by Sue Miller
He was frowning suddenly. “The big question is, will he be able to do it again?”
“Oh, now that he has it, I bet yes.”
“Yah? But without that sense of surprise, maybe.” He took his glasses off and began to polish them with the hem of his immense and shapeless T-shirt. It said SONOMA JAZZ FESTIVAL.
“But we were the only ones surprised,” she said. “I mean, who else knew he’d never done it before?”
“Well, he was surprised, too, that’s the thing. He surprised himself. That’ll be hard to replicate.”
“Oh, try not to be such a pessimist, Ed.”
“Hard for me,” he said. He put the glasses back on, and his pale, washed-out eyes got big again.
They sat in silence for a moment, both staring off at nothing. Billy sighed. She needed to get going. She stood up and began to pull on her coat, her bat coat, as she thought of it. It was black, it had big, loose arms, like wings.
“Want to get a drink?” Edmund asked. “Celebrate?”
“Can’t. I’m meeting friends.”
“Oh.” And without missing a beat, “Well, maybe I could join you.”
Billy imagined it quickly, the impossibility of the group. “They’re kind of special, old friends,” she said. “We’d be pretty boring to you, I think.”
“… ‘she said, brushing him off.’”
“I adore you, Eddie, you know that.” She reached out and touched his cheek. The fur of his beard was surprisingly soft. “I hope you’re as happy with yourself as I am with me.”
“Oh, I doubt it.”
She laughed. “I know. But do it, Ed—get happy.” She picked up her bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow, anyway.”
He bowed his head ceremonially. “Good night, then, Wilhelmina.”
Billy walked back out through the empty theater, empty but for the cleanup crew moving around in the rows of seats, picking things up. She turned at the opened doorway to the lobby and stood looking back at the slope of the seats, at the closed curtain, remembering it again—her Gabriel, his visible sorrow and joy and the way she had felt connected to that, to both feelings. Had felt, somehow, comforted by them, she realized now.
As she stepped outside into the chilly rain, as she put up her umbrella, she was aware of a dragging reluctance about this next part of her evening. She just didn’t want to do it, to go and be with Leslie and Pierce and whoever their pal was. It was partly her usual hesitation about Leslie, fond as she was of her. But it was also because she was so stirred by the play tonight. She wanted to hold on to that, to think it through.
Instead she would go and sit and make the smallest of small talk with the person she most would have liked to talk to honestly about everything—but never had. And never would, she was certain of that.
The day Leslie called, Billy was at home alone, working. When she heard Leslie’s voice at the other end of the line, she experienced immediately what she’d come to recognize as the usual mix of feelings about her. The pull of the old affection, and then the wish to be free of that pull. But when Leslie said that she and Pierce were coming down to see the show, Billy had said only how glad she would be to see them. She offered the name of a place to meet afterward. Then, just as it seemed that the conversation was over, that the next step would be to say goodbye and hang up, Leslie said, “I think we’ll bring a friend along, too.”
“Great,” Billy had said.
As soon as she hung up, she started to worry about the play, about how Leslie would receive it. It wasn’t about Gus and it wasn’t about herself, but the feelings behind it were ones she understood because of Gus and herself. Leslie would probably wonder about that. She might even be wounded by it. Billy had wounded a number of people with her work, but she didn’t want Leslie to join the club. There was something so open, so recklessly generous about her that it made you want to shield her from anything painful.
It was only a while later, fixing herself a snack before she headed to the theater for another rehearsal, that it occurred to her that the friend Leslie had spoken of might be a man, a man she was planning to introduce to Billy, in some old-fashioned sense of the word.
Surely not. Surely it wasn’t a man. And even if it was, surely there was no sense in which an “introduction” would be made.
But standing in the kitchen, eating her crackers and cheese, Billy had thought, How strange would that be?
She walked slowly through the misty rain down Tremont Street, trying to make the short trip last as long as possible. But of course the lighted windows of the restaurant had been visible from the moment she started out, and she was there in only a minute or two. As she waited on the corner for the cars to pass so she could cross the street, she could see Leslie and Pierce at their table, leaned in, talking to the third person, who was, indeed, a man.
