An Available Man

by Hilma Wolitzer

  After the women were gone, he resisted the impulse to go back upstairs and look at the empty closet and drawers. He walked the dog, who’d been confined to the kitchen during the purging, and then Edward went in there and poured himself a stiff shot of vodka on the rocks. He sat on a stool at the counter, sipping his drink and looking through the newspaper he’d already read that morning.

  The war, the war. Stalemates in the Middle East and in Congress. There were photos of the flood-ravaged towns Sybil had referred to, where Bee’s clothing would probably be worn in some makeshift shelter rather than at a festive dinner party. Bloomingdale’s was having a white sale. Some eighty-nine-year-old musicologist had died following a fall in his home. It was Saturday and the crossword puzzle looked daunting. Edward put the paper aside and opened the drawer where he’d stashed the letters. There was still time to open a few more before he’d have to start thinking about dinner.

  Some of the women sounded nice—quietly friendly, and funnier and more modest than most of those who had placed ads. Lonesome, the way he was. A couple of them seemed slightly insane. He began to put the letters into piles, the way he did sometimes with students’ papers before he graded them: the brainy ones, the hopeless cases, and those that fell somewhere in between.

  He opened a can of clam chowder and poured it into a pot. There was a desiccated-looking bagel in the freezer that might be toasted back to edibility. He wasn’t hungry exactly, just kind of restless. How good it once was to prepare dinner for two, to chop onions on the cutting board while Bee shelled the peas and the broth simmered. To set the table, each place mat a mirror image of the other.

  He saw that they’d forgotten about Bee’s aprons, still hanging on magnetized hooks at the side of the refrigerator, but they were unisex, really. He tied one around his waist and turned on the heat under the soup.

  For over a year Edward hadn’t felt sexually aroused, as if a vital wire between his brain and his penis had been severed. He’d tested himself a couple of months ago with a porn site on the computer, and those women with their absurdly enhanced breasts, their staged expressions of lust, and the choir of moans that might have come from a horror movie all left him unmoved. Now, standing at the stove stirring the soup, he became aware of a halfhearted erection.

  What kind of sicko was he that the discarding of Bee’s clothing, or scanning the desperate letters of women he’d never met, or the sea-smell of the canned chowder could turn him on, even weakly, after such a long dry spell? Then he thought of the three women he knew well who had been in his bedroom only hours ago, with their rustling skirts, their hair, and the fluty chorus of their voices. And he remembered how they’d each embraced him at the garage door before they left, Lizzie going last, after the others had turned away, and that she’d kissed him fully and lingeringly on the lips.

  First Date

  In the darkened AV room, Edward kept telling the kids to settle down. But the title of the video, Our Sexual Selves, had been paused on the big plasma screen as they’d come in, sending a ripple of nervous excitement through them, like a wave undulating through the fans in a baseball stadium. There was a lot of laughter and shoving as they scrambled for seats, and pens and pencils clattered to the floor.

  It was always like this. The videos had changed over the years, growing more explicit in content and language, along with the sophistication of the students, but their reactions remained the same. Most of the boys had gravitated toward the left side of the room, the girls to the right. They could have been Democrats and Republicans, divided by ideology and an aisle. But the two groups in front of Edward were likely to find common ground a lot sooner. Some of them, he was pretty sure, already had.

  The voice-over on the video was female and friendly, as opposed to the god-like authority of those sonorous male voices in the “sex education” films when Edward was a teenager. One of them, he remembered, was called How We Got Here and might have been about Christopher Columbus, or immigration, rather than human reproduction. The first image on the screen then was of a boy and girl shaking hands. The only thing missing in that sanitized version of their supposed attraction was gloves.

  The narrator intoned that Tommy and Jane were friends, and that friendship sometimes blossomed into love (an older T. & J. holding hands), and love into marriage (rice being thrown at the newlyweds). As Edward recalled, those were the final postnatal human beings in the film, until the cute little baby in Jane’s arms at the end, with Tommy grinning beside them. The rest were medical text illustrations of gonads and ovaries; the age-old story, illustrated with arrows, of the sperm’s journey toward the waiting egg; and the gradual development of the folded, big-headed fetus. No penises, no vaginas, and definitely no foreplay.

