An Available Man

by Hilma Wolitzer

  There was a brief dead silence, and he wondered if the connection had been lost. “Laurel?” he said.

  “I’m still here,” she said, seeming to convey a lifetime of waiting.

  “Shall I come downtown?” he asked.

  Another silence before she said, “I made other plans, but I suppose I could change them.”

  Edward had a rush of remorse. He’d been selfish, unfair, keeping her at the end of a string he could pull or loosen at will. And she’d been pretty patient with him, for Laurel. Was he still just being cautious, or was he punishing her for past sins without admitting it, even to himself? “I don’t want to mess up your plans,” he said.

  “It’s all right, I guess,” she said. “Why don’t you come by about seven?”

  Edward looked at his watch. It was just past three thirty. He’d hoped to ransom his car from the garage and drive downtown, where he might have been lucky enough to find a parking spot on the street. His back was beginning to ache and he felt tired. He wanted to take a hot shower and lie on Laurel’s bed with her. They could have napped together afterward before going out to dinner. That morning he’d imagined her in the little black dress, but he was wearing chinos and a faded old T-shirt. He looked down at his clunky, scuffed hiking boots. And he’d neglected to shave for the last couple of days. He hadn’t really thought any of it through, and then he’d made that detour to the museum.

  Now he had to kill over three hours. He considered finding a movie in the neighborhood to fill the time, or checking to see if Frances or Bernie was at Bruno’s. The Met was still open, so he could have gone back there, but none of those options really appealed to him. When he’d finished talking to Laurel, he called Julie at her midtown office and asked if she could take a long coffee break in half an hour or so. She was as surprised as Laurel had been to discover that he was in the city, but she sounded much happier to hear from him. “Sure,” she said. “It’s Friday, so my boss is long gone. I’ll meet you at the Starbucks on the corner.”

  He had to put his car in another garage a few blocks from the Starbucks, and he was dragging his feet by the time he got there. She was waiting for him, sipping from some elaborate frozen concoction at a table against the wall. “Poppy!” she called. When he approached, she rose and kissed his cheek with cold, foamy lips. “Ouch, you need a shave,” she said. “And you look like a mountain man.”

  “The birds didn’t mind,” he said. He ordered coffee for himself and a pastry they could share and sat across from her. Before she could begin their usual chitchat, or a litany of the highlights and low moments of her life, he said, “Jules, I want to tell you something.”

  She put her hand to her breast. “You’re not sick or anything, are you?” she said. Her face paled, the way it had in those moments right before he’d told her about Bee.

  “No, no. I’m as healthy as a horse.” What a stupid expression. And why was he reduced to clichés? He merely wanted to open up a little, to stop treating her like the needy child she no longer was. “It’s good news, really. I’ve started dating again.”

  “You have?” she said. “Well, that is good news. Anybody I know?” Now she clapped her forehead. “That was dumb. I don’t know anybody you could date, do I?” Before he could answer, she said, “So, are you exclusive?”

  Another stupid expression. Edward thought of a realtor’s FOR SALE sign on a lawn in his Englewood neighborhood, offering the property as a “co-exclusive.” He didn’t know how to respond. He hadn’t been seeing anyone besides Laurel, but they’d never discussed an official arrangement. Maybe it was about time. Yet shouldn’t he talk to Laurel about it first?

  “Not really, not yet,” he said. “But the woman I’m seeing later is someone … well, not someone you know, exactly, but you spoke to her once on the phone.”

  Julie looked blankly at him for an instant and then she cried, “Your old flame, Laura!”

  A riff of that wonderful standard came into his head: My old flame, I can’t even think of her name … He didn’t bother correcting Julie; she’d get it right eventually. “That was a very long time ago,” he said, implying that the flame wasn’t eternal, that it may have burned itself out. “But yeah.”

  Julie wasn’t deterred by his reticence. “Still …,” she said. Then, “Hey, we could double-date sometime!”

