Jennifer Haigh

by Condition

  Increasingly, she found this irritating. If a woman had no children to soothe and encourage, why should she go through life simpering like a nursemaid? And if she had no interest in attracting a man—which, increasingly, seemed a wise attitude to adopt—why should she wear lipstick? Undoubtedly Janet Reno had more pressing concerns than her hairstyle. And so—the thought struck Paulette like a gust of wind—so, perhaps, did Gwen. She thought back to those frustrating Christmas Eve suppers, her daughter's monologues about her job at the Stott. Consumed with anthropology or archaeology, Gwen had tried to share what was most important in her life. Paulette had only pretended to listen.

  I am changing, she thought.

  She turned her attention to the Globe. The local section covered yesterday's Battle Road reenactment in exhaustive detail. For the first time in eleven years, Paulette had not attended; she'd handed over her interpreter duties to Harry Good's wife. I'll be visiting my sister in New Mexico, she'd lied. A few weeks before, an envelope had appeared in her mailbox: no postage, delivered by hand. Inside was a postal money order for four hundred dollars, and a scrawled note: It's not much, but it's a start. Thanks for everything. Best, Gil. Now Paulette couldn't bear the thought of seeing him in uniform, firing the musket of John Hawes Gilbert. She didn't want to see him at all.

  Imagine her surprise, then, to glance out her kitchen window last week and find him standing in her own backyard, chatting easily with her son Scott. A shiny new truck was parked next door at the Marshes', where something—a floor? a bathroom?—was being replaced. She'd listened dizzily at the open window, but they had talked only of carpentry. He hadn't even spoken her name.

  Later Scott had questioned her eagerly: How did she know Gil Pyle? Did she realize the man was a genius?

  Apparently he's a fine carpenter, she said mildly. Where is he living these days? With his family in New Hampshire?

  Nah, said Scott. With his girlfriend. In Providence, I think.

  She'd understood, then, that whatever had passed between them—or hadn't; perhaps she'd imagined the whole thing—had come to a close. She and Gil Pyle would never be lovers, or even friends; to him she was merely a creditor. The money she'd lent him—Donald's money!—would come back to her slowly. Each time he made a payment, her heart would ache. Under these circumstances it was absurd to look out the window ten times a day, to see if his truck ( her truck? their truck?) was parked next door.

  She was past the age of love. Her fascination with Gil Pyle had been its last flowering; she saw this now, in sadness and in relief. It seemed suddenly idiotic that this one small part of life should be the focus of so much weeping and gnashing. For a few years men and women flattered and chased and pined for each other; then the rest of life stretched ahead of them, to fill with whatever else the world contained. Which was, when you thought about it, quite a lot. So how to account for all the novels and operas, the plays and poetry and pop songs on the radio: was love really so fascinating, so consuming, that nothing else was worth singing about?

  Perhaps it was. But Paulette, finally, had had her fill. It was time to think about something else.

  She turned to the classifieds and scanned the ads, looking for estate sales. With Donald she'd made great finds at such sales—her Roseville jardinière, a few pieces of Rookwood, a full set of Scroddleware in near-mint condition, having spent its life in a stranger's china closet. But without him she found the sales disheartening, whole houses turned inside out and opened to strangers, families dispersed or died out or simply uninterested in the boxes of framed photographs: unsmiling children, sepia toned, dressed like tiny adults. These photographs unsettled her profoundly, the children gazing somberly at the camera as if foreseeing a bleak future. Children who were dead now, or ancient or dying, abandoned to nursing homes. Sorting through the photos, she'd been overwhelmed by a feeling she couldn't name, the realization that these lives, now extinguished, had once been as real as her own, as passionate and confused and pained. Like all young people, she'd once harbored the unconscious conviction that the world had begun the day she was born. Time had disabused her of this notion.

  It was, she supposed, the fundamental difference between youth and age.

  She was about to set aside the classifieds when she spotted the ad.

  LAST-MINUTE SUMMER RENTAL. LARGE HISTORIC HOUSE IN TRURO, SECLUDED, SLEEPS 16! SLEEPING PORCH, OCEAN VIEWS, MANY EXTRAS. CALL NOW!

