When We Argued All Night

by Alice Mattison

  And right. Also doing things right. Personally wrong, up to a point, politically right, mostly. Something like that. He had just typed death of Nelson in the list of events to write about. He got up and left the room, though he had three-quarters of an hour of his two hours left.

  One reason he felt like a pretentious idiot had nothing to do with Naomi. Evelyn Saltzman had had a heart attack. Artie had been too upset to call, but Carol had called Harold, and he’d gone to see Evelyn in the hospital. Now it was a few weeks later and she was home. When he’d phoned the other day, Artie said, Come see us, it would cheer her up. Come Sunday. Maybe ten or eleven? I’m driving her to Carol and Lenny’s for lunch.

  —I write in the morning on Sundays, Harold had said. How about after lunch, when you come back? Artie and Evelyn had never moved out of Brooklyn, but now they lived in Brooklyn Heights and it was easy to get to them.

  —Nah, she’ll be worn out. And I want to watch the tennis. Then Evelyn had called to him, and Artie had gotten off the phone.

  Now on Sunday, Harold—amazed that at eighty-five it was still possible to do something he regretted as much as he regretted having said he was writing this morning and couldn’t visit Artie and Evelyn—picked up the phone. Can I come now?

  —Sure, Artie said. We’re just about to take a walk. She’s supposed to walk.

  —Where?

  —The river.

  —I’ll find you, Harold said. He took a hat for the sun and left the apartment. All over the city, old people walked. Naomi and her friend, Artie and Evelyn. Well, he and Artie had walked when they were young too. As he hurried to the subway, he spotted a cab. Eagerly, he rode across the Brooklyn Bridge, back into Brooklyn. He sat up straight and looked at the river. The glint of sun hurt his eyes.

  He had the taxi drop him near the Promenade, close to Artie and Evelyn’s apartment. As he set out on the paved walk next to the river, he heard Artie call, Hey, you old bastard! and turned.

  —One-four-nine is the school for me, drives away all adversity! Artie sang. He was elated now, after being terrified when he thought Evelyn would die. They were sitting on a bench, smiling and waving. Harold stood in front of them, leaning over to kiss Evelyn, who looked old, but whose eyes were bright with humor and pleasure. How do you feel? he said.

  —I’m alive, she said, and what crossed her face for a second looked more like despair.

  Harold made the choice to ignore it. And you’re out of the hospital. You look wonderful. What a beautiful day.

  The wind made crisscrossing lines on the river. There were sailboats.

  —Sit, Artie said. We’re resting. How’s the work?

  —I’m an idiot, writing about my life.

  —From what you tell me, the point of the book is that you’re an idiot. Artie had shriveled and darkened like a nut. His nose looked bigger than the rest of his face.

  —I haven’t started writing, Harold said. I’m making notes and typing them on the computer. Did I tell you I bought a computer?

  —Who needs it? Artie said.

  —No, it’s terrific, Harold said. You want to add something, you just stick it in. With a typewriter, you retype the whole damn thing. I keep finding notes that belong somewhere else, and I just put them where they ought to go. He thought about typing death of Nelson.

  —Ridiculous, Artie said.

  —How is your wife? Evelyn said. I’m sorry, I forget her name.

  —Naomi. She’s fine. She sends regards.

  —Where is she?

  —With a friend, Harold said. Naomi had kept her friends when they married, and she only rarely saw his.

  —She should live so long, Evelyn said. Startled, Harold looked at Artie, who shrugged.

  Artie said, You need to walk. They stood and he took Evelyn’s arm. Harold went around to her other side, and the three of them promenaded down the Promenade, part of a cheerful procession of lovers, dog walkers, children in strollers.

  —You are so right, Evelyn said, as they set out. She wore a light blue sweatsuit and clean white sneakers.

  —In the hospital, Artie said, they made her walk every day. We’d walk to the nurses’ station and back. Then we did it twice. The day before she came home, we did it twice without resting.

