The Last Time They Met

by Anita Shreve

  —There was so much harm then. He looked inward, possibly reminded of Catholic sins. Are you religious now?

  —Only on airplanes, she said quickly, and he laughed. He tried to eat another bite.

  —I am, a bit, he confessed, startling her, and he seemed almost bashful in the confession. My mother’s minister stayed with me for days after Billie died, though I hardly knew his presence. Very good in the clinches. Well, they are, aren’t they? We often play tennis together now, and I sometimes go to services. So as not to hurt his feelings, I think.

  Her breath was tight and seared her chest. This mention of private disaster had come too soon. She heard the phrase again: After Billie died. . . .

  He went on. I suppose I feel I ought to show some gratitude. Though they must know that in the end it doesn’t help. In the end, nothing helps. Drugs, possibly.

  —Yes.

  He leaned forward. Does this happen to you? I think of what we did, and I cannot believe we were ever so cruel.

  She couldn’t answer him. He had paid more dearly than any man deserved. And she? What payment had she made? She had had love, and her children were alive. Against all the odds, she had been rewarded. What justice was in that?

  She put her fork down, unable even to pretend to eat. There had never been a rehearsal for such a conversation. She folded her fingers under her chin. She could not go forward, for she didn’t know how much he could bear. She would take her cues from Thomas, not ask any questions.

  The massive plates were replaced with smaller ones. The waiter filled their glasses.

  —Do you still have the letters? he asked.

  —I lost them, she said, relieved to have moved to safer conversational ground. They spilled out of a carton. I watched from a second-story window of a house my husband and I were moving into. He had been carrying it, the carton. I held my breath when he picked it up. They would have hurt him, even though . . .

  (Even though I hadn’t seen you in years, she had been about to say.)

  —No man likes to think there was another who mattered, Thomas said reasonably.

  —And then, weeks later, when I thought to look for them, they were gone. Nowhere to be found. I tried to ask obliquely, but he seemed not to know what I was talking about. It’s a mystery. To this day, I don’t know what happened to them.

  —He destroyed them, Thomas said simply.

  Linda could not imagine that outcome, that act of subterfuge. Vincent had lacked the desire, and therefore the skill, for duplicity. Whereas she and Thomas had been acrobats.

  Arms were laid upon the backs of chairs. Food was devoured or ignored. Mirrors against the walls doubled the diners, showing faces where faces had been hidden. A cohort of small men in soiled aprons threaded themselves around the narrow table like dancers. A lack of windows, reminders of the rain, made the room seem intimate. Those who had no gift for conversation suffered.

  —When did you marry? Thomas asked lightly.

  Discussion of the past invited pain, she thought, though it was foolish to imagine they could continue any conversation without mentioning the worst between them.

  —Nineteen seventy-six, she said.

  —Twenty-four years ago.

  She nodded, and there was a moment when she knew what he was thinking: of herself preparing for a wedding. Of herself in the throes of the strongest physical love for another.

  —And you have children? he asked. I think I might have read that.

  —I have a daughter who is twenty-three, a son who is twenty-two.

  And there, it was done: the mention of her children.

  She watched Thomas struggle to compose his features. How bottomless the grief that could show itself in fresh tears years later.

  —What are their names?

  —Maria and Marcus.

  —Maria and Marcus . . . ?

  —Bertollini.

  —Your husband’s name.

  —Vincent, she said, not adding that he had died.

  —It’s so I can imagine it.

  She nodded.

  —You dress beautifully now. Thomas kept his eyes on her face as he said this, though she knew that he had already assessed her.

  —Thank you, she said simply.

  —Billie would have been twelve this spring, Thomas said.

  The name, spoken aloud, was too sad, too harsh. She could see, in the tightness of his mouth, the cost of this.

  —The boat was waterlogged and rotten. The head smelled. You could hear Rich fucking in the forward cabin . . .

  For a moment, he could not go on.

