Starting Over

by Dan Wakefield

  When he hung up, he couldn’t help wondering if she was all dated up—if that fucking Hartley had already horned in on her, or if she had another guy, or was having a secret mad affair with her boss, who was married, or—

  Potter stopped himself. He was going to take it one step at a time. He was going to enjoy the glow of anticipation that had warmed his whole day. He wasn’t going to spoil it He put on more records, which he hadn’t done for some time when he was by himself. If he was alone, and lonely, romantic or pretty or soothing music only made him feel worse. But now, with a possibility of soon having someone to share that music with, someone he really wanted with him, it was all right. It was marvelous. He let Joni Mitchell serenade him with her pretty songs of love.

  Potter whistled all the way to school the morning of his date with Marilyn, and breezed through his Communications classes with a verve and energy that surprised even himself. Unlike those days when he had said all he had to say, and saying it seemed to take sodden hours but the clock showed that only eighteen minutes had passed, this was a day when Potter was shocked when the class bell rang, for he felt he had only begun, that he needed much more time to explore all the possibilities he saw in the subject, which flowered beautifully before him. The ham in him was coming to the fore almost shamefully, as he recited passages, strode back and forth in front of his class, a captive audience if there ever was one, performing as if the area he paced between the front row of chairs and the blackboard was a legitimate stage. But what the hell, the students seemed to like it; they were being entertained. And Potter felt like entertaining.

  When his second class had its all too brief hour ended at 12:20, Potter went humming out into the halls, ran into Gafferty, and proposed they really live it up and go have lunch at Bachelors Three. Drinks and all. When he saw Gafferty’s hesitant smile, and watched the regular red flush of his face grow even deeper, Potter suddenly realized to his own embarrassment that it was all well and good for an irresponsible bachelor to go around having restaurant lunches with drinks as if still on a fucking expense account, but it was totally out of the question for a guy supporting a wife and kids. And if the number of kids were nine, such a lunch might cast the whole lot of them into a week of eating nothing but small bowls of porridge.

  He threw a comradely arm around Gafferty and said, “Hey, I mean it’s on me.”

  “Oh, no, that’s a nice thought, but—”

  “Listen, I got myself into a little poker game over the weekend, won a few. It’s bad luck to save that kind of money—got to spend it right away.”

  “Well then,” Gafferty brightened, “if I didn’t come to help ya, I’d be letting down a friend.”

  Buoyed, buoyant, loving the little lie because it produced the right effect, Potter took Gafferty to lunch as if he were an important client and Potter was able to write it all off to Olney and Sheperdson. It added to his good feelings, making him in fact think back with fondness to his hard-drinking hard-dealing PR life in New York; not with regrets, but a certain nostalgia. He regaled Gafferty with tales of those days, intrigues and deals, promotional schemes that earned him raises and others that backfired, and when at 3:15 he met his public relations seminar he simply carried on, knowing, as one always knew when it happened on stage, that he had them in his pocket.

  He went home and had a long singing shower before his date, bellowing to himself, arrogantly off key:

  I want to hold your ha-aa-and,

  I want to hold your hand …

  When Potter picked up Marilyn after her class, she seemed somewhat distraught, as she had on the phone. At first Potter wondered if it meant anything, was some sort of bad response to him, but before going off on that tack it occurred to him that just about anyone would be a little harried after working all day in an insurance office and spending an hour and a half attending a class on Existentialism. He had arrived early and paced around outside the building. It was one of those old Boston buildings that seemed like a combination Church and Armory, with a large lecture hall on the ground floor. Potter peeked in the door, and that peculiar color and odor of Night School seeped out; a dim sort of yellowish, faded light, and the smell of chalk and musty, much-used books. Potter glanced briefly at the backs of the students; some slumped, some with their coats draped over their shoulders, some shifting restlessly, some leaning forward, intent upon the learned drone that might, magically, reveal some secret, open some door, release something inside the mind or soul. Existentialism. It was one of those subjects that somehow held out the promise of easing the pain, or explaining a better way to deal with it. It supposedly dealt with Despair, and yet there was about the word a taunting aura of Hope.