  It couldn't be. But there, astonishingly, was the address: 1 NECK ROAD.

  She phoned the agent and placed a deposit.

  You don't want to see it? he asked, stunned at his easy good fortune.

  Not necessary, Paulette said. I'm familiar with the house.

  This settled, she called the children. For the first time ever, she called Gwen first. As the phone rang she imagined walking with her daughter along Mamie's Beach, deep in conversation. She would listen, really listen, to whatever Gwen wished to tell her. She would learn about anthropology or archaeology; she would accept her daughter exactly as she was. Seeing this, Gwen would open up to her. There would be no more strained silences between them. They would have much to discuss. Not just the Ricos of the world, or the Gil Pyles, but the world full stop.

  Paulette waited, but Gwen was not at home; she was out doing whatever people did on a Sunday morning in Pittsburgh. Finally a recording answered.

  "I can't wait to see you," Paulette said, feeling only slightly foolish at saying this to a machine.

  She phoned her sons. Scott, naturally, was free all summer. Billy did not answer; Paulette supposed that he was on call. It seemed to her that he was always working. Of her children, only Billy was truly ambitious. In that way, only Billy resembled his father.

  His father.

  She hadn't quite recovered from the shock of seeing Frank at the Harvest. The intent way he'd looked at her, the queer urgency in his voice. He had seemed slightly unhinged. She'd been flabbergasted when he pressed her hand to his face—an inexplicable gesture, more intimate than a kiss. And how strangely he'd behaved with Neil! The two men's friendship had always confounded her—the competitiveness, the animosity barely concealed. How unlike her friendship with Tricia James, for example. Paulette considered this. Well, perhaps not so different.

  She had called Tricia immediately after she rented the house, bursting with enthusiasm, unable to contain herself. "Darling, that's wonderful!"Tricia crooned."How many are you expecting?"

  "Why, just the children," said Paulette. "And Scott's family, of course."

  "Not Gwen's boyfriend?"

  "I didn't tell you? That's over and done with." Paulette said this lightly, trying to recall what had possessed her to confide that particular bit of news to Tricia in the first place. "Gwen came to her senses.

  She's back in Pittsburgh now. All is well."

  How relieved Tricia was to hear this! How concerned she'd been, positively beside herself with worry.

  "And what about Billy?" she asked. "Will he be bringing someone?"

  "He isn't dating at the moment," said Paulette.

  "Well, you ought to invite him to bring a guest. He may have a girlfriend he isn't telling you about." Tricia paused. "And what about Frank? Surely he'd like to spend some time with the children."

  "Heavens, no," Paulette said."What an outlandish thought."

  Hanging up the phone, she'd felt the beginnings of a headache at her left temple. Lately Tricia seemed to have that effect on her. The last time they'd spoken, Paulette had been hit with a full-blown migraine. Swallowing aspirin, she considered canceling her autumn visit to Philadelphia. Perhaps this year she and Tricia would take a break.

  From the safety of his bed, Billy watched the Boston Marathon on television. Two hours had passed since the firing of the gun, the elite men blasting off from Hopkinton. Soon the front-runners would be turning the corner onto Boylston Street, the Hancock Tower coming into view.

  He would never run Boston.

  Billy glimpsed his reflection in t
he bedroom mirror. He looked haggard. His sleep had been troubled lately, interrupted by savage dreams. He was chased by armed assailants, beautiful boys with guns, knives, clubs. That the boys were attractive made the visions more terrifying. He woke exhausted.

  He hadn't left the apartment in eight days.

  First he had taken a week's vacation. His partners grumbled about the short notice, but both owed him favors. Every summer Billy worked like a dog while Matt escaped to the Hamptons. And when Lucia had gone into labor prematurely, it was Billy who'd covered her emergencies—missing the 1995 Boston Marathon, a fact he'd never let her forget.

  When the week was up, he left two voice mails: one for Lucia, alluding to vague health problems; another for Geri the receptionist, instructing her to reschedule his patients.

  This accomplished, he stopped answering the phone.

