Leaving Sophie Dean

by Alexandra Whitaker

  With a stab of certainty, she knew then that it would be impossible to get through the day as if nothing unusual had happened. There was no conceivable way she could pick up her children today and play with them as if everything were okay, smiling bravely while they prattled on about “Daddy’s girlfriend.” Enough of being a tower of strength! Enough of Sophie, the good sport, the model mother, doing her duty and then… doing her duty some more. “I’m not having a good day,” she whispered to her featureless image in the window, and then again, with greater conviction, “This is not a good day.” It was then that she noticed, also reflected in the window, a neon sign spelling “Budweiser” backwards. She turned and saw the blacked-out front of a dingy bar across the street. A place to go. Clutching her bag to her chest, she dashed through the traffic and hurled herself against the heavy door and into the bar.

  Darkness, reeking beer fumes, plaintive country music: a mistake. She stood disconcerted. Never mind, just leave again. She turned, then stopped dead. If she left, she’d be outside again. Out there with that candy wrapper.

  The bartender looked up, his bottom lids drooping like a St. Bernard’s, showing the red below. “Yeah?” he said.

  Uh-oh. She’d been spotted. Now it would be rude to leave. “Oh, hello. I’ll… I’ll… I’ll have a…” And that was that. She could think of nothing more to say. There were no more words in her mind.

  “Want some time to think it over?” the bartender said at last. It looked like she was teetering, about to take a swan dive off the wagon.

  “Beer!” came a shrill voice from the end of the bar. Peering through the gloom, Sophie made out a red-haired woman of sixty or so who slid off her stool and ambled up to her. “I think the word you’re after is ‘beer.’” She smiled, showing drinker’s teeth. “Mind if I sit down?”

  Sophie made a polite gesture, and they perched on stools side by side. For a time the woman sang along in a high, cracked voice to the country song on the jukebox. Then she broke off abruptly and said, “Is it safe to say you’re not having a good day?”

  “Ye-es,” Sophie said cautiously. “It’s safe to say that.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Fine.” She got back to her song: “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille.”

  But on the other hand, why not? “Well, actually…” Sophie began, and the woman fell silent. “Actually, I don’t mind. It’s this. My husband left me for another woman three weeks ago, and now she’s moved into our old house, and she lives there with my children, and I feel very angry about that.”

  The woman nodded and leaned toward Sophie. “You know what?” she said.

  “What?”

  She leaned closer still, and when she spoke, it was slowly and with emphasis. “It’s… not… important.”

  “Oh.” The woman must be drunker than she looked.

  “I mean, it stinks and it sucks and everything else, but for all that you’re mad and hurt and filled with anguish, there’s a little corner of you that doesn’t give a shit. Not really.”

  “Oh. Well. I have to say I’m… having difficulty locating that corner.”

  “Ah, but it’s there! And sometimes, just for a rest, you need to get into that place and stay there for a little while. You know what I mean? Okay, so he’s an asshole, no doubt about it. But… it’s… not… important.”

  “Hmm,” Sophie said neutrally.

  “So! You get yourself into that place, and if you don’t mind, I’ll join you there! It’s nice and cozy there, warm and dry.” The woman giggled, then screeched, “April fresh and dry as a bone!” Sophie smiled uncertainly, but the woman reached out and shook her hand. “My name’s Liz, and I’d like to buy you a beer.”

  “I’m Sophie. And… well, yes, all right. Thank you.”

  “Billy,” Liz snapped. Evidently their relationship did not require much small talk.

  The beers came, and Liz raised her glass high. “To that special place,” she said, “where you don’t give a shit.” It sounded like a dangerous toast to Sophie, but she lifted her glass, and when she had finished her beer, she ordered two more, as was only polite, before bidding Liz farewell.

  Back outside on the sidewalk, feeling a little dizzy and flinching like a vampire in the harsh daylight, Sophie fished out her phone and made two brief calls. The first was to Marion, asking her to pick up the children at school and play with them until six, then deliver them to their father’s. The second was to Milagros, telling her that Adam would probably be calling to apologize and asking her to please take her job back, if he did. And so that afternoon at four o’clock, Matthew and Hugo were at Marion’s house finger-painting, and Milagros was shrewdly negotiating with Adam the terms under which she would allow herself to be reemployed by him. And Sophie…

  In rapid succession she pictured all the things she might conceivably do with her afternoon: seek counseling, pour out her heart to a friend, meditate, lunch, or shop in Copley Place. Have a massage, a run, a nap, a swim. Go to the Gardner Museum or the MFA. She could even don an assortment of trash bags (a small one as a turban, a larger one as a tunic) and go sweep Boylston Street as a sort of reincarnation of the famous Bag Man, then run back to the bar, her plastic garments flapping, and tell Liz to set ’em up again. She closed her eyes and pressed them with her fingertips in an effort to think what, what, what she wanted to do. And then the answer came: nothing. She wanted nothing, nothingness. Not to feel, not to think. To shed her sad and weary self and sit in the dark, engulfed in something else. Her soul’s only desire, Sophie realized, was to gaze hour after hour at a big screen in an empty theater.