  Potter learned over dinner that Marilyn’s nights were not all filled with dates, though indeed she had dates, but the interior part of her week was filled with activities. Monday night was pottery class. Tuesday after work she saw her shrink. Wednesday was Existentialism. Thursday she took an advanced psychology course in deviant behavior, which could count toward an advanced degree if she ever decided to go for one. She might sometime, since you couldn’t do much with only a B.A. But she really hadn’t figured out what she really wanted to do yet. She was groping. She admitted that. She had only been divorced for six months, around the same time as Potter.

  All this was difficult to absorb, because Marilyn was still very nervous, and the restaurant was so loud it was difficult to hear anything. Potter had taken her to Jimmy’s Harborside, wanting to do something special. The food was good, but it was so large and crowded, Potter felt as if he were in a Greyhound Bus Station. In the middle of sentences, the loudspeaker would blare out, but instead of calling destinations of buses the voice called out names of parties to be seated—“Mr. Gill, party of four—Barron, party of two—”

  Potter drove badly on the way home, taking a couple of wrong turns, and once bursting into a torrent of obscene curses at a car honking behind him when he was a split second late in taking off at a traffic light. He apologized to Marilyn.

  “Boston drivers are the worst,” she said. “They’re crazy.”

  She sounded tired. Potter wondered if he had blown the whole thing. It wasn’t going like the smooth, intimate evening he had imagined. It occurred to him that maybe he was trying too hard. He had put so much expectation into their date; it was like a football player getting too “up” for the big game, and fumbling it away. He wondered if Marilyn was doing the same thing.

  It was better when they got to her place. She lived in The River House, a large, modern-style building on the flat part of Beacon Hill, and her living room window provided a slanting view of the Drive and the River. You could hear the steady hum of traffic.

  Marilyn had done a lot with her apartment. As in most modern buildings the rooms were just boxes, blank and anonymous, defying any effort of an occupant to make it seem particular or personal.

  Marilyn had helped to humanize it with a lot of plants, large plants, that defied and contradicted the nature of the building; they were alive. And individual. Some bushy, some slender, some heavy and formidable.

  The furniture wasn’t schlock modern or slick Scandinavian, but had the character of age, though it wasn’t precious antique stuff that you had to be fearful of sitting on. Marilyn had collected the pieces from secondhand furniture barns in New Hampshire and Vermont. Potter admired the effort, and the energy that had to go into it, the determination to make a human, comfortable haven in a barren place.

  “This is really nice,” he said. “Your apartment.”

  She had given him a Scotch on the rocks, which added, as always, to his sense of security. She had a brandy in a large snifter, which she cradled in her hand, tilting back and forth.

  “It gave me something to do, when I really needed it. Suddenly being alone, after—seven years.”

  “Yeah, I know. No matter how bad the marriage was, and how much you think you’d give anything to be free, it hits you like a ton of bricks. Being alone again.”
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br />   “Yes. It isn’t that I wanted to go back to my husband. I had no regrets. It was just the—emptiness.”

  “Yeah, exactly. I felt the same way.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Well, about four years, officially. But we lived together off and on for more than five. It was one of those—uh—” Potter grinned, “dramatic sort of relationships.”

  “The Real Thing,” Marilyn said, smiling.

  “Yeah.”

  “I know. I mean I know because mine wasn’t like that. My marriage. I had an affair like that before, and I was convinced I wanted a nice, quiet, stable relationship.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got bored. I thought I was going to die of boredom.”

  Potter sighed. “Well, it’s one thing or the other.”

  Marilyn got them another drink.

  They exchanged the stories of their marriages. They were both very benevolent to their former partners, giving them the benefit of every doubt, stressing how much was their own fault. And yet, each told some plain facts, that made the other understand.