  He glanced again at the television. Six times, now, he'd trained for Boston; six times, for various reasons, he had choked. The groin pull, a bad case of mono; the chronic exhaustion of residency. A car accident, whiplash and broken ribs. A life accident, whiplash and broken hearts. Year after year, he ran New York with no trouble. So why did Boston continually elude him?

  Last night he'd lain awake plagued by this question. Finally, exhausted but wide eyed, he had called Jeremy.

  He's sleeping, you barbarian, Nathan said irritably. Jesus, what time is it?

  It was two-thirty in the morning. But: Boston.

  Maybe, Nathan said, you don't want to go home.

  Billy's time in the apartment had not been idle. He had spaces to fill, closets to rearrange, to disguise the vacancies left by Srikanth's things. They each owned a large volume of clothing; a lengthy, complicated, shockingly expensive renovation had turned the three-bedroom condo into a two bedroom with large walk-in closets. Sri had emptied his on a Tuesday. Billy came home from work to find the mirrored door open, the racks bare. Closing the door he heard a faint rustling.

  On the back of the door, hanging from a brass hook, was a suit covered in silky dry cleaner's plastic. It was the sand-colored linen Sri had been wearing the day they met.

  Had Sri forgotten it, or left it on purpose? Did he want Billy to keep it? Or hail a cab and race across town to return it?

  A person could lose his mind wondering.

  To distract himself, Billy undertook a massive reorganizing. With Sri gone, his own woolens would have room to breathe. His silks and linens could summer in Sri's old closet, like suntanned Drews at the Cape. He was thinking this very thought when his mother phoned.

  This was only briefly surprising. For as long as he could remember, he and Paulette had thought alike.

  When the phone rang he glanced at the clock—11:30 on the dot, Gwen's usual time. He hadn't heard from his sister in two weeks, not since her visit to New York. A fact he hadn't registered until this very moment.

  "Red Leader," he barked into the phone."How the hell are you?"

  A long, mystified pause.

  "Billy?" his mother said."Heavens, what's the matter with you?"

  "Mother, sorry." Of course: it was a Monday, not a Sunday. The days had begun to blend together, a bad sign. "I thought you were Gwen. I haven't heard from her in a while."

  "That's odd. Neither have I. But the last time we spoke she sounded fine." Paulette paused. "In fact, she was planning to meet with someone at the university about finishing her thesis. Her adviser is retired now, which apparently complicates matters. Billy, it makes me sick to think about it. How silly of her to have given up when she did. A year away from a PhD. Can you imagine?"

  Billy closed his eyes. Not this, he thought. Not now. He hadn't the strength to help his mother bemoan Gwen's life choices. He thought of Sri's linen suit still hanging in the closet. He felt as though he had a lover waiting in the next room.

  "Anyway," Paulette said, "your sister is fine, considering. I'm just glad to have her back in civilization, after all that business. That young man."

  Billy thought of Gwen's red-rimmed eyes, her quavering voice.

  The shock of seeing her in tears, the first time in twenty years.

  "I think she misses him," he said, swiping at his eyes.

  "You sound congested. Is this why you're home on a Monday? I was certain I'd get that terrible machine."

  "I feel lousy," he admitted.

  "I tried you all day yesterday. I was starting to worry. Darling, the most remarkable thing happened. I was glancing at the Sunday paper, and you'll never guess what I found. The Captain's House! The new owners are renting it out."The house was available, as luck would have it, the third week in June—the week of Paulette's birthday.

  "Only a week," she said apologetically. "I asked for more, but they're booked for the rest of the summer. I suppose beggars can't be choosers."

  She had already mailed in the deposit. Billy allowed her to tell him this, her voice rising with excitement.

  "That sounds great, Mother," he said, when he could bear it no longer."Let me check my schedule and get back to you."

  There was a chilly silence.

  "Check your schedule? Billy, you can't be serious. For once I'd like the whole family to be together on my birthday. That hasn't happened in years." She hesitated."Of course, you're welcome to bring a guest."

  A guest?

  Billy nearly dropped the phone.

  "Mother," he said, more gently. "Things are complicated just now." He paused a moment, not trusting his voice."It's hard for me to think about next week. Never mind next month."

  "But it's summertime!" his mother said."You have to take a vacation sooner or later. You can't work every single minute. No wonder you're ill."

