He saw then that there was a car parked behind his in the driveway—a dusty red Fiesta, too scruffy to be a rental. She must have taken the Woods Hole ferry. Well, she could turn right around and take the next one back.
“I have to use your bathroom, anyway,” she said. “Please.”
He hesitated and then stepped aside, letting her go past him into the house.
She glanced around. “What a dump,” she said, Bette Davis–style.
He looked at her coldly. “The bathroom’s down the hall on the right. Second door.”
The water in the lobster pot was boiling, and he turned off the jet. The telephone rang and rang, but he didn’t answer it. He could hear the toilet flushing, and then the water in the bathroom sink run, and screech as it was turned off. The plumbing in the cottage was particularly noisy, as exaggerated as the sound effects in a school play.
When Laurel came out of the bathroom, he was waiting by the front door, with Bingo beside him, to usher her out. The dog, almost completely deaf now, had been asleep in the kitchen when Laurel had knocked on the door and come into the house. But he’d probably been awakened by the raucous plumbing, and had loped in to see what was happening.
When Laurel saw him, she stepped back, and Edward remembered that she was afraid of dogs. She had been bitten by a stray when she was a little girl, or had claimed to have been, anyway. He held on to the dog’s collar and said, loudly, “Bingo, stay.”
Laurel, somewhat emboldened now, said, “Bingo? Edward, really!”
“My daughter named him,” he said. “She was just a child.” Why was he offering her an explanation? Why was he talking to her at all? “He won’t hurt you,” he said, in an affectless tone. “You can leave.”
She still stood a few feet from him with her hands clasped at her waist, like a nervous student about to recite in class. “I know what I did,” she said. “It was terrible, it was worse than terrible. It was criminal. Over the years, whenever I let myself think about it, I wanted to die.”
“But you’re still here, I see,” he said.
“I’m a coward, too,” she said, and attempted to smile.
“I told you that I’m over it. It was ages ago.”
“After I left Joe, I actually got married.”
“Congratulations.”
“Edward, don’t,” she said. “It was spur-of-the-moment—a justice of the peace—or I wouldn’t have gone through with it. Allen Parrish, a nice enough guy. I stayed for about a month.”
“I don’t want to hear the story of your life,” he said. He looked at his watch. “And I’m expecting somebody.”
“I did try to kill myself. But I screwed that up, too.”
He was silent and she said, “I took pills and put a plastic bag over my head. The kind that’s stamped THIS IS NOT A TOY? Maybe I didn’t take enough pills, but I began to suffocate and I pulled the bag off.” Her hand went to her throat. Despite all the lies she had told him, he knew she was telling the truth about this.
“I went into therapy with this shrink in Phoenix, Aaron Steinman. He wanted to put me into the hospital, but I promised I wouldn’t do anything to myself and that I would show up every day. And I did—at seven AM, five days a week. Do you want to hear his diagnosis?”
Edward shook his head; he already knew that, or at least the gist of it. “How long did you see him?” he asked.
“For six years straight. And then on and off for booster sessions. I had a teaching job out there, decent health insurance. It strapped me anyway. But I finally found out why I was the way I was. Why I had to leave everybody before they left me. Starting with my parents, but they got the last word.”
“They always do,” he said.
“I’ve changed, Edward,” she said. “And I don’t just mean physically. I’ve finally grown up.”
When he didn’t answer, she took a deep, shuddering breath and swayed a little. “Do you think I could sit down?” she asked.
He ushered her into the living room, where she dropped into one of the two overstuffed chairs. He took the dog down the hallway to his bedroom and closed the door. Then he went into the kitchen and brought her a glass of water. Her hand shook a little when she took it from him. The cuckoo popped out and marked the hour, startling both of them. Seven o’clock. Edward sat down opposite her, on the other chair.
Laurel sipped the water and said, “I was going to write to you, but it seemed inadequate—pitiful, really. Hateful. I kept looking you up on those people-search sites, relieved that you were still alive, hoping that you were happy.”
“I was,” he said. “I am. I married a wonderful woman. I lost her, but I have children, a family.”