  “Of course, she was under great pressure at the time, with her modeling,” Potter explained after telling of the night his wife, dead drunk, set the curtains on fire in their apartment.

  After Marilyn told of the occasion she discovered her former husband, Hank, at a neighborhood Christmas party fucking a divorcée under the ping-pong table in the basement, she quickly added that “Of course, that’s a way of getting attention, and the poor guy wasn’t getting much attention from me. I was really a bitch, I guess. I didn’t mean to be. I was just so bored. And I couldn’t hide it.”

  Potter understood.

  Marilyn understood. She slipped off her boots, and tucked her feet up under her ass. Her sheer knees blinked at him.

  Potter was really turned on by her, but he didn’t want to push things. It had been so long since he had really wanted to be with anyone—to talk to them and also to fuck them—that he wanted to nurture it, as he had promised himself he would, wanted to savor the anticipation of their first going to bed, not half-smashed on their first evening out, but fully conscious, slowly, exploringly. He wanted a contemporary version of a “courtship”—that is, not screwing till the second date. But he didn’t think about it in that mechanical or perfunctory manner. He wanted something that he thought of as “real.” He pictured a room with sunlight in it.

  He glanced at his watch. It was almost one.

  “Listen,” he said, “you probably have to get up at some ungodly hour. I really should go.”

  A look passed over her face as if he had slapped her, and he realized he hadn’t yet said anything about meeting again, and hurriedly asked if she could go out Saturday night. And maybe they could do something on Sunday, too. Take a drive or something. To the country.

  “That would be nice,” she said, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

  “Really, I’d really like it,” he said. “I’d really like to be with you.”

  “Well,” she said, “what’s wrong with right now?”

  “Right now?” he asked.

  He knew damn well what she meant; he felt like a judo wrestler who is suddenly thrown in the position that he uses on other wrestlers. But he had less defense for it.

  A man couldn’t say “Why don’t we wait?” A man couldn’t say “I really like you but I’d like to get to know you better.” He couldn’t give any of the woman’s answers for not doing it. It would make it seem he wasn’t a man. It would make him be suspected of being in fact like a woman—effeminate … a fag. Or afraid. Fag. Fraid. Fraid. Fag.

  Invited to perform, a man had to perform. Or not be considered a man.

  Potter closed his eyes a moment, sloshed down the rest of his Scotch, and pulled her to him. Doing his duty.

  It wasn’t exploring or tender, but angry and biting and struggling and mean. That could be nice too, but it just hadn’t been what he had in mind. But he threw himself into it, and she responded in kind.

  When it was over, he tried not to think. There was no sunlight in the room; only the luminous glow of the electric alarm clock.

  4

  Marilyn invited Potter to her place for dinner. She had chilled a pitcher of martinis, and made some guacamole for an appetizer.

  Potter was appreciative. The little things. You wouldn’t find one of your new generation chicks chilling a pitcher of martinis or making guacamole. They’d hand you their stash of grass and some papers to roll a joint with, and later you’d have to send out for pizza and beer.

  He was glad he brought Marilyn the dozen roses. The old-fashioned gesture seemed to genuinely please her, and so pleased him in return. He would never have taken roses to a young girl now, fearing the gift would be scorned as trite, or worse, that cutting roses would turn out to be some obscure ecological offense that would brand the giver as another despoiler of the environment, like General Motors or Dow Chemical. It was nice not to have to worry about all that shit. With Marilyn, he could relax. Be himself. Enjoy. And without any skulking kids underfoot, either.

  From the stereo came the familiar, sophisticated tinkle of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

  They dined by candlelight. Thick lamb chops, spinach, and baked potato with lots of butter and sour cream and chives.

  “This is terrific,” Potter said. “It’s better than any restaurant.”

  “I like to cook. Especially when it’s appreciated.”

  “My appreciation overfloweth.”

  “The last couple years I was married, Hank was usually soused by the time we sat down to dinner. God. He was always spilling things. I might as well have fed him from a trough.”

