I didn’t know, but I knew what Jean meant. Itching had nothing to do with love or politics. Bright Morning of Pain is one of those books that’s about a slightly tidier and more dramatic existence than any we know. All events are life-changing. I hadn’t noticed Val’s lapse on the topic of itching, but I too relished certain unstudied gestures that seemed to have slipped in by mistake, messing up the literary smoothing.
I always tried to make Jean talk about Barker Street. She resolved not to, I knew, worried that I’d tell Griff—I didn’t—but then she did talk. That summer, they were getting ready to open rooms where clients could go for privacy. They were also just doing what they did, coaxing people into entering the building, eating a sandwich, accepting a ride to the health center.
Jean thought her fellow workers were hilarious and repeated to me the jokes they told her, which I rarely found funny. When I could go, she brought me there—big spaces, tall windows. The agency accepted the logic of its users, and I saw that running it, Jean had become both less and more sensible. She knew that feeling is rarely logical, and that it’s undeniable.
All this, I knew, would suit Zak. Jean suggested that the four of us go out to dinner at a new Indian restaurant, and I wanted to do it. I was sure Griff would say no, but you could never guess where Griff’s conscience would take him. The evening after Jean made the suggestion, he and I watched a Red Sox game, with the TV still on the big table in the living room, even though I’d said I wanted it upstairs. I was on the sofa, with the dog on the carpet near me.
I told him Jean’s proposal.
He quickly said, “Zak?”
“Yes.”
“She’s going with Zak?” I had spoken during a commercial, but the game began again. The other team was batting, and he paused until each pitch had been resolved.
“Yes.”
“Jean Argos and Zak Lilienthal,” he said. “This is my fault. They wouldn’t know each other if I hadn’t been persuaded to have that cursed dinner.”
“Jean’s happy. I suppose Zak is.” There was a pause until, again, the ball was no longer in the air. He watched from a straight chair at the big table; during commercials, he was reading a long, official report. I had reread Bright Morning of Pain that week, and my activity was making a list of pages I had marked, using a code.
“Does she know—?” he said.
“About Martha? I told her,” I said. “Jean can keep her mouth shut. Should I have asked Martha’s permission?”
“No. What did Jean think?”
“She’s still seeing him.”
He said, “She’s casual about trouble.”
I considered. “It’s why I like her.”
“Me, too. Up to a point,” he said. “Let’s go to dinner. He’ll behave if he knows we’re keeping an eye on him. We owe it to her.”
His face became abstracted. Griff was so familiar to me that I knew not just what he was thinking but what he was doing about his thoughts: directing himself not to draw conclusions about Zak, no matter what took place, as a judge might admonish a jury to dismiss from its collective mind what the law didn’t consider pertinent.
Now I wanted to prolong the conversation. We sounded like Griff and Ollie, for once, even though I still hadn’t figured out how to write that essay.
Then Griff said, “Maybe it’s okay to keep the TV down here.”
“No, I need to work at night,” I said quickly.
“You could work in your study.”
“I can’t. You know that.”
He was silent. Then he said, “And you know—it’s about time we had that wall broken down, enlarge the kitchen.”
“What made you think of that?” I said. “That’s all I need, carpenters! Griff, I really meant it about taking a break. We’re just not together right now.”
Before the dinner with Jean and Zak, I went away for a week—to the Cape with Martha and Annie. Griff was too busy to come; school was starting soon. “If you’d gone earlier . . .”
“But my ankle. Which I wrecked at your ridiculous party.”
“I’m not blaming you,” he said.
“You don’t like vacations anyway,” I said.
“That’s true.”
“I mean,” I said, “I’m going without you not because we’re separated but because of scheduling conflicts.”
“We aren’t separated,” Griff said. Once a couple has tried separation, it’s too easy to think of it again.
“Well,” I said, “we are separated.”
“We’re eating meals together. We’re even going out with friends. Friends of a sort.”
“We’re people who live apart but get together to eat,” I said.