  —We were on our way to Maine, he said, the tremor in his voice momentarily under better control. Rich and his girlfriend were on the boat. And Jean, my wife. He glanced up at Linda. And our daughter, Billie.

  —Thomas, stop, she said quietly. You don’t have to do this. I read about the accident when it happened. Indeed, she could remember only too well the way she’d been turning the pages of the Boston Globe as she did every morning (Vincent with the Times at the other end of the table; her hand was sticky with jelly, she remembered), and the way the words THOMAS JANES and DAUGHTER and DROWNED had been, with what seemed like impossible and screaming capitals, all contained within the same headline. The way Vincent had instantly put down his paper, saying: Linda, what’s the matter?

  A waiter, balancing plates, created an artificial pause.

  —It wasn’t Jean’s fault, though I blamed her.

  Linda watched Thomas’s fingers tighten on the stem of his glass. She could not dictate how he would tell this story.

  —God, how I blamed her. I would have killed her on the boat if I’d had the strength or courage for it.

  Linda pressed her folded hands against her mouth. How we struggle to hold in what we would say, she thought.

  She looked around the room, at all the faces — avid and intensely curious — turned in their direction. This was awful. They could not do this here.

  —Thomas, she said, standing. Come with me.

  * * *

  They moved along a quay that jutted into the lake. The drizzle made a net around her hair, her face. Thomas walked with his shoulders slightly stooped, his hands tucked into the long pockets of his trench coat. He had knotted the belt loosely, one of the ties longer than the other. His shoes had not been polished in some time. It wasn’t poverty that made him so unkempt, she knew; it was merely lack of care. Another’s care or his own.

  —You live in Hull still, she said.

  —Yes.

  —And how is Rich?

  —He’s fine. He’s married now, with two boys. He married a doctor, as it happened. The boys are great.

  She could not imagine how Thomas managed to play with other people’s children, or even to talk to them. Would the ache be constant? Would there be an hour, five hours together, when one simply — and blessedly — forgot?

  —I see your aunt occasionally, Thomas said. She always tries to pretend she doesn’t know me.

  —Can you blame her?

  —No, of course not. I hardly blame anyone now except myself. I suppose this is progress.

  The wind was raw against the open neck of her blouse. She clutched the lapels of her raincoat. I won’t ask about your wife, she said. Though I would like to.

  —You mean Jean?

  She nodded, knowing they couldn’t speak yet of Regina. Possibly not ever.

  —Oh, I can talk about Jean. He seemed to have recovered from his tremulousness in the restaurant. Linda imagined that grief might show itself in a random pattern: some moments would be unbearable; others would be merely bits and pieces of a bad story. I don’t blame her, he added. I said that. She was a good woman. Well, still is, I suppose.

  —You don’t see her?

  —Oh, God, no. I don’t think either one of us could bear it. After a year or so, she moved inland, to Indianapolis, where she was originally from. It’s safer there, I imagine. No possibility of ocean. I assume she’s still alone. Yes, I kn
ow she is. She writes occasionally to Rich.

  And why did Thomas continue to torture himself with ocean? she might have asked.

  They had walked to what appeared to be an industrial park. She remembered a Christmas Day, years ago, when she and Thomas had strolled empty streets in Boston, the only persons in a deserted universe. But then she had a troubling thought: though she could remember the day — the sense of endless time available to them, the promise of possibility around every corner, the clarity of the air — she could not feel it. And she found that she minded this inability to feel the past. It was disturbing, really, to be so removed from the texture of one’s life.

  Her skirt moved as they walked. She was ruining her shoes. Beside her, she could feel Thomas’s heat, even in the inhospitable chill. There was, about her shoulders, a contraction of self-consciousness. His physical presence was familiar to her, and yet foreign as well. All his cells were different now, overturned three times.

  —Do you teach? he asked.

  —I do. She named the college. Part-time. My husband died two years ago and left insurance money.