“Edward, I’m glad! I mean about you being happy, about your family.”
“You knew about them, though. I told you everything in that first phone call, when you were calling yourself Ann.”
“I started using my middle name. I guess I didn’t want to be Laurel anymore.”
“But you didn’t tell me who you really were.”
“You’d never have agreed to see me if you’d known.”
“You’re damned right about that. But you couldn’t drop it. Why couldn’t you just drop it? You even called Julie, my stepdaughter.”
“I did. I felt like some deranged stalker. And she was so sweet on the phone, as if she wanted to hook us up.”
The phone rang again, and again he didn’t answer it. “Laurel, do you want me to say that I forgive you?”
“Yes, but only if you really mean it.”
Everything she’d ever consented to had been conditional. “All right,” he said, “I forgive you. I was angry as hell, but I recovered. Okay?”
“You still sound a little angry.”
He clutched his head. “Jesus, what do you want from me?” he said.
“I guess I want you to believe how truly grieved I am, and to know that I ruined my own life when I walked out on you.”
For the first time he looked directly into her eyes. They were still that arresting gray-green color, her gaze as intense as he remembered. Why hadn’t he recognized her at the museum? “You were sick,” he said. “You don’t need forgiveness for something you couldn’t help. And I’m sorry you’ve had such a bad life.”
“But I’m better now. I mean right now, being here with you and hearing you say that.”
“Good,” he said, “so that’s settled,” realizing that he meant it, and that he felt relaxed for the first time since her arrival. “What time is your reservation?”
“What reservation?” she said.
“For the ferry going back.” That line from Edna St. Vincent Millay ran through his head: We were very tired, we were very merry—We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry … Bee and Julie sometimes recited, almost sang, it together as they sailed across the water to or from the Vineyard.
“I didn’t make one, I kind of left it open-ended. I didn’t know if you’d be home, if I’d have to wait for you …”
He knew it was hopeless, but he called, anyway, and of course the ferry was solidly booked. There was a cancellation for the noon trip the next day, though, and Edward took it in her name. “We’ll have to find you a bed-and-breakfast for tonight,” he said.
“All right,” Laurel said. “But could I take you to dinner first? I’m pretty hungry—famished, actually. I feel as if I left the city in another lifetime. Or are you still expecting someone?”
“Not anymore,” he said. She was always given to hyperbole—famished instead of hungry, freezing when she was merely chilled, half dead rather than tired. It used to amuse him.
“Do you still like lobster?” he asked.
The Dream
He didn’t listen to his messages until Laurel was in the guest bedroom with the door closed. Only one of them was from Ellen. “Hi, Edward, I’m back,” she said. “Can we get together? Call me.” The other message was from Julie, thanking him for the “great” weekend. A word she used too easily, wantonly, about everything f
rom junk food to clothes to movies. Even Todd was great when he wasn’t being a total shit. “That sounds great” was what she’d said about Ellen joining them for dinner, not long before her meltdown at the sight of the yellow house. Well, maybe the weekend had been great for her, at least in terms of catharsis. And he hadn’t lost touch with Ellen, after all.
It was bizarre having Laurel in the bedroom down the hallway, where Julie had slept so recently. As if he were running a shelter for troubled souls. It struck him that both women suffered from a fear of abandonment and that he’d turned out to be the steadfast figure in Julie’s life and, finally, a source of atonement in Laurel’s. Of course, Julie’s problems and her self-destructive tendencies were kid stuff compared with Laurel’s.
After Edward had found out that there were no vacancies for the night anywhere on the island—it was the heart of the season, and someone getting married had claimed multiple rooms for out-of-town guests—he’d briefly considered asking Ike and Peggy to put Laurel up. But he couldn’t imagine explaining to them who she was and why she couldn’t stay with him. It was easier to treat her like another stepdaughter, an old friend, anyone at all for whom there was room at the inn.