  There was enough, though, to arouse disgusted and titillated cries from the adolescents in that 1950s classroom: “Eww!” “Gross!” “Whoo-hoo!” Mrs. Grady, Edward’s eighth-grade hygiene teacher, had to rap on her desk with a ruler, calling, “People, people!” as if to remind them that they belonged to a civilized species. Maybe it was only their imaginations and hormones at work. Edward wondered if just the sputtering sounds of an old movie projector could provoke an erotic charge in him.

  Our Sexual Selves had the soft-porn look of a music video. It began with a blast of rock music to which a group of male and female dancers in body stockings stomped and shook. Sex, the female voice said, as the relentless beat continued in the background, is everywhere in our culture. This was followed by clips from romantic scenes in movies and TV shows, glimpses of nude Roman statuary, suggestively clad fashion models shimmying down a runway, and even a brief view of an ordinary young couple making out on a park bench. One of the boys in the classroom cried out, “No, stop!” in falsetto, as one of them invariably did, to the cheering of his buddies.

  Of course the video’s focus, like those of the 16mm films of Edward’s schooldays, was on reproduction, the blending of genetic information—nature’s raison d’être for sex. And words like scrotum and testes were still good for a laugh.

  While stopping short of advocating abstinence, the narrator told her audience that although desire was a normal, healthy part of growing up, it was best to engage in sexual activity when one was mature enough to make wise decisions. The girls trilled and buzzed about that. The boys booed heartily, of course. Tell it to their testosterone, Edward thought. And at lunch in the faculty room afterward, when he recounted the video’s caution against mindless sex, his friend Bernie said, “Hmm, mindless sex. Isn’t that a redundancy?”

  Later, at home, Edward prepared for his first date in what seemed like a millennium. He showered and shaved and polished his shoes. He used the electric toothbrush, which he hadn’t done for such a long time that his gums bled a little. Then he tried on a couple of sports jackets before deciding on one. No tie, though. The restaurant he’d chosen was supposed to be very good, but casual. Bingo seemed to have picked up on his mood, moving anxiously behind him from room to room. Mildred was going to take him for his walk later, relieving Edward of a curfew.

  Almost fifty years before, when he was getting ready for his very first date, which consisted of changing his T-shirt and taming his unruly blond hair with water, his mother and father were at home but keeping their distance. Back then, he was going to take a girl named Rachel Granby to a school play, a kind of evening version of their daytime lives.

  Tonight, he was meeting someone called Karen Leslie at the Paper Moon in Short Hills. She was one of the five correspondents whose replies to the ad he’d held on to. She’d declined his offer to pick her up—either a sign of her independence, or a defense against some potential serial killer knowing where she lived.

  After her letter, their communication had been through email. She was fifty-four, she’d informed him, a Jerseyite, too, who worked in finance and had been divorced for a long time. He liked the specificity of her age, her laid-back tone, even the odd fact that she had two first names. Relax, she seemed to be saying, this
isn’t going to be a big deal.

  He realized that he wanted the company of a woman—a shared meal and conversation—but beyond that, he told himself, he had no plans, no intentions. The near future was a peaceful blank. He tried not to think about Bee, about the past, about anything at all. But his mind kept returning to the video he’d shown at Fenton that afternoon with its underlying message that sex was for procreation, not recreation.

  All those years ago, when he’d sat next to Rachel in their junior high school auditorium as the houselights dimmed, he was excruciatingly aware of their elbows almost touching on the armrests. Did the hair on his arm actually stand up to graze the amber down on hers? She had breasts as tiny as teacups he could sip from. He’d felt swamped by a surfeit of that normal, healthy desire. What a dirty biological trick it was to inflame barely socialized kids with such burning lust.

