He leans forward to look closely at her. “It’s fine.”
She sits back and folds her arms, as if against a sudden chill. “I may need my shawl.”
“You want me to go get it?”
“Not yet. No. It’s fine.”
He watches the waiter come back.
“Is everything all right, sir?”
“Yes, we’ll have a bottle of this Chablis.”
“Right.”
When the waiter’s gone, the old man fetches forth the camera again and holds it up. She gazes out at the lake and the hills in the distance, the lowering white clouds there, tinged with sun. He snaps still another picture.
“You and your archival urge,” she says.
He puts the camera back.
“A trait of yours that I always felt was a kind of failing.”
“Then it’s a common one.”
“Not living in the moment. Yes, that’s true.”
“You’ve never looked more beautiful to me,” he says.
She resists another cough, holds it in with her closed fist, then relaxes again. “I wish I had been religious.”
“You’ve been spiritual.”
“Yes, I know,” she says. Then, in a kind of recitation: “The religious person is afraid of going to hell. The spiritual person has already been there.”
“I used to think I knew so much. Don’t chide me with it.”
They both smile, not looking at each other. “That little boy. I didn’t find him at all cute.”
“No,” he says.
“What do you suppose he meant, asking if I’m bad?”
“Something about the cane, maybe?”
“You have to admit that I’ve never had any sentimentality about boys and little girls and babies.”
The waiter brings the wine, opens it, and pours a little, and the old man lifts the glass to his nose and breathes. “Very good,” he says. The waiter pours, taking his time. The wine is soft gold, the sun showing in it, sparkling in facets. “Nothing like the color of a good white Burgundy,” the old man says. The waiter acknowledges this without real interest, sets the bottle wrapped in a little towel in a metal cooler on the table between them, and walks away. He’s a tall Irish boy with a buzz cut who takes pride in his physique. His black shirt is cut to fit him taperingly, and his sleeves are folded back to show the thickness of his forearms.
“You always had such a capacity for appreciating things,” she says.
He sips the wine, turns the glass a little, looking at it, then sips again. It’s as if he’s performing for her. “It’s quite delicious.”
“Is it better than it would be if you were going to have it again tomorrow? And the day after that?”
“I can’t really tell. And we weren’t going to speak of this tonight.”
“Isn’t everything supposed to be enhanced by this circumstance?”
“Dear.”
“That little boy, with his straight-on way of looking at us. Do you suppose he could tell something?”
“No. And stop it.”
“I don’t remember when I began to know about it myself,” she says. “That’s strange, given that my mother—well. But I was very small, not much past three, when she went.”
“I was older, when it came to me, I guess. Though I always—” He stops, takes a swallow of the wine, and gazes out at the lake and the sky.
“I know,” she says. “I’ll quit.”
“We’ll talk about whatever you want to talk about. But we did agree not to mention it.”
“I used to say I never wanted to live forever.”
“No. I know,” he says. “I remember. Please.”
She smiles, without quite looking at him. “But I am bad, aren’t I? Such a strange thing for a little boy to say.” She takes more of the wine, but lifting a glass is obviously difficult for her. Her hand shakes. Again they’re quiet. He reaches for the camera, holds it up, and snaps yet another picture, then puts it away again.
“Do you really think the pictures will mean anything to anybody?”
“How can you say that? Of course they will. And they’ll show everyone that we were completely together in this, and at peace with it.”
“I’m not at peace with it, though. You are. You are supremely, depressingly at peace with it.”
“Do you want to call it off?”
“I’m being bad,” she says. “I have a stick.”
He sips the wine. She takes some, too. They’re quiet for several moments. They hear the gulls cry, sailing low over the wind-rippled water. The breeze blows through her hair, and she raises the collar of her dress.
“Should I get your shawl?” he asks.
She appears not to have heard him. “Did you see that article about how, in some billions of years, however many years, Venus might collide with the earth?”
“No.”
“It was in the paper. With an artist’s depiction.”
“Billions of years.”
“That seems somehow more daunting as a concept than simply to say eternity.”
“I used to think of all the paintings, statues, and books,” he says. “I remember hating to think of them ever going away, even in billions of years.”
“You wanted to live forever.”
He’s quiet a moment. Then: “No, my darling. I didn’t say that. But we all do. In some way we all certainly do, or did. Isn’t that true?”
“I’m chiding you again.”
They drink more wine and watch the light begin to fade beyond the hills. The dark shades of green are growing still darker across the way, and parts of the shoreline opposite them have receded into shadow, pools of blackness at the edge of black water.
“Do you think you might’ve been happier if we’d had children?” she asks.
“I’ve been so happy with you.” His eyes brim, and he wipes them with the fingers of his left hand. It’s a motion a little like brushing away an insect. In his right hand he holds his glass of wine, and he does not put it down. He drinks what is left in the glass, then picks up the bottle and pours more for himself. He offers the bottle to her.