The lobsters were wonderful, briny and sweet. Laurel ate hers with the joyful zest he remembered from their happiest days, her chin and fingertips glistening with melted butter. How young she looked for her age, how unself-conscious she appeared to be. Between them, they finished off the bottle of wine. After dinner, while Edward loaded the dishwasher, she went out to her car and came back with a large tote bag that seemed to contain whatever she’d need overnight. Just as well. In his bachelor years, between Laurel and Bee, he’d kept a couple of new toothbrushes, some scented body lotion, and even an extra bathrobe in his apartment, just in case. Now he had the basic belongings of a monk.
Laurel showered first, the water shrieking through the pipes like someone being murdered. She was in there for a long time—what was she trying to wash away? When it was Edward’s turn, there was hardly any hot water left in the inadequate tank. He was in and out in a couple of minutes, before brisk turned to icy, and he would have to put the dishes through in the morning.
The spare bedroom had bunk beds, contributing to the “sleeps six” claim of the realtor. Julie had chosen the top bunk, saying cheerfully as she bounced on the mattress that it was just like sleep-away camp. Edward hadn’t reminded her that she’d hated camp, and had suffered so much from homesickness that he and Bee had to retrieve her in the middle of her stay. If asked now, she’d probably say that camp had been great, too. Everyone rewrites personal history to drum up a better self-image. Maybe he was glorifying himself as Julie’s savior and Laurel’s redeemer. And was his marriage as blissful as he remembered? Was Laurel really that terrible?
She’d chosen the bottom bunk. When he came in with the linens, she called him “Warden” and asked if she had a cellmate. A joke, of course, but there was some underlying seriousness to most humor. Bee used to say that.
But his own sober analysis of everything was starting to get on his nerves. “Good night, and don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he said to Laurel, which his mother had always said to Catherine and him when she’d tucked them in at night.
“Sweet dreams, Edward,” Laurel said, and he left the room, shutting the door behind him. That was when he played his voice messages. It was almost eleven by then, too late to call Ellen back, and he wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that, anyway, with Laurel in the house. As soon as she left for the ferry the next day, he would make plans to see Ellen that afternoon or evening.
Edward went to bed feeling drowsy and lighthearted. His muscles ached, but not unpleasantly, as if he’d earned a good night’s rest through hard labor rather than psychological rumination. He tried to read, but the words blurred and wouldn’t stay in his head, so he closed the book and let himself doze off. In that zone between wakefulness and sleep, he began floating away in a canoe from the shore of the lake behind the yellow house, where Bee and the children were waving and calling out to him. Their voices coming across the water warbled like birdsong.
Then he was in his old bed, their bed, on Larkspur Lane in the sultry darkness of another summer night. “What are you thinking?” one of them said, or thought. They’d often said that in the prelude to sleep. First he was spooning Bee, the warm curve of her spine against his belly, his face in the perfumed tangle of her hair. Then she was spooning him, her breasts pillowing his back, her mouth against his neck. “Edward. My Edward,” she whispered, and he turned so that they were facing each other, much closer than that naked couple in the museum, so close that they became one being that began to move rhythmically to the refrain: What are you thinking, what are you thinking, what are you thinking?
And he came awake fucking Laurel, who’d entered his dream and his bed, probably at the same moment. When he moaned, in passion and in protest, she said his name again and again, in that breathless way, and he gave himself over to her, to the sweet, violent, arduous work of their joined bodies. Oh, God, it was good—great, even. He wanted to shriek like the plumbing, to stay inside her forever. What was he thinking? But he’d stopped thinking. His brain had detached itself from the rest of him that was rampant with wanting and pleasure.
He didn’t last as long as he’d hoped to, not after all this time—that was probably why he didn’t keel over from a heart attack. He lay there, holding her, winded and sated. “Again, please,” Laurel said.
He laughed. “Hey, I’m sixty-four,” he said. “Could you wait a couple of weeks?”
