The Behavior of Love

by Virginia Reeves

  It’s wrong that I think of morning sex with Ed as Tim moves on top of me. That I hear Ed’s voice on the phone. Good morning, beautiful. But the yearning for Ed’s attention is ingrained, and I channel it here in this moment with Tim. I sleep with them both—Tim who has never stopped seeing me and Ed who sees me only now that there is so little else he can see.

  — —

  At noon, a rich couple from Santa Fe is perusing the back hall where several of my paintings hang. I’ve given them a quiet, self-effacing pitch: “Not a professional by any means. Just something I’ve always loved to do.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” the wife says, “your work is astounding.”

  The praise is too generous, but still, it warms me.

  My work is finally reflecting this place, but only its dirty sides. That burned-out third floor at Boulder, yellow scars left by mines, long trains of railroad cars covered in graffiti, rolled bales of rusted barbed wire.

  I am giving the couple some space to make their decision when Ed walks in, a Styrofoam box in his hands.

  “Got us a Reuben to split from the Gold Bar.” He pops open the container to show a hefty sandwich, a heap of greasy fries, a sad pickle spear. The Gold Bar makes a good Reuben, not that I eat Reubens much anymore. They’ve always been Ed’s favorite sandwich.

  The food is stinking up the gallery, clouding the sage and lavender candles I burn every time I work—Montana chic. The Santa Fe folks don’t want takeout in Styrofoam.

  “I don’t eat out here on the floor, Ed, and I have customers.”

  “I’ll just take this back to your office.” He is already walking that way, shouting—too loudly—over his shoulder, “I’ll save you half.”

  I watch his asymmetrical walk—the lift and throw of his left leg, every step a swing, something like a golf stroke, full of focused attention, direction, aim. He lifts his foot, pulls it to the side, and then throws the whole limb forward. He should be using his cane.

  He walks right past the Santa Fe couple.

  Please don’t speak to them.

  Ed stops and leans over, and I cringe at the thought of his breath—smoky and unbrushed and hot. “That lady’s brilliant, you know. I’d buy every piece of hers I could.”

  “We agree.” The woman leans toward Ed, intrigued. “That smells delicious.”

  “If you’re looking for a good lunch, the Gold Bar down the way makes a hell of a meal. Not fancy like this place, but damn fine food.”

  “Oh, Lester, how delightful. The Gold Bar! We’ll have to go.”

  I watch with horror. Then amusement. Then resentment. Then gratitude. This Ed is such a stranger, such a wonderful, disgusting stranger.

  He leaves the couple and closes himself in the back office. I know he’ll spill all over the bills and invoices piled on the desk, leave everything smeared with ketchup and grease.

  The couple returns to me, the woman’s face aglow. “What a sweet man. Does he show his work here, too?”

  “He’s not an artist.”

  “Well, he has the personality of one!” The woman takes the arm of her husband. “We’re going to take three of yours, dear. Coupling, Twine, and Ghosts. I’m in love with February, too, but I don’t think we have space in the car. I might have you ship it to me when we get home.”

  It’s my biggest sale, and they must see the surprise on my face.

  “Oh, honey. You’re going to be a star.”

  It is so sweet and so far from the truth. My hands shake as I take the check from the man, and I want to hug the woman, but she makes no move toward me. I hold the door for them as they bundle their butcher-papered paintings out to their car.

  “Where’s this Gold Bar your fellow mentioned?”

  “Two blocks down on the left. You can’t miss it.”

  “Brilliant. Thanks again, dear.”

  My biggest sale, and now my benefactors are off to the Gold Bar, per Ed’s recommendation. It’s awful how pleased I am.

  We have a decent bar of our own in the back, the varied leftovers of receptions, and I pull out a half-full bottle of Jameson, hold it up for Ed to see.

  “Well, all right!”

  I pour a couple fingers’ worth each into two coffee mugs, pull a chair up opposite Ed at the desk. As I knew they would be, the papers are littered with food, and Ed’s beard is flecked with dressing, a few strings of kraut. He hasn’t touched my half of the sandwich, though, which nearly makes me cry. He’s never been one to share food.