He didn’t answer. He might have pointed out that we slept in the same bed, but that happened only sometimes. I knew he was too upset to speak, and I had let it happen. How could I? I didn’t know. I looked at him, his worry lines, his expressive eyebrows. I thought that I was being ridiculous, but I didn’t say so. For the first time all summer—an exaggeration—I cherished Griff, the consistency with which the man was who he was. But it was no help.
When I came home from the Cape, the television was back upstairs. Now, again, I heard the faint sound of the crowd at a game—the ups and downs of the announcers’ patient or resigned or excited descriptions, but not the words—and Griff’s occasional cries of dismay or pleasure.
Joshua Griffin
We are not separated. When Olive is away, I feel her absence whenever I am home. We spend most of our time in the house apart—she downstairs, I upstairs—but I feel her through the floorboards, hear her indignant mind, seething and justifying and reconsidering and seething some more. There are thoughts she comes to in a moment that would take me a week, but then she thinks something else a moment later.
When she comes home from the Cape—loud, sandy, sunburned, tired—she likes me better. That comes from being with Martha and Annie, who like me just fine. Neither has ever allowed either parent to criticize the other—they took that position early and have never changed it. I know Olive didn’t spend the week complaining about me. She comes home with both girls on a Sunday, in the late morning, and after lunch, she drives them both—thoughtful Martha and impetuous Annie, both gleaming with youth and loveliness—to the train station. They kissed me with joy, and I joyfully held them close.
When Olive comes in again, alone, I’m washing the lunch dishes. I turn from the sink, wiping my hands on a kitchen towel. She still looks more like a traveler than a woman in her own house, dangling her car keys, her graying hair windblown.
“I’m glad you’re home, Ollie,” I say.
“Me, too.”
“But it was good?”
She leans on the wall. I say, “Let’s talk in the living room.” I pour two glasses of water, and she follows me. We sit, I on the sofa, she on a chair.
“Olive,” I say. “Please. What is wrong?”
She is quiet for a long time. “I want you somewhere else,” she says, but she sounds tentative, as if she’s reading a note someone has passed her that she doesn’t understand.
“Why? I want to be with you.”
“I don’t think so,” she says. “You love the idea of me. I think when you’re somewhere else and something makes you think of me, you have great admiration for the idea of me. But when you’re home, it’s the same. You have an idea of me. You’re not having to do with the actual person.”
I consider whether this might be true. “Isn’t that true of any two people? We can’t read each other’s thoughts.”
“I can read yours,” she says.
“I don’t think so.”
“Sometimes.”
“Maybe.” I put my glass down on the table next to me. There is no coaster, so I put it on top of a folded newspaper. “I don’t want to put up the old door at the foot of the staircase.”
“Neither do I,” she says. “It was a stupid idea. We’ll go on as we are.”
“So we’re not separate
d?”
“It’s easier for me,” she says, “to think we are. I expect less of you. Be my housemate.”
“What would be different,” I say, “if you felt that I’m your husband?”
She doesn’t answer.
Jean Argos
I like a guy who speaks. Too much history with the other kind. You know what I mean.
Jean: Blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah.
Man: Blah.
Jean: Blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah.
Man: Blah.
Right away, talking is one of Zak’s good points. Possibly he talks too much. Zak has an opinion about everything in my life. He wants to hear about my job, especially Joshua Griffin, and these are conversations he goes back to. “No,” he says one morning—I’ve stayed over at his place—and it takes me a while to realize he is disagreeing with himself. With what he said the night before about my life. “Griff argues, but he’s really on your side.”
“He thinks I’m a nut,” I say.
“I don’t think so.”
It’s a weekday morning, and we’re hurrying to shower and dress, but he starts talking about Joshua and himself. I know this is a hard subject. Joshua was Zak’s imaginary father—the one who took an interest and could be a bit stern for Zak’s own good. His actual father, he says, was shy, out of his depth with such a loud and noticeable son. Joshua was a history teacher then, and he helped Zak with assignments.
