“Just a feeling.” Although as she said it, she realized that the feeling she’d had that morning had faded significantly; what she felt now was mainly defiance against her sister. “Also this Claude person is persistent—he telephoned the gallery when I didn’t respond to the emails.”
“He will stop, though, if you don’t respond,” said Edward. “Right? Sullivan will handle it.” There was a tinge there of condescension, as though Sullivan were her trusty Saint Bernard. But then, a minute before, Laura had likened him to an engine part.
“I guess I’m curious,” she said. “I mean, what would the angle be?”
“Money,” Edward said baldly.
“I’m sure you’re right.”
His eyebrows asked for him: But?
“But—my mother wouldn’t ignore it.” There it was; that was the kernel of the matter. She scraped her knife through the sauce on her plate and watched the line fill in, hearing her mother’s admonition across the decades: Don’t play with your food. “I know I should delete the email and forget about it. But she wouldn’t.” She looked up at Edward. “What do you think?”
He didn’t respond immediately, frowning down at his plate as though scrutinizing the remnants of his dinner. Laura knew his legal mind was ratcheting and processing, choosing language that would convey his meaning as precisely as possible. Others might cheerlead Go for it or Listen to your heart, with a gushing, easy volubility that had all the depth of a social media Like, but for Edward, delivering an opinion was a commitment.
“I think that you’re under no obligation to chase this particular wild goose,” he said. “Even if your mother would choose to chase it.” A gentle smile as he took up his water glass. “And even if your sister wouldn’t.”
A lawyerly way to say Make up your own mind. Laura laid her silverware across her empty plate, wondering whether Edward’s work problem had been knotty enough to have inspired dessert.
Edward put his water glass down, cleared his throat. “Martin asked me today if my girlfriend would be attending the partner dinner on Saturday.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Laura said.
“My girlfriend,” repeated Edward. “That word. At my age. It sounds so… flighty.”
Flighty he was not. Edward lived by Flaubert’s philosophy, Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. Edward’s original violence required an alarm at 5:40 a.m. each weekday, ablutions and breakfast and on the road by a quarter to seven, carrying the same steel travel coffee cup that had been brought home and washed out and left on the drainboard the night before. Why waste precious thought choosing a cup every morning? After reliable purveyors of shirts, socks, and underwear had been found, why seek others? Serial killer closet, Sullivan had commented after Laura described the row of identical button-downs and slacks to him, back when she and Edward were new.
“Martin could just use my name,” Laura said. “He’s known me for six years.” She added, “You know he does this kind of thing to goad you.”
“Maybe so,” he said with a hint of surprise. Although his career butted him up daily against politicians and other criminals, he never assumed the worst of people. “Still.” He was fussing at his plate, brows knitted, scraping some pearls of quinoa together with the tip of his knife.
“What is it?” she said. Although suddenly she knew.
How could she have been so stupid? It wasn’t a work problem that was preoccupying Edward. The flowers, the nicely set table, his nervousness. She knew. She knew, even though she’d had only one marriage proposal in her life before, and that was decades ago and totally different, Adam going down on one knee with a tiny box in his trembling hand, his voice fracturing with emotion.
“We’re happy together,” Edward said. His knife pushing, pushing the grains into a damp little hill. He shot a glance up at her. “I mean, I’m happy.”
“We’re happy,” she said.
“And it has been six years.” He laid the knife down and put his hand out to capture hers. “At our age, it’s not a big jump. It’s not like skydiving.” A smile fluttered at the corners of his mouth. “More like stepping down from a curb.”
She looked down at her fingers trapped in his. Paint rimed one of her fingernails, Sap Green that had stubbornly prevailed against the mineral spirits, the long shower, the scrubbing with a nailbrush. Rough, dry, big-knuckled, these were not the hands of a bride.
“Why can’t we just continue as we are?” she said.
It was terrible to watch the hope drain from Edward’s face, see it replaced by disappointment and hurt. What was wrong with her, blurting it out like that? Perhaps the long, solitary hours in the studio these many years had eroded her social skills. Or simply too much wine with dinner.
“We’re happy as we are,” she said, squeezing his hand. “As you said. We’re happy.”
He gripped back briefly, then pulled his fingers from hers and took the napkin from his lap, put it onto the table.
