by Walter Blum
“Wally Bascom, you are incorrigible!” Seeley chided.
“Don’t tell me you never had a bit of larceny in your heart,” Wally grinned.
“You’re going to have to give that back,” Larry warned.
“What for?”
“It doesn’t belong to you.”
“It doesn’t belong to anyone except maybe Hunter Baines,” Wally said, “and he’s practically bought the farm, hasn’t he?” He caught himself just in time. “Sorry, that was uncalled for. Me and my big mouth.” He looked around and a thought registered. “Didn’t anyone invite him?”
“I think we all figured he wouldn’t want to come,” Larry admitted.
“Why not?”
“Well, you know…”
“Hell, just because Baines was our boss doesn’t mean we have to exclude him from our little rituals.” He swept the room. “He’s a nice guy, you know? Does anyone here believe he didn’t have our best interests at heart? Does anyone actually blame him for selling the station? Listen, he could do whatever he wanted. That was his prerogative. Money is money, and we all know that’s what counts in this day and age.”
“Wally, I think you’ve had a little too much to drink,” Larry chided.
“There’s no alcohol here, or hadn’t you noticed? Listen, why don’t we call him up and get him to come down here. Anyone know his home number?”
“I’ll call,” said Seeley, and went into the kitchen where the phone was located.
“What do you say we have a reunion?” Brian Hathaway said.
“A what?”
“A reunion. Next year—right here—same time, same station.”
“Hell, we’ll all be long gone by then,” Wally scoffed, and set down the glass of orange juice he’d been nursing.
“So what?” Brian argued. “Isn’t that the point? I don’t see why we can’t take a little time out from what we’re doing, come down to Canelius and catch up on what everyone else is up to. I’ll even put together a newsletter if you like.”
“I thought you were studying to be a chiropractor,” Wally said.
“That was long ago,” Brian said, and with a glow of pride added, “I’m a radio announcer now.”
From the skeptical expression on their faces, Adam could see that Brian’s idea of a reunion had landed with a dull thud. Maybe it would have worked out if they’d all been a little closer, a bit less self-centered. Now it was too late. The moment called for goodbyes, not second looks. He was about to add a few words of his own when he noticed Seeley standing in the doorway, her back to the kitchen.
She seemed to have undergone some sort of strange permutation. Her eyes were misty, her face was pale, as though all the blood had drained away, and she seemed to be trying to say something, but when her mouth opened nothing came out but air. The effort to speak contorted her lips. Her hands shook. Suddenly, the others became aware of her presence, and the room fell silent. Seeley’s voice, when it came, was like a small child’s.
“He was going to come tonight. I did invite him, I swear I did. He was just getting dressed when it happened—chest pains—right in the middle of dressing he had these terrible chest pains. They called an ambulance right away and rushed him to the hospital, but by then it was too late. They did all they could…it was just that…Oh, my God, I never had a chance to speak to him, to tell him how much he meant to me.”
“I thought he had cancer,” Adam said.
“Yes, he did, but he had a heart condition, too. He just didn’t want anyone to know,” Seeley said, the lump in her throat unmistakable. “He was that kind of person. He didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him. You know, I did invite him. I’m sure he would have come…He liked everyone in this room. He was a good man. He…”
“So it goes,” said Wally and, picking up the glass of orange juice, he raised it to his lips.
23
The days crawled by on tractor treads, clanking, groaning, while he pretended that every star on the horizon would glow brighter than the one that came before. It felt as though he were slogging across an expanse of black sand on an endless beach. He wanted to leave but he couldn’t. A hot mist hovered on his shoulders, and the wind beat against his face, making it more and more difficult to break clear of the forces that were tying him to this landscape, wrapping his feet with sticky tape and gelatin, slowing him until he could hardly move.
Hunter Baines’ death came as a shock. It was as though a line had been drawn in the sandy waste, and from here on, burden was piled on burden until it became almost unbearable.
The funeral was one of those neat, antiseptic affairs, very Anglo-Saxon Protestant, filled with flowers and organ music and little speeches by acquaintances who barely knew the man, in a chapel whose ceiling was too high and whose altar barely accommodated the notion of God and those who had gone ahead. Adam recalled the messy remembrance for his father, the shivah with people eating and talking and milling about; the ceremony at the grave that almost hadn’t happened because the hearse blew a tire and had to be hauled by a tow truck to the cemetery.
Messy, and yet there was something alive and cleansing about the way they’d shipped Lou Bernstein off to another world. If only Hunter Baines could have received the same farewell. He deserved better than what he got. The whitewashed chapel, the perfunctory hymns, the words of hypocrisy still echoing in his ears, all of it led Adam to make a silent promise to himself that when he died—of course, that was beyond comprehension—but if it ever happened, he would have it known that he wanted everyone sent away. He was not to be honored or praised or spoken of by people who hardly knew of him, and his ashes were to be scattered to the wind.