  —I didn’t know. I’m sorry. He who would know better than any man how useless sorry was. Was it a long illness?

  —No. It was very sudden.

  Beside her, Thomas seemed to lope rather than to walk.

  —I started touring more aggressively after he died, she said. I found I didn’t think about Vincent as much in hotel rooms.

  They had reached a bench. He gestured for her to sit. She had her hands in the pockets of her coat and gathered them forward into her lap. The weekend lay before her, more defined than it had been just hours earlier. A year from now, she knew, she might be thinking, That was the weekend that I. . . . It was momentous after all, their having met after years apart. Momentous simply in this exchange of history, in the verification of one’s past. Thoughts of something larger were impossible; they ran against the grain these days, against the tide.

  —Was your marriage good? he asked.

  No one ever asked her these sorts of questions anymore. There was, undeniably, a kind of exhilaration in having to answer them.

  —I think it was a wonderful marriage. She knew nothing of Thomas’s second marriage, to the woman named Jean, only of its unspeakable demise and aftermath. We had a lot of joy together. I remember thinking that when Vincent died: ‘We had a lot of joy.’ And very little unhappiness.

  —I’m glad.

  —But no one gets through life unscathed, she said. And she wondered: was that true? Did anyone, at fifty-two, have an unscathed life? Vincent never seemed to suffer, and I found that contagious. Life was more normal, less fraught than it had been.

  Had been with you, she might have added.

  —Reason enough to love anyone, I should think.

  —We had just come back from what was to be our summerhouse in Maine. We’d gone up for the day to meet with the contractor. It was to have been a magnificent house — well, magnificent to us. After years of saving for it, it was finally a reality. Our only regret was that we hadn’t done it when the children were younger, though already we were thinking of grandchildren. She paused, as if for breath, when really, it was the tamping down of anger that had momentarily stopped her. I went out to the bank and left him in the house. When I came back he was on the floor, surrounded by oranges.

  —A heart attack?

  —A massive stroke. She paused. Nothing about his health had ever suggested the possibility. He was only fifty.

  Thomas put a hand on hers, which had escaped from her pocket in the telling of the tale. His was cold, his palm roughened to a papery texture, despite the writer’s fingers. He touched her awkwardly, the gesture of a man not used to consoling others.

  —It’s such a surprise to see you, she said. I didn’t know. I hadn’t read the program.

  —Would you have come if you had known?

  The question was a tunnel with a dozen furtive compartments. — Curiosity might have made me bold.

  Thomas released her hand and took out a pack of cigarettes. In a series of gestures both ancient and familiar to Linda, he lit a cigarette, picked a piece of tobacco off his lip, and blew a thin stream of blue smoke that hung in the damp air, a bit of calligraphy dissipating. There would be, of course, no point in mentioning his health. Thomas would almost certainly say he’d lived too long already.

  —Would it surprise you to learn that I came here because of you? he asked.

  Something more than surprise kept her silent.

  —Yes, it surprised me, too, he said. But there it is. I saw your name and thought . . . Well, I don’t know what I thought.

  Behind them, a ferry or tugboat blew its whistle.

  —I am hungry, actually, Thomas said.

  —You have a reading in half an hour.

  —Payment exacted for all this fun.

  Linda looked at him and laughed.

  Thomas stood, the gentle man, and took her arm. I think this means we owe ourselves a dinner afterwards.

  —At least that, Linda said in kind.

  * * *

  They took a taxi to the theater. At the door they parted — with customary good wishes on Linda’s part, the obligatory grimace on Thomas’s — and truly, he seemed to blanch slightly when Susan Sefton accosted him and impressed upon him the fact of the performance in ten minutes’ time.

