Love Is a Rebellious Bird

by Elayne Klasson

  “Why?” I asked. “Why would she want to do that?”

  Lillian had grown tired of traveling, tired of your whole life together, you said. She claimed she’d been bored for some time and that the two of you no longer shared any of the same goals or interests. Aimless wandering, she called the trips and said she was through with such a foolish waste of time and money.

  “Foolish?” I repeated. “She called it that?”

  “Actually,” you said, with a harsh laugh, “she might have used the word colossal. A colossal waste of time and money.” The new restaurant was to be a family business, her family’s, she’d stressed. Lillian’s children were very hardworking; she’d brought them up that way, she said, so she was confident of the restaurant’s success.

  “You must have told her she didn’t need to work,” I said.

  “Of course. I told her we have enough to live on. We have plenty.”

  “And what did she say to that?” I asked.

  Lillian had replied, “I know all about your fuck-you money, Elliot. But that is your money, not mine.” As you spoke, you did a fairly good imitation of her accent. “The restaurant will be my legacy for my children,” you said in that distinctive Quebecoise of Lillian’s. “I can no longer remain so decadent, doing nothing productive.”

  I snorted. Legacy? Decadent? Trust Lillian to make such dramatic pronouncements.

  “What’s that, Judith? What did you say?”

  “Nothing, Elliot,” I answered. “I’m listening. Go on. How did she seem when she left?”

  “Angry, as if I’d done something terrible by providing for her, by giving her a good life. What did I do wrong?” you asked. “I don’t understand.”

  How pathetic you sounded. I couldn’t bear it. Besides being puzzled, I was growing furious with Lillian. “But Elliot,” I said. “Lillian must be seventy-five years old. Right? People her age don’t start businesses as exhausting as restaurants. They slow down. It’s a crazy plan.”

  “I know, I know,” you said tiredly. “But that’s Lillian. Age has never meant a thing to her. I didn’t realize she was bored with our life. I thought she was happy, but she said that ever since she sold the gallery, she’s felt useless. Made it seem like it was my fault. She said I took away her, oh, I don’t know, took away her something.”

  Lillian thrived on work, I knew that. That’s all she talked about when I’d first met her at Serendipity in New York, her family’s poverty and how hard she worked her whole life, implying that Elliot and I knew little about that. Now, as best I understood it, her new plan was to start a restaurant with her son as chef and the rest of the family helping out in some capacity. She’d not only missed work, she’d told you, but she also missed her culture, missed speaking French. The time had come for her to go home. But it appeared that all of it—her boredom, the restaurant, missing Quebec—had been news to you.

  As ridiculous as I thought the whole thing sounded, I surprised myself by saying, “Okay, so why don’t you go with her? Why not move to Montreal?” I couldn’t believe I was making an argument for you to preserve your relationship with Lillian. Yet how could I not? No matter what I thought of the woman, you and she were a couple. You’d built a life around her and you sounded miserable.

  There was an especially long pause. “Elliot? Are you still there?”

  “What did you say, Judith? Sorry. I got distracted, you can’t imagine how crazy this has been.”

  “I said, why can’t you go to Montreal with Lilly?” Why were Elliot’s reactions so slowed down, I wondered, so subdued? The whole conversation was strange, especially as we hadn’t spoken in so long.

  “Sorry, yes, that’s right. Join her. I suggested that,” you replied. “I said, ‘Listen, Lillian, I don’t mind selling the house here in Beacon and moving to Canada. There’s nothing to keep me here. I can help you with the restaurant.’”

  “And?” I asked. “What did she say to that?”

  “She laughed at me,” you said quietly.

  “Laughed at you?”

  “Yeah, and then she said I didn’t get it. This was her project. Hers and her children’s. I forget what she said next. No, I remember now. She asked me what would I do in a restaurant? Wash dishes?”

  I could just hear Lillian, see her pursed little French mouth. To her, Elliot’s and my lives had seemed privileged. She’d decided we were self-indulgent and soft. Lillian came from a family of nine brothers and sisters. Life was endless effort—they never had enough food, clothing, space. She had mentioned, more than once, that Americans like us had no idea what it was to be poor, really poor. To her, we’d had silver spoons in our mouths. I’d never thought of us as growing up privileged, but it’s all relative, I know.