  Such bathos, she thought. My life falls apart—so I go to the movies.

  She saw four films that day and night, starting with the excellent Agnès Jaoui. All the films were foreign and subtitled, all of them transported her completely as she watched, rapt and wide-eyed, like a child greedy for bedtime stories. Her thoughts spun out in ever-widening circles as she walked home from the Coolidge Corner Theater that night, muttering to herself, reenacting certain scenes from the films and inventing others: the things that should have happened, but hadn’t. Her evening had achieved its purpose. She had succeeded in bombarding her senses with alien sights, sounds, and stories until she had drummed herself temporarily out of being and she could consider her own plight with a sort of numbed indifference.

  4.

  At midday the students were draped around the shiatsu classroom in various poses: one sitting cross-legged on the floor, rolling her head in gentle circles; another lying flat, her legs propped against the wall; another resting her head on a friend’s lap. Most of them were also eating some form of lunch involving thermoses of soup, sandwiches with leafy bits poking out, and pieces of fruit held in the hand and studied with frowning concentration between bites. Occupying roughly the center of the composition was Jake—or Cob, as Rose preferred to call him, favoring the second half of his name—his white hair fluffed out magnificently, seated with his legs well apart, one hand gripping his knee and the other stroking his beard with a satisfied air. It was he who eventually broke the silence, delivering a monologue that felt like the sort of set piece used in theatrical auditions.

  “Change…” he began, shaking his head with amusement. “Change…” He forced out a chuckle. “Oh, if only… if only we could accept the fact that change is the rule rather than the exception…” He sighed; then, his voice soft and earnest: “we’d all find life a whole lot easier.” He slapped his thigh softly and emitted another low laugh.

  L looked up from her stoneware crock of greens, her fork, trailing bean sprouts, poised in midair, and gave Jacob an unreadable look. She was the one, Sophie suspected, most likely to fall for the avuncular charms of the old earth daddy, and he seemed to think so, too, for he smiled and addressed the rest of his discourse directly to her. “It’s normal for human beings, their lives and their relationships, to be in constant motion—that’s ho
w life is. Nothing stands still! The earth turns, the seasons turn, the constellations shift in the sky.…” This last was accompanied by expressive hand motions and a face radiant with childlike wonder. “Constant change is the norm—not an aberration. Not the tragedy, not the crisis that we make it out to be. Change is growth. Change is health. All the trouble begins when, out of fear, people try to lock themselves and others into static roles.” Clenched fists, wincing. “That’s not right, that’s not nature. If something’s not moving, not changing, not flowing, that means it’s blocked, it’s stuck—it’s sick.”

  “So we can depend on nothing and no one?” Sophie asked sharply, wary of getting into a discussion with Jake-O but annoyed enough to be drawn in anyway.

  “No!” Jacob turned to her, a triumphant gleam in his eye. “We can depend on everything and everyone—to change! To evolve! That is the beauty of it.”

  “Not all changes are beautiful.”

  “No, some are very painful, but we must embrace them—as proof of life.”

  “No.” Sophie shook her head and set down her apple. “No. There’s no obligation to embrace anything. To acknowledge and act in consequence, yes. To embrace, no. And there’s nothing unnatural about wanting some consistency in your life. The seasons you mention, the constellations—they move in a known, predictable cycle. They’re perfectly reliable.”

  Anthony joined in, his finger raised. “Yes! I was going to say that there seems to be some confusion here between motion and change. Real change wouldn’t be day following night, but rather the day the sun doesn’t rise! And every time that has happened, during eclipses, people have freaked out pretty hard. It seems pointless to blame them for that.”

  Jacob spoke gently. “I’m not suggesting we blame anyone for anything.” He turned to L for support, but she was back to munching her greens. “I’m just making the valid point that we must not fear and reject change, when change is the very essence of life.”

  L set down her empty bowl and spoke. “I think what Jacob is getting at here”—she raised her eyes to him, and he smiled at her gratefully—“is that he’s trying to come up with a theory that will do away with the concept of responsibility.” His face fell as she continued. “He means it’s okay to let people down. It’s healthy, even.” They glared at each other, and Sophie wondered what was going on between them, because something obviously was.

  “Yes, it can be okay!” he said. “Of course it can be! It depends on a thousand—no, a million!—circumstances, great and small, and how they all mesh together and the intricate pattern they form!”

  Sophie actually snorted. “So life is just a wonderful, constantly shifting kaleidoscope—”

  He pointed at her. “That’s a very good way of putting it!”

  “And expecting anyone to be dutiful or dependable or loyal is ridiculous and pathetic. Is that it?”

  “No. Duty exists, and so does responsibility, but their nature is also constantly shifting. Take the case of a parent and child. The parent’s duty to the child is always changing. When she’s little, you have to tie her shoes, but soon you won’t need to. Here, too, is constant change.”

  “Here, too, is a fucking cop-out,” L said, her eyes resting on him.

  Anthony cleared his throat. “Again, I think, Jacob, if I may say so, that you’re taking an example of a natural cycle—​​a child growing up, the changing of the seasons—while I think some of us here are talking about change as a breaking of those natural rhythms. The day the sun doesn’t rise…”

  “The day a parent walks out on you.”