Okay. Okay, maybe that would make things easier. A stranger, to let some air into this evening, to keep them all turned away from the topic at hand. The topic always at hand between her and Leslie.
She had barely stepped through the door—she was just shaking out her collapsed umbrella—when Leslie was embracing her, engulfing her in the citrusy scent she always wore. She was saying something, something about flowers. Billy didn’t understand right away. She felt as confused as if she’d been waked from a deep sleep to a conversation already under way. But apparently, yes, Leslie had bought some for her, some flowers, and then forgotten them. She was apologizing for this.
Billy smiled. “Leslie, I wouldn’t have known anything about it if you hadn’t told me. Don’t tell me, for God’s sake.”
“But I could kick myself.”
“Well, don’t. It was such a sweet thought, I’m glad you had it.”
And then they were at the table, being introduced. Sam, the stranger’s name was. He stood up—unfolded himself slowly and for what seemed to Billy like a long, long time. She felt like laughing. Leslie couldn’t possibly be fixing them up. It would be ridiculous, the way they’d look next to each other. It would be a kind of visual joke.
Leslie sat down. Billy had to clamber up onto her chair—it was high, bar-stool height. She slung the big bag she was carrying over the post at its back. Leslie was still talking about the flowers, telling the friend, Sam, about forgetting them. Pierce, meanwhile, had started to speak to Billy, congratulating her on the play. After a minute or two, they were all turned to her. The Sam guy began to add his questions to Pierce’s. How had she thought it went tonight? When was the official opening? Had there been reviews yet? Billy answered politely, fully, but nervously. As she slid her coat off, she felt the man—Sam—helping her, easing her sleeve away so she could extract her arm. It felt good, this small kindness. Maybe it would turn out that he’d be a refuge of sorts.
The waitress came over, tall and blond and cool, unsmiling, a tiny diamond blooming in the outer flesh of one nostril. Billy asked for water and red wine. Pierce ordered a plate of cheeses for the table.
After she left, they turned to Billy again. More questions. It made her feel jittery, more jittery than when she’d been walking over. When the wine came, she lifted it immediately and had a swallow. What she wanted was not to be at the center of things here.
She asked Sam where he lived.
Brookline, he said.
“Oh, I lived there when I first came to Boston!” she said. She talked about the apartment she had then, the horrible cats she was sitting for. They figured out where his house was in relation to hers. They talked about restaurants they liked, and the bookstore. They were both fans of the Coolidge Corner, the independent movie theater.
Movies. Always good. And it worked tonight, too. Pierce had seen No Country for Old Men recently and wanted to talk about it. He said he didn’t know what to make of it.
This was so un-Pierce-like that Billy was curious: why not?
She was turned to Pierce, listening to his explanation of what was unreasonable in the film, when she saw Rafe’s pale face float by outside. He was hat
less—no umbrella, his collar turned up, his eyes squinted against the rain. He didn’t look in, he didn’t see her. She had the impulse to get up, to go to the door and call to him, but of course she didn’t. She sat, nodding, being polite, listening to Pierce.
Leslie, who hadn’t liked the movie at all, said the best thing about going was the moment buying the tickets when she got to say, “Two seniors for No Country for Old Men.” Billy had turned to her when she started to talk. As she laughed now, she glanced over at Sam, at the end of the table. He was watching her with level, appraising eyes, as though he’d noticed her quick mental trip away, perhaps had seen where she’d gone in those few seconds.
But then Pierce was suddenly pointing to the back of the room. “Good Lord, what kind of place have you brought us to, Billy? It looks like a … an, abattoir, for God’s sake.”
The others turned and looked toward the far end of the room to what they apparently hadn’t noticed when they came in: past the tables and the big square chopping block, the three wide refrigerators sitting side by side, lighted brightly from within. Their clear glass doors revealed chunks of bloody, raw meat stippled with fat, hanging sausage links, indecent-looking birds—naked, plucked.
“Yes,” Billy said. She curtsied her head to Pierce. “A charnel house, for the edible dead.”