  He almost burst into laughter, but she was serious. So he smiled and said, “Maybe, we’ll see,” that old tactic he and Bee always used with Julie whenever she’d wanted something—a pony, her own telephone line, a nose ring—they weren’t inclined to let her have. It seemed to still work; she allowed him to change the subject.

  Eden

  Laurel was wearing a terry-cloth robe when Edward arrived, with nothing on underneath. And when he kissed her, she seemed to like the rasp of his unshaven face; at least she stroked his jaw before she ordered him to make himself presentable. The bathroom was still steamy and fragrant from her shower, and he whistled and sang as he shed his clothes, as he let the water pummel the stiffness from his shoulders and back. He sang something in French that she’d once taught him, a children’s song about rain and frogs and snails. Then he burst into “The Marseillaise” and finished with a medley of old ballads, including “My Old Flame” and “The Very Thought of You.”

  Sometimes, when he shaved, she sat on the edge of the tub or the closed toilet seat to keep him company. Now, when he lathered up and called, “Lulu, come in here, I miss you!” there was no answer. Maybe she was on the phone or in the bedroom with the door closed. Maybe she’d dozed off in there waiting for him. But when he came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his middle, she was standing in the living room, dressed in jeans and a shirt. She was even wearing shoes. “Did I take too long?” he asked. A hopeless, pointless question, he knew, as soon as he saw her face, its bloodless pallor, the hard set of her mouth. “What’s wrong?” he said. “Laurel?”

  She didn’t answer. That’s when he noticed his backpack on the floor at her feet, with everything spilled out of it—the binoculars, his thermos and keys. He was sure he had left it on the bed. The birding journal was in her hand. “Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “When were you planning to tell me?” she said. She spoke through gritted teeth, as if she were trying to throw her voice.

  “What? Tell you what?”

  She thrust the journal at him, and it fell with a little thud between them. When he bent to pick it up, his towel fell off. He had never felt so naked in his life. He clutched the towel against himself as he reached again for the journal. Several pages were curled and creased; a couple of them were ripped. “Hey,” he said again, as much in bewilderment as in protest. “Wait,” he told her. “Just wait a second, okay?” Then he went back to the bathroom and got dressed as quickly as he could.

  When he came out, she was still standing in the same place, in the same position, but quivering now, like a taut, plucked wire. He wouldn’t have been surprised if her body began to hum. His first impulse was to reach for her, but she jerked away from him. “Don’t touch me!” she cried, as if he’d approached her with a blowtorch.

  He held the journal, flipping through the damaged pages, looking for a clue to her fury. The names of birds flashed by like birds themselves—thrushes, warblers, waxwings, flickers. References to trees and to the weather, to drizzle and snow and sunlight. A page came completely away from the binding as he turned it. He stared at it and then at Laurel.

  “Her private garden, Edward?” she said. “That’s quite a euphemism.”

  “What?” he said. But he knew what she was alluding to. It was the last thing he’d written as he sat on the wall at Turtle Pond, in that euphoric moment just before he checked his cell phone for messages. “Ollie’s private garden is beautiful, Eden, really. So glad she let me in.”

  He said, “That’s not what that means.” He tried to sound calm, reasonable, even amused. A silly misunderstanding! But his heart clamored and the hand holding th
e loose page trembled. He probably would have failed a lie detector test on the subject. “I was writing about Central Park,” he added faintly.

  Laurel snorted. “You must think I’m an idiot, Edward. How long has it been going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on. I swear it.”

  “You saw her today, didn’t you?”

  He might have lied about that, but he didn’t. “Yes,” he said. “We ran into each other, accidentally. Elliot was there, too. We all had lunch on the steps of the museum. Hot dogs.” As if that homely detail bore out his story.

  “Lunch! Ha-ha. You are such a fucking liar,” she said. “You and your fucking whore! That’s why you needed a shower in such a hurry. Is what’s-his-name her cover? He’s gay, isn’t he, with his precious weavings and his unicorns. Tell me, is your dog actually dead?”