“Maybe Shelby was right,” he said with a tight, rueful smile. “I should have had a ring.” Shelby. So he’d talked to his daughter about this. “I told her you didn’t wear jewelry on your hands because of the paint.” He stood up, lifting his plate and reaching for hers, carrying both into the kitchen.
Laura could imagine Shelby, who was as forthright as Edward was reserved, telling him Dad, don’t be a dope, it doesn’t matter about the paint, women are magpies, we like shiny things. Shelby’s mother, Edward’s wife, Elaine, was dead for years yet still part of the world in her vibrant, good-hearted daughter, as well as other ways: the stained-glass panel across the top of Edward’s kitchen window that glowed a jewel pattern onto the floor in the light of morning, the layout of the garden beds. Elaine had made Edward a good home. Which he had cherished, and which now he was offering to Laura. She and Edward spent most nights together in this house. Wasn’t he simply suggesting the natural next step?
She followed him into the kitchen, where he was scraping the plates into the step-bin.
“I don’t need a ring,” she said to his back. “I don’t need the piece of paper either.” After all, the ring and the paper had meant nothing to Adam. She’d learned recently that he’d married again, to a woman barely thirty. Laura hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry when she had the realization that on that long-ago day when Adam was down on one knee stammering his eternal devotion to Laura, his future second wife was two years away from being born.
“Do you realize that you never call me just to check in?” said Edward. He let the bin lid drop, set the plates in the sink. “Just to ask how I am doing?”
“Do you want me to do that?” She’d liked that they weren’t like other couples, relentlessly checking with each other all the time. She’d also liked, she realized, the Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday template of their dates, the element of spontaneity it granted to the rest of the week. Seeing him always felt like a choice happily made.
“When you disappear into your work, it sometimes feels like I disappear for you too.” He turned on the tap, pulled the spray nozzle out of the end of the faucet, and directed it over the dishes. “It isn’t just paper,” he said. Raising his voice a little above the sound of the water. “And it’s not what the paper means. It’s what the absence of the paper means.”
“It means nothing,” she said. She put her arms around him, laid her head against his back. “It means that we’re happy without it.” She felt his shoulder blade moving under her face as he reached forward to turn off the tap.
“I want us to be married,” he said, his voice thrumming against her cheek. He turned in her arms and looked down at her. “I know it’s old-fashioned. I’m old-fashioned.”
“Not that old-fashioned,” she said, smiling up at him. “Not like take-your-name old-fashioned.” Her voice teasing. She hadn’t even taken Adam’s surname, and back then she hadn’t yet sold a painting.
“I wouldn’t ask that,” Edward said.
H
is voice held a wistfulness that surprised her; the flood of rage she felt hearing it surprised her more. His emphasis on ask felt like an assault. He wanted to swallow her identity up into his? She took a step back, out of his arms.
“I want us to live in the same house,” he continued earnestly, oblivious to her reaction. “You could keep your house, of course, for the studio, and stay there whenever you wanted.”
“Thank you,” she said, unable to stop the sarcasm that shot out of her like a slim angry knife.
He blinked, perceiving her animosity. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. He turned, opened the dishwasher, began slotting the rinsed items into it. “I don’t want to change much. I just want us to be official.” Dropping the cutlery into the basket in separate tiny jolts. “I don’t want my obituary to include the words longtime companion.”
Obituary. “Is this about Geoff?” One of Edward’s friends had unexpectedly dropped dead the month before; he’d been a couple of years younger than Edward.
“Not entirely. But his death has made me think about what I want.” He corrected himself, “What I need.”
“This feels less like a proposal than an ultimatum,” she said.
“I did this all wrong,” he said, vexed. “Shelby is going to kill me.”
* * *
“Edward’s asked me to marry him,” Laura told her mother the next day, at the house in the quiet neighborhood in Northwest Washington now known as Forest Hills. It hadn’t been called that when she grew up there. It hadn’t been called anything. When the Metro had come in the 1980s, spreading across the area like a crack in a windshield, existing neighborhoods like Cleveland Park and Friendship Heights and Foggy Bottom became Metro stops, and then steadily, like a catalyzed reaction, the rest of the city coagulated into boundaried shapes with names. Real-estate agents had accelerated the process, seizing upon posh-sounding monikers like Crestwood and Berkley and validating their use, and sometime while Laura was in college, or sometime after that, the trapezoid between Connecticut Avenue and Rock Creek became Forest Hills.
Laura and Genevieve were sitting out on the screened porch, overlooking