by Sue Miller
And although that was all in the past now, and probably for Sam nothing memorable—a vague feeling of sweetness and perhaps melancholy to their friendship—Leslie had a sense of renunciation in introducing Sam to Billy, a sense of giving up a thing of private value. She could never have talked about any of this to Pierce, of course. But then she couldn’t have spoken of it clearly to anyone. She herself could barely grasp the conflicts among her own feelings in regard to Sam, or in her impulse to bring him and Billy together.
And in the end, she told herself, it would probably turn out that they’d all spend a pleasant evening together, and that would be that. This notion she had of offering a dear and valuable thing of her own to Billy would turn out to be misplaced. And perhaps Pierce was right—perhaps Billy had already begun again with someone else. Perhaps, as he’d also suggested, more than once. Perhaps there was a lover in her life right now.
But that didn’t matter. It couldn’t hurt anyone. And she wanted to do it. She didn’t know why, exactly, but it was what she wanted.
“Ah!” Sam cried, seeing them. He stepped quickly across the space under the marquee. Before she could lift her arms, he had her face in his hands, he was in charge of it, turning it to plant a kiss very close to her mouth, now on this side, now on that. He smelled of wool, of the wet air, of some complicated gingery men’s cologne or aftershave.
Now he was embracing Pierce, a bit sideways, patting his back as he did so. They were all saying things at the same time: How wonderful, how well each one looked, it had been too long.
As they began to move together toward the glass doors, they were trying to remember exactly how long it had been. Two years? Three? Remember the time he’d stopped by after skiing? Was that it, the last sighting?
Pierce went to get the tickets at the call window, and Leslie and Sam waited, talking. He was asking her about their weather—the dry fall, the lost leaf season. He seemed awkward, a bit shy. Maybe he was feeling something like the sense she had of disjuncture in all this.
When Pierce came back, they went together up the wide carpeted ramp to where there was a bar, people crammed in front of it ordering drinks. Leslie stood leaning her back against the wall while the two men plunged into the crowd. She watched them for a moment and then looked around her. It seemed a younger crowd than typically went to the productions in the larger theater connected with this new, more experimental one. The woman standing next to Leslie, talking with her friends about a concert of some sort, had a little diamond stud in her nose and a bluish tattoo of unidentifiable swirls that climbed down her neck and then into her sweater.
Now Pierce was by her, touching her arm. He handed her the white wine he’d ordered for her, and she sipped at it. It was sharp and cold, unpleasant. She hoped their beers were better.
Sam was saying something to Pierce about his work. Things had dried up a bit with the mortgage crunch. Two of the private houses he’d started on were on hold for now, but there was another larger project he’d gotten that would take their place—a library at a small private college north of Boston. He talked about the way he envisioned it.
Leslie had only a few sips more of her wine. The crowd in front of the bar had thinned. The men finished their glasses of beer and the three of them ambled in and found their seats. Leslie sat between Sam and Pierce. Both of them helped her arrange her coat behind her on her seat. They all began to leaf through their programs.
Leslie was reading a history of the theater’s development when Sam said, “Wait.” She looked up and met his eyes.
“Isn’t the playwright here … wasn’t she your brother’s lover?” he asked. He had the program open to the page where Billy’s bio appeared, hers and the director’s, both with dramatic photos.
Leslie could feel herself flushing. “That’s right,” she said. She leaned over and looked at the photo more closely to give herself time to regain her composure. “She doesn’t really look very much like that, though.”
“I thought I remembered the name.” She could feel his eyes on her. “I think I met her at his service.”
“Yes, that’s right.” She looked at him. “I forgot that. That you might have met her then.”
She turned back to her program and pretended to read on. She was remembering the service, remembering Billy that day, and now Sam.
Just before the lights went down, she thought she saw Billy come in and take a seat on the far aisle, down near the front. But the house went dark then, and she couldn’t be sure. She had changed her hair, if that’s who it was. It was short, sculpted around her head, with thick bangs. It made her look a bit like Louise Brooks.
As the curtain went up and the stage was revealed, the audience let out a little sigh. She’d noticed this before at a play. She thought of it as the noise of the suspension of disbelief: Ah! Here it is, what we’ll give ourselves over to for a few hours.
The set was a living room, its couch facing the audience, the chairs at either end of the couch turned slightly forward, too, like most stage living rooms. As though we were the fireplace, Leslie thought. The fireplace, looking back. It was supposed to be the living room of intellectuals, you could tell by the jammed bookshelves. In places a few books were actually wedged in sideways across the tops of a shelf of vertical ones. Stacks of them sat on the little tables scattered around.
There was a large, high window at the back of the set and a balcony running along the left side of the stage above the living room, a balcony lined with more bookshelves.
And then there was a movement up there, and she focused on him: a man, sitting at a desk on the balcony, bent forward a little, reading or working at something in front of him. He drank some coffee and set the cup down in its saucer, the clink of china on china loud in the silent theater. It seemed a little too long to Leslie, these moments when nothing was happening, but then the phone rang and she jumped, so she supposed it had worked, if that was what was intended.
