A Week as Andrea Benstock

by Lawrence Block

  “I don’t know the answer.”

  “I’m not sure anybody does. What it comes down to is what the two of them want. God knows I wouldn’t blame her if she packed up the kids and jumped on a plane and left him in the middle of the fucking desert. I never did like that son of a bitch.”

  “I thought you did.”

  “Never.”

  “You always get along with him.”

  “Oh, I get along fine with him. Everybody gets along with him, it would be impossible not to get along with him, because he’s exactly the person he thinks you want him to be. But when you peel the layers away, just who in the hell is he? Not that I’ve spent tons of time with him because I haven’t, and that’s fine with me.”

  “I never had any idea you felt that way about him.”

  “Well, ninety-eight percent of the time I don’t feel any way about him, because I don’t have to. But when he’s forced on my attention, well, that’s how I feel about him.”

  “Funny.”

  “What is?”

  “All the ways that you’re hard to know, and the fact that it keeps surprising me to remind myself of the fact. When I first met you I was struck by how straightforward you were.”

  “Good old Mark, solid as the rock of Gibraltar. A little dull—”

  “Now stop that!”

  “A little simple, a little thick between the ears, but —ouch! Jesus, that hurt!”

  “Well, you had it coming.”

  “Not while I’m driving, huh?”

  “I’m sorry.” Then, “Are you mad?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Good. Mark? Is there anything we should do?”

  “About what? Oh, my sister. No, not that I can think of. Like what?”

  “I don’t know. We could go out there. They’ve been after us to come out often enough.”

  “Be pretty obvious, wouldn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Let’s say you were in Linda’s place. Would you want to see the cavalry come riding over the hill? And from their point of view we might not even be the cavalry. We might just be the Indians.”

  “You’re right. I just wish there was something we could do, that’s all.”

  They drove for a while in silence, and then he said, almost to himself, “I never really got to know her. We were just far enough apart in age when we were kids, and then when we were old enough so that age didn’t matter, she was married and we were involved in different lives. If they’d lived here, but they didn’t. And then there’s Phil, he lives in Buffalo, and how close am I to him?”

  “You see a lot of each other.”

  “Sure, and if he needed something he’d come to me, I suppose, but I don’t really know him. Of course there’s the age difference.”

  “He thinks you don’t approve of him.”

  “For God’s sake, why?”

  “Because he’s working for his father. You’re a lawyer and he’s a businessman and it’s not even his business and he thinks you don’t approve.”

  “How do you know this? Something he said?”

  “Just intuition.”

  “Woman’s proverbial intuition.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well,” he said, and paused, and then something changed in his face, as if he decided that conversation had run long enough, as if it was opening doors he would prefer to keep closed, as if he had reached for the switch and changed the channel. He reached over and put a hand on her knee. “There’s one thing we can do,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “To uphold the institution of marriage. To express our solidarity with the concept of the sanctity of the family unit.”

  “How?”

  He squeezed her knee. “We can go home and screw our brains out,” he said.

  “Well, now,” she said. “You don’t think I’m a little old for that sort of thing? A little long in the tooth?”

  “I’ve always thought your teeth were just the right length. What the hell does that expression mean, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. But thirty’s old, you know.”

  “Ancient.”

  “The bones get brittle.”

  “Uh-huh. I’ll be gentle with you.”

  “You do and I’ll kill you.”

  When he returned from the bathroom she was already in bed. “I’m wearing my present,” she said. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t get me a fur coat?”

  “Very. I hope you know I meant it when I said to exchange it if you don’t like it.”

  “I hope you know I love it.” His gift was a dress watch with a gold mesh band and a delft blue face, and she thought it was exquisite. “And it’s such a perfect gift for a thirtieth birthday.”

  “How so?”

  “Oh, time flying by. Like giving a gold watch to someone when he retires, so he can listen to the rest of his life ticking away.”

  “I hope you don’t—”

  “Ha!” She sat up in bed. “Gotcha! No, silly, I didn’t take it that way at all. Anyway, it could be worse. It could be a calendar watch. Oh, come here, don’t pout Oh, come here, my darling. Ah, yes. That’s better. That’s so much better.”

  It was a good night for them to make love. Lovemaking was a virtually automatic accompaniment to significant days—birthdays, anniversaries. But tonight was especially right because the lovemaking was in such perfect harmony with the feelings that had been with her all evening. She was aware throughout of the special familiarity of their bodies, the mutual knowledge acquired over the years, and she quivered in appreciation of the genuine comfort and pleasure that grew out of this knowledge.

  For quite a long time they lay on their sides facing one another, kissing lazily, touching each other with their hands. This, she sometimes thought, was truly the ultimate intimacy, the special intimacy of hands. Her hands on him, his hands on her, touching one another not so much to excite as to examine, to seek, as a blind person would seek to read a face.

