This is not what he hoped their meeting would come to. The waitress comes over after awhile and asks if there is anything she can do to help.
–She’s probably just tired, B says.
–I think she’s drunk, the waitress says. She had at least three drinks at the bar before you got here and from what I could tell she’d been drinking before that. Do you know where she lives? I’ll call a car service for you if you like.
B looks in his jacket pocket for the letter Debby sent him and is relieved to find it, but the return address is blurred by a water stain.
The waitress shakes Debby’s shoulder. –Where do you live, honey? she asks.
–You don’t need to do that, Debby mumbles. She opens her eyes and lifts her head with the flourish of a circus performer doing something obscurely difficult. I live a few blocks away. I’m a neighborhood person.
B settles the tab and leaves the restaurant with Debby holding on to his arm.
–I can make it on my own, she tells him, but he insists on accompanying her home.
–How do I know you’re not some dirty old man who is only pretending to have known my mother? she asks as they stand in front of her door, Debby searching through her purse for the key.
When she gets the door open, B is eager to return to his uneventful privacy, but Debby invites him in, holding on to his sleeve to emphasize her point. B does not try hard enough to get away and finds himself inside Debby’s dramatically over-decorated apartment—the motif is theatrical masks—the door closed behind them.
–I should get home, he says, wondering why he doesn’t just go. There seems no longer any necessity for him to stay with her.
They are sitting next to each other on her living room couch and Debby rests her head on his shoulder. B is trying to figure out what is going on between them. He imagines Didi looking on from wherever.
–Do you want to go to bed with me? she asks.
–No, he says.
–Beware, she says. This offer may not be tended in your presence ever again. I’ll present the question one more time. Do you or do you not want to go to bed with me?
–I make it a rule, B says, not to go to bed with women who are not responsible for their behavior.
She puzzles over his answer. –Is that yes or no? she asks.
–It’s no, he says.
–Then I’ll thank you to leave, she says, disappearing from the room.
3.
B is glad to get out of there, though once he hits the street he considers going back. Didi would appreciate his looking after her daughter, he tells himself. At the same time, he can’t imagine (or can imagine too well) what direction such looking after might take. So, disappointed in human nature, his own and others, he goes home, concerned with getting a good night’s sleep, which of course he won’t get anyway, never does.
For the next few days, Debby and B chat on the phone as if they have known each other for years. Her manner assumes an intimacy which he finds disconcerting, though he is secretly flattered. –I’ll take you to dinner at a nice place, he tells her, but you have to remain sober.
–Are you afraid I’ll embarrass you? she asks.
–When you get drunk you embarrass yourself, he says.
–If I knew you were a fucking bleeding heart, she says, I never would have answered your letter in the first place. The fact is, drinking protects me from feeling embarrassed. He can see that there is something to that, but of course once she sobers up (which may be why she stays drunk) the embarrassment she’s been avoiding will hit her twice as hard.
–Come with me to a AA meeting, he says.
–If I was going to go to an AA meeting, she says, why would I need you there to hold my hand?
–I need you there to hold my hand, he says.
–For a supposedly sophisticated person, you’re a real corn-ball, she says.
So a relationship evolves between them, a casual insult—freighted friendship. B finds himself spending more time on the telephone with Didi’s daughter than with either of his own sons.
One day, his older son comes by to visit, which is a rare occasion. –I worry about you, Dad, his son says. You live like a hermit. Nothing’s going on in your life.
–Nothing that you know about, B says. I’m seeing someone.
–Whoever she is, the son says, from the look of your apartment, I would bet she doesn’t do housework.
–She’s never been here, B says, annoyed at the remark on several accounts. And if I thought my apartment needed cleaning, I’d hire someone.
–Dad, says the son, who is this person you’re seeing that has never been to your place and doesn’t do windows?
–When I’m ready to tell you, you’ll be the first to know, B says.
The son says this is not meant to be a duel of wits, not on his part, that his visit has been an expression of concern on his part, that he and Danton have been worried about B’s unavailability since his retirement.
