If I Forget You

by Thomas Christopher Greene

  The next day, Margot sleeps late. She is vaguely aware of Chad leaving in the morning, his routine, the half hour down on the treadmill, then his shower and his getting dressed in the walk-in closet as he does, going in wearing a towel and emerging like the Wall Street superhero he loosely aspires to be, a crisp suit and shiny brown shoes on. When she rolls back over a few hours later, he is gone.

  Margot sits up in bed. Looking out the windows, she can see the day is overcast, though it doesn’t appear to be raining. She reaches for her phone. She stares at it, looking for the text from Henry that is not there. What is the protocol here? Perhaps it’s too old-fashioned to think he should be the one to reach out to her? Did she imagine the idea that time had done nothing to erode their connection? A barb of doubt comes over and she thinks, Oh, be grateful, will you? Do you want to throw everything away?

  Margot looks out at the gray day and a wave of sadness sweeps over her. She suddenly longs for her children. Emma is deep in the woods of Maine, probably out on a canoe in the middle of the vast lake, or on one of the daily hikes they take to some vista where you can see hundreds of miles of green forests rolling toward the sea. Alex is in the city, like his father, his first job, though unpaid, and at a publisher, of all things. She remembers that conversation when he said he wanted to be an editor, and she was proud of Chad, for though he said he thought books were dying out in America, and that editors were lucky to make enough money to afford to live near the city, let alone in it, he also told Alex he thought he should take the position and see what he thought for himself. Of course, it was a far easier thing to say knowing that Alex would leave college with a healthy trust fund intact from his grandparents.

  Margot takes her phone then and texts her son.

  “Can you escape for coffee?” she writes.

  The response comes immediately. “Yeah. U okay?”

  “Fine. Just miss you.”

  An hour and half later, she waits for her tall son to emerge from the Flatiron Building. When he finally comes out, looking to her like such a full-fledged man in his coat and tie, the goofy flop of hair dangling over his forehead the only remnant of his teenage years, Margot feels something give within her. She goes to Alex and hugs him.

  “You sure you’re okay?” he says.

  “Of course. Just wanted to see you. Are you too old now for your mother?”

  “Jeez. No.”

  In front of them as they walk is the Empire State Building, the best view of it in the city, the great limestone obelisk rising up above the other buildings. At a Starbucks a block away, she orders both of them lattes. He doesn’t have long before he needs to be back. He tells her about the work, mainly filing and running errands, sorting mail. But the other day, a famous author stopped by and everyone drank champagne to celebrate the delivery of her latest manuscript, a certain best-seller. Alex talks about how hot the building gets, up on the nineteenth floor, and the ancient and slow elevators. How in the dive apartment in Alphabet City that he shares with two other boys from college they sit at night in their underwear and drink beer in front of fans. And looking at her soft-eyed son, Margot finds herself getting nostalgic for the time of life he is occupying, and part of her hates herself for this, the always looking back, the inability to live now or for the future, and maybe, she thinks, this is what it means to be over forty. Everything interesting is behind you and you live out the string as best you can, finding the small moments that make you happy. Either that or start over.

  * * *

  Walking through Union Square Park by herself fifteen minutes later, Margot feels her phone vibrate, and the text that comes through makes her smile.

  “Are you there?” Henry writes.

  It is such a poet’s question, Margot thinks. Does he mean am I out in the world somewhere? Or is it the more narrow question: Am I currently holding my phone in my hand?

  “I am here,” writes Margot.

  Margot stops walking and stares at her phone. People stream around her. She moves into the lee of a building to escape them.

  “I can’t think of anything but you,” Henry writes. “I just taught a class and I don’t remember a thing about it. I need to see you. Can I come out there? Are you alone?”

  “You don’t have to come out,” Margot types back. “I am here.”

  Henry, 2012

  The funny thing about getting older, Henry decides, is how the rules you lived with for so long change. For much of his adult life, he wouldn’t have dreamed of having a drink before five, that very rational marker that indicated the shift to nighttime. And often it was far later than that, for if he had work to do, he liked to address it with a clear head. Among his colleagues, this made him unusual.

  And yet here he finds himself at a little past noon with an open bottle of wine across from Margot at a bistro near Union Square. He tops her glass off with the white wine and then pours himself another. He is feeling strong. Last night, he slept better than he had in a long time. The wine is helping. As are the french fries cooked in duck fat, which he eats with the relish of a teenager.

  “I’ve had a night to think about this,” Henry says. “Really think about it.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to Vermont in the morning. For a few days. I want you to come with me.”

  “Oh,” Margot says. “I don’t know. Where would I say I was going? I need to think.”

  Henry leans forward. “There are two places I feel like myself. Do you know what they are?”

  Margot shakes her head. “No.”

  “This little cabin I bought on a lake in Vermont. And the second is with you. I need to know what happens if I put them both together. I need to know if it’s all real.”

  “If what is real?”

  Henry reaches into the side pocket of his messenger bag. “This,” he says, and he hands a small rectangle to Margot.