The thought of funerals had been added to the baggage of his life, weighing him down and coloring the way he made his way from day to day. He thought of the small apartment with its lumpy bed and lithograph of a wheat field. He couldn’t wait to leave in the morning, but once outside, he realized he had no place to go. The files they heaped on his desk at the office, the literature of the business world, could just as easily have been written in the language of a scholar from Mars. After a few pages, his eyes blurred and his mind glazed over. The library, once his favorite refuge in off hours, now had to be avoided because he knew that sooner or later he’d run into her. She spent at least two or three hours every day there as a volunteer. Meals were just as bad. He had long since given up cooking for himself, and the minute he stepped inside a restaurant he felt as if everyone was watching him. His single table in the corner reproached him for not having brought along an invisible guest.
He was being punished for his sins, and the sin that counted most was pride. All that time, basking in the glow of endless good fortune, a beautiful wife, a lovely home, a place of sensuous furnishings and romantic music where he could retire at night and speak whatever marvelous words came into his head, dazzling those people who would listen and make love to his voice and think of him as some sort of wizard creating spells out of smoke and thin air, all that he had loved and reveled in had come crashing down around his ears. In his vanity, he had forgotten who he was. He deserved everything that he got.
He awoke one morning, convinced that there was no way he could wrench himself out of bed. His body ached as though a fire had gone through it, and he barely succeeded in struggling into his clothes and out the door. He was reminded of Mrs. Warren’s diatribe long ago about Armageddon and the Antichrist—“that’s the man who will come among us and perform miracles, and we’ll be deceived,” she had said.
The skies were pregnant with dark clouds, although this time he managed to reach the office before they opened up. He buried his nose in work, took a couple of phone calls from would-be investment targets and managed to convince himself that he was being “productive.” People in the office liked to use that word; he still wasn’t quite sure what it meant. By noon, the rain was beginning to let up, but it would probably return off and on for the rest of the day. He could order Chinese takeout from a restaur
ant down the street, but the thought of chow mein or greasy pot stickers at this hour seemed singularly unappealing. Best to make a run for the B&B, which would be crowded but warm and dry and only a couple of blocks away. With any luck, he could make it without getting too wet.
He paused to let Francine know where he was off to. She glanced out the window to the left of her desk, aware that he had arrived that morning without a raincoat. “You can borrow my umbrella, sir,” she offered.
“No, you’re going to need it,” he said, and then an idea came to him. “I could probably do it.”
“Sir?”
“She wouldn’t be home. She works at the library this time of day.”
“Who does?
“And this is Tuesday, isn’t it?” He nodded and for a brief moment the gray fog that had surrounded him for more than a week lifted, allowing him to see things with greater clarity. “Of course. Delia has Tuesdays off, so I can drive over, pick up my raincoat and be gone before anyone knows I was there.”
Francine’s face reflected her perplexity.
“Delia?”
“I never told you about her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Delia’s our maid.”
She smiled, but it was clear that she still hadn’t a clue as to what he was talking about. He decided there was no point in going into a long, elaborate explanation. This would suffice for now. Leaning over her desk, he put his signature and the time in the sign-out book—one of Max Goldman’s little quirks, keeping track of his employees’ whereabouts, even at lunchtime. He wrote the single word “lunch” at the end of the line, returned the pen to Francine and took the next available elevator to the street.
The rain had stopped as he slid into the car, but he drove swiftly, knowing how temperamental the weather could be at this time of year. The truth was, he wanted one last look at the house. Although they had bickered about decorating, about rugs and drapes and living room furniture, in the end he had come to like its cool elegance, the way one room flowed into another, the sound of the furnace as it roared to life on a cold evening, the play of light and shadow against the walls made by the branches of trees outside. It was their place, this elegant white house on Fairhaven Street, and there were still all those happy memories from the time of perpetual delight.
He pulled up just as the clouds were starting to unburden themselves again. For a moment, he thought he saw a curtain flutter at an upstairs window, but it happened so quickly he put it down to imagination. He parked in the driveway, pulled his coat collar around his neck and made a dash for it. There was a circular overhang above the front door and he stood there, protected but already dripping, shaking himself like a drowned rat and thinking how lucky he was to have come away that morning with his house keys.
The door opened just as he was inserting his key in the slot, and he felt a bolt of electricity go through him, pinning him to the emerald welcome mat.
She stood there, her eyes wide, her mouth parted faintly, dressed in pale blue slacks and a pink flowered blouse. It was the sort of outfit she wore on days when the agenda did not include shopping or visiting or spending time at the library, since such a choice might be considered immodest by some of the more censorious around town. She hadn’t put on any makeup, and there was a kind of freshness to her face that he preferred to all the lipstick and powder and mascara that usually accompanied her out the door. She had laced her arms across her chest at the sight of him, as though to protect herself against this unexpected intrusion. They stood there, the two of them, speechless, staring in amazement. Finally, he broke the silence.
“I thought you’d be at the library,” he said.
She let her arms fall slightly. “The rain—” she murmured. “I wasn’t sure I want—I mean—”
“I forgot to take my raincoat.”
“I’ll get it for you.”
