Stories of Mary Gordon

by Mary Gordon

  For several years, again to everyone's surprise, Lavinia didn't settle down. Then she met Joe Walsh, who was so clearly the wrong type that everyone knew it couldn't last, not long anyway.

  But it went on for fifteen years. He was a “player” in the Koch administration, nobody was exactly sure what he did, only that it was something that had something to do with City Hall. When Koch lost, he kept doing whatever it was he did for Dinkins, which was unusual, people thought, and must mean that he really knew what he was doing, whatever that was. As all Lavinia's friends began drinking less in the late eighties, Joe didn't. For a while, people thought it was just that he was drinking as he always had and they noticed it more because they'd stopped. But then they had to admit to themselves— they wondered if Lavinia had admitted it— that Joe was, if not an alcoholic, then a problem drinker. He also kept smoking when everyone else had quit, and even took up cigars. One night, after a dinner at the Morriseys’ on 119th Street, he earned Richard's enmity forever by putting his cigar out in the water of a glass bowl Helen had filled with nasturtiums. Richard had grown used to the transgressions of his friends, his children, and his children's friends, but he adored his wife as if they were new lovers, and seeing her face when the cigar sizzled in the nasturtium water, he knew that she felt violated, and this he could not forgive.

  It was soon after that night that Lavinia decided she'd had enough of Joe. Fifteen years of feverish arguments followed by feverish lovemaking, sour-mouthed morning accusations, resolutions, and recriminations seemed suddenly to settle in her spine like the aftermath of a debilitating fever. She realized that this feeling of bruised exhaustion had become so habitual that she hadn't noticed it. But she noticed it now. And so the next time Joe did something mortifying— he insulted one of their guests on the new color of her hair, asking her who, for God's sake, she thought she was kidding— Lavinia simply said, “I've had enough.” It was her apartment they were living in. She gave him a month to find a place to live.

  Of course, she would have to go somewhere while he was still in the apartment, and she didn't have time to make plans. But plans had to be made. That was why she was crying when she ran into Rachel on the subway platform. “My parents would love to have you, I know they would,” Rachel said. “I'll phone them tonight. You're still at the same number?”

  Lavinia said yes she was, that was what was ghastly about it. She was sleeping in her son's room, in the bottom bunk of his childhood bed.

  The next morning, Helen phoned as if she knew exactly the right moment to call; it was eleven in the morning but Joe had just left for work. She said that of course Lavinia must come to them, only she'd have to get herself to Bishop's House from Shannon. It was only forty-five minutes, but anyway, Helen said, she'd be happier with her own car, she'd want to see the countryside and not be dependent on the Morriseys to shepherd her.

  Lavinia left two days after she spoke to Helen. She slept five hours of the six-hour flight, so she hadn't a lot of time for speculating about what her stay at Bishop's House would be like. She knew it would leave her feeling quiet and without malice— “all passion spent” was the phrase that kept going through her head. She reminded herself that Helen and Richard were eighty and eighty-two, and was prepared to do a lot of the cooking.

  The drive from Shannon was as easy as Helen had said it would be. Lavinia had never been to Ireland before, and kept trying to resist making cliched remarks to herself about the quality of the greenness. But she couldn't help it; it was so purely green, so without blue or yellow, or purple even, that she wanted it in her mouth, which felt scalded from recriminations, or against her eyelids, which had been abraded by hot tears.

  She'd brought a dozen bagels and two pounds of hazelnut coffee, which she knew Helen especially liked. They'd be pleased by the gift, its cheapness, its knowledge of their habits. The coffee smell seeped through the shiny fabric of her suitcase and made her anxious for arrival, anxious to feel at home.

  The front of Bishop's House was white stucco; it was surrounded by old trees, elms and chestnuts, at once domestic and venerable. The kind, Lavinia thought, you just don't get in America. There were two cars parked in front of the house, a small white Ford and a black convertible sports car. It was a 1965 Karmann Ghia, Lavinia knew, because Brad's parents had bought them one as a wedding present. It was in perfect condition and Lavinia wondered if restoring old cars was a hobby Richard had taken up. It seemed unlikely.