  I raise my mug and clink it against his. “I sold three paintings, Ed. My biggest sale ever. And you helped.”

  “Nah. I didn’t. It’s all you, Laura. Didn’t I tell you, you’re amazing? That we’d move here, and you’d have the time and space to really devote yourself to your art, and here you are—famous.” His smile is deep and rich and flushed with pride.

  Chapter 37

  — Laura —

  Pete and Bonnie are over. We just finished dinner, and the murmur of the television rises up from downstairs, a spatter of voices, and then the boys laughing. Bonnie and Pete’s backs reflect in the giant window behind them, night here already, the days turning short. My yard is out there, my gardens, my patio. My husband is doing the dishes, and I am chatting with friends, and my children are laughing downstairs. It is all too easy, and I know from Pete and Bonnie’s faces they are about to shatter it, all this comfort, so I sip my wine and close my eyes and tell myself to appreciate it. There is nothing wrong with ease.

  Still, I’m hungry for whatever it is they have to tell me.

  “Pete thinks it’s time to get Ed into a facility.” Bonnie spits out the words and sets to her wine, drinking it like water.

  “But his memory keeps improving,” I say. “He’s so much clearer than he was when he first came home.”

  Pete says, “You’re further removed from it than I am. The house is out of control. There’s the water damage, but even worse is the daily mess. There’s rotting food everywhere and dirty clothes and garbage. You’re right that his memory is improving, but it’s scattered. And the other parts are declining.” Pete rubs his eyes, hiding behind his hands. “I just think we were too optimistic.”

  “You think we were wrong to bring him home at all?”

  Neither Bonnie nor Pete replies, but their faces say it: Ed never should have been allowed to live independently.

  “He still listens to you, love,” Bonnie says.

  “You were the ones to tell me to step away!” I say it jokingly, but I want them to feel it, their flip-flopping.

  “Well, that never really happened,” Bonnie says, shooting a look over my shoulder toward Tim, there in his own world in the kitchen. “You see him at least once a week.”

  “He shows up at the gallery.”

  “None of that matters,” Pete says. He sounds tired, all the joy of the evening wrung from him. So many of my Ed thoughts center on us, Ed and me, but now I think about Pete, pal-turned-caregiver, and I realize how hard this must be for him, too. Ed was his best friend, his colleague, his drinking buddy, and now he is Pete’s ward, one more patient on the roster.

  I have been in the house only a few times since Ed came back, most recently when Pete was out of town and Ed thought he’d left a burner on, remembering at a truck stop halfway to Bozeman. He goes for long purposeless drives, this new Ed. The house was shocking, jarring, sad, and I walked through it like an anthropologist through a lost city, noting the evidence of habitation, the accumulation of things. Jack-off rags by the recliner, more around his bed, pornographic videos, their thick mail-order packaging strewn about the living room, the videos piled on top of the VCR. Julie Gets Jammed, alongside The Godfather, alongside Puffy Nipples, stacked atop Jaws. Overflowing ashtrays, cigarette butts on the floor, burn scuffs in the wood. The plate on the side table was covered in foil, layers upon layers that served as a fresh surface each time he ate, earlier meals moldering there under the thin metal sheets. I’d needed the restroom, but I couldn’t bring m
yself to go in there, not with the rest of the house as it was.

  Tacked to the wall near his desk was a poem by Dylan Thomas.

  And books everywhere.

  And his guitar there by the woodstove.

  These are pieces of the old Ed, and I know there must be a piece in there still that recognizes how awful the rest is. It’s this part that allows only Pete inside his house nowadays, Pete who has witnessed worse out in Boulder, Pete who will understand.

  But Pete is done understanding, and I know Ed will feel only betrayal when his old friend comes to him with a plan to move him away from his home. Ed will never let himself live in a facility of any kind. I know this clearly. It is as true as any truth I’ve learned about Edmund Malinowski. He will live independently until he dies.