  —A good walk, Evelyn said, and Harold was relieved that this remark was not a non sequitur. She put one foot deliberately in front of the other, but she was steady. She smiled. I eat such smart food, she said. You should see.

  —A lot of fish, Artie said. You want to know my personal recipe for fish? I broil it with lemon. Delicious. A little oil, no butter. But the trick is to know how long it takes. You have to take it out at the right minute.

  —It’s very good, Evelyn said.

  —So is this Wild Card thing going to ruin baseball? Artie said then.

  Harold shook his head. He knew there would be more play-off games this year. He hadn’t followed baseball closely enough to have an opinion, but surely anything done for the benefit of the advertisers was bad. The sun was pleasant on his shoulders. He was a little chilly in a lightweight jacket. Summer was over. Funny how you looked forward to the next thing, even though each one brought you closer to the end. It had to be Darwinian: species survived when they found excitement in the renewal of the seasons. But you didn’t have to be old to die. Nelson was dead. Myra had been dead of lung cancer for years. Thinking of Myra made him think of the cabin. How’s Brenda? he said.

  —She was here when Ev was in the hospital, Artie said, and she’s coming back soon. The dog sitter—something. In a few days. She and Jess—they have money, who would think? Getting bought out was the best thing for Brenda’s business. Jess makes a fair chunk of change too, with that law practice. They sent us some stuff to eat.

  —Low-fat, Evelyn said.

  —Brenda asked me, Artie said, Does Harold go to the cabin? God, I loved that place. Ev, when you’re better, we’ll go stay in a hotel in the mountains.

  —Brenda was the one who told me it was for sale, Harold said. She and her partner drove over to see it. Can you imagine? The next day I made an offer—asking price, no inspection. I pay a caretaker so it doesn’t go up in flames. But I’ve never once gone.

  —That’s a mistake, Artie said. You should go. You still drive? Take Naomi and just go, take a look. Just make sure the mountains are still around the lake.

  Harold was silent.

  —It won’t bring him back, staying away, Artie said. And he didn’t die there—I honestly don’t know what that has to do with it.

  —You’re right, Harold said. Nelson never liked being there. Maybe if I had helped him have fun there, everything would have been different.

  Evelyn spoke slowly, almost making it a chant, with pauses between each word, Honey, it . . . is . . . what . . . it . . . is. She patted his arm. Come on, I’ll race you, she said, and walked a little faster, pulling her arm away from Artie’s and pumping with both elbows, her hands in fists. Her short hair was white, fluffed by the wind.

  Gulls screamed above the river, and a red dog stopped to sniff Artie’s shoes. He leaned over and scratched the dog behind the ears, and Harold and Evelyn walked past him. Artie broke into a little jog to catch up. The dog’s owner, a young woman, called, Great day for a walk!

  6

  Brenda’s mother had complained for years that she couldn’t sleep, and when she died, two months ago, in her honor Brenda had apparently become the new Evelyn Saltzman Insomnia Expert. Jess thought it was Evelyn’s way of being with her.

  —It’s a visitation, she said. Brenda knew Jess would have liked a visitation from Evelyn for herself. Her own mother, still alive, was sometimes hostile and sometimes elaborately friendly but never relaxed about Jess’s homosexuality. But Evelyn had been as matter-of-fact about women loving women as she was about everything else. Her only objection to Jess as a partner for Brenda had been that she smoked, but soon Jess quit and then she had no faults.

  Brenda had pointed out that Evelyn was
too considerate to keep someone awake; any haunting she’d need to do, she’d accomplish at some reasonable hour.

  —Heaven is timeless, said Jess. No clocks.

  —Jews don’t go to that kind of heaven, Brenda said.

  So now she was carrying out her recently acquired duties as an insomniac while Jess breathed steadily in her sleep beside her, lying on her side facing away from Brenda, her butt in flannel pajamas just touching Brenda’s thigh. Brenda checked the red numbers on the clock at their bedside too often, glumly noting the passage of the next to the last day of the first year of the new millennium—it was 2:47 AM on December 30, 2000. Purists said the first day of the new millennium had not been January 1, 2000, but would be January 1, 2001, which didn’t make anybody think planes would fall from the sky, as they had thought last year. Brenda had not worried about Y2K.