  “Christ! Stop it! You’re hysterical. You don’t even know what you’re saying.”

  “You waited a very long time to get even with me, didn’t you? You have the patience of a saint. That’s how everyone thinks of you, I’ll bet. Saint Edward, who got left in the lurch by his bitchy bride. That poor, holier-than-thou victim.”

  “Laurel, come on, this is madness.” It was; he was certain of that. All the evidence was before him, and he couldn’t look away: the things she’d done and said, the diagnosis spelled out in Bee’s mental handbook, the warnings from his friends before she’d won them over.

  Yet there was something that ate at his conviction, something inside himself. Laurel was correct in her condemnation; he wasn’t saintly. He’d hated her on their wrecked wedding day, as he did that afternoon at MoMA, and he had held part of himself back from her ever since they’d reconnected. Self-protection was how he’d thought of it. But his motives didn’t matter, did they? The unconscious doesn’t lie; Freud said that. Or Bee said that Freud said that.

  He’d held back, and now he wanted another woman, just as Laurel had declared he did. The very woman she’d accused him of wanting. The one with hair like a spiky crown of autumn leaves and a smile he strived to elicit, like a prize; the one who’d chosen loneliness over being with the wrong person. He only lusted in his heart, like Jimmy Carter, or in some hidden recess of his brain, but lusted, anyway, longed for her. Not in vengeance, though, only out of simple need. But he’d deceived Laurel, just as he had deceived himself. She was crazy, but she was also right.

  “Get out of here,” she said in a weary monotone. She might have been dismissing an unruly class.

  Edward gathered his belongings, and she watched him with gleaming eyes. Tears, or only the shine of sick, sad triumph, he couldn’t tell. He wanted to console her, he really did, but he didn’t know how or if it was even possible. He could feign outrage about her snooping in his journal, and insist that nothing had happened, at least not yet—a technical, lawyerly truth—but the assurance she craved would have to be false. The thing was, he couldn’t love her, though he’d been on the verge of saying that he did, telling himself that it was about time. How had that almost happened?

  “Laurel, I’m very sorry,” he said, the only honest thing he could think to say.

  She turned her back to him. “Get out,” she said again, and this time he did.

  Aftermath

  Edward lay low over the weekend, monitoring the caller I.D. on his phone, hoping and dreading that he’d hear from Laurel, while letting calls from Julie, Nick, and Sybil go right to voice mail. He wanted to know that Laurel was safe, without subjecting himself to another tirade—or worse, a cajoling recital of regret like the one that had put her back into his life up at the Cape. And he wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone else. The messages the kids left were casually chatty—he could wait to call them back, and Sybil offered a last-minute invitation on Sunday for lunch, concluding, as if she were mumbling to herself, that he was probably staying in the city with his girlfriend. It was easier to let her think that he was.

  The only call he took was from Gladys, who just wanted to say hello. Mildred had been coming to her place a couple of afternoons and evenings a week to spell her regular home attendant, and to generally “help out,” which included cooking and light housekeeping. According to Gladys, they also had some good talks and worked on puzzles together. Good talks about what, Edward wondered. The milliner and the psychic, almost a generation apart, didn’t seem to have much in common. That evening Mildred was staying on to share the sole amandine she was preparing. Why didn’t Edward join them? Another time, he promised; he was working on his lesson plans for the week.

  He had been doing just that, sporadically, all day, having progressed from the biology and behavior of the frog and other amphibians, to reptiles. Snakes and lizards slithered and crawled behind his eyes while he also contemplated getting in touch with Olga and telling her of his feelings for her. What if they weren’t reciprocated? And why did his pursuit of her seem premature? God, he was in his mid-sixties, almost three years widowed, and still dithering like a teenager. He had broken irrevocably with Laurel, yet he needed to establish her well-being before he could move on. Saint Edward.