  Knowing each other, knowing each other so well and so long, knowing each other as no one else on earth knew either of them. Oh, there were vastnesses of him she did not know. She kept finding new depths in him. And there were infinite stretches of herself that she very carefully kept to herself. But each day and month and year they opened a few more doors and windows to each other. Sometimes in conversation. Sometimes in the touch-language of the flesh.

  “Mmmmm.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Come on top for a while.”

  “Lazy man.”

  “Ahhhh.”

  Slipping easily from one posture to another, lazy, warm, unhurried, and finally he was on top of her again and she wrapped her arms and legs around him and held him very tight, and he began to move within her more deliberately, and he was breathing faster and so was she, matching her breathing to his unconsciously, automatically, and she said oh, baby, oh, baby and he said yes, yes, meaning yes I am almost there, meaning yes come with me, come with me, and the door opened and they went through it, together.

  She said, “Carnal knowledge.”

  He took the cigarette from her lips and drew on it. She watched the smoke hanging in the still air. Smoking was not supposed to be enjoyable if you couldn’t see the smoke. The room was just light enough so that the smoke was visible.

  “Wha’d you say?”

  “Carnal knowledge. Tree of knowledge. And Adam knew Eve. And on her thirtieth birthday, ladies and gentlemen, Andrea Benstock suddenly discovered the meaning of phrases she’d known all her life.”

  “You’re a nut.”

  “How do you like doing it with an older woman? I’m supposed to be exciting and mysterious.”

  “What else is new? You’ve always been exciting and mysterious.”

  “Am I improving with age? Like a vintage wine?”

  “Like ripe cheese.”

  “You’re almost too romantic for words. Hey, gimme a drag on that butt, buster.”

  “What I love about
you is you’re refined.”

  “Yeah, I got all this couth shit down pat. I was well brought up.” And, in her own voice, “It’s been a big day.”

  “I was afraid it would be a little on the dull side for you. The usual day around the house, then the enormous novelty of a family dinner at the club. I was trying to think of something exotic to do.”

  “Like flying down to Acapulco for a midnight swim?”

  “Like driving up to Toronto for dinner and spending the night. But we’d already made plans with your parents and I didn’t want to spoil it for them.”

  “You’re a sweet man.”

  “What brought that on?”

  “I don’t know. Toronto’s always fun but I’d rather do it some other time. I wanted to spend tonight doing just what we did. Doing ordinary things.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It must be past midnight, don’t you think? Oh, I’m sure it is. So I’m past my birthday. I am thirty years old. I am entering my thirty-first year. I can’t play ingenue parts any more, baby. The dew-eyed number is a thing of the past.”

  “Listen, I’m going to be thirty-five soon.”

  “So?”

  “Speaking of big birthdays.”

  “That’s not for a while.”

  “No, but it’s lurking around the corner there.”

  “Thirty-five’s a great birthday for a man.”

  “It is?”

  “Are you kidding? Of course it is. When a man’s thirty-five it means you can start taking him seriously. Thirty-five’s a sensational age for a man to be.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then, leaning away from her to extinguish the cigarette, he said, “I won’t be promising any more.”

  “Huh?” She rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Won’t be promising what?”

  “The adjective, not the verb. Right now I’m still a promising young attorney.”

  “Correction, you’re a successful young attorney.”

  “Uh-uh. Promising. I’m too young to be a success or a failure. I can be leaning toward one or the other but unless I’m a millionaire or panhandling on Chippewa Street I’m still in the promising category. But that stops at thirty-five. By then you either keep the promise or you don’t.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “So it’s a big birthday. Not to take away from the enormity of your being thirty, my dear, but I’d say thirty-five is a fairly significant moment for a man.”

  She yawned luxuriously. “What fun,” she said.

  “Growing old?”

  “Getting to know you.”

  “In the Biblical sense, that is.”

  “In every sense. Getting to know you over and over again, in every sense there is.”

  The dream yanked her out of sleep and very nearly out of bed. She found herself sitting up with her feet over the edge of the bed and her heart pounding. Her mouth was dry and her throat all knotted so that she couldn’t swallow.

  In the dream, someone had been telling her that she was responsible for her own face. It might have been Winkie. And she was looking into a mirror, and then there was no frame to the mirror, and it began to grow and to curve in around her, until ultimately she was trapped inside of a mirrored sphere.

  And she couldn’t see herself. She would begin to fasten upon her reflection and then the features would swim dizzily out of focus until finally the screen went blank and she saw that she had no self to be reflected.

  And she was responsible.

  She could remember the dream now. And she could remember her terror. But she could not reconcile the two. The dream did not seem a tenth as frightening as it had been.

  She thought, I won’t see Cass any more.

  And, I don’t have to see him any more.

  And, I never had to see him in the first place.

  Her watch was still strapped to her wrist. She took it off but checked the time before setting it on the bedside table. It was not quite one-thirty. It was hard to believe she had been asleep such a short period of time. The dream alone had seemed to last for hours and hours.