  She rolled over onto her side, facing away from Jess, and now their rear ends touched. Jess stirred in her sleep and moved away slightly, and when Brenda reached back and just touched what her hand came to—a thigh, she thought—Jess grunted contentedly, as if to say yes. They had driven to Vermont one weekend this fall, with Abby the dog in the backseat, and had a civil union ceremony. Jess said she’d like to marry. Brenda didn’t believe in ceremonies. She told Jess she was having this one because it was important to do everything possible to give other gay people the right to do whatever they wanted, but the truth was that she was happy that Jess wanted—as she herself wanted—to promise to stay together. Brenda saw it as for life; Jess was sure they’d be together after death as well.

  —I have no objection to being your partner after death, Brenda said. This was in the motel the night after the ceremony. She lay on the bed flexing her feet. After the ceremony they’d taken a long walk. She’d been wearing the wrong shoes, and her ankles were sore. She said, I needed to make that clear.

  —My grandmother must have been so surprised when she got to heaven and found gay couples, Jess said.

  —Do you think she spoke to them?

  —Oh, she’d speak to anyone.

  Now it was 2:53. What was keeping her up, Brenda decided, was an e-mail she’d written to David. Maybe it had been a mistake. These days David was a technical writer in Silicon Valley whose work she didn’t understand. He lived alone in Mountain View and had a long, narrow face and lank black hair. He didn’t look like Brenda, but like her father—her father in a rare mood. David’s face told you he could be hurt; her father’s had more often expressed—less so lately—anger or defensiveness. She scarcely remembered David’s own father’s appearance (but she had supplied Ted’s name when David had requested it as a college sophomore—he had found Ted living on Long Island, and they had met once or twice).

  Brenda knew David had written fiction in college, though he’d never let her see it. But two weeks ago, she’d received a priority mail envelope from him containing a short story. This is some real writing I did, he had scrawled on an accompanying sheet of paper from a company scratch pad. The story was about a boy with a lesbian mother who has a girlfriend, Carrie. His babysitter is sick, and Carrie agrees to take care of him. She drives them to a nearby lake, where the boy talks her into giving him money for ice cream. His mother does not allow him to walk to the refreshment stand alone, at a distance, but Carrie doesn’t object. He gets lost, and when he gets back, he can’t find Carrie. Afraid she has drowned, he tearfully begs help from a lifeguard, who leads the boy to a boat shed, behind which is Carrie, making out with another woman.

  Brenda had had no idea David could produce a story like this—or any story—and was as impressed by its length and number of characters as by anything else. She thought it seemed good enough to publish. She wondered if it was true, if he’d been afraid to tell her about an infidelity by one of the women she’d loved. There hadn’t been anyone exactly like Carrie, but one—the one they lived with for two years—was Karen, a similar name. She didn’t think Karen had cheated on her; they’d had plenty of other problems but not that. Karen didn’t drive, though.

  She wondered what David hoped she’d say, whether he might want her to critique the story, and when she read it again, she found she wasn’t sure she believed the ending. That was what she’d written about, finally. She praised the story effusively, did not mention its similarities to their own life, but questioned the ending. Maybe Carrie should be making out with a man, she suggested. Would Carrie make out with a woman on a New Hampshire beach? And wouldn’t the lifeguard be too embarrassed to lead the boy to the right place? She had written the e-mail several times and sent it three days ago. David hadn’t replied. Maybe she hadn’t praised the story enough. Maybe David hadn’t wanted criticism or praise but something else.

  Brenda got up, pulling her robe around her. Abby, who was floppy-limbed in all circumstances, part golden retriever, was a rag doll at night. She was stretched at the foot of the bed. Without noticeably organizing her legs, she rolled onto the floor and padded after Brenda, who went down the wide oak staircase—the first thing she’d loved about the house; it still needed to be refinished—and let Abby out.