  “Apparently she doesn’t think I’m a very hard worker,” you continued. “At least not by her standards. She laughed and looked at my hands. ‘They are soft as a baby’s. Those hands were not meant for dish washing.’”

  “Jesus, Elliot, you’re a lawyer,” I said. “What does she expect?”

  “Yeah,” you answered. “But I thought about my father. Remember? His were the roughest hands imaginable. The way he had to load and unload meat from those refrigerator trucks?”

  I did remember. When we were kids, the hugeness of Mr. Pine’s forearms and hands had scared me. Besides being big, his hands were always chapped and red from the cold, even in summer, the knuckles knobby and distorted. All these years later, I could still see his sandpapery hands.

  “The cold gave my dad terrible arthritis,” you said. “At night, he’d massage his fingers, trying to straighten them. He’d say to us, ‘You boys get an education. You don’t want to be tossing slabs of meat all day. Like me. Work with your brains, not your backs.’”

  “You could make a life for yourself in Quebec, Elliot,” I said. “You have so many talents. Be their lawyer. Or do the books.”

  “Judith, you aren’t listening. Lillian doesn’t want me there.” And you sounded completely defeated. “She’s very decisive. We’re over. Once Lilly is through with something or someone, she’s through. Like they never existed. Trust me, I’ve seen her. There’s a grocery shop in Beacon she’d avoid, even if we had nothing in the fridge but spoiled milk, because the owner once slighted her. There are people she hasn’t spoken a word to since she sold the gallery because they were once late with a payment.”

  “I just don’t understand it,” I said. “Why would she end the relationship now? After all the years you and she have been together.”

  You didn’t answer. There was another long silence.

  “Elliot,” I finally said, “are you still there?”

  “Yeah,” you answered after the maddeningly long pause. Then, you delivered your second piece of startling news. “I’m here. But I should tell you that it could be more than the restaurant. There’s something else. Something I haven’t wanted to admit. But Lilly lived with me and I know she saw. She noticed what was happening.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, the pulse in my head getting even louder. “Are you sick, Elliot?”

  “Not sick, exactly. But I’m not the same. I’m not me.”

  Haltingly, you told me that for the past two years you’d been getting more and more forgetful. You could tell that you were processing information much more slowly and could feel Lillian’s impatience. More than a few times, you’d had to call her, unable to remember where you’d parked the car in town or even to recall the errand you’d set out on. It was getting worse, you said, and you were frightened, but when you tried to talk to Lilly about it, she changed the subject. She would say you weren’t focusing enough. You just needed to concentrate, try harder, instead of daydreaming all the time. Lillian herself had never had even a cold in all their years together. She could not accept whatever was happening. You paused again and said, “You see, Lillian dislikes weakness of any kind.”

  “That’s why she’s leaving? Because you’re forgetful? It couldn’t be that,” I said. “We’re a
ll getting older. Forgetting things.”

  I felt myself getting queasy and swallowed hard to keep down the food from breakfast. Elliot was the most brilliant man I knew. Quick, funny, knowledgeable in every area. Could something be wrong with his brain? If there was, then it was a very cruel and ironic joke being played by whoever doled out maladies. Perhaps Elliot was exaggerating the problem. I wanted to believe that.

  Everyone I knew was having trouble remembering words. Just last week, I’d gone shopping with two of my girlfriends. We’d met a fourth friend for lunch, Marnie, and were trying to describe to her something we’d just seen in a store.

  “It was gorgeous. The softest red leather thing,” I said, after we all sat down together.

  “What was it?” Marnie asked.

  “One of those jacket things. What’re they called? You know, we wore them to work all the time?” I answered.

  “Yeah,” said Vivian, “I can’t remember what they’re called either. But this was so soft. Like butter. You know what I mean, with a collar and buttons down the front.”

  “Right,” added our friend, Rachel. “We wore them with skirts, like a suit. What’re they called again? Damn.” She closed her eyes in concentration, trying to remember the word.

