The First Warm Evening of the Year: A Novel

by Jamie M. Saul

  “I did a terrible thing letting my family down like that. My sister, most of all. So why should I get a pass? Whatever else happened, or will happen, I have it coming to me.”

  “How will seeing your sister’s house make any difference?”

  “You can’t really be this impenetrable.”

  “I’m sincerely curious.”

  Simon sat low in the seat, his eyes were closed.

  He said, “Being around the things she lived with, will close it all out,” as though he were talking to a simpleton. “If I can just say good-bye to her, in my way, pay my respects, maybe I’ll feel like I’ve made amends. Maybe I just have to see for myself that my sister is dead.”

  “I don’t understand this obsession with the past.”

  “Obsession is a pretty strong word.”

  “Then attachment. What happened, happened. And really, what you did was not so terrible.”

  Simon didn’t answer right away. When he did, he turned his face away from me.

  “There’s this one time in your life, or one place, when you were the best you are ever going to be, with people whose love for you and yours for them was so absolute, that it’s all you wanted. And then it’s gone, and all you want is to be reunited with what it used to feel like, because you know that you’ll never be able to love any other people or any other place like you do those people and that place. Laura couldn’t replace the love she had for Steve. I can’t replace my love for her and how it felt to be her younger brother back when we were kids. But how can I not go looking for it?”

  I didn’t say anything. I started thinking about Marian staying in her house after Buddy died. The scrapbook Laura saved and left behind. I was thinking what it must be like to feel that the best part of yourself is in the past. What it must be like to remember the day before it was gone. Now I understood what Marian had been telling me that afternoon when I’d driven up to see her. She wasn’t talking about a time when all she was was happier than she was now, or less lonely, but a time when she felt complete— When you lose that, you wake in the morning and at night in your bed, your first thought, your last thought isn’t about the irretrievable past, but the irretrievable you.

  When I looked over at Simon, he was still staring out the window. We were less than an hour away from Shady Grove, the scenery must have looked familiar to him.

  “This was a bad idea,” he said and asked me to stop the car. “I need a cigarette.”

  “Just roll down the window.”

  “I can’t stand all the wind in my face. Pull over somewhere. Please.”

  I pulled over. Simon got out of the car and started pacing along the side of the road while he puffed on his cigarette, walked past the car, turned, and walked back.

  “I don’t want to see Remsen,” he said, “when we get there.”

  “I have to stop at his office. He’s got the house key. You can wait in the car.”

  “I don’t want to see anyone.”

  “Who do you have in mind?”

  “I just want—I’m just going to stay in the house and not go out.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Wait . . . Forget it . . . Turn around.”

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  “Take me back to the city.”

  “No way.”

  “Why should you care whether or not I go? This was a bad idea.”

  “Finish your cigarette and get back in the car.”

  Simon dropped onto the front seat and tucked his hands under his armpits; his chin rested on his chest. His mouth was turned down, not so much in a frown and not in a pout. It wasn’t petulance that I was looking at. It was the look of grim defeat. The wanderer, the drifter who is neither heroic nor mythic, but just what Alex said: A man who wanted, if only for a day or two, to go home.

  About a mile later Simon told me, “I don’t know what I was thinking.” And a mile or two later, “If anyone asks, don’t tell them who I am.”

  “Most of the people you knew have probably moved away,” I said. “And the ones who stayed won’t recognize you.”

  “You think?”

  “You’ll be anonymous.”

  “That I’m used to.”

  Another mile passed. He said, “Thanks. Thanks for saying that.”

  It was early afternoon when I pulled up in front of Remsen’s office, went in and got the key to Laura’s house, and when I came out stood for a moment under the gentle springtime sun.

  It was a warm day even for the last week of April, with signs of life in the town square, crocuses and daffodils, people sitting on benches, walking down the sidewalks wearing their spring colors. One of those people was Marian, wearing an orange sweatshirt and blue jeans.

  She was standing on the other side of the street, staring at me over the roof of a car, just staring with her head cocked to one side, and smiling in a way that made me think she was waiting for me to walk over to her.

  I told Simon, “Wait here,” crossed the street while I waved at her, cognizant of nothing but Marian standing at the corner.

  “I wish I’d known you were coming back,” she said.

  “You would have liked if I’d called ahead?”

  “I don’t know what I’d like, actually.”

  “I think you do.”

  “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I came with Simon.”

  “Simon? Welles?”

  “He wanted to see Laura’s house.”

  “I wish you hadn’t.”

  “I’m glad I did.”

  “Please don’t say things like that to me.”

  “I like saying things like that to you.”

  “How long are you—does Simon think he’ll be here?”