  “Yeah. I know how it is. Sometimes Jessie got too loaded to cook. Then we’d both just drink. That was fun.”

  “I think it’s really important—eating nicely. It’s sort of what keeps you civilized.”

  “Absolutely. It doesn’t have to be fancy or anything. Jessie could cook some real gourmet stuff, but nine times out of ten she’d tell you how it hadn’t come out right, and start apologizing all over the place, and then you couldn’t enjoy the food. You had to keep saying how great it was, and reassuring her at every other bite. You can’t digest that way.”

  “No. Or if the other person’s depressed.”

  “Oh, brother. I’d rather have a hot dog with a smile than crêpes suzette with a lot of sighs and moans.”

  “It’s worse than eating alone, almost.”

  “That’s hard too, though.”

  “I make myself do it. When I first left Hank and moved in here I got in the habit of coming home and just nibbling on a piece of cheese or eating tuna out of a can or something and I started feeling just lousy. So one night after work I bought a lot of groceries and fixed a beautiful meal for myself, with flowers on the table and the good silver, and I sat down all alone and ate it. I decided I would do that at least once a week, and I’ve stuck to it. And other nights I cook something, even if it’s just a chop and a vegetable.”

  Potter pictured Marilyn, alone, going to the store and buying groceries, coming home alone and setting a nice table, and eating her dinner.

  “You know,” he said, “you’re braver than I am.”

  “Braver?”

  “Yes. I mean it. To make a meal just for yourself, and put flowers on the table, and sit down and eat all alone. That takes courage.”

  Marilyn lowered her eyes a moment, took a deep breath, then smiled. “Well, let’s not think about it. Right now, we’re together.”

  She reached her hand across the table and Potter took it in his own and held it very hard.

  “This is nice,” he said.

  “Yes. It is.”

  As Marva Bertelsen put it, they were “an item” now. They invited the Bertelsens to dinner at Marilyn’s house, Potter pouring martinis and playing the gracious host, expansive and cheery, happy to be able to entertain Max and Marva for once instead of the other way around, feel
ing he wasn’t a mate-less orphan kid now but a man with a fine woman he admired, an adult joined with another adult in a kind of union, however tenuous or short-lived it might turn out to be. Now it was fine. Marva said she’d never seen Marilyn look so glowing, or Potter so relaxed. Max nodded his benevolent approval. When they left, Max patted Potter on the back and Marva squeezed his hand and said, “We’re happy for you.”

  That night Potter and Marilyn made love, long and tenderly. Toward the end, they exchanged the magic words.

  “I love you.”

  “Oh, I love you.”

  They stayed up late, sipping brandy, talking and laughing and touching.

  “Oh, Phil,” she said, “I hope it will stay this way.”

  “It will,” he assured her. “We’ve both been through enough crap for a while. We deserve this—a good time. Together.”

  Monday night Marilyn went to her pottery class, and Potter picked up a fat sandwich at Elsie’s Delicatessen in Cambridge and took it home to have for supper with a cold beer. He was alone for the evening, but not lonely. He felt self-contained, and amiable. It wasn’t bad being alone when you knew another person was out there, a person you’d been with and wanted to be with again, and would be. Both Potter and Marilyn decided it would be silly to start spending every night together, that in fact they could have a better relationship by not trying to absorb each other’s life, but having each other to look forward to, so that meeting and being together would be all the more enjoyable.

  Potter settled down with a book of Shakespeare criticism, hoping he could glean some observations that would add new interest to his own teaching, enrich his own commentary on the plays. Around nine o’clock the phone rang, and he assumed it was Marilyn returned from her class—though it seemed a little early for that.

  It was Jessica.

  She said she was fine, all was well with her, but she had some serious matters on her mind that she wanted very much to talk over with Potter and wondered if she might run up on the shuttle tomorrow and have dinner with him.

  Potter, trying to sound very natural and calm, said of course, he’d look forward to seeing her.