  Marnie stared at the three of us uncomprehendingly, either because she herself was not able to name the article, or was confused by this game of charades we were inexplicably playing.

  Finally, the waitress, who we’d not realized had arrived to take our order and was listening to our desperate fumbling, said, “A blazer,” and began tapping her pencil on her pad. “You mean a blazer, right?” She was young, with skinny jeans and thigh-high boots.

  “Blazer!” we all shouted at once. “Yeah, that’s it. A red blazer.”

  I looked up at the waitress. Bitch, I thought. Today you may have put us out of our misery and given us the word our minds refused to recollect, but one day, you won’t be able to think of some word, either. “Thanks,” I said politely to the young waitress, “just couldn’t think of it. Blazer. Of course. That’s it. Thanks.”

  “Sure,” the girl said. “Have you decided what you’d like to order?”

  Maybe this was all it was with Elliot, the same word-finding problems all of us were experiencing as we began our seventies. Those tricky nouns, or people’s names, that sometimes needed special effort to be recalled.

  You answered very quietly, “It’s bad, Judith. It isn’t constant, it comes and goes. But it’s happening more often. Not just words. I forget how to do things, stupid things. This morning I couldn’t remember how to work the toaster oven. I stood there holding my bagel and stared at the gizmo, but I didn’t know what I should do with it.”

  “Are you alone there?” I asked, my fear increasing. Besides my head pounding, I could feel how hard my heart was beating. “Has Lillian completely moved out?” How could she leave him?

  “She’s been back and forth a few times. Between here and Canada. She’s been packing up her things and shipping them up there, I suppose. I don’t think she’s coming back anymore, though. She’s been gone quite a while this time.” You sighed.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “I don’t know exactly. The place looks so empty without her stuff. Her art, her clothes. I go over to our closet and there are all those empty hangers clinking together.”

  For some reason my mind went to the bronze statue of Lillian, the one you’d described to me so vividly when you first met her. The life-sized nude sculpted by a famous artist who lived in the Hudson Valley. You’d said, with some pride, that even without clear facial features, it was quite recognizable to everyone who knew Lillian. I’d never seen the sculpture, but I’d imagined it many times all these years, could not get the image out of my head. What would it be like to see your naked body as public art in the town where you lived? What would it be like to be the lover of the woman whose firm breasts and formidable ass stood exposed to the elements and all who passed by in the town square? You had seemed so impressed by the sculpture of Lillian when you’d first told me about it. Now, with her gone, how would you feel about it? Unless you made a detour, I suppose you still walked past it on your way to your favorite coffee shop. Did you stop and look at it with longing now? Did you brush off the snow that had accumulated on those breasts? Or did you hurry past? Okay, I had never liked Lillian, but now I felt the woman must be as cold and unfeeling as that bronze statue. Who could leave a man when both of you were in your seventies? When he was obviously having trouble and not as capable as he used to be? Weren’t they partners? Even if they had never married, one expected some loyalty from a long-term mate. Her behavior was unforgivable.

  “Have you been to a doctor yet, Elliot?” I asked evenly.

  “A doctor? For what?” you asked.

  I closed my eyes. “About the forgetting.”

  “Oh. Yeah. My regular guy. Here in town. I can’t remember his name right now. He says I need to go for tests. To someone who specializes in de … in memory problems.”

  “Okay, then you need to do that,” I said, aching that you couldn’t even say the word. Imagining how scared you must be. I knew how frightened I would be. Especially remembering how confused my mother had been at the end. Dementia. It was everyone’s greatest fear. “Can you get some names from your doctor, a specialist? A neurologist? It’d be good to get evaluated, to know what you’re dealing with,” I said. Then, after I took a breath, I added, “Do you want some help with that, Elliot?”

  There was no answer. “Elliot?” I repeated.

  Then you said, “I’ll get back to you, Judith. I think there’s something wrong with the washing machine. It’s making awful noises. It might be leaking.” And abruptly, just like that, you hung up.