  How wonderful they looked, Lavinia thought, both of them opening their arms to embrace her. They were so American, the best of America, forthright and reserved and generous. They became more themselves as they grew older, softer and more tolerant. Tears of love came to her eyes and she buried them in the wool of Richard's shoulder.

  “I'll take you to your room,” Helen said. The huge black front door opened to a hallway, tiled black and white. Almost directly behind the door was a wide mahogany staircase with a red stair carpet that had faded in places from the sun. Lavinia's room was the second door from the staircase; she knew from Rachel that Bishop's House had six bedrooms.

  “You look done in,” Helen said. “You probably want a sleep, but I'd resist it. Try to stay awake till nine or so, get yourself on Irish time. I'll make coffee and we'll have a walk.”

  “Look what I've brought you,” Lavinia said, flourishing her Zabar's bags.

  “Hazelnut,” said Helen. “You're a perfect angel, as always. I'm afraid I'm not, neither perfect nor an angel. I'm afraid I'm a bit of an old fool, I've allowed something stupid to happen.”

  Lavinia's heart sank; she was afraid Helen was going to tell her that she was ill, or that Richard was, and that she'd have to leave because one of them was going to the hospital. She couldn't bear the thought; she could have taken the illness or death of one of her own parents more lightly than Helen's or Richard's. It was absolutely essential to the well-being of the world that they be in it.

  Helen sat down on the bed and patted it so that Lavinia would sit beside her.

  “Do you remember our friend Nigel Henderson?”

  “I'm afraid I don't,” Lavinia said.

  “You must have met him one time or another. He and his wife Liz lived next door to us for three years. He was on lend-lease to Columbia back in the seventies. They're English. Perhaps you were too busy with the children.”

  “I'm not young enough for you to be erasing whole decades,” Lavinia said.

  “Nonsense, you're a baby. It's just that you're getting over a love affair. It makes everyone feel ancient,” Helen said, making Lavinia wonder, for the first time, if she'd been unfaithful to Richard.

  “Poor old Nigel,” Helen said. “He's sort of a mess. Liz left him for a woman, and he stopped taking an interest in teaching. He shacked up with one of his students and took early retirement. They were going to live in Bali or something but it never came off. She took off instead. Anyway, here he is, no job, no girlfriend, and I'm afraid he's just been told he has terminal cancer.”

  “How terrible,” Lavinia said. “How old is he?”

  “Fifty-six.”

  “My age,” Lavinia said.

  “So you see when he phoned two days ago, really sounding desperate, asking if he could come over on the car ferry, we didn't feel we could say no.”

  “Of course not,” Lavinia said.

  “He's always been a bit pathetic, one of those overgrown boys, but this is really dreadful.”

  “Dreadful,” said Lavinia.

  “And dreadful for you. You come here to be petted and recover your spirits and we turn you into an angel of mercy.”

  “Maybe it'll be good for me,” Lavinia said. “Put my own trouble in perspective.”

  “And there's always the Irish countryside. Nothing can spoil that.”

  The kitchen was in the basement and was dark, but Helen had made it cheerful with flowering plants and brightly colored pottery. Richard was at the stone sink, filling an electric kettle.

  “Angelic
Lavinia brought us some hazelnut coffee,” Helen said.

  “Good God,” a voice said from the other darker end of the kitchen. “You Americans can never leave well enough alone.”

  “This is Nigel,” Helen said. “We make him go to that dark corner if he has to smoke.”

  There are some bodies that belong to a particular time period, Lavinia thought. Medieval bodies, eighteenth century bodies. Nigel Henderson's was the sixties model. He was long-legged and narrow-chested; his jeans were tight and he wore sandals with a leather ring for his big toe. His hair was gray and wavy and he wore it to his shoulders.

  He walked toward her. “Somehow in all my ghastly years in New York we managed not to meet, which made them even ghastlier.”

  His eyes traveled from Lavinia's breasts to her thighs in a way that made her feel the time difference. It was four in the morning in New York and she wanted to be asleep.