–Hey, I’ve been cultivating my garden, B says. And I’ve been seeing someone.
–Okay, who have you been seeing? he says. It’s just that I have difficulty believing what you say is true. From what I can tell, Dad, is that you’ve been alone too much and that you’ve been depressed.
–How can someone as out of control as you be a therapist? B says to Debby over dinner at Café des Artistes.
–The reason I’m so good at it, Debby tells him, is that my openness to my own problems enhances insight into the problems of others.
B, who has dipped his toe into therapy on a few harried occasions, remains skeptical of her claim. —I worry about you, he says. I think you need someone to take you in hand.
–We call that projecting, she says. You’re a lonely man, B. And why shouldn’t you be? It’s not the most fun in the world living alone.
–Now who’s projecting, B says. He is holding her hand when he makes this remark. His sense of her attractiveness, or lack of it, has been revised in the three months that have passed since their first meeting. She is smaller and less svelte than her mother, but certainly sexy to the eye (and whatever) of this beholder. The fact of it is, he has not even so much as kissed her (mouth to mouth) at this point. His relationship to her has been a kind of loco parentis undermined by an occasional flirtation. Debby continues to insist that if he had married her mother, they wouldn’t have lasted three years together. Why three years, he wonders, but doesn’t ask. What is it about him that suggests that three years is the longest he could survive with anyone (he has been married over 7 years three times to other difficult women)?
–If you have such a jaundiced opinion of me, he says, why do you continue to see me?
She waves off the question as if it were unworthy of consideration.
–In your professional opinion, how long would you and I survive together? he asks.
She takes back her hand, squinches her eyes at him.
–Are you just babbling or is that question supposed to mean something?
B is not so much surprised at her belligerence as he is surprised at the injudiciousness of his remarks. Indeed, he is innocent (or at least oblivious) of his own intentions.
–I was thinking about what you said about your mother and I not lasting three years together. I apologize if my question offended you.
–I don’t think you and I would last one hour, she says, because it’s unlikely in the extreme that we’d ever live together. I mean, what gives you the idea that I would even consider moving in with you?
B holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender. –I didn’t think you would consider moving in with me. It was a hypothetical question I was asking. We do spend a lot of time talking on the phone.
–Maybe that’s because we’re both lonely, she says. And we want something from each other that we’re obviously not getting.
B is wary of asking, knows and doesn’t know, what mutual lack she is referring to. They are not making it together is what she means. The idea of sleepin
g with his former girl friend’s daughter is disturbing to him, though it is not anything he wants to confide in her. So he changes the subject which elicits a knowing smile from Debby as if she had seen his brand of evasive tactics in her professional practice too many times before.
4.
It is a fact that I have always felt lonely even when living with someone, even when married. I tended to marry women who wouldn’t encroach on my lonely space. The remote Clara. And later Genevieve who tended to value only those things she didn’t have. This is something Debby knew about me from the first without being thrown any telltale clues. The mystery was that, while feeling lonely—it was like a deeply muted pain—I nevertheless dodged intimacy like a fatal bullet homed at my heart. I was so used to living alone, I didn’t know how much I truly minded it. The unacknowledged truth is, I find comfort in being alone and at the same time I can barely stand it. A certain pride is achieved by enduring the all but unendurable thing. Have I never not been lonely? The early days with Genevieve perhaps, though I’m not sure even of that.
5.
B asks Debby to spend New Years eve with him, but she has a prior commitment, or so she says. An hour later she calls back. –Just what exactly did you have in mind for us? she asks.
–Does that mean you’ve become available, B says, or is it just a matter of finding out what you might be missing?
–If we spend New Years eve together, you’re going to have to go to bed with me, she says.
B has an answer to everything. –Wouldn’t our making such an agreement take all the spontaneity out of it?
–Take a hike, she says.