  Karen Leslie was sitting at the bar in the Paper Moon, drinking a martini, when he got there. He knew who she was by the way she turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow in appraisal. Her crossed legs were long and muscular. He went over and shook her hand, like a business acquaintance, like Tommy in the sex ed film of his youth.

  She was good looking in a hard-edged, female-action-figure sort of way. Walking behind her and the hostess to the table, Edward realized that the two women were almost interchangeable, with their artful makeup and twitching short black skirts. They had the same self-possessed carriage, too, but only one of them was carrying menus.

  They sat down and Karen said, “So, who are you?” The question caught him by surprise. He’d already told her about himself in their email exchange: his marriage and widowhood, his job, the stepchildren—but maybe all that was only the dating equivalent of giving his name, rank, and serial number.

  He’d grown to be, post-Laurel, fairly confident with women, whether or not there was sexual tension between them. There was tension at this table, but he wasn’t sure of its nature. Suddenly he wasn’t sure of anything, least of all what he was doing there. I’m heartbroken, he might have said, and I’m horny. There was an icebreaker for you.

  Instead, he caught the eye of the waiter and ordered two martinis. In his head, Bee whispered: You are what you are, Edward, as if she were giving him dating pointers from beyond. “I guess I’m just a guy trying to make a good impression,” he told Karen Leslie. “What about you?”

  “Let me see,” she began. “I’m a fiscal conservative; I’ve been divorced twice. My older son doesn’t talk to me. Should we look at the menus? I’m starving.”

  “Sure,” he said, but she had already raised and opened hers, so that her face was hidden. He could still see the pale shadow of her cleavage, that sweet place. Her fingernails were long and crimson. This was a mistake; he didn’t like her—she was cold and tough—and yet he wanted her. Or the hostess. Or another woman, blond and chubby, sitting at the bar clinking glasses with a friend. Jesus. It was an even dirtier trick to allow those long past the age of procreation to want to go on fucking, maybe forever, even without the gentling grace of love.

  “I’ll have the striped bass,” Karen Leslie said.

  They got through dinner discovering that they didn’t care for any of the same movies or music or books. If they were a couple, Edward thought, they would always cancel out each other’s vote. And if one of those matchmaking services had set them up, they’d have just cause for a refund, if not a lawsuit.

  But his own cynicism disturbed him. Bee used to say that he had a gift for bringing out the best in people, a natural empathy. Had he lost that when he’d lost her? “What happened between you and your son?” he asked Karen.

  “He’s decided to be gay,” she said.

  “That’s not really a decision,” Edward said.

  She clicked her fingernails against the side of her espresso cup for a moment, and then she said, “You don’t do this very often, do you?”

  “Have dinner?” he said. “Nearly every night.”

  “Funny,” she said mirthlessly.

  So he’d blown it. A least they’d come to the restaurant in separate cars and could part ways in the parking lot without too much discomfort.

  When he’d walked Rachel Granby home from their date, he’d ventured to take her hand and she let him, after moving a balled-up Kleenex to her other one. The play had been Our Town, that perennial favorite of the school’s Drama Department, and Rachel had snuffled and wiped her eyes throughout the performance. Edward had to swallow several times, but managed to hold back his own tears. Love and death, that incomparable duo; a good-night kiss seemed built into the scenario. He remembered to moisten his lips, while Rachel dried hers with the back of her hand. Then he moved closer and she met him halfway.

  In the parking lot of the Paper Moon, Edward walked Karen Leslie to her BMW. “This was nice,” he found himself saying as she pressed the remote to unlock the doors. The headlights blinked and the horn beeped, and he leaned over to kiss her cheek. He almost lost his balance when she grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled him toward her, crushing her mouth against his—tongue, teeth, pelvis, the works.

  Then she released him just as quickly, slid into the driver’s seat, and asked if he wanted to get in beside her or follow her home. Edward stood there, regaining his breath, his equilibrium. First Lizzie’s furtive smooch in the garage, and now this—Bee’s reluctant prophecy for him coming true. So why didn’t he feel elated, at least below the belt? He patted the roof of the car and said, “Karen, thank you, but you’re right, I am still new at this. And I’m not quite ready yet.” When she slammed the door and sped away, he inhaled a lungful of exhaust as if it were pure oxygen.