  “You’ll never get him to move,” I say, rummaging in my purse for the cigarettes I now buy and smoke openly.

  Without turning from the sink, Tim says, “Outside, please.”

  I don’t go outside.

  “Give me one of those.”

  I pass a cigarette to Bonnie, then reach across and light it for her. Pete shakes his head when I offer him one. “Got to follow the rules of a man’s house,” he says.

  “Maybe you could talk to Ed?” Bonnie says through her smoke. “If we can get everyone on the same page, maybe it’ll be enough to convince him.”

  I smile at her, at Pete. I can see Tim reflected in the glass, drying his hands on a towel. He is glaring at me, but I know he won’t ask me to go outside again, since Bonnie is smoking, too. Tim would never argue in front of guests, even these two, my oldest friends, compliments of my ex-husband.

  “I’ll talk to Ed, but I promise you—he’ll never do it.”

  — —

  Ed asks me to meet him at the library, a first. I know Penelope works here. I see her occasionally when I bring the boys. I’ve assumed they see each other, too, but this new Ed knows not to talk about her to me, and most often, I’m able to pretend she doesn’t exist.

  This new Ed is also forgetful, though, and I find the two of them in the back corner of the 900s sitting in deep chairs, books open in their laps. Jealousy rises in me, rich and angry as those days back in Boulder. I’m tempted to make a scene. You wanted him, Penelope, well, here you go. He’s all yours now. The great Edmund Malinowski. Congratulations.

  I swallow it and interrupt them with a quiet “Excuse me?”

  Ed is slow to lift his head and slower still to recognize me. When he does, fear blanches his face, and he is immediately talking, a great stream of excuses. “It’s not what it looks like, Laura. There’s nothing happening between us. That’s long in the past, I promise. We’re just working together—isn’t that right, Pen? She’s helping me with something at the institution. I’m helping her with her reading group. We’re trying out different pieces to see if they’ll work with the bigger group. I should’ve called and told you I was going to be late—”

  “Ed.” Penelope has placed her hand on his arm, and his words dry up as quickly as they came.

  The library is quiet around us.

  Ed is looking at his lap, a caught boy. Guilty.

  The only other time the three of us have shared a room was back in Ed’s office in Boulder. He looked the same then. And the emotion is real. He is guilty. Then and now. His relationship with Penelope has never been nothing.

  I should let them get back to their book club. It’s good for Ed.

  But the girl who helped ruin our marriage is sitting in front of me, her hand on my ex-husband’s arm. And she isn’t a girl anymore.

  “How long in the past are we talking?” I ask.

  Penelope says my name now. If she touches my arm, I’ll slap her face.

  “Come on now, Pen. I think I deserve to know just how long my husband was fucking around with you. It’s fair, don’t you think? I mean, it’s all water under the bridge—you two are clearly doing great, and I’m remarried, but humor me. Are we talking months? Years? And I’d love to know the start date, just for clarification purposes, of course.”

  Ed is still looking at his lap, and Penelope is standing and storming away. “Come with me, Laura.”

  I hesitate, but my curiosity is stronger than my indignation, and I follow her upstairs to the administrative offices. She closes us inside a small room. There is part of me that hopes we fistfight, a great scrappy brawl here in the library. We’ll walk out with cuts and fat lips and missing clumps of hair.

  But she leans against the desk and sighs. “I was in love with your husband. You’re right about that. But nothing really happened. I kissed him once, and he pushed me away. Then he discharged me from the hospital. I quit taking my meds in the hope that I’d get to go back to Boulder and be with him again, but instead, I sent myself into the nonstop seizures that landed me in Great Falls with Dr. Wong, who did actually save me. I was so sure it would be Ed who’d be the one. I know he came to visit me when I was up there. I know he missed your son’s birth. I don’t remember seeing him then. I remember him in Boulder, and then I remember him here at the library when he came to find me after you two split up.”

  He went back to her. It hurts more than it should.