They were both stuttering. It was something he thought he had conquered in the fifth grade, when kids in the playground made fun of his impediment. He remembered the pain and embarrassment, the nights spent in the bathroom with the door shut tight, practicing tongue twisters like “she sells seashells” and “the sinking steamer” in front of the mirror. He had resolved then and there that he would never be caught with his vowels and consonants down, had willed himself to be a speaker and thought he had succeeded. But the past was not that easily eluded.
“Come in. Please, please,” she said, turned and led him into the living room.
In later years, he would explain what happened next as an accident, but he knew that things weren’t arranged that easily. He stood near the fireplace, thinking he might receive some sort of sign, marveling that nothing had changed since the three of them—he and Max and for one brief, frightening moment, Susan—met at this exact spot and the world imploded like a giant balloon. It shouldn’t have surprised him, and yet…he had heard stories about wives who, when their husbands left the family nest, moved the furniture around, disposed of treasured heirlooms and generally made a mess of things.
Of course, it had only been a week. Not enough time to purge the house of his presence, to exorcise all the things he’d used and touched and laid a hand on, even if she’d cared. For Susan, the house was only peripheral to the rest of her life. Possessions came and went like bubbles on a pond. A minute or so later she was back with the raincoat on her arm.
“Have you eaten?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“I’ve made a salad. You can stay if you want and have some lunch. There’s too much for one.”
He hadn’t meant to say yes, but the words just came out. Draping the raincoat over the back of the sofa, he followed her into the kitchen. The table in the adjoining breakfast nook was laid, almost as if company were expected. They sat facing each other with the window on one side holding a frozen image of the patio, rainwater streaming down the glass, a gray squirrel hopping from bush to bush in search of liquefied nourishment. It was all so peaceful, so bland, and yet so dreadfully necessary.
“It’s been rough,” he said.
“Yes.”
He broke off a swatch from a loaf of French bread. “I’m sorry it had to come to this,” he said.
“I am too,” she agreed.
“I still have the feeling I didn’t do enough,” he said.
“There’s nothing you could have done,” she said. “It was the way things were meant to be. It was the way you looked at me, the way we started out, right from the beginning. If only you’d been a little less adoring, a little more critical. You always treated me as though I were a mystery, as though I were some kind of goddess.”
“But that’s how you wanted to be treated. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“No.”
“I always thought you did.”
“You never asked. You never once said you wanted to see me any other way.” She pressed the palms of her hands together, almost as though she were trying to squeeze the truth out of them. “Well, you were wrong. I’m not a mystery, Adam, and I’m not a goddess. I’m ordinary and plain and I’m not even a very nice person.”
“People don’t always have to be nice.”
“It helps.”
“And you’re certainly not plain. How can you say that? You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”
“Maybe that’s the problem.”
Adam and the woman he adored faced each other, trying to close the emptiness, trying to touch and failing. It broke his heart, to be so close and yet so far away.
“If only you didn’t know so many things you’re not supposed to know,” she said. “My father…he was afraid—for himself and for me. He knew I was weak, and if things fell apart and people got to hear the truth, I’d never survive. But I’m not like you, Adam. He knew that. I can’t hold it together, and I don’t have a place to hide, the way you do. So we made a bargain, my father and I. I’m sure he told you how it happened, and why we couldn’t go back and make it better. I let him ta
ke my most precious possession, the one thing a person should never have to lose—I let him take my freedom, and in return he agreed to protect me—for the rest of my life, I guess. But I had no choice.”
“Everyone has a choice. You just have to say yes or no.”
She stabbed a fork at the salad before her. “That simple? Yes or no, that’s all there is to it?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“But you’re a man, don’t you see? You don’t have to worry about the consequences. If you make a baby, you can walk away and no one will blame you. If you ruin someone’s reputation, they let you clear out before anyone knows what you’ve done. You can come down here to a town like this, have a good time, screw the local girls and move on to the next. No one holds you responsible.”
Adam bristled. “You think that’s what I did?”
“Yes, damn it! You’re like all the rest, like every one of them.” Suddenly, her eyes widened and he could see tears forming. “Oh, God! I’m sorry, Adam. I didn’t mean it like that. I’ve been so angry and so scared for so long, I’ve come to think that everyone is guilty of the same crime. Of course it isn’t your fault. I know if we had it to do over, you’d come through for me.”
“I’m ready to do it over,” he said.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am,” Adam insisted.
“Why? Why would you want to?”
“Because I’m still in love with you.”
“Please don’t condescend to me, Adam. You know what I’ve done. You know what I’m liable to do, and you know I’m not capable of being honest with you. Don’t say you’re in love with me if you’re not.”
“Let’s put it another way. Do you think you could ever love me?”
“I do. I already do. I fell in love with you long before we were married, Adam. I’m not making this up. I do love you, with all my heart, but I can’t change the past. If you want me to change—” She gazed out at the water-soaked patio, and at the squirrel who was now hanging halfway up a distant tree. “Well, you’re just going to have to give me a rain check.”