  “Oh,” she says, and puts her hand over her mouth. It is a photograph, the only one he has of the two of them, and the sides of are wrinkled and it has a tear in it. It was taken on the Bannister campus, a sunny fall day. They are at the edge of the campus quad, on a small hillock, and he is sitting on the ground and smiling at the camera, while Margot looks up at his face adoringly.

  “I can’t believe you have this,” she says.

  “It’s been much loved, like an old stuffed animal.”

  “Look at us,” she says. “We were such babies.”

  “You know what’s amazing to me?”

  “What?”

  “I think you are far more beautiful now.”

  “Oh, stop it. Really.”

  “No, I’m serious. All young people are kind of blandly beautiful, you know? Trust me. I teach them. But a measure of a woman’s beauty is how she ages. And last night when I saw you coming down the street toward me, you took my breath away.”

  Henry sees the welling of tears in her eyes, and he says, “Hey, don’t cry. It’s okay.”

  Margot half laughs. “Then don’t be so fucking nice to me.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  “You know what is crazy? I’ve been married a long time and this doesn’t feel wrong. What does that say about me?”

  “Will you come?”

  “Yes,” Margot says. “Of course I will.”

  The next morning, on a clear, sunny day, Henry drives north out of the city, and off of I-95, he follows the sign for the train station in Stamford, and when he gets to the parking lot, he drives through it, looking for her, and he doesn’t see her anywhere. She decided not to come, he thinks. He drives around again. And then a moment later, a Mercedes SUV pulls into the lot, and even from this distance he can tell it is Margot. A moment later, she is parked and climbing into his Volkswagen with a small brown duffel bag.

  “I didn’t think you were going to come,” Henry says.

  “I’m just always late,” she says. “You should know this about me. One of my many terrible qualities.”

  The weather holds
all the way to Vermont. Three hours later, they are off the highway and driving those webs of half-marked dirt roads that lead to the lake. When they get to the final turn that is Henry’s road, the cow path that cuts through the woods, he says, “We’re here. And this is my favorite part. The road.”

  Up and through the trees they go, swooping down into the wide-open meadow before they are back into the woods again on the narrow dirt track, the dappled sunlight coming through the high trees and speckling the path in front of them. A minute later, the lake opens up in front of them and Henry looks at Margot and she is smiling and he says, “This is it.”

  “I love it,” she says.

  “It’s not much, really. But it’s mine.”

  “It’s wonderful.”

  They stand there for a moment, on the grassy top of the cliff, the house below them, and they can see out to the peninsula that cuts the lake in half, the silvery birch trees that grow on it. The afternoon is hot and humid and Henry knows from looking at the weather that they may get thunderstorms later, and he secretly hopes so, the drama of it all, the windswept water and the rain falling in torrents while he and Margot sit on the screened-in porch and drink wine and watch the lightning expose the sky.

  “Let’s unload,” Henry says.

  And so down the steps they go, with Margot carrying their two bags while Henry manages a cooler and two bags of groceries on top of it. He shopped the night before at Fairway for everything they might need, not wanting to have to leave here for anything.

  And then they are inside the musty cabin, the door opening onto his simple bedroom with its double bed, and then down the stairs into the one room that contains the kitchen and a small living area framed by a big stone fireplace.

  Henry runs around opening everything, aware of how stale it all smells, and then he opens a bottle of white wine and they move out onto the deck that sits right above the lake. He raises the umbrella on the outdoor table and they sit down now and he pours them both glasses of the wine and hands one across to Margot.

  “This is so lovely,” she says.

  “It’s hot,” he says.

  “I love it.”

  “Cheers,” says Henry.

  “Cheers.”

  “So I didn’t ask,” Henry says. “But where did you say you were going?”

  “Canyon Ranch.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a retreat center in western Massachusetts. I have gone there before. Do yoga and clear my head. Eat healthy. I told Chad I just needed a break.”

  “Well, I can’t promise you that we will eat superhealthy. But we should go swimming. The water is beautiful.”

  “It looks cold.”

  “Refreshing. It’s really lovely.”

  Margot sips her wine. “I feel like I am on a first date. I can’t imagine you seeing me in a bathing suit right now.”

  Henry smiles and waves his hand outward. There are other houses across the way, but there is no sign of another person anywhere. “We don’t need bathing suits,” he says. “We have the lake to ourselves.”

  Margot laughs. “No way.”

  Henry raises his glass. “Maybe if I get you drunk first.”

  “You’re bad,” Margot says. “Henry Gold, what has happened to you?”

  “Just making up for lost time,” he says, and as soon as he does, he regrets it, for it shatters the simplicity of the moment and brings the past roaring into the present.

  Margot stands up then and walks over to the railing of the deck and looks down to the water, toward his dock, which juts out into the lake.

  “How about a canoe ride instead?” she says.

  “You got it.”

  And Henry appreciates her grace, her ability to move them both back to here, and in the canoe they move slowly out in the lake, the water like glass as the narrow green boat slices through it. Henry is in the back with the paddle and Margot faces him, and soon they are out past the peninsula that defines the cove and into the broader expanse of the lake.