  What I Did on My Summer Vacation

  Even as a child, Edward, who enjoyed school, had looked forward to the freedom of summer. By May, he was already distracted by the balmy air and the occasional housefly or gnat that drifted in through the open classroom windows, by the promise of all the unstructured days that lay ahead. His father had worked for the post office and always took his two-week vacation time in July. The family would go on a short trip somewhere—to camp out up at Lake George; to visit a historic site, like Colonial Williamsburg; or to stay at a small hotel in upstate New York. Edward had shown an early propensity for science in school, but his love affair with nature began during those summers, with the discovery of nearly invisible life among the blades of grass, and the mysterious humming and chirring from the trees and ponds at night.

  As a young teacher, he’d gone off to Europe in the summertime, like most of his colleagues. He and Laurel had planned a monthlong honeymoon in Venice and Trieste; she’d littered their apartment with travel guides and brochures. His honeymoon with Bee was a three-day weekend in Provincetown, while Gladys took care of Nick and Julie. Every year after that, until Bee’s illness, they’d rented the same house on Lake Tashmoo, in Vineyard Haven, for the month of July.

  Now those intoxicating spring breezes and yet another generation of insects floated just outside the closed windows of Edward’s air-conditioned classroom at Fenton Day, and his students were already glancing away from the lesson on the blackboard toward escape. But so much leisure time—that bonus of teaching envied by other, much higher-paid professionals—loomed as a threat to the sanctity of Edward’s daily routine. And summer itself was booby-trapped with memories.

  July 8 would be the first anniversary of Bee’s death. In the bereavement group, Amy Weitz had warned against the particular pain of holidays and birthdays and anniversaries. Somehow, Edward had gotten through Bee’s birthday in September with the diversons of the new school term, and the winter holidays seemed like a blur in retrospect, an emotional snowstorm through which he’d somehow found his way.

  But how would he get through ten long weeks without any plans? He couldn’t go back to the Vineyard without Bee, to the borrowed house they’d both loved, and face fresh condolences from their neighbors there. And he didn’t think he could occupy himself at home; he certainly wasn’t eager
to try dating again anytime soon. So he went to the guidance office at school in early May and found a private tutoring job two days a week with a seventh-grader who wasn’t in any of his classes.

  Nathaniel Worth was failing science and falling behind in almost everything else. According to his guidance counselor, Jenny Greene, Nathaniel had been a “late surprise,” born when his parents were in their mid-forties. His older brother and sister had both breezed through Fenton years before, earning him an automatic place there. He’d been tested by a psychologist and a learning specialist, and was deemed intelligent but with low self-esteem, and with issues about his organizational and social skills. He didn’t have many friends, Jenny said, and had been nicknamed, with the cruel marksmanship of children, “Worthless.” There was some concern that he might fall somewhere on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum.

  The Worths lived across town from Fenton Day in an imposing prewar building that faced the East River. Margo Worth came to the door when Edward arrived for her son’s first tutoring session. She led him through stately rooms to what must have been a study or an office, where Nathaniel sat at a large, gleaming desk, gnawing like a beaver on a yellow pencil. Kids always looked smaller to Edward outside of school, and this scrawny boy was dwarfed by the desk and the leather executive’s chair on which he was perched. His summer buzz cut made his ears stand out.

  In a quick survey of the room, Edward saw law books on the shelves, punctuated by trophies of some kind, and a couple of seascapes that he thought might be by Winslow Homer. The rug under his feet was Persian and beautifully worn. Jenny had told him that both Margo and Johnson Worth were corporate attorneys.

  “Here’s Dr. Schuyler,” Margo Worth said. “Take that thing out of your mouth and say hello.” Nathaniel let the ravaged pencil drop from his teeth onto the surface of the desk, and, without looking up, lifted his hand in a brief, languid salute—a wary Indian greeting the white stranger.