  For several days, I heard nothing more. I worried about you in the short term. In the best of times, you’d never been a domestic person. What were you eating? Had water flooded that beautiful wood floor of yours, the one you told me you’d had restored when you and Lillian remodeled? I also worried about the long term. What exactly was wrong with you? How bad was it? Was there anyone to help you? With no children, and no relatives nearby, there was just Phillip, your only remaining brother. Your older brother, Jeffrey, had died of an aneurysm some time ago. The last I’d heard, Phil was still living in Chicago, but dealing with his own problems—an alcoholic wife, difficult children. Were there any close friends nearby? I could not fathom how Lilly had just left and not helped you with practical arrangements. It was winter and news of huge snowstorms on the eastern seaboard had been all over the papers.

  I couldn’t stand it any longer. Several times over the next few days, I picked up the telephone and phoned you. There was never an answer. Finally, on my fourth or fifth try, you picked up, but only after the answering machine had already started its recording, a message made by Lilly in her French Canadian accent.

  “Hello,” you said, breaking into the message. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Judith, Elliot. I’ve been worrying about you. Are you okay?”

  “Judith? Sure, I’m okay. Did someone call you? Who told you to call me?” you said, sounding surprisingly suspicious. “What did they let you know?”

  “Let me know?” I asked, worried that some new disaster had befallen you over the past few days.

  “About Lillian,” you said, then paused. “I guess you don’t know. Lilly’s left me. She went back to Canada.”

  “Oh?” I spoke in a small voice. “When did she go?” This was like a scary Hitchcock movie. You recounted, once again, how Lilly was in Montreal. How she was going to open a restaurant with her son, the chef. Almost word for word, you repeated the conversation we’d had a few days before, but this time you did not mention your memory problems. You sounded sadder than you had on our previous call, though. Even more beaten down.

  “Elliot,” I said, “are you alone? Is anyone there in the house helping you?”

  “Of course,” you answered. “Our houseke
eper’s here. Uh, you know who I mean. I can’t remember her name now. She’s been working for us for years. Did you ever meet her? She’s here cleaning up now. In the kitchen.”

  “Elliot,” I said. “When we talked a few days ago, you told me you were forgetting things. You told me you were going to get evaluated by a doctor.”

  “Jesus,” you answered, sounding surprised. “I said that? I don’t remember that. You and I talked? Shit, are you sure? Or did somebody call you? Lilly phoned you, didn’t she?”

  “No,” I said evenly. “No one called me. You told me yourself, Elliot. Listen, do you suppose I could talk to your housekeeper? Can you put her on?” I heard you put the phone down, then heard your footsteps.

  After a long few minutes, a man’s voice said, “Hello? Who’s this?”

  “This is Elliot’s friend, Judith. Judith Sherman. I’m phoning from California. Elliot said he was going to get his housekeeper and put her on the phone. Who is this? You’re not the housekeeper, are you?”

  “No.” The man gave a short laugh. “Trina is here, though. The housekeeper. My name is Julius. Trina cleans for me and my wife, as well as for Elliot and Lilly. Trina called us a little while ago, asked us to come over. When she’d got here, to the house, she saw Elliot wandering out back, where the woods are. It’s been terribly cold and icy this week and he was wearing only a flannel shirt and jeans. And slippers, some kind of felt slippers. He’d gone out to get the paper, but he couldn’t find his way back into the house. Poor guy was freezing. Thank God Trina came and let him in. She’s making him soup right now. I just got here.”

  This was worse, I thought, worse than I’d imagined. “How long has he been this way? When did Lilly leave?”

  “Frankly,” Julius said, “we’ve noticed him changing, little by little, for over a year, though I haven’t seen him much since the summer. We heard from Trina that Lilly was leaving. Lilly also told a friend of my wife’s, but she didn’t come over and tell us. She was back and forth a bit. I saw her car go up and down the road. The last time must have been two weeks ago. We don’t actually know what’s going on. Friends have been coming over to check on Elliot. We’re all trying to figure out what to do. And then Trina, of course, comes every other day. She’s terrific. But, as you can imagine, it’s kind of awkward. You must know how proud Elliot is. Sometimes, he’s quite a bit better. Almost seems like the old Elliot. The problem is, we don’t know who should take charge. Someone has to do something, though. It seems as if Lillian has really moved out. The place looks half-empty. Who should we call? Any family around?”