  “I'll just help Helen with the coffee,” she said. “We all know Richard's useless.”

  “Unfair, unfair,” Richard said.

  “Perfectly true,” Helen said. “I only put up with him for his conversation.”

  Helen walked with Lavinia through what she called “our field.” Nothing grew there but grass, and Helen apologized for that. It made her feel like a tourist, she said, wasting the country's riches, but she really wasn't up to raising cattle or even keeping goats.

  “I think it's all right, Helen. The country's lucky to have you.”

  Helen frowned and said something that Lavinia couldn't hear though it sounded like “humbug.” She hated being complimented, and Lavinia knew that and felt slapped, or slapped down.

  “I wouldn't be surprised if Nigel tried his charms out on you. I suppose it's understandable, given what he's facing right now, but it might be a bore for you. On the other hand, it might be amusing for you. I can never tell.”

  “Tell what?”

  “What, or who, young women find attractive. Or anyone, for that matter. Of course he's attracted to you. I suppose it's unfair of us, offering him a bed down the hall from such a sexy girl.”

  “Hardly a girl, Helen,” she said.

  “That's how I think of you and I'm sure Nigel does, too.”

  For a moment, Lavinia liked thinking of herself as a young girl, walking down a street, her step bouncy with the knowledge that all eyes that fell on her desired her. But only for a moment. Then she realized her body was tired, worn out, dried up, and what she wanted was not sex but replenishment and rest.

  “Oh, God, Lavinia, I'm afraid we've put you in an awful spot. I hope at least he'll leave you alone to read and walk. And the lake just down the road here is lovely for swimming, if you can bear the cold, which I know you can because of your summers in Maine. I know he can't stand it. He's always complaining about the cold. And he's a late riser. So get up early with me, we'll have breakfast together. I'll make a lunch for you and you can pack it on your back with a book and be on your own. And thank God you have your car.”

  It sounded like a good plan, a refreshing plan, and Lavinia knew that was what Helen meant. But it made her feel a little sick, both fearful and ashamed, her childhood feeling when she was being packed off somewhere, sent off for someone else's idea of her pleasure.

  Richard and Helen didn't modify their policy of leaving their guests to themselves because Nigel had terminal cancer, or because when he was left alone he seemed to do nothing but take over the sofa in the pretty sitting room, empty Richard's whiskey bottles into his Waterford glasses, and fill the clear air with the smoke of his cigarettes. He left the packets— Silk Cuts— in the grate of the fireplace. They collected there until someone— Helen probably— removed them. It was summer, no one was lighting fires. Did he think, Lavinia wondered, that his packets just disappeared? She wanted to say that to him and she wanted to ask him if he thought it was good for someone with terminal cancer to go on smoking, or didn't he feel that all that smoking had brought him to this pass. But she didn't say anything because she didn't want to upset Helen and Richard, who could only go on as they did if they believed their guests were getting on just fine.

  Nigel wanted attention— from the Morriseys, from Lavinia— but he went about getting it exactly the wrong way, as wrongheadedly as a child who will never win his parents’ love and whose every gesture leaches what little sense of duty they might have. Helen walked in the mornings. Lavinia sometimes joined her but only sometimes, on the days that Helen specially asked her to. She knew if Helen didn't ask her it was because she wanted to be alone. In the afternoons, if it was warm, she swam in the little lake and she did want Lavinia's companionship. Richard didn't swim, but she made him come with her if no one else was swimming, in case “I got a heart attack and disappeared.”

  She said it matter-of-factly, as she might have said “In case there are no bananas in the market today.” This was the way the Morriseys dealt with their age. Nothing was blinked, but nothing was dwelt on longer than it should be. They always made you feel, Lavinia thought, that they knew how to live. That was why it was good to be around them, and that was why Lavinia said nothing to Nigel, even at his most unpalatable.

  She said nothing when she opened the door after her bath and found him leaning on the wall right across from the bathroom, slouched against it like a juvenile delinquent, smoking one of his endless cigarettes. And she said nothing when, one night, he'd had too much wine to drink and went on a tirade about what he called today's woman. “Wombman. They have a womb but they want to be men.