“Only a little,” she says, holding out her glass.
He pours it and sets the bottle down.
“I believe we—that is, people—people wouldn’t know love, if it weren’t for—for, you know, the fact of the end being there—” She waves the thought away and has another small drink of the wine.
“The worst people I’ve ever known,” he tells her, “had no sense of it at all.”
“That little boy, grown, without having gained the knowledge.”
“Yes.”
“Is that what makes us gentle, do you suppose?”
“You and me?”
“All right.”
“I would like to think we were always gentle people,” he says. His voice breaks. “Teaching is a good way to lead a life.”
“Our all-important work.”
“That’s right. Our work. Right.”
“Poor man. I’m giving you a bad time.”
“No,” he says.
“I think I’m trying to talk you out of it again.”
“Can we not do this?”
Once more they’re silent, staring out at the serrations in the water.
She says, “I’m surprised at the need to keep from saying ultimate kinds of things. You know, ‘the fall of a sparrow’ and all that.”
“ ‘The fall of a sparrow,’ yes. But the sparrow is brought down. Someone shoots it.”
“Oh, right.”
“It’s true.”
“In its way. I seem to want to recount all our stages of unlikeliness as a couple. Well, some people said. I thought sometimes we would both go on to other people. Both of us. Remember the time I threw all your clothes out in the front yard? And that neighbor—my goodness, I can’t recall his name. He took a picture.”
“It was so long ago,” says the old man. “We were different people. Just babies.”
“But what was his name?”
“I remember that it was the same name as a British historical figure—not a king.”
“Not Disraeli. Montgomery?”
“Chamberlain, wasn’t it?”
“No,” she says. “Further back than that. I’m sure.”
“I remember it began with a C. It wasn’t Chamberlain?”
“God,” she says. “I want that name back like my life, just now.”
He reaches across the table and takes her hand. “What does it matter. Anyway, I’m sure it was Chamberlain.”
“No, it wasn’t. And if only you weren’t always so sure of everything.”
His voice is barely audible. “I’m just trying to help.”
“We always did what you wanted to do. I’ve always let you have your way.”
“I think we always tried to do that for each other, darling.”
“What about Mimsy Stratton?”
“Now, why are you bringing that up? Now of all times. My God—Mimsy Stratton.”
“You know I still try to picture you with her. Even now, this morning, when you woke up to my coughing, and you were so solicitous and sweet and tired, and we were decided and sure about everything. I thought of it as a possibility anyway, like daydreaming a future.”
“You know very well I could never have had a future with someone like Mimsy Stratton.”
“You were obsessed with her.”
“I could never have had a future with someone like Mimsy Stratton. And it was almost thirty years ago, and we were different people.”
The waiter comes back out and walks over to them. He pours more wine in both glasses. Not much is left in the bottle. “More wine?” he says.
“I think I would like a cold draft of something,” the old man says.
“Yes,” his wife says. “A Moretti. Do you have Moretti?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Two of them, in iced glasses.”
The two people watch him go, and then turn to face each other. They hold up their glasses, touch them, and drink. He pours the last little bit into his glass and swallows that, too.
“Do you think you would have remarried?” she asks quietly, without looking at him.
“Darling. We’ve been over it and over it. I won’t be here without you. We’ve done this. We’ve decided. Please.”
She sets down the glass, then folds her hands around the bottom of the stem, looking down at it. “I used to believe I could live forever if I was allowed to.”
“I don’t feel the wine,” he says. “I usually feel white wine faster than this. I drank most of this bottle.”
“I wish we’d had the one child,” she says, suddenly. “That’s what I wish.”
“If you will please, please, not do this.”
“I do have that as a regret, dear. And it’s deep. And long standing, too. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to bring it up. But I did what you wanted then, and I’m doing what you want now, and it’s always been about doing what you want, including not bringing up certain people.”
“We can talk about anything you want, then. Let’s talk about it. Mimsy Stratton moved north and married someone from India, who died in New York on 9/11 of a septic duodenal ulcer. One of the non–Twin Towers deaths recorded on that particular day. She had a big family with him and got terribly fat. She was never anyone but a person I worked with and respected and liked. And she couldn’t understand what you thought you saw about her, and we were not even friends anymore when she moved away. And we would never have known any of this about her if you hadn’t kept up with her, and that was what you wanted. I haven’t thought about her in ages.”
“We were so passionate all the time,” she says. “Weren’t we?”
The waiter brings the beer on a little silver tray. The glasses are dull white with the ice coating, and the foam at the top of them is creamy looking. He puts the tray down and walks away. The old man sips the beer, then wipes the foam from his mouth. “This tastes perfectly wonderful,” he says. “You should try it.”