“The Oedipal dead?” asked Leslie, incredulously.
Billy laughed. “E-di-ble,” she said. “Though who knows? Who knows how the capon feels about the hen?”
“Isn’t there a joke that begins that way?” Sam asked.
“There should be,” she said.
“I’ll be working on it.”
His face had a worn quality to it. She liked that. A used man, she thought. She turned to Pierce, said, “It is called the Butcher Shop. In its defense.”
“Very original,” Pierce said. “I don’t think it would quite fly in Hanover. All those naked carcasses. Too much unbridled mortality for a polite college town.”
“I like being reminded of mortality,” Billy said.
“You’re younger than we are,” Pierce said. “We don’t.”
Billy smiled. Leslie smiled back at her, and for a moment she felt a spark of the warm connection that had once lived between them. It unnerved her. She had a little more wine to drink.
As if she were feeling the connection, too, Leslie leaned forward. “I like your hair,” Leslie said. “Cut that way.”
Billy’s hand went up as if of its own volition and touched her hair. “I’m dyeing it now,” she said. Completely irrelevant, Billy.
Leslie sighed. “I probably should be, too. Mine’s gotten so white.”
“But it’s a beautiful white,” Billy said. “Pure as the driven snow.” She could hear the nervous, jazzed quality in her own voice. She hoped no one else could.
It seemed not. Pierce and Sam had started to talk across the table—they were at opposite ends—about the approaching primary elections, the odd assortment of candidates in both parties. Leslie said she and Pierce had gone to see Hillary Clinton in Hanover and were impressed.
“I can’t vote for Hillary,” Billy said. “Not after the Iraq vote.”
“For Christ’s sake, Billy,” Pierce said. “Everyone voted for the war.”
“Well, clearly a majority did. But not everyone.”
“Who didn’t?” Leslie asked.
“How soon they forget,” Billy said. “Your buddy Patrick Leahy. My buddy Ted Kennedy. Paul Wellstone. Barbara Boxer. A bunch of the good guys.”
“Mikulski did, too, I think,” Sam said. “And Chafee.”
“Right.” She looked at him appreciatively. “And a couple of others. It wasn’t a done deal at all. It really mattered, how Hillary voted.”
“But didn’t she sort of have to, really?” Leslie asked.
“Hillary?”
“Yes. Because of being a woman. Not to be a wimp.”
“Not to be a woman, anyway,” Sam said.
“But I hate that! It’s so strategic.” Her voice was too loud. Pull it in, pull it in. She lowered it, spoke calmly. “No, I’m for Obama. Ever since that convention speech. Plus he’s my homey—from Hyde Park, just like me.”
Sam offered the preposterousness of Mitt Romney as a candidate, and Pierce joined in trashing him. They moved on to Fred Thompson, and he got it, too. Billy started to relax a bit. She had the sense of an opening up of the evening, a kind of freely moving conversation spurred by politics—she loved politics, for this and other reasons—so she was surprised when Leslie was suddenly standing by her chair, lifting her coat from it, making excuses for herself and Pierce. She was tired, it was past their bedtime. No, no, Billy and Sam must stay, she said. Pierce was standing now too, pulling out his wallet, joking about how expensive the hotel was, saying that they had to get to bed as soon as possible to get their money’s worth.
Sam and Pierce argued briefly about the money that Pierce tried to set down, but Pierce won—he simply wouldn’t take the handful of bills back. Billy slid off her chair while Pierce helped Leslie on with her coat. Then she was lifting her face to Leslie’s cheek, to Pierce’s—and they were on their way, one last wave before they were out the door, into the dark night.
Leaving Billy and what she supposed was her date. She got up onto her high seat again. They were silent for a few seconds. Too long. “If we’re going to stay,” she said, “I’d like another drink.” She knew this was a bad idea. She’d had almost no supper, hours earlier—half a tuna-fish sandwich consumed standing in the kitchen, Reuben watching the slightest shift of the hand holding the bread.
“Are we going to stay?” He was looking at her, truly asking.
“I suppose we should. We’ve been instructed to, anyway.”