The man raised his head and took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. He sat waiting through three rings. A woman’s voice came on, gracious, smooth, and said, “You’ve reached Elizabeth and Gabriel. Leave one or both of us a message.” None of that silly stuff about the beep, Leslie thought. She should do that at home.
Now another woman’s voice, louder than the one they’d just heard, louder and less patrician, younger perhaps, began to speak. “Gabriel, it’s me. Gabriel. Pick up. We have to talk. This is important.”
A pause. The man—Gabriel, it must be—tilted back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling.
“Gabriel? Pick up. Please. Please pick up.”
Gabriel got up and started down the spiral stair that led from the balcony to the living room, holding on to the rail. For a moment he stood motionless at the back of the stage.
“Gabriel?” the woman said. There was a loud sigh, and she hung up.
He came forward to a side table where the phone sat. He pushed a button on the machine, and the message came on again. He stood listening, gazing out over the invisible audience. He was frowning, thoughtful. He was a slender man, perhaps fifty or so. He was dressed the way the owner of all those books would be—baggy corduroy pants, desert boots. An academic, Leslie assumed, though without the requisite tweed jacket. Otherwise he looked just like the Dartmouth professors who meandered the streets of Hanover.
Now he pushed another button on the machine, erasing the woman. As one can in this new world, she thought. Who had it been? A lover? A lover he was done with, maybe.
As he stood there, perhaps thinking about returning the call, there was a knocking. “Dad!” someone called, the voice sounding urgent, a man’s voice. “Dad, are you there?”
Gabriel seemed frozen. He was clearly torn. He started to cross the stage, stopped. But then a look of puzzlement, or curiosity, passed over his face, and he stepped to the right rear of the stage, which Leslie couldn’t quite see from where she sat. Evidently he opened a door there, because suddenly a young man burst into the room,
trailed, after a few seconds, by a woman. He was talking loudly as he crossed to the front of the stage. He turned back from there to his father, to Gabriel. He was still talking, question after question. Why hadn’t he answered the phone? He’d called four or five times. What the hell was he doing? Did he have any idea what was going on in the real world?
The woman with him was pretty in a pale, washed-out way: minimal stage makeup, long, straight blond hair, the kind of role Sandy Dennis would have played in Leslie’s youth. She was standing by him now in front of the couch, trying to shush him, to calm him down.
But he wouldn’t be silenced. He turned to her, he yelled at her, too. She stepped back, as though she’d been slapped. She and Gabriel exchanged a look. She was embarrassed by this, by being treated this way in front of anyone else. Leslie had a quick half memory of her parents, her father shouting, her mother silent, shamed.
Gabriel had by now come forward almost to the center of the stage, too, and he stood next to the couch, impassive, waiting, letting his son’s ranting pass over him, as though this behavior was familiar and perhaps tedious to him. Leslie was inclined not to like him, he was so condescending. But then the son himself was overbearing, so maybe it was a natural response. Or a little dance they did together.
“Have you listened to the news?” the son was saying. “Or have you been sealed up here all morning in your … precious cocoon? Do you know what’s going on?”
The woman—the son’s wife, Leslie assumed—had sat on the fat upholstered arm of the chair on the left side of the stage.
Gabriel answered calmly, “I don’t. But you will tell me, no doubt.”
The younger man shook his head in exasperation. He knew this patronizing calm all too well. He had a full head of curly hair, which flopped around with his quick motions. He was darker than his father, and shorter, squatter. It could have been cast better in that regard, she thought. He turned to the woman. “He will never change. Why do I let you persuade me that it’s even worth trying, with him?”
The couple had an exchange, voices lowered, intense, while the father crossed to an arrangement of bottles and glasses on a ledge among the bookshelves and poured himself a drink. Leslie came fully into disbelief here: she knew no one who kept bottles and glasses in the living room. The scene should have happened in the kitchen, she was thinking. Though it would have meant changing some other things.
“Just tell him,” the woman was saying.
The young man turned to his father. He cleared his throat. “If I may interrupt your privacy, then,” he said, a grim, unpleasant smile on his face.
Gabriel had come forward again with his drink. “Please,” he said. “Do.”
And then it came pouring out. The details of a bombing on a train, the Lake Shore Limited, as it pulled into Union Station. Questions, corrections, flew. The young woman was clearer about things than her boyfriend. Or husband? The father came farther forward and sat on the couch, setting his glass down on the coffee table. His face was unreadable as he asked his questions, as he listened. What became clear slowly was that his wife was supposed to have been on the train, returning from a trip. No, he hadn’t heard from her. He looked frightened. Though he hadn’t been picking up calls, and there were a few hang-ups.
Were there survivors? he wanted to know.
Yes, the son said. There were a couple of cars that blew up completely, and most of the train derailed, but people climbed out and some walked away. Many were hurt, some gravely, according to reports. And of course there were many dead.
Gus, Leslie thought. It was about Gus. His face came to her, the face from her dream earlier in the afternoon. She was sitting up very straight now. Pierce’s hand had come over and was resting on hers.
Suddenly the younger man said, “I can’t believe you didn’t go to the station to meet her.”
Gabriel’s hand waved, dismissive: this wasn’t important. “We agreed I wouldn’t.”