–If you’re going to be uncompromising, B says, I suppose I’ll have to accept your terms. But you have to promise me you’ll remain sober for the entire evening.
B goes to her place for a home-cooked meal and then to a party of mostly people his age or older. Debby wanders about nursing a Perrier with a squiggle of lime, speaking only when spoken to, and even then stopping only to answer the question put to her. It is not B’s intention to drink too much, but since he does, (he is already on his third glass of champagne), he knows dimly that he will be held accountable afterward. Perhaps he is drinking too much because Debby is not drinking at all, a way of representing the firm while one of its members is on vacation.
A friend, a former lover, tells him why she is breaking up with the man she has lived with for the past five years. B is keeping track of her argument while watching Debby’s perambulations out of the corner of his eye. She is leaving him, she says, for political reasons. He is in favor of the death penalty. She does not see herself spending the rest of her life with a man who gets off on institutional murder. Her reasons seem false or unduly severe, but it is not B’s part to tell her that.
Debby comes out of nowhere, tugs on his arm, whispers, –Time to go, Bo.
The woman he has been talking to, stops in mid sentence, says, –I’ll thank you not to repeat this to anyone.
Debby says, holding out her hand to the other woman, –We haven’t been introduced.
B takes the occasion to turn away and slip like a secret into the wall-to-wall crowd. Moments later, frozen on the edge of a conversation among strangers, he feels Debby’s hand on his arm just above the elbow. –You can’t escape me, she says. I hope you’re not really trying.
6.
At some point B feels obliged to introduce Debby to his two sons. The fateful moment comes three days after he has spent the night in her apartment and the day after they have agreed to look for a larger apartment they might live in together. Telling his sons, he hopes, will validate a relationship that has never seemed quite real to him. Aware of the apparent inappropriateness of this alliance, B seeks to set up an ideal situation for the meeting. Debby suggests having them to dinner at her place, and a date is set and invitations made.
The dinner is a disaster. Debby gets drunk and falls into her verbally abusive mode, accusing the sons of not giving B the affection due him. The sons struggle to be polite, but at some point the younger son, Danton, walks out without a word, his dinner barely acknowledged. His absence creates an odd tension around the table. The older son gets up after a while (before coffee and dessert are served) and says that he too has to leave.
–Why do you hate your father? Debby asks him.
–This has nothing to do with my father, he says.
–I don’t need to be talked to that way in my own house, she says to him. You have my permission to get the fuck out of here.
B intercedes, takes the son into the hall to talk to him. –She’s not like this when she’s sober, he tells him. Be patient with her, okay? She has a drinking problem.
–She asked me to leave, Dad, the son says. If I go back, she’s only going to throw me out again.
B acknowledges the son’s point, decides not to press the issue any further.
–You don’t have to stay either, she says when B returns. No one’s forcing you to stay here against your will. She walks into the kitchen and he follows after her, claiming her by the sink, wrapping his arms around her as if his hug were the only thing keeping her from going into orbit.
–You’re a mess, he says in her ear.
–Look who’s talking, she says. You’re the world’s doormat, fellow. There’s been so much shit wiped off on you you’ve been passing it off as suntan.
When he lets go of her, she collapses to the floor in what seems to B a kind of slow motion. He lifts her up, eliciting a moan and some under the breath curses. When it is clear that she is out for the count, he carries her into the bedroom, removes her shoes and rolls her under the comforter. He wants to leave but he clears off the dining table first, scraping the dishes and piling them on the counter next to the sink. He puts plastic wrap over the leftover food and makes awkward room for it in the oversubscribed refrigerator.
On the drive home, he thinks about their first sexual tangle together, which was two weeks ago, and concedes that it was a lot less harrowing for him in actuality (is harrowing the right word?) than it had been in the imagination. In fact, the sex had been rather playful and lighthearted. Up until the actual moment they did the deed, B imagined he had been seeing Debby in part at least as a favor to Didi, the repayment of some kind of unacknowledged debt. After sleeping with Didi’s daughter, that illusion of course would no longer fly.