  I am desperately ill, he thought. I've had a heart attack. I've been at tacked by my heart.

  "People don't stop having heart attacks in the summer," he said instead.

  He could tell by her silence that he'd said something terribly wrong. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, he thought. But what did she expect, calling at this particular moment, when his own life had frayed to a single quivering thread?

  He stared at the television. He had missed the finish. A commentator was interviewing the lean Kenyan who'd crossed the line first.

  Billy thought, I will never run that race.

  "Darling, what's the matter with you? Are you upset with me for some reason?" She paused."For heaven's sake, this isn't about Gwen?"

  "She loved him," he said, surprised by his own vehemence. "He made her happy. She's a grown woman, you know. I know you don't think of her that way, but she is."

  He took a deep breath.

  "You've always tried so hard to protect her. But maybe that wasn't what she needed. Sending Scott down there to f— to mess things up—it wasn't right, Mother. It wasn't fair to Gwen."

  For a long time the line was silent.

  "Billy," his mother said softly."Is everything all right?"

  Gwen climbed the stairs to her apartment, laden with bags of groceries. She turned the key in the lock. She had been home just over two weeks, and the emptiness of the place still startled her, the blank corners where plants had once lived. Her first day back she'd hauled out a dozen corpses—amaryllis and ferns, ivy and ficus, clay and china pots packed with hard earth and dead leaves. The sole survivor, an ailing cactus, she placed squarely on the kitchen table. The cactus was grayish and gnarled. Round lumps grew on it like polyps. I hate this thing, Gwen thought each morning as she sat down to breakfast. But perversely, spitefully, she kept it alive.

  Now she set her groceries on the kitchen counter. Mrs. Uncapher's television was audible through the floorboards. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. The steady drone comforted her. It made her feel less alone.

  The morning's errands had depressed her. First, the university, a meeting with the new chairman of the anthropology department. The news was not good. After ten years, many of Gwen's credits had expired.

  She would have to reapply to the PhD program. If she was ac
cepted—if !—she'd have to make up the credits she'd lost. Then there was the matter of her thesis, whose exact subject she remembered only dimly.

  The very word, thesis, had unleashed in her a wave of antipathy, an old panic. She'd been unable to write it ten years ago, when she still believed it mattered. In her current state of mind, failure seemed inevitable.

  The meeting ended, she'd wandered the campus. Her bright months in St. Raphael seemed as distant as childhood. The world was this gray Pittsburgh sky, this cold rain falling in sheets. It seemed, now, that she'd always expected to return. This life was correct, her logical destiny. The wild, random joy of her time with Rico had been a mere detour. An error had occurred, a crazy glitch in the system, an arbitrary pairing too improbable to last. Gwen understood, now, that she'd been waiting for him to betray her. In the end he had done so, though not in the way she'd expected. The brazen tourists with their room keys: he had never succumbed to their charms. At least, not as far as she knew.

  She watched the students scuttle between buildings, laden with backpacks, and tried to imagine herself among them. At nineteen, twenty, she'd felt like an outsider. At thirty-four she would feel like a freak.

  Head down, zipped into her ugly purple slicker, she walked the streets of Oakland, past the bar where she'd once kissed Eric Farmer, tipsy on Stott Golden Ale. At the next corner she ducked into FastCuts, empty at that hour."Where've you been?" asked her usual stylist.

  "Your hair is so long."

  Gwen ignored the question."I need a haircut."

  "Are you sure? It's so pretty this way."

  "Take it off," Gwen said.

  Now, shorn, she stared at herself in her bathroom mirror. This face, this body that Rico had loved, or pretended to. The stubby arms, now covered with freckles; the short neck, the nipples spaced wide on her flat chest. She recalled a night in March when they'd delivered a group of divers back to Pleasures, then motored around to the far side of the island and dropped anchor. The pink sun sliding low in the sky. Let's swim, Rico said, dropping his shorts. Whenever possible he swam naked. His lean buttocks were as brown as his back. To his eternal amusement, Gwen persisted in wearing a swimsuit. What are you hiding? he often teased her. I've seen more of you than you have. I've seen everything there is to see.