“I can’t believe that.”
Gabriel tried to persuade him this was irrelevant. That their concern should be Elizabeth now. He kept asking more questions. What time? How long had it been? Was there anyone to call?
The son explained it all again. Said he had been calling. Leslie’s heart felt heavy in her chest.
Gabriel got up now and went to the back of the stage. With his back to the audience, he poured himself another drink. He asked if either of them wanted one. The wife said she did. He poured another glass and brought it to the front of the stage, to her.
The young man—Alex—was silent, incredulous, watching this. When his father sat down again, he started to talk. He didn’t mean to interrupt this, this party—his voice was laden with sarcasm—but they needed to think about what they were going to do.
Gabriel, the father, looked at him for a long moment.
The son looked back, defiant. “I can’t believe you,” he said again.
“In what sense?”
“Every sense! I can’t believe you didn’t go meet her.”
Gabriel set his drink down. He spoke patiently, as if to a child. “Your mother and I had agreed she would get herself here. This is what we always do. Why should her travels, or mine, for that matter, when I travel, discommode both of us?”
“‘Discommode’?” The younger man was almost shouting. The woman got up, went toward him. A few people in the audience laughed. “‘Discommode’?”
“Alex …,” the woman said. She reached a hand up to his arm.
“No!” He jerked his arm away. “You pretentious fuck,” he said to his father. He turned to his wife. “He’s such a fuck. Such a jerk.”
“Alex,” she said, pleading. “This doesn’t help, it doesn’t help anything.”
“Okay then,” he said more calmly. “Okay, let me just ask. How come you weren’t answering the phone? Huh?”
“I was working,” Gabriel said. “I don’t answer the phone when I’m working.”
“Oh yeah. Work. The thing you do instead of living.”
“It is living.”
“To you, it is. Only to you.”
The son started to pace, railing against his father—how absent he’d been in the young man’s childhood, in spite of the fact that he was home most of the time. The things he’d missed—performances, recitals, sports events. The Great Pooh-Bah, he called his father. The Wizard of Oz. He stopped behind the couch, bent a little forward, his hands resting on its back. “The nothing behind the screen,” he said bitterly.
Then he stopped. He seemed to gather himself. After a long moment, he came forward and sat down at the other end of the couch from his father. He started to tell a story, a story about how, as a boy, he used to love it when he got a splinter, because he was allowed then to interrupt his father at his desk, and his father would get out his kit, his tweezers and his needle, and hold Alex’s hand, or his foot, and speak to him in a loving voice while he extracted it. He said he sometimes ground a splinter in deeper when he got one, so it would be harder to get out, it would take longer, and he would be able to believe for that much longer that his father actually cared about him, that he loved him.
Leslie remembered this story. This was Billy’s story, Billy’s story about her own father, the academic, the great man. She had called him that same thing once: the Great Pooh-Bah.
Onstage they all sat silent for a moment. Then Gabriel said, “Well, I did, love you.” He sounded sad, as if he were mourning a precious thing lost long ago.
“Bullshit, Dad. I was calling you today, and you were screening my calls.” The son laughed. “Let that be a metaphor. Let that be a metaphor for the way things are between you and I.”
“Me,” Gabriel said, distractedly, almost under his breath.
“What?”
“‘Between you and me.’ Is correct.”
The young man laughed again, bitterly. “Jesus,” he said. He got up, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. “Know what? I’m going to call around some more and see what I can
find out. I’ll take it to the bedroom so I don’t bother you.” He exited by the door on the left side of the stage, the one Leslie could see.
Gabriel and the woman sat for a long moment. He finally said, “Want another?” raising his glass.
“No,” she said.
“No, I don’t either,” he said.
“Why isn’t it you? Calling,” she asked after a minute. She had such a small voice. Feathery, slightly nasal.
He shrugged. “Alex will find out what there is to find out. He’s better at that than I am, anyway.”
“But you’re so … detached.”
“No, I’m not,” he said.
“But you seem to be. You seem so …” She was frowning. Her hands rose a little, then dropped. “You know, I’ve always defended you to Alex. Because I felt like I understood you. It seemed to me that you and I were a little bit like each other. Quiet.” She smiled, a wistful, Sandy Dennis smile. “Quieter than Alex and Elizabeth, at least. Though that’s not so hard, I guess.” She gave a quick little laugh. “Less … overtly passionate.” She paused a moment, then went on. “I remember once when we were all in Massachusetts, and they were having one of their long, great intellectual arguments, about …” She waved her hand. “Something. Nothing.” She made a face. “Gender identity. Something like that. Or the Iraq War.” She shook her head. “Something where you’ve heard both sides of the argument so often that it sets your teeth on edge. And of course Alex was being provocative, and Elizabeth was amused and above the fray, both of them loving it, almost … feeding lines to each other. And it just, exhausted me. Their commitment to it. It was so, stupid, really. And I remember going out onto the porch, and you were there, and we sat for a while just watching the water, with their voices rising and falling, and you said to me, just, ‘More of same.’ Do you remember? ‘More of same.’ And we both laughed. It didn’t seem necessary to talk, even.”