  I said, “I want you to know that I get it. I get it now,” and maybe I should have told her that I understood the longings and fears in the lyrics in old love songs, and her emotional paralysis after Buddy died, and Laura’s. And the crazy thrill of standing on this particular sidewalk talking to her about anything, even Simon Welles. But I would have felt foolish telling her that, so when she said, “I don’t know what you mean,” all I answered was, “I’m going to be here only for a couple days. I’d like to talk to you sometime.”

  “You’ll only mess up my life. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  She looked over her shoulder at the row of stores behind her, and at the few people walking by.

  “We can’t talk out here.”

  “Where do you have in mind?”

  “I asked you not to try to see me again.”

  I smiled at her. “That’s one of the things I get.”

  She turned around and walked away from me. I watched her until I was sure she wouldn’t turn back to look, then I crossed the street to my car.

  After I pulled away from the curb, Simon asked me who I’d been talking to, and when I told him, he said, “That was Marian? She was very happy to see you.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “The way she was watching you, before you looked up, and the way she was grinning when you were talking to her. Weren’t you there? Like someone had turned on a light.”

  “Not the most original description, but I’ll take it.”

  On the front lawn of Laura’s house was a FOR SALE sign which hadn’t been there when I’d left town. Inside nothing had changed. It was just dustier.

  We stood in the center of the living room. Simon looked around as though he were measuring for a new carpet, walked across to the kitchen entrance and back again, at the same time telling me, “Go sit down somewhere and take it easy. I’ll clean the place up a little. Really. It’s no big deal. I used to clean houses for a living.”

  I went upstairs and put my overnight bag in t
he smaller bedroom, with the twin beds, ran my hand over the soft quilted bedspread, gave the lace curtains a glance, kicked off my shoes, and lay down on the bed. I thought about Marian, seeing her on the street, hearing her voice. And was Simon right? Was she really happy to see me?

  I experienced a sense of exhilaration because I knew that this was not the infatuation Alex had talked of, or the distraction. I’d seen Marian on the street, and I’d felt exactly as I’d once imagined; exactly what I wanted to feel, seeing her again. And here I was in Shady Grove, where it was now possible to see her walking down the street again. Maybe tomorrow. That was, at least for now, enough.

  I started to laugh, a loud, full-bodied laugh, and kept on laughing for a moment or two longer, when the phone rang.

  It was Marian calling.

  She said, “I want to explain my behavior before.”

  “I’d say you did all right the first time.”

  “No. You showed up at my house, then you just drove off. Now you show up again, this time with Simon Welles of all— Where did you find him, anyway?”

  “He found me.”

  “You can’t do that. Coming and going like that. You’ve really complicated things.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I don’t know if I can believe that.”

  I wanted her to be calling from her car, parked just down the street, and if I got up and pushed back the curtain, I’d see her sitting there; in another minute, I’d be down there, leaning through the open window, asking her, “What’s so awful about making each other crazy?” Which was what I told her.

  “You can’t just show up when you feel like it and say these things to me,” she said. “You’ll go back to New York in a few days, or whenever.” Her words came spilling out one on top of the other without any space between them—“And then when you feel like coming back”—until she ran out of breath, paused a moment and then went on: “I asked you not to try to see me again, and here you are, trying to see me again. That makes me so angry. I asked you not to come back here and you did. And there’s Eliot to consider.”

  “I’m well aware of Eliot.”

  “If you see me on the street, just pass me by. If we should happen to be in the same— Oh God, do you even mean half the things you say?” There was silence after that, and she clicked off.

  My feelings of exhilaration had not abated.

  All I wanted now was to give Simon as much time as he needed in Laura’s house, or whatever else he thought he wanted from Shady Grove.

  Later, when I went downstairs, stepping over the vacuum cleaner, I saw Simon standing in the kitchen door with a mop in his hand; he’d just finished washing the floor. I told him I was going out for something to eat. He said we should go shopping, and he’d cook us supper.

  “I’m not in the mood to play house. There must be a restaurant somewhere. I’m buying.”

  I found a little place far enough from town to assure Simon that he wouldn’t see anyone who might remember him; the sort of a place where it seemed wise to stick to basics. We both had pasta.

  Simon looked around, as though he might be recognized. Then he said, “What you said before, about playing house, it wasn’t very nice.”

  “No, it wasn’t. And while we’re talking on this lovely evening together, would it kill you to stop lying to me?”

  “You are one suspicious man. I was telling the truth when I said I missed my sister.”

  “And missing her funeral?”

  “Does it really matter how? The fact is I did.”

  “You could have told me the truth the first time, instead of handing me all that crap.”

  “You aren’t the easiest person to approach. I told you the story I thought would work. If I’d told you the truth, would it have made a difference?”

  “Does my brother know how devious you are?”

  “Marian looks good. Like herself. She’s aging well.”

  “I’m sure she’d be glad to know you think so.”

  “Do you have to be so obnoxious?”

  “Was that obnoxious?”

  “Where was Buddy?”

  “He’s not in the picture.”

  “Divorce?”

  I shook my head.

