every couple of years, a general contractor cleaned out the gutters annually. The small details of regular maintenance were left undone. Pine trees, rhododendrons, forsythia, and lilac bushes had all but taken over the porch and the windows on the first floor.

  The inside of the house, too, was showing signs of wear, specifically the wear of all those housemates moving in and out over the years. Paint was chipped from around the doorframes, and there were deep nicks in the walls made by bed frames and bureaus and bookcases as they were carried up and down stairs. Five of the balusters supporting the staircase railing had been knocked out.

  The living room, where we were sitting discussing Ryan, was dimly lit by two tiny wall lamps on either side of the mantelpiece and by the flickering television. Sharon had been smoking heavily, and a blue haze hung in the air above our heads. Most of the rooms in the vast house had grown dusty from lack of use. Sharon claimed she preferred not to clutter the place with furniture, so people could dance when she threw parties. In fact, she rarely entertained, and when she did, the events usually ended early and abruptly after she wandered off to bed unannounced, leaving the guests to depart in confusion.