  It was a steeply inclined room that might once have been a lecture hall, with seats that fanned out from a podium like spokes from a wheel. Linda took off her wet raincoat and let it crumple behind her back, the cloth giving off the scent of something vaguely synthetic. Alone now, anonymous, with two strangers seating themselves beside her, she allowed herself to think about Thomas’s assertion that he had come to the festival because of her. It wouldn’t be entirely true — there would have been a sense of reemerging into a world he’d left behind — but the part that might be true alarmed her. She didn’t, couldn’t, want such a costly overture.

  The trickle into the theater was modest, producing a pock-marked gallery that could be, Linda knew, dispiriting when viewed from a stage. She ached for Thomas to have a good audience. There were students with backpacks, a few couples on what appeared to be dates, some women like herself sitting in small, cheerful groups. The would-be poets came in singly, supplicants seeking words of inspiration or, at the very least, an agent. But then a side door, forgotten or locked until now, swung open to admit a steady stream of people; and Linda watched as row after row filled and spilled into the next, the gallery’s complexion clearing. Linda felt, oddly, a mother’s pride (or a wife’s, she supposed, though she’d had little practice; Vincent had been terrified at just the thought of public speaking). The respectable audience became a flood, the doors held open by bodies that could go no further into the theater. Thomas’s years in self-proclaimed and necessary exile had whetted appetites. History was being made, albeit history of a parochial and limited sort.

  Beside her, a younger couple speculated about the famous silence.

  —His daughter was killed on a boat.

  —Oh, God. Can you imagine?

  —Washed overboard. She was only five. Or six, maybe.

  —Jesus.

  —They say he had a breakdown after.

  —I might have read that.

  The lights dimmed, and an academic introduction was made. An exile, though not its cause, was alluded to. The introduction did not do justice to Thomas, though it suggested a singular achievement that one might honor even if there hadn’t been any work in years. The spotlight made unflattering shadows on the academic’s face. She herself would soon be standing there.

  When Thomas emerged from the wings, a hush, like cloud, settled upon the audience. Thomas moved with old authority, careful not to look up at the several hundred faces. When he reached the podium, he took a glass of water, and she saw (and hoped that others did not) that his hand trembled in its epic progress from the table to the mouth. Behind her, someone said, Wow, h
e’s really aged, the words (such power) reducing even the best of them to something less.

  Thomas fumbled badly at the beginning, causing an empathetic flush to run along the sides of her neck and lodge behind her ears. He seemed unprepared. In the growing silence, he flicked pages with his forefinger, the paper having the snap and crackle of onionskin. Linda could hear from the audience murmurs of surprise, the slight whine of disappointment. And still the riffling continued. And then, when she thought she could bear it no longer, when she’d bent her head and put her fingers to her eyes, Thomas began to read.

  The voice was deep and sonorous, untouched by the years that had ravaged his face. It might have been the voice of a proclamation, the basso profundo of an opera singer. It seemed the audience held its breath, lest breathing cause the people there to miss a word. She strained to comprehend the startling phrases, then was left to tumble down a slide of images that were oddly pleasurable even though their terrible meaning could not be misunderstood: “Water’s silk,” he read, and “Bed of sand.” “The mother bent, a trampled stem.” The hair on the back of Linda’s neck stood up, and chills stippled her arms. She held herself and forgot the audience. One could hardly believe in this marriage of confused and servile grief. She knew, as she had not ever known before — as she was certain those around her had not known before — that she was in the presence of greatness.

  He read from The Magdalene Poems. A series of poems about a girl who did not become a woman. An elegy for a life not lived.

  Thomas stopped and took another epic drink of water. There was the sound of a hundred listeners putting hands to chests and saying, Oh. The applause that followed was — one had to say it — thunderous. Thomas looked up and seemed surprised by all the commotion. He did not smile, either to himself or at the audience, and for this Linda was inexplicably relieved: Thomas would not easily be seduced.

  The questions that followed the reading were routine (one about his culpability, appalling). He answered dutifully; and mercifully, he was not glib. Linda wasn’t certain she could have borne to hear him glib. He seemed exhausted, and a sheen lay on his forehead, white now with true stage fright.