  “Buddy Ballantine died?” He took a good look at me, the expression on his face went from that tight smugness to a look of retreat.

  “Any more questions?”

  “You and Marian?”

  “Marian and someone, anyway.”

  “Someone? As in someone from Shady Grove? Name please?”

  “Does it appear to you that I want to talk about this?”

  He lifted his fork to his mouth, and after he took a bite and swallowed, “You have a thing for Marian Thayer—I mean, Ballantine—and you want me to not to bug you with questions? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Are you?”

  “Don’t think I can’t find out on my own.”

  “Alex won’t help you with this.”

  “I hadn’t even thought of Alex.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “It must be someone I knew, or else you’d tell me.”

  “Why do you care so much?”

  “Who could she possibly be interested in after Buddy Ballantine?”

  “Someone named Eliot.”

  “Eliot? Not Eliot Wooten?”

  “Why not Eliot Wooten?”

  Simon put down his fork and sat back.

  “I just lost my appetite. That’s like going from Brando to—to some guy in a clown suit coming onstage and doing tricks on a toy tricycle.”

  “How so?”

  “Buddy Ballantine? Buddy Ballantine, even when I knew him, was one of the most exceptional people you’ll ever come across. And Eliot— Have you met him? He’s the guy all the girls in school used to say was ‘nice.’ I bet he’s still ‘nice.’ Tell me I’m wrong. How could anyone do that to them—”

  “What’s it to you?”

  He looked repulsed by my question. “It offends my sensibilities.”

  “Don’t be such a drama queen,” I told him.

  The following morning, when I came downstairs Simon was standing on a stepladder, washing the living room windows.

  “I had to do something to take my mind off—” He sat on the top rung. “So?”

  “So? So what?”

  “Look around. The furniture, the colors, the way she placed objets. This is what Laura chose to live with every day.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m talking about the things Laura lived with,” he said. “And you with a gay brother.”

  “Are my homophile creds suddenly coming into question?”

  “And a psychiatrist. Your entire lineage is under question. What does it tell you? I wish I knew what she had on the walls.”

  I sat in one of the chairs, and while Simon went back to washing windows, I told him about my first impression of not only this room but the rest of the house: that it was where someone’s grandmother would be right at home, tidy, not fussy, but in strict order.

  Simon stopped his work, climbed down, and sat across the room from me. The sunlight through the living room window brought a shadow across the floor and into the corner where Simon was sitting, but the rest of the light had turned the pink walls a softer roseate color. The chair where I sat now received the heat of the sun, while moment by moment the room grew warmer. I looked up to see him watching me.

  “I would have loved to see what her apartment in Paris looked like,” he said, “wouldn’t you? But she made herself a home here that’s certainly boring if comfortable. Her way of buffering herself, wouldn’t you say?”

  “From the things she’d lost or the things she still wanted?”

  Simon rested his elbows on his knees, and took another look around. “I don’t know why she tho
ught she had to come back here. Just because you’re born in a place, doesn’t mean you have to die there. She could have, or should have, stayed where she was, given herself time, gotten back to her music. She should never have given it up.”

  “Coming from you?”

  “I’m a walking life of regret. But teaching music at the high school?”

  “Don’t be so quick to judge. She may have taught her students to love music the way she used to. Or still did. We can’t know. Maybe it’s how she wanted it.”

  “Then God damn her.” Simon got up, walked over to the opposite corner, where the sun was brightest, and stood with his face turned to the light. “The reason I started cleaning the house, beside the fact that it was floating on a cloud of dust balls, was the hope that I’d get to know Laura, the person who lived here. Moving around the place, and all. I mean, you can’t clean someone’s house without getting to know them at least a little bit, right?” He laughed a dry laugh, as though the dust of Laura’s life was stuck in his throat. “Maybe what I was really trying to do, scrubbing and everything, was to get it all clean and I’d find some clue to my sister, but all I found was—I feel like I’m inside a shell.” He shook his head. “All it is is seeing how someone I didn’t know made a bland little nest for herself. This could be anyone’s home.” He walked over to the stepladder, folded it, and leaned it against the wall. “I think I was looking for an agreement between what I expected to see when I came here, what I hoped I’d see, and what I’d actually discover.” He looked as though he were about to cry, but he pulled himself back and said, “I didn’t expect that my sister just shriveled up inside.”

  “You said you were looking for closure.”

  “I said I was looking for closure and to say good-bye. But who would I be saying good-bye to when Laura already said good-bye to Laura? And now I’m standing here pissed off at Laura, pissed off at myself, and a little pissed at you, too, Geoffrey. This is not what I expected.” Simon looked around the room, as though he were trying to find something else that needed cleaning, or maybe he was giving Laura another chance.

  All I did was think about why I’d come here, and that my own expectations and Simon’s were as insubstantial as the dust swept from this house. I found that an intolerable concession to make.