  “There was a big part of me that still loved him, of course. But a bigger part that hated him. I know you have to see me as a villain, but I was kept in a place for retarded people, people who couldn’t feed themselves or dress themselves, people who couldn’t talk. I was given shoe-tying lessons. I was put in the rapid-toilet-training program. Against all that, I had the attentions of my handsome doctor. He was all I had. I’m sorry if it was part of what ruined your marriage, but I’m sorrier still for what it did to me. He was all I knew, and it took me so long to be able to let anyone else in.”

  “You never slept together?”

  “We never slept together. But I don’t know if it’d be much different if we had.”

  I suppose that’s true. It was an affair, whether there was sex or not. An affair between an older doctor and his teenage patient.

  Still, I’m relieved.

  “Why are you helping him now?” I ask.

  She looks past me to the drab walls of the little office. It’s cold and unadorned. Vacant, I assume.

  “Because it would be worse if I didn’t.” She meets my eyes, and it’s clear this is all she’ll give me. She walks to the door. “Did you need to talk to him? I can give you a few minutes.”

  There’s more I want to say to her. I want to tell her she might not be a villain, but she’s no heroine, either. I want to tell her what it felt like to walk into Ed’s office and feel the energy between them. Wrong as it might have been, it was real and strong. I want to yell at her and then thank her. I want to accuse her and then forgive her. She is not the only reason Ed and I divorced, but she helped, and I am grateful. It is awful but true: Our marriage wasn’t good, but it would be even worse to be his wife now. And it would be even harder to leave.

  Ed is dozing where we left him.

  “Ed,” I say gently. “Ed, wake up.”

  He lifts his head and blinks, smiles broadly. “Hello there, beautiful. What a treat!” He looks around, smiling through his confusion. “Looks like we’re in the wrong place, doesn’t it? We should be down at Dorothy’s, throwing back a couple shots.”

  “You’re in the middle of something here.” I tell myself I’m not mentioning Penelope’s name because I don’t want to confuse him. “I just need to talk to you about something real quick.”

  He smiles even bigger. “I knew this would happen, Laura. The house is all ready for you. Just as you left it.” We are back in Dorothy’s the day I told him about Charlie. He’s sure I’m coming back. Most days, he doesn’t know I’m gone.

  I can’t talk to him about assisted living. There’s nowhere for him to put the information.

  “Okay, Ed,” I say, letting him keep the story for the little time it’ll last until Penelope arrives. I tap the open book in his lap. “Better get back to it, l
ove. We’ll catch up later.”

  “I’ll take you out.”

  “Okay, Ed.”

  I kiss him on the cheek, and when I look back at him from the end of the aisle, his head is bent to the pages of his book, stern concentration on his face.

  Penelope is sifting through papers at the information desk. “He’s all yours,” I say as I pass her, though he isn’t. He is ours. Together, we are Ed’s dysfunctional parents—I am the one who left and started a new, comfortable life, leaving our needy son in the care of the weaker parent, already a few steps behind, weighed down by her own challenges.

  We have our own successes and failures.

  And neither of us will get him into a facility.

  Chapter 38

  — Laura —

  The reception is the fanciest event the gallery has ever thrown, thanks in large part to Bonnie’s help with the setup. “We’re doing real goddamned glasses, Laura. None of those ugly plastic cups you use for lesser folks. And Pete insists on bringing Ed, but I’ll tell you straight out, I don’t know why you invited him. And, since you did, and that’s all said and done, I just want you to know I’m not playing babysitter. This is my best friend’s Big Night, and I’m not spending it nursing your ex-husband.”

  Bonnie rarely talks about Ed anymore, but her speech is bitter and angry when she does. “It’s like having a third giant child. Pete’s there all the time, taking care of him,” she said the last time she was over. We were alone drinking wine and smoking cigarettes. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear this. Thank God you escaped when you did. Can you imagine still being married to him? In his current state?”

  I can. I do.

  “Please shower,” I told him on the phone this morning. “And dress up. It’s going to be on the fancy side.”

  “Anything for you, my love.”

  I don’t correct his endearments. There is so much of him in this new series of mine. Let him believe he’s my husband again, if only for tonight.