  “Oh, look,” Margot says.

  Henry follows her eyes to the resident pair of loons floating some twenty yards away from them. Henry, with one long pull on the paddle, steers the boat in their direction. He loves this feeling, the effortless glide, and he loves even more the look of joy on Margot’s face as they come within five yards of the large black-and-white birds, who then, one following the other, dive under the water, visible for a moment as sleek shadows before they disappear into the depths together.

  Margot, 2012

  She wants to love all of this, his small cabin, the deep mountain lake with the clear water where you can see the bottom even when it’s deep, the forest that goes right to the shoreline, the high she is getting from the wine, but most of all, the two of them, how easy they are together, and this part, in particular, astonishes her. How can they be so comfortable with each other when by all rights they should be complete strangers?

  Margot wants to love all of it, but part of her feels claustrophobic, even in all this open air, maybe nothing more than a nagging sense of self-doubt, or as simple as the idea that he drove her here, leaving her car in the Stamford parking lot, and isn’t that such an obvious place for it to be?

  They ride the entire lake in his canoe. Back at the cabin, they pour new glasses of wine and, together in the small kitchen, prep dinner, moving around each other with ease, her bending simply to his lead as he asks her if she can make the salad while he marinates the steaks. Outside, the thunderclouds have started to move in, and Margot can see them thick and heavy and dark above the hills on the other shore, while above them a bright sun still beams down.

  Henry looks nervously at the sky. “I want to get these on the grill before it comes,” he says. “I never cook inside here if I can help it.”

  The first crack of thunder hits just as they sit down at the picnic table inside the screened-in porch. Margot jumps a little.

  “That make you nervous?” Henry asks.

  “A little,” she says. “I’m not used to being out here.”

  Henry laughs and they both look out at the lake, where the wind has picked up suddenly. Margot can see the trees on the peninsula bending under its weight and then she hears the rain before she sees it, like the sound of an oncoming train, and they both turn at the same time and watch it move across the water until it reaches them, pounding on the roof, some of the spray coming through the screen to where they sit.

  “Holy shit,” Henry says. “Now this is a storm.”

  “Should we go in?” Margot asks.

  “Never,” says Henry, and as he says it, lightning strikes somewhere out near the point, just across the lake from them, a blur of light in the gathering darkness, followed instantly by an earthshaking crack, and Margot says, “You sure?”

  “Positive,” Henry says. “Listen: You know what I love about this?”

  “What?”

  “The cruelest thing in the world is the march of time. It just keeps going and I know we can’t ever stop it. Except on days like this and in a place like this—do you know what I mean? You can slow it down if you try and maybe it’s just an illusion, but illusions are real in their own way. This afternoon, for me, felt almost like an entire lifetime. Like that canoe ride could have been a year long, in a good way. Does that make sense?”

  “I love your mind,” Margot says.

  And they eat then and the steak is good and tender and the salad crisp and there is a good baguette to bring it all together and around them the rain falls in sheets and the wind rattles the old cabin and bends the trees, but Margot doesn’t care, because suddenly she feels like she is home and maybe there is nothing to be afraid of, after all, and it has been a long time since she has really felt that way.

  After dinner, they stand in the screened-in porch, staring out at the storm over the cove, and Henry puts his arm around her and she leans into him. The wind is moving the water on the small lake in great sideways waves that splash over his dock below. They sta
nd there for a while in silence, and maybe Henry is right, that you can slow time if you just try really hard, if you give in to silence and give in to storms like this. She has lived forty-two years and for the first time she is realizing how profoundly beautiful something as simple as a thunderstorm can be.

  Soon, though, the wind dies down and the sky starts to lighten and the only thunder they hear is far off in the distance. From the north side of the lake, the sun emerges through the clouds and they watch its golden light spread to where they stand and they can see the fast-moving clouds disappearing above the hills that surround them until, other than the water that is still running everywhere and the steam suddenly burning off the deck, it is as if the storm never visited here.

  That night, the moon is stuck behind the hill across from them and they can see it not yet risen and gauzy through the trees. The stars are out in force and the bright stripe of the Milky Way looks close enough to touch above them. It is warm.

  “It’s dark enough now,” Margot says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “To swim. I want to swim now. You won’t be able to see me.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Henry says.

  Margot takes off then, through the screened-in porch and out onto the lawn and down toward the dock. She can hear Henry behind her, following. When she reaches the dock, she doesn’t hesitate, quickly peeling off her T-shirt and unfastening her bra and then wriggling out of her jeans and sliding her underwear down. He is next to her now and she can hear him doing the same thing, but she doesn’t look over, because she wants to be the first one in the water.

  And then she is running the four or five steps to the end of the dock and letting herself go like a child, jumping as far as she can, and then hitting the water with that surprise, and she is under. She comes up and pushes her hair out of her face just in time to see Henry’s nude body launching off the dock toward her.