The Condition

by Jennifer Haigh

  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 attacked 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 accepted—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 Fast-Cuts, 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.

  Which, of course, was true.

  What had possessed her, that night, to peel off her swimsuit? She was aware of him watching her. It was not yet dark. Rico applauded as she dove into the surf. They swam together a long time, darting at each other like cichlids: the charged rush and run of marine life, the watery dance. Had she really done this? Was Gwen McKotch capable of such a thing?

  In the Caribbean she had met two astonishing people, Rico and herself.

  She was sitting in her kitchen, poring over the classified section of the Post-Gazette, when the telephone rang. For an instant her heart leaped. Ridiculous, of course. Rico didn’t have her phone number, and wouldn’t know how to get it. There was no way he could possibly find her.

  Still hoping, she picked up the phone.

  “Darling, there you are! I’ve been trying to reach you for two days. Is everything all right?”

  Gwen hadn’t cried all day, a major accomplishment. Suddenly she felt her eyes fill. Her mother’s concern and tenderness. Her mother’s voice.

  “Um, no. Not really.” Gwen broke off, not trusting her voice. “Mom, I miss him,” she said softly—Gwen who did not say such things.

  “Oh, sweetheart. I know you do.” Paulette sighed. “Love is such dangerous business. I’m just glad you’re back, and safe. Promise me you’ll never run off that way again.”

  “I won’t,” said Gwen.

  “I’m not going to interrogate you about what happened. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

  “Mom, thank you,” said Gwen, oddly touched. How unlike her mother to show such restraint.

  “I can’t bear the thought of you being disappointed. If that young man couldn’t treat you properly, he didn’t deserve you. That’s all I’m going to say on the matter.” Paulette seemed to hesitate. “I know it’s no consolation, but I do have some good news. How would you feel about coming to the Cape this summer?” The Captain’s House, she explained. For Paulette’s birthday. She had just spoken to Billy. He and Scott would be there.

  “Stay the whole week,” Paulette urged. “It will be wonderful to have you close.”

  “I will,” said Gwen. As before, as always, she had no other plans.

  You left him?”

  They were sitting in a Mexican restaurant on the North Side, a few blocks from the Stott. Heidi Kozak was still in work clothes. She had a new hairstyle she called the Rachel, inspired by the star of a television show.

  “I don’t get it. A few weeks ago you were so happy I couldn’t stand you. Seriously. I’d get off the phone and think, enough with these local yokels. I need an island guy.” Heidi drank deeply from her margarita glass. “God, these are good. We need a whole pitcher. Now: What the hell happened?”

  “He lied,” Gwen said. Then, flushing mightily, she told Heidi about the envelope in Rico’s glove compartment, how she’d placed it on the bed the morning she left.

  Heidi looked utterly perplexed. “Let me get this straight. You didn’t even ask him where he got it?”

  “No,” Gwen said. “Honestly, it doesn’t matter. He could have robbed a bank for all I care.”

  Heidi frowned. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that he’s a liar. He said he was broke, and I believed him.” The words came out in a rush. “I was going to fly up here and sell my car. Empty out my bank account. The money my grandfather left me. I was going to put every cent I had into that business. And Rico would have let me.” Gwen stopped for a breath. “He was using me. He only wanted my money.”

  Heidi poured half her margarita into Gwen’s empty glass.

  “I thought he loved me. Isn’t that ridiculous? I feel like such an idiot.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Gwen nodded. To her horror she felt her eyes tear.

  “Well, fuck him, then. You’re better off without him.”

  “That’s what my mother says. Not in those exact words, of course.” Gwen grinned feebly.

  “Your mother? She must be loving this.” Heidi gave the Rachel a fluff. “It’s exactly what she wanted, isn’t it? You back in Pittsburgh. Rico out of the picture for good.”

  Gwen hesitated. “Sure. I guess so. But she means well. Billy, Scott—they were all worried.”

  “Oh, right: Scott.” Heidi signaled the waitress with two fingers: two more margaritas. “I still can’t believe he showed up there.”

  “It was bizarre,” Gwen agreed.

  “Interesting…” Heidi’s voice trailed off.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you think the timing is weird? Your brother shows up out of the blue, and—a week later? two weeks?—Rico has twenty thousand dollars.”

  Gwen drained her glass, licked the salt from her lips. “What are you saying? That Scott gave him the money?” She frowned. “Why would he do that?”

  “How would I know? But you have to admit, the timing is freaky.”

  Gwen shrugged. “Anyway, Scott doesn’t have twenty thousand dollars lying around. Trust me. I’m surprised he could afford a plane ticket.”

  “Well, what about your mother? Didn’t she have some rich old boyfriend who died? No offense, but it sounds like she might have some spare change.” Heidi covered her mouth with her hand. “Oops. I shouldn’t have said that. My point is, somehow or other, your mother got exactly what she wanted. Am I wrong?”

  Gwen blinked, and remembered.

  I’m just glad you’re back, and safe.

  It will be wonderful to have you close.

  Promise me you’ll never run off that way again.

  “No,” Gwen said slowly. “You’re not wrong.”

  chapter 10

  Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts.

  Creeping along
the highway, at the frustrating speed of fifteen miles an hour, Paulette remembered the verse. The traffic was even denser than she remembered. No longer a small knot of cars approaching the Sagamore Bridge, the jam now extended for miles in both directions. It was Saturday, changeover day on the Cape: a flood of weekly tenants passing over the bridge to take possession of their cottages; an equal volume headed in the opposite direction, heading home to the Empire State, the Constitution State, or north to truculent New Hampshire (which had given the world Gil Pyle) to Live Free or Die.

  We’re tenants now, Paulette thought. This had occurred to her a month ago, when she wrote the crushingly large check to the rental agent; but the realization had been fleeting. Now, sitting in changeover traffic on Route 6, she felt its full force.

  The backseat she’d packed full of picnic gear and beach towels. In the past they’d kept such items at the Captain’s House, ready for whomever might need them: the cousin who turned up without warning, the unexpected guests. In her attic Paulette had found two old wooden tennis racquets, a badminton set, an inflatable raft somebody—Gwen or Billy—had used as a child. In a dusty corner was a bag of golf clubs. (Martine’s? Why would she have Martine’s clubs in Concord?) Feeling foolish, Paulette had lugged these items, minus the clubs, out to the station wagon. Of her children only Billy was a golfer. She hoped he’d remember to bring his own clubs.

  She thought of the dozen bags of groceries in the hot trunk of the car, and worried about the perishables. Extra eggs for Billy (he ate only the whites, so an omelet used up half a carton), Canadian bacon for Scott’s eggs Benedict. Strawberry ice cream for Gwen, who devoured it by the pint, or used to. Did she still eat ice cream? For years Paulette had seen her only at Christmas. Of Gwen’s adult habits and tastes, she had no idea.

  She had a great deal to learn.

  In addition to the towels and tennis rackets, she’d packed two books Gwen had given her, in different years, as Christmas gifts: one a paperback thriller, the other a hefty tome involving women and wolves. For years they’d sat unread on a shelf. Now Paulette was determined to read them, to understand why Gwen had chosen these books for her. Who was this daughter she’d raised? This scuba diver, this anthropologist (or archaeologist), who was brave or foolish or passionate enough to run away to a tropical island and fall in love with a total stranger: Who was this independent, secretive, impulsive young woman? Paulette was looking for clues. For years, struggling to raise the daughter she’d expected to have, she had failed to see the one she’d gotten. But it wasn’t too late. The week at the Cape stretched ahead of them. There was plenty of time.