He imagines Didi observing his behavior and registering disappointment. She must feel justified, he thinks—why shouldn’t she?—in having lived her adult life apart from him. He was untrustworthy, as she had guessed, a slave to the itch of impulse and indifference. Lying in his bed at night, nurturing his aloneness, he asks Didi to forgive him as if she were invisibly in the room and could puzzle out his thoughts.
–You have it all wrong, she says, sidling under the covers next to him. There’s never been anyone in my life but you.
–Is that right? he says. His exhilaration almost stopping his breath. He doesn’t dare reach out for her.
–Of course it’s not right, she says. I had a husband, I had other lovers, I had children. You were the farthest thing from my thoughts all those years. I said what I did just to see what you would make of it. You just think everything’s about you or we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
–Wait a minute, B says, why are you haunting me if I am the farthest thing from your thoughts? Huh?
She pretends to ignore him, which confirms him in his nostalgia.
He is aware that the conversation between them is delusion, but that doesn’t mean he is ready to give it up. She is facing away and he locks his arms around her from behind.
–I am not haunting you by choice, she says. This is all your selfish doing, you impossible man. After despoiling my daughter, I wouldn’t think you’d have the gall to talk to me again.
The more she abuses him (more or less, what difference does it make?), the happier it makes him. And B has never been a happy man except for a few barely acknowledged isolated moments.
Are you through with me? she asks. Can I go now?
–Never, he says.
And they go on that way, arguing over the dead past, announcing feelings or denying them, B with a commemorative hard-on, elated by nostalgia, until he wakes from this dream, or falls asleep in mid-sentence, losing her again once and for all, one or the other, whichever is truer to the story.
XII. OUTTAKES
My mother would say with a kind of embarrassed pride when she presented me to one of her friends that I was large for my age. It was not exactly true. In school, as I remember, when they lined us up in size place for the class picture, I was the fifth shortest boy in the class.
B offers this story about his mother in group after this smug guy, Phil, asks him why the only parent he ever talks about is his father.
–The reason you don’t think about your mom, Phil says, is that you’re so angry at her, it’s safer to shut her out.
B says, –Bullshit.
–Come on, Phil says. I can’t believe this is news to you. Your mother was the first woman to break your heart.
–You’re in denial, the woman he has a crush on in the group says.
Nothing gets B angrier than to be told he’s in denial. Nothing. –What am I denying? he asks the room. I happen to think there’s something sweet about a mother seeing her son as larger than other boys his age even if it was a false perception. She eventually lost her memory, my mother did, and this may have been the earliest stages. At some point, probably more gradually than we realized, she stopped being there, the inner person disappeared as if its only existence was the sum of its lost memories. Even when she was out of it and didn’t know who you were, she was gracious enough to pretend that she did. Everyone who knew my mother, without exception, liked her. The group is silent when he finishes this tirade and he looks around him fiercely, hoping to frighten off attack before it catches him unaware.
—
B woke abruptly from a dream of flight to find himself in bed—hers (theirs)—next to Heather, his friend Max’s wife. They were lying back to back, his right foot entwined with her left, though they were otherwise unconnected. The shock of being where he dared not go nearly stopped his heart. He couldn’t for the life of him recall the steps leading to his present disgrace. The first thing he did was peer at his watch—that is, the first thing after he carefully disentangled his foot—and it seemed to show ten after four, or possibly twenty after two. Having the time, even if imperfectly—it was too dark really to tell—gave him a purchase on reality. His idea was to get out of Max and Heather’s bed before Heather discovered him there, but on the other hand he didn’t feel much like moving. An enervating lethargy had settled in. It wasn’t so much that he was too comfortable to move as that he couldn’t imagine a preferable alternative. Going out in the cold to chase down his car—he had difficulty remembering these days where he parked—didn’t seem like much fun. The rash of red flowers that dotted the comforter that covered him to the waist seemed to glow in the dark.
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