“Not just yet,” she murmurs. “I wonder why any of this means anything to me now. You wouldn’t think it would matter. But just this minute it does. I have to say, it does.” She watches him sip the beer. The light has almost gone from the sky, and the water below them is becoming pure darkness, on into the purplish haze obscuring the other side of the lake. “Oh, my dear. I’m so frightened. I’ve never been as frightened as I am right now.”
He gets up and moves around the table to her side. She puts her arms around his waist and holds on. “Are we terrible, selfish people?”
“I won’t hear it,” he tells her. “Now, I mean it. Stop this.”
“If I weren’t so frightened of the pain.”
“Here,” he says, wiping her face gently, leaning over her.
“It’s a sin. We’ll look bad.”
“No.”
“I’m terrified,” she murmurs. “I want there to be something.”
“My love,” he says. “We’ll just take the pills and go to sleep together. We’ll just be going to sleep like we have all these years.”
“I’ve wanted to be strong for you.”
“You have, my darling girl. You always have.”
She cries a little, and sniffles, and holds the handkerchief to her face. Some others come out from the hotel dining room. Three couples, evidently having a good time with whiskey. They’re talking loudly about the virtues of different malt scotches. Someone in the bar has prepared a flight, as it’s called, of the different kinds. Two of the men are chasing theirs with Guinness. Claiming that the whiskey makes the nutty flavor of the Guinness even stronger.
“Why aren’t you afraid?” she asks him. “You don’t seem the slightest bit afraid.”
He lets her hold on a moment longer, then reaches down and pats her shoulder and kisses the side of her face.
“I’m better,” she tells him. “Please. Sit down now.”
He does so. For a while they watch the others, who stand at the railing and talk and laugh and make jokes about something that has transpired in the town. One of the men was in an altercation with the local constable about a broken taillight on a rental car.
“Nothing I have done or read has prepared me for this,” the old woman says. “Yet I’ve been thinking about it my whole life. Isn’t that remarkable?”
Her husband nods. He’s holding his glass of beer but not drinking from it.
“Premorbidity—can you imagine him using such a word? I’m to have very little premorbidity. My entire life has been that, hasn’t it?”
“No,” he tells her. “Mine has. You were always in your life up to the hilt. You never gave it a thought. I was the one who was thinking about it all the time and worrying myself sick over nothing. My stupid hypochondria.”
“You talked about it,” she says. “I kept it to myself.”
“You were the brave, centered one, always.”
“I’d have had children,” she says flatly. “Or I’d have had the one.”
He puts the beer glass down and covers his face with his hands. It’s a motion of great weariness more than anything, rubbing his eyes, while the people nearby get louder and more raucous, sampling their whiskeys and seeming far past the ability to distinguish the subtleties of the enterprise. Their laughter rises into the night. He looks up at the stars beginning to sparkle at the top of the sky, the last daylight gone, and the moon rising. The light from inside the hotel is all the light there is now.
“Really, why aren’t you afraid at all—even a little?”
“I thought we had both made peace with it,” he says.
“No, I have made no peace with it. That’s your idea of it.”
He says nothing.
“Another kind of sickness,” she mutters. “Also long standing.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“What will happen to the pictures?” she asks.
“It’s a record of us now. For Flo and the
rest of them.”
“You were always coming to this,” she says. “It has nothing to do with my sister.”
He sniffles, turning from the noise, and from her, too. But then he straightens and faces her and slowly nods. “I know.”
“I always hated it.”
“Yes,” he says.
“Your damn dying. Always your dying.”
“Please, darling.”
“I wish we’d had our girl.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “We don’t know that it was a girl.”
“A girl,” she says.
He takes a long swallow of the beer and then sets the glass down with a suddenness. “Cromwell.”
She looks at him. “That was it, yes. Cromwell.” Her tone is devoid of inflection.
“Cromwell,” says her husband.
She breathes, coughs, sighs, and then sits straighter, as if adjusting to a cramp in her lower back. “I want to go wherever there is to go as me,” she says. “Myself. I never would’ve believed it. And I want to carry my sorrows with me and all my regrets and frustrations and every single minute of every single day. Forever. If I can think of it, why can’t I have it?”
“Darling,” he says.
“I wish you weren’t so happy about it.”
“No,” he says. “You have no idea.”
“I do. I know. I can’t help it.”
He gulps the beer down. She has a sip of hers. He brings the camera out again and can’t quite get it to focus. The noise is increasing from the others on the veranda, and someone drops a glass that rolls and does not break. The whole gathering marvels at this, as if it were some kind of miracle. One of them, a heavy, shaggy blond man, comes over and offers to take the old couple’s picture. The old man hands him the camera, stands, shakily, and moves his chair around to sit next to his wife. The heavy man says, “Smile,” and they smile, and he snaps the picture.
“Thank you,” says the old man, putting the camera back in his coat pocket. He pulls his chair around and faces her again across the table.
His wife watches him run his hands over his face. “I’ll never forgive you,” she says, low.
Living in the Weather of the World Page 17