  She went to the bathroom, used the toilet. After she was back in bed she remembered that she had wanted to look in the bathroom mirror, to assure herself that the dream was only a dream, that it was over now. But that was ridiculous, she didn’t have to do that she was done dreaming now. And the bed was comfortable, with her husband warm at her side, and it was late, and she was too tired to worry what the next dream might hold.

  Thursday

  April 16, 1970

  IN 1970 spring teased Buffalo with a string of false starts. There would be a handful of warm days. Then the temperature would drop abruptly and snow would fall.

  But on this April morning Andrea felt reasonably certain that spring had come to stay. The sun was warm on her face, the air fresh and light. She walked around her back yard as she had done recently on mornings that felt like spring. She examined the new leaves on the shrubs and trees, the emerging shoots of the spring bulbs. It seemed as though something new came into view every day. Now perhaps winter was really over.

  If winter comes can spring be far behind?

  Winter had come, an early winter and a harsh one, and deep in the winter, early in January, her father had died. The following afternoon she had stood watching as his boxed body was lowered into an opening in the frozen earth. There was snow on the ground that afternoon, a couple of inches of it, and there was fresh snow falling. Everything looked terribly white and clean.

  And now everything was turning green.

  She took her time noting the garden’s progress, bending now and then to pull a weed. The soil was cold to the touch but soon it would be warmer. It seemed almost wrong to be pulling weeds. They were alive, they were green, and the season was still new enough so that anything green was welcome.

  The phone rang at one point but she did not rush inside to answer it. Eventually it stopped ringing.

  A few minutes later she went inside. She drank a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette. Then she picked up the telephone and began to dial a number. She had almost finished when she was suddenly overcome. There was a pressure behind her eyes, as if there were tears welled up there demanding to be shed. Her eyes remained dry, however. She felt quite dizzy and her hands and feet were very cold.

  She managed to replace the receiver, managed to find a chair and sit in it. She made herself breathe deeply and slowly until she felt all right again, although the coldness in her hands and feet persisted. She thought that a straight shot of liquor would probably do her a great deal of good, but of course she never considered actually having a drink. It was morning and she did not drink in the morning. A woman down the block did drink in the morning, as Andrea had discovered not long ago. The discovery had unnerved her, even shocked her. The whole idea of a suburban housewife having a little nip as soon as her husband left the house, affected her so that for some time afterward she felt a little funny about drinking at all, at any hour of the day.

  She smoked another cigarette—which was probably a particularly dumb idea when one had cold hands and feet, but the hell with it—then went to the phone and made her call. When her mother answered she said, “Hello, Mom. How are you?”

  “Oh, I’m all right. And you?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Robin’s at school and Mark’s at the office and I just thought I’d call.”

  “I’m glad. I was just going to call you, as a matter of fact.”

  “Did you call before? About fifteen minutes ago.”

  “No. Why?”

  “I was outside and the phone rang and I didn’t feel like running for it. I thought it might be you.”

  “No, it wasn’t. You were outside? It’s a beautiful day today, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Maybe the winter’s finally over. Sometimes it seems to me as though winter and summer both get longer every year and spring and f
all absolutely disappear. Your father would say I’m starting to sound like those cranks who blame the snow on the atomic bomb and the astronauts. Actually I’m sure it’s Nixon’s fault.” There was a pause. Then, softly and tentatively, “Andrea, today is—”

  “Yes, I know, Mother.”

  “I knew you would remember, of course.” Another pause. “Thirty-nine years, it would have made.”

  “I know.”

  “It was the funniest thing last night. I was in bed and just on the verge of falling asleep and of course I was thinking that today was our anniversary and I had an impossible time deciding if it was going to be thirty-nine years or forty years. I was doing all sorts of complicated arithmetic, trying to figure how many years we had been married when you were born, one bit of nonsense after the other. I suppose it was the pill I took before I went to bed.”

  “I’m sure of it. I was just going to say that.”

  “But isn’t that a funny thing to be confused about? Well, it would have been thirty-nine years today.”

  “Mother—”

  “I’m all right.”

  “I was thinking maybe I would come over for a little while.”

  “Well, what I was thinking. I want to go to the cemetery today.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “It’s something I want to do. How would it be a good or a bad idea? I certainly don’t want you to come if you don’t want to, but I—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’ll come.”

  “Only if you want to.”

  “Of course I want to. I want to wait until Lucinda gets here but she’s due any minute, and then I’ll come over, and we can go to the cemetery whenever you want.”

  “Lucinda. Oh, your girl. I didn’t even think that it was Thursday, isn’t that funny? I was thinking of the date but not what day of the week.”

  Thursday. So it was indeed Lucinda’s day, but it was not her day with Cass. That particular string of Thursdays had come to an end with her thirtieth birthday. A dividend of maturity—and when I became a woman I put away childish things.