  “I mean, for God's sake,” he said. “Anatomical differences count for something. Men have more strength. Women can bear and nurse children. I mean, shouldn't that tell us all something? Or am I quite mad? Perhaps I am quite mad. That's what Liz thought. No, I'm wrong. That's not what she thought at all. She just thought I was stupid. Plain stupid. ‘You think with your cock,’ she said. That was her greatest insult. And precisely that dyke's greatest asset. Made her brain clean: no cock to cock it up.”

  “I'll just make coffee for everyone,” Helen said.

  Richard suggested that perhaps one day soon, if the weather was good, they might all drive up to Coole Park, where Lady Gregory had lived, and see the tree where Yeats and Synge had carved their names.

  “I mean really that's what it was all about with Liz. She couldn't stand that I had a penis and she didn't. That's what it all came down to. She rejected my penis out of her own bloody envy at not having one.”

  “I think that's been considered, and rejected as a theory,” Lavinia said. She looked at Richard's disappointed eyes, and wished that she'd kept her resolve of saying nothing.

  “Wall, wot wuz yer problem,” Nigel said in what he thought was an American accent. “Was your husband's cock too big or not big enough?”

  “Nigel, you must go to bed now,” said Helen. “You seem overtired.”

  He covered his face with his hands. Lavinia thought that his hands were his best feature; he should have covered his face with them all the time. Then she could see that he was weeping. His shoulders shook and he began sobbing loudly, with no impulse to silence himself or to stop.

  “I'm not overtired, Helen. As you perfectly well know. I'm drunk, and I'm dying.”

  It would have helped if there were some background noise: the ticking of a clock, the rumble of a dishwasher. Even the chirping of a cricket. But there was no sound in the room at all; it was a mark of how simply the Morriseys lived. And simply, they had to sit in the tumult of noise Nigel was making and endure it, unadulterated. Then Nigel stood and shook himself like a wet dog. He walked up the stairs, saying good night to no one.

  “Oh, God,” Helen said after she'd heard his door close. “I behaved like a fool. The poor, poor desperate creature. He's dying and he has not one real human connection. And I made it worse.”

  “No, Helen,” Richard said.

  “Well, I didn't make it better.”

  “That's as may be,” he said. “But you didn't make it wors
e and there's a difference.”

  “And you did make it better, both of you,” Lavinia said. “He feels less alone here. Less as though life were ridiculous, or hopeless or absurd. You make everyone feel that.”

  “Well, we could all use a rest,” Richard said, pointing the way up the staircase, which Nigel had climbed in the dark.

  Lavinia couldn't sleep. There was a full moon and the muslin curtains didn't keep it out. It made a pool of not quite light— but illumination— on the oak floorboards. She thought of all the people who'd slept in this room before. Most of them long dead. And Nigel was facing death alone. What was it like for him? Was he looking down a long, dark corridor? A tunnel? Or into an endless sky or into an endless well? She wondered if he was terrified or numbed. She wondered what it would be like for her.

  It would be different. She would have her children, her friends, students whose lives she'd touched. It wouldn't be what it was for Nigel: that horrible aloneness, that sense that you'd been given a life, that it was being taken from you and you'd done nothing with it but make a mess.

  She was thinking of him so intensely that she wasn't surprised when she saw the knob turn, and the door open. He stood in the doorway, framed by the light from the hall.

  “Do you mind?” he said.

  “No, not at all.”

  He walked directly to the bed and sat down on it. She propped herself up on her elbow. He kissed her; his mouth was rough from cigarettes and wine. His hair was a little unclean and she could smell his armpits, not dirty, exactly, but unfresh. None of that mattered. He was alone and he was dying. She could give him this, if this was what he wanted. They both knew that it could be his last time.

  He nuzzled her breasts halfheartedly, he knew what he was after. He didn't make much attempt to arouse her, they both knew it wasn't about that. He finished, and lay on top of her a few moments. Then he said, “At moments like these, I need a cigarette. Do you mind if I turn on the light?”