She laughed in response, and planted kisses along his collarbone, which was suddenly exquisitely sensitive, as if it shared nerve endings with his cock. He kissed her, too, on the eyelids, her forehead, her eager mouth. Then they separated and looked each other over, as people might examine their own cars after a fender bender. Her small breasts still had a poignant beauty, and her pubic hair was silver now, the way the hair on her head used to be. She told him that she’d dyed the latter brown when her face was no longer youthful. And he apologized for the damage gravity had done to his own body. But as he fell asleep again, he was suffused with memories of their younger selves, as he suspected she was. As if time had rewound itself and nothing bad had happened yet between them.
They didn’t have to wait a couple of weeks. In the morning, he surprised her and himself with an erection without the inspiration of a dream sequence or any little blue pills. This time he woke her, and the lovemaking was slower and less turbulent, but just as satisfying. He hadn’t forgotten what to do, after all, and Laurel was still the nimble, inventive cohort of memory.
Afterward, he made coffee and scrambled some eggs. Laurel came into the kitchen wearing one of his pajama tops. It was so big on her that she looked comical and sexy at once. Her toenails were painted bright blue. “My final crack at funkiness,” she explained, curling her feet over the rung of a chair. She seemed to have overcome her fear of Bingo, who stretched out next to her and sighed. In fact, she had to have gone past him to enter Edward’s bedroom during the night, an act of courage and determination.
Over their eggs, they talked about the coincidence of her having answered the ad his children had placed, and, in a general way, about the divergent paths their lives had taken during the years they’d been apart. Casual, social, morning-after chatter. She didn’t cling to Edward or declare her love, as she used to, as he’d worried she might. And serving her breakfast was simply a civil act. He couldn’t get beyond what they’d done in bed to any feelings other than gratitude and a sense of wonder, of having been slugged by fate. Maybe that was why he was so slow to get to his feet when someone knocked on the door. And although he said, “Laurel, don’t!” she sprinted to the entrance and flung the door open before he could stop her. This time Ellen was waiting there, a day late, clutching a bunch of yellow flowers.
The Next Day
Laurel left for the noon ferry, as planned. She’d kissed Edward ardently
in parting, although his own ardor was on hold. She was living in Chelsea now, and he took all the vital information and promised, without genuine conviction, to contact her soon. To his enormous relief, she hadn’t questioned him about Ellen, as she’d surely have done in the past, when it would have been her right. Laurel seemed to accept that she was the interloper here, reappearing in the middle of his life without warning. That he had a life.
After Ellen said, “Sorry, I must have the wrong house,” and hurried down the path to her bicycle and sped away, all that Laurel said to Edward was, “I hope that wasn’t something awkward.” She’d behaved reasonably, for her, another sign that she might have really changed.
But it couldn’t have been more awkward: Laurel at the door in his pajama top and with her blue toenails, him lurking in the background in his bathrobe. A few of the yellow flowers had been dropped in Ellen’s rush to get away, on the front step and on the path, and after Laurel was gone Edward had walked around picking them up, as if he were removing evidence from a crime scene. But instead of tossing them into the trash, he plunked them into a glass of water, where they hung listlessly over the rim, like spent swimmers.
He didn’t know what to do after that. Ellen wasn’t going to be amenable to an explanation. And what could he say, anyway? The truth was so complicated he could hardly process it himself. He felt guilty and wrongly accused at the same time. He imagined her shutting the door in his face, or not opening it to him at all. A phone call, in which he’d likely suffer a hang-up, seemed cowardly and too impersonal for the situation.
So for several hours he did nothing at all. In the interim, Julie called him again. “Poppy, did you get my message?” Edward only half listened as she flitted from one subject to another. He stared at the drooping flowers and at regular intervals interjected sounds into the phone, like “hmm” and “ah,” as if he’d lost language as well as heart. Julie didn’t seem to notice.
The next call was from Peggy, inviting him to a cookout the following evening. He took comfort from the sound of her voice, but he wasn’t in the mood for ordinary social communion. And what if Ellen turned up there, too? What if she didn’t? He asked Peggy if he could get back to her, he was just on his way out. And then he got on his rented bicycle and rode to Ellen’s place. Her car was in the driveway, her bike lying across the lawn, like a careless teenager’s. A single yellow flower lay next to it and he bent down and picked it up.
An Available Man Page 14