He laughed and raised his hand to signal the waitress.
When she’d come over again and taken their order, he turned to her. “Now that I’ve got you alone,” he said, “let me ask you about the play.”
“Okay.”
“Would you say it had a happy ending? We were arguing about it.”
She couldn’t tell if he actually cared or was just being polite, so she didn’t know whether to try to explain it to him, what she had wanted, and then the surprise of how it had gone tonight. What she said was “Maybe. I guess I don’t really think of it as an ending, anyway. More a beginning, maybe.”
“A lot of maybes there.” His eyes were unreadable through his old-fashioned spectacles. “But then I suppose it’s not really fair, is it, to ask the playwright what the play means.”
Billy thought this was generous of him. She’d been evasive and he was being generous. She should be generous. She said, “It’s fair enough. And it’s probably time the playwright worked up a quick, deft explanation for wider consumption. Hey, what is my play about?”
“And?”
The waitress came then, with their wine.
Billy leaned back as she set their glasses down. And then she proceeded to do a little housecleaning, picking up around them a little, taking away Pierce and Leslie’s glasses and silverware, their napkins, giving the table a quick swipe with a towel.
“A clean slate,” he said when she’d left.
They didn’t speak for a moment or two. Billy had a sip of wine and glanced around the room. It was getting late for a Tuesday night. There was only one other table still occupied, and two couples at the bar, plus a lone drinker chatting to the bartender. He was someone Billy saw a lot by himself in the bars in this part of the neighborhood. When you’re by yourself in these same bars, she reminded herself.
She looked at Sam, apparently pondering his wine. Everything felt awkward, suddenly. She needed to do something, something to make it easier. “What’s Leslie up to, do you think?” she asked. “Has she donated us to each other?”
He looked surprised for just a few seconds. He said, “It felt something like that, didn’t it?”
“So are you in any sense hers to donate?”
He raised his sh
oulders, his eyebrows. Who knows? “Are you?” he asked.
She considered it. “Well, maybe she thinks so. I was her brother’s … girlfriend, I suppose you have to say. Though that’s such a ridiculous word. Fiancée, by her lights. So she feels, I guess, a combination of things about me. Affection, I believe, as I do for her. But also worry. Responsibility.” She had some more wine and set the glass down. “I don’t mean I think she owes me any of those things. But that’s who she is. What she’s like. As you no doubt know, if you know her.” He nodded, a slight smile on his lips. “The deal is, Gus was supposed to love me forever, according to her. To take care of me. He died. Now who will do that? I think that’s some of it.” She pointed at him. “Now you,” she said.
“Me what?”
“Now you explain why she thinks she can give you to me.”
“That’s easy,” he said. “I’m an age-appropriate single man. An old friend. It’s not so surprising she’d try to fix us up.”
“But you didn’t know about it.”
“I didn’t. She said a friend had a play being performed, would I join them, and perhaps we’d all have a drink together afterward.”
She felt more comfortable suddenly, knowing he hadn’t been in on it, hadn’t agreed to it. She looked at him appraisingly. “So, are you more an old friend of Pierce’s, or of Leslie’s?”
“Both.” He looked a little sheepish for a second, she thought. What was that about? “More Leslie. I met her first. I know her better.” He was frowning, considering something. “She was kind to me when my marriage was falling apart. She and Pierce both were. But more Leslie, yes.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, it was years ago. My wife and I built a house together near them in Vermont—I’m an architect—and before it was even finished, the marriage was collapsing. Leslie had sold us the land—she was working in real estate at the time—and as it turned out, she was more interested in the house than Claire, than my wife, was. Interested in the process, in the design, in the building of it, and so forth. We saw a lot of each other over that year and a half or so. I was up there every few weeks.” His face had changed. She had the quick thought that it was like Gabriel’s—Rafe’s—when he was remembering Elizabeth. “I suppose you could say I had a kind of … crush on her. Though that makes me sound like a ten-year-old.” He dipped his head, smiled ruefully. “Which I might have just about been for a couple of months after my marriage ended.” He looked at her. “But nothing ever happened between us.”