“More than he helped the girls,” Zak says. “He was crazy about me.”
“Then why did you—?”
“I know. I must have known he wouldn’t like it. I was looking forward to the scolding, I think, and then the understanding.”
“You thought he’d understand why you secretly filmed his daughter having sex?”
“He’s a humanist,” he says. “A mensch.” He leaves the room and returns with his shoes. “I thought Martha would be mad-slash-not-mad. She’d think my film was brilliant. But I should’ve written a story on paper, not made a film with actors. It had to do with race too, which I thought they’d love, but, oh boy.”
As we’re heading out to our cars, he suggests that we try to arrange a dinner with Joshua and Olive. I see that he wants more than anything to get their friendship back. Part of my appeal is my connection with them. I’m not offended—I know he likes me for myself, as well. Why not use what’s there to be used? I too think making friends with Joshua and Olive would have benefits. More than that. Zak, who is at ease with bodies of all sorts in all situations, is entirely open but not particularly intimate, and I’ve rarely had close friends. The dinner party at Joshua Griffin’s gave me a massive dose of intimacy of more than one kind, and much that I do in the months after it is an attempt to get some more—to make friends with Olive. I broach the question of a dinner with her, and she says she’ll get back to me, which sounds like no—but she says yes. We make a date to meet at an Indian restaurant.
Our dinner is almost at the end of summer. Zak bikes over to my house when he gets off work. I live near Edgewood Park, so I take my own bike from the garage and we ride in the park for a half hour. Then we go to bed. The sex isn’t right. Zak is too exuberant, all but manic. Nervous. Then we’re late. We shower fast and dress fast, and I feel alone. I’m with someone who’s not particularly aware of me, just contemplating his evening with powerful people. We take my car, since he came on his bike, and it’s like I’m the taxi driver.
Joshua and Olive are seated side by side, staring at the door of the Indian restaurant, looking tense amid red-and-tan cloth hangings, glints of gold. Zak holds the door open and I walk in first, beneath his arm. I’m in a turquoise sleeveless dress and sandals—no jewelry; no jacket, though the air conditioning will make me cold. I’m carrying a little black pouch instead of my usual big stained tote bag. Very Saturday night, though it’s Thursday. Zak is also in summer clothes—an open shirt with his chest hair showing—and sandals. Olive is in a neat white T-shirt and tan cargo pants; Joshua is the most formally dressed: no jacket, at least, but—of all things—a red necktie.
“You look as if you spent the day on the beach,” Olive says.
“Biking,” I say. “After work. Sorry we’re late—we had to shower.”
Which is stupid of me, the first of several stupid remarks that evening. I know she sees “bed” on my face. But Zak talks easily about the food. Papadums and sauces appear, we order beer for us, wine for Olive, a Coke for Joshua. Zak—waving the cracker—points out that it’s crisp and peppery. We order. We decide to share. We pick out dishes, but then the waiter wants to know how hot we’d like them. Zak and I say, “Hot,” just as Olive says, “Medium,” and Joshua looks anxious. He mumbles, “Medium,” too, but I realize an Indian restaurant may have been a mistake. Olive says maybe we shouldn’t share, but “Medium,” Zak says firmly to the smiling waiter. Eating assorted appetizers, we talk about the weather, Olive’s recovering ankle, and the geography of Zak’s new life—where his practice is, where he lives; we don’t mention my house.
The main dishes arrive, with naan and basmati rice. The waiter snatches the lid off each dish as he names it. It’s like somebody snatches the lids off us too, and we talk more easily. I order another beer, aware that it’s too early to order a second beer. “So,” I say then, “is risk necessary? If you’re going to accomplish anything, I mean.”
“Risk?” Zak says.