  “Or a partner does.”

  “The day someone you always thought loved you punches you right in the face!” This last was from Rose, and it produced consternation in the room.

  “Your husband?” a sympathetic voice inquired.

  “My sister! Last Christmas!”

  “Yes, yes! Some changes are tough!” Jacob raised his voice to take the floor again. “I acknowledge that. But there’s a value, in troubled times, to recognizing that change is life… and life is change!”

  “Do you really think so, Jacob?” Henry said, suddenly joining the conversation. “Let’s take Rose’s case. Her sister’s just slugged her, and she’s sitting there with her brand-new black eye. Do you really think that as she holds a lump of raw meat to her face, she is consoled by the thought ‘Life is change’?”

  After class Henry and Sophie walked partway home together, he pushing his bike along the sidewalk, she still fuming. “It’s easy to say change is wonderful when your own life is on an even keel, but when you’ve just been ‘changed’ for another woman, you have quite a different take on the whole thing, believe me. That Jacob is such a jerk.”

  “He is a jerk. But he’s right, too. Always remember, my dear—jerks can be right. Life is change. Look at you, changed for a different woman. Well, all you can do is let this new event flow into the stream of your life.”

  “Henry!”

  “It’s true. You can’t dam it up. What’s her name?”

  “Her name?” Sophie spoke with careful neutrality to conceal the revulsion she felt pronouncing it out loud. “Valerie.”

  But he noticed and said loyally, “Bad name. But the point is, your children won’t be happy until they can feel free to like Valerie, even love her.”

  She thought about that. “Okay. So?”

  “So you have to help them do that.”

  “Oh, come on, surely not! Why is every damned thing my job? It’s up to her to make herself lovable!”

  “That too, but that comes later. The first step has to come from you. You have to give them permission to love her.”

  She covered her eyes. “Good God, what next?”

  “What? Don’t you see what I mean?”

  “Yes, I see. I see and I agree. It just seems to be asking an awful lot. All this being mature and putting the children’s welfare first really takes it out of a person.”

  “What’s the man’s name?”

  “What man?”

  “Her boyfriend. Your children’s father.”

  “My husband?”

  He shrugged.

  “Adam. I’m sure I’ve told you that before.”

  “Adam! Now that really is an ugly name.” He mouthed it a couple of times, his face crumpled with distaste.

  She laughed. “You know, it’s amazing to me how you can be so wise one minute and so childish the next.”

  “Yes. Actually, Sophie, that’s something you love about me. And don’t you forget it.” He caught her hand and gave it a surprising kiss in the palm. Then he flung his leg over his bike and cycled away.

  * * *

  Valerie was lying on the chesterfield after dinner, a magazine in her hand and several others piled on the floor beside her, but she was finding it difficult to concentrate because of Matthew and Hugo, who were not running around the room or shouting, but sitting quite still in armchairs, knees together, hands in laps, looking at her intently.

  Casting about for a subject of conversation that might interest her, Matthew at last hit upon: “I have a fish at Mommy’s house.” But she wasn’t listening. “Valerie. Valerie.” He repeated her name politely until she lowered her magazine. “I have a fish at Mommy’s house. His name is Cloudy. Hugo has a fish, too. It’s named Fishtag.”

  Valerie wondered if one were really expected to respond to conversational gambits like this one. Surely not. What could a person say that wouldn’t sound cruelly sarcastic? How interesting? No, he’d see straight through that—kindest just to let it drop.

  “At Mommy’s house there’s a roof deck,” Hugo offered, pronouncing the words importantly. “It has plants, and it’s beau-ti-ful.”

  “Fancy that.” With some bitterness Valerie remembered the double terraces of the dream apartment she had designed for herself and Adam. A very long time ago, it seemed.

  “Time for bed, boys,” Adam said, coming in from the kitchen.

  From behind his back, Hug
o produced his elephant and its detached trunk, which he handed to Valerie. “Can you fix this?”

  Without glancing at the pieces, she passed them to Adam, who snapped the trunk back on and returned the toy to Hugo, who beamed to see it whole again.

  “Come on,” Adam said. “Let’s go up and get your pajamas on.”

  “No bath?” Matthew asked.

  “Oh, yes, of course. Bath, then pajamas, then books, then bed. That’s right, isn’t it?” They nodded, and Adam felt a touch of pride at his mastery of new skills—and something else, too: He was beginning to draw comfort from this evening routine of theirs.

  After they’d gone upstairs, Valerie drifted over to the table and surveyed the unappetizing remains of that night’s supper: lima beans spilled off the edge of the boys’ plates, chicken in congealing gravy, Hugo’s fork with two lima beans speared onto it standing upright in his water glass. Adam’s plate was still half full. She finished the wine, had a quick cigarette on the patio, then wandered around the living room, waiting for Adam. What a bore these evenings were. She looked at her watch, feeling rather left out. She could hear the boys begging Adam for one more book, and she realized it was stupid of her to mope down there alone. She went to the bookshelf, chose a thick volume, and climbed the stairs with a straight back, lightly shaking the hair from her forehead.