  A newspaper stained with coffee was spread on the kitchen table. Gore—it now turned out—had won the popular vote by more than half a million. Bush had picked somebody called Donald Rumsfeld to be secretary of defense. Jess kept up with the news, but after the Supreme Court had made Bush president, Brenda couldn’t bear it, read little more than headlines. She bundled the paper into the recycling bin and opened the refrigerator. Then she closed it and ate a banana. Abby barked and she let her in.

  She still wouldn’t be able to sleep. She went into the living room. The computer was on a table in the corner. She got a blanket from the sofa, wrapped it around herself, and turned the computer on. It was 3:42 AM. She checked her e-mail. Something had come in just after she’d left the office. It was seven or eight years now since her company had been bought by a firm in Ohio that made similar playgrounds—also imaginative, also put together often by volunteers on the site—but made of steel. Brenda, now in charge of Mountainside and its finely crafted wooden products, kept an eye on design and construction at home, but she also traveled more. She supervised volunteer workdays for both parts of the operation, did some of the teaching herself, and had a staff of two for the rest. A school system in Iowa was buying three playgrounds and wanted to reschedule a workday. She’d deal with that in the office. But there was also a message from David—no, two messages from David.

  Mom,

  Thanks for the suggestion—it’s interesting, though I’m not sure I agree.

  What an astonishing boy. She could never have expressed polite disagreement to her parents. She would say, How can you possibly think something so totally wrong? Often in tears. David was almost twenty-seven. Did she still do that at twenty-seven? Yes.

  He went on,

  I think the story needs Carrie to cheat on Liz with a woman, and the lifeguard wouldn’t have the nerve to confront them until the kid asked, but then he would. He’d be seething about their shocking behavior. If you’re wondering about the time Annie drove me to the lake, by the way—I assume you are, and thanks for not asking if the story really happened, which is all anybody else I show my stories to seems to care about—she did not kiss another woman behind the boat shed or anywhere else. I don’t think there was a boat shed. I’ve conflated our usual lake, which is where Annie took me, with another one. But I really did go for the ice cream by myself, which you didn’t allow even at our little state park. I felt bad about that for years, but it wouldn’t have made enough of a story.

  Anyway, thanks for reading.

  D

  As so often, Brenda sat back in her chair, reminded that David was someone she could rarely predict. He had said, stories. This was not an isolated story. She deleted two spam messages and read David’s second one.

  Not to go on about this too much, but it’s an example of something I think about all the time: I don’t know other writers. I belong to a wr
iting group, but they don’t know shit. I’m thinking about grad school. There are programs where you can go for a week or two and then mail in work, so I wouldn’t have to move or quit my job. More soon.

  D

  PS Happy New Year

  It was past four, and Brenda heard Jess’s footsteps on the stairs. The dog stood up. Sweetie, Jess said, what?

  —It’s okay, said Brenda.

  —It’s cold in that bed without you.

  —I’m coming, Brenda said. I miss my mother, she added. She started to cry. Jess held her arms open, and they embraced awkwardly on the stairs in their two puffy down bathrobes—one blue, one green—which they’d bought each other a couple of years ago rather than replace the heating system. Jess, who also missed Evelyn, cried too.

  7

  A fool and his money are soon parted, but a fool and his principles are harder to separate, Harold wrote. He didn’t know what came next. How long had he been writing this book? He’d bought his first computer in the mid-nineties and had made notes for months before he started writing. Now it was almost winter, 2002. A long time. When the initial draft—well, the fifteenth draft, which now seemed like the initial draft—was done, a year or two earlier, the editor who had published Harold’s previous books had retired, but his longtime assistant had become an editor. She had accepted the book but sent a letter of suggestions, queries, and complaints that Harold had put aside for months, the months of a cardiac bypass. Whenever he looked at the letter, Harold got so upset he couldn’t read it: it was three pages long.