I’m thinking of Paulette. Zak and I talked about her this afternoon, just as we were taking off on our bikes, but what am I doing? I know how Joshua feels about Paulette. I’m doing it because I want Zak to be right about Joshua: I want to see Joshua, after a little argument, turn open and warm. But surely he won’t. For a second, I wonder if I’m getting myself into trouble just to prove that Zak’s fantasy about Joshua makes no sense. But I don’t have time to think this through. I have to explain about risk, and now I can’t think of an example except Paulette. “I was telling Zak. A woman who works for me—well, you know—”
“Risk is a romantic fantasy,” Joshua says. “Take risks! Teach kids to take risks! It’s what everybody says. I teach kids not to take risks. I teach them to figure out what will work, and do that.” I see that he’s taking some rice and putting on top of it a tiny mound of aloo gobi, like he’s illustrating the rule.
Zak laughs. “Maybe risk is good for timid people but not for the brave.”
“Not good for anyone,” Joshua says. He eats some of his rice. He has the intent look of an old man for a few seconds, as I glance across the table. His napkin is tucked into his collar. His attention is on the process his hands carry out—while Zak scoops food and tears bread and eats and argues all at once.
“That woman who works with you?” Olive says.
“Everything she does makes some kind of sense, though yes, everything is at least a little dangerous. But she tries things!” I’m excited about Paulette’s newest scheme, and for a moment I am sure Joshua will be excited, too.
He makes a noise, and I interrupt myself. “Joshua wants me to dump her, but he’s wrong,” I say to Olive. Coyly. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
“The woman who put that nonsense in the paper?” Joshua says. “What now?”
I am still hopeful. “She’s paying clients to do little jobs. I said we don’t have a budget for that, even though it’s so little—so she said she’d earn it. Today I find out that twice, she’s taken teams of homeless people and gotten them to clean people’s property for money. The clients get some, and she keeps some, which pays for other clients—or the same clients—to work at Barker.”
“Is she with them when they do the work?” Griff says, putting down his fork. “What is she telling the homeowners? We can’t guarantee these people—we don’t know them. They could be rapists, murderers. What if they get hurt? We don’t have insurance.”
“If they’re murderers,” Zak says, “maybe they deserve to get hurt.”
With a gesture that shows me what things were like between them t
wenty years ago, Olive reaches across the table and slaps Zak’s hand, and he pats hers. He begins to talk about another doctor in his practice who’s difficult but good. He’s trying to help—broadening the topic to “screwy but worthwhile people.”
Then Olive says, “What about political risk?”
“What about it?” I say.
“Never mind,” Olive says.
Then I know what she means. I say, “Like in Bright Morning of Pain,” but she is speaking again and doesn’t notice. She’s asking Zak what it’s like to be a pediatrician.
“I’m a kid and an adult at the same time,” he says, happy with the subject change, not noticing that Olive is working hard to keep us friendly. “We talk shoes. When a baby knows six words, he’ll talk about his shoes. ‘My shoes.’ I try to wear cool shoes.”
“Like running shoes?”
“I want the kind with flashing lights.” He scoops up food with a scrap of naan. He gestures with it—talk about risk!—and a hot splat of chickpeas and sauce falls sideways onto my bare arm. I jump, flick the food onto the table with a finger, touch my napkin to my arm. Zak doesn’t notice any of this, though I see that Olive does. I shift my chair away from my date. It makes a sound when it moves, and now he glances at me and goes on talking. He’s saying cute things, as always.
I wish I had said, “Hey, you dummy!” when the food fell on my arm, but it’s too late now. I want Zak to stop sounding young and perfect. So I change the subject again, but I’m not going back to the topic of Paulette. And I think Olive wants to talk about the book. So I ask Joshua—again—if he’s finished it. Olive looks at me as if she thinks I’m crazy, and I remember that this book is a complicated topic for the two of them, even though Joshua says he loves it, even though Olive knew the author.
There is a long silence. Then Joshua says, “I did.”
“And what do you think?” I say, while Olive is saying, “Where did you get it? You didn’t read my copy. I keep it under lock and key.”
“I borrowed it from the New Haven Free Public Library,” Joshua says, slowly enunciating the library’s formal name. Then he looks at me and says, “That’s not how it happened.”
Conscience Page 20