  Well, hardly. It was for himself, for achieving the serenity that comes with real freedom. He wanted Laurel to let him off the hook; the trick was in getting that done without having any contact with her. He thought back to her lengthy guest list for their wedding, all those friends she’d never mentioned again. Now he couldn’t recall a single name, anyone he could simply call and ask to check up on her, to see if she was all right. It was emotional blackmail, he knew that, but it was self-imposed. He had gotten into this mess with some naïve idea that people can change, can even go from pathology to sanity. Laurel was a pretty good actress, but he’d been a willing audience, despite all his initial resistance. She’d insisted her craziness was a thing of the past, and he had conspired by believing her.

  Edward’s books and papers for school were spread out across the kitchen counter. There were about twenty-seven hundred species of snakes in the world. He could cover only a few of them, their anatomy along with their social habits—they were largely solitary creatures—and evolutionary changes, the loss of limbs and outer ears, the opaque eyelid replaced by the transparent brill.

  Earlier in the term, Edward had covered his students’ favorite subject: human evolution, with its own list of vanished characteristics—the tail, the opposable big toe, a pelt-like coat of body hair, even certain molecules. He always avoided mentioning the coccyx, that vestige of their missing tails—the word was too uproarious to seventh-graders, although they’d find it less so if they ever fell on it without the cushioning of a furry stump.

  In the unit on humans, Edward stressed the wonderful advantages of walking upright, of adaptive genetic changes, like the Tibetans’ ability to breathe the thinnest air and the improved circulation that protected Arctic natives from frostbite. And he talked about the ongoing universal need to cohabit, to be part of a couple, a family, a tribe, a nation, that unshakable impulse against loneliness. In almost every class someone curious and brave, or simply provocative, asked why men still had nipples. Others wanted to know the purpose of wisdom teeth or the appendix, questioning the concept of intelligent design. Any discussion of their bodies thrilled and freaked them out at the same time.

  Edward had had his appendix removed when he was in high school, his infection-attracting tonsils and adenoids years before then. His own evolved and lived-in body, like everyone’s eventually did, showed gravity’s pull and the disrepair of aging: less hair (where it was desirable, anyway); diminished sexual prowess; the sudden elusiveness of certain familiar words. It all starts going downhill earlier than we expect, not long after acne finally clears up. What was he waiting for?

  He scribbled in his plan book while he ate a turkey sandwich for supper. The phone rang a couple more times, and, glancing at the caller I.D., Edward saved himself from listening to the pitches of some telemarketers. Later, when he was getting ready for bed, the phone rang again—it was after eleven, when on
ly urgent news usually came—and without hesitating he picked it up. His heart bumped and Bernie Roth said, “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “No, no,” Edward said. He had to sit down on the side of the bed. “What’s up?”

  “Well, I got a really strange phone call a little while ago.”

  “Who from?” he asked, although he was sure he already knew the answer.

  “From your … from Laurel.”

  Edward had imagined getting a call from her in which she would threaten suicide. He’d told himself that it would be pure histrionics, readying his defenses before the fact. Yet now an image of her gasping inside that plastic bag filled his head. His own breath became short and ragged. When he could speak again, he said, “How bad did she sound?”

  But Bernie answered his question with a question. “What the hell’s going on between you two?”

  “Nothing, it’s over,” Edward said, wondering if it ever would be.

  “Yeah, that’s what she told me. But I couldn’t believe she’d do it to you again.”

  Edward ignored that last. “What did she say?” he asked, picturing Laurel shouting into her cell phone from a windswept bridge, slurring from the depths of an overdose. But why would she call Bernie?

  “Here’s the kicker, man. She wanted to have dinner.”

  “What?” Edward said.

  “That’s what the lady said. Did I want to meet her for dinner tomorrow night.”

  Edward flopped backward onto the bed, felled by relief and confusion. “So, what did you say?”

  “Are you kidding?” Bernie said. “First of all, I don’t mess with anyone else’s woman, ex or otherwise. Even I have some standards. And dinner with Laurel—well, somebody’s gonna be devoured, right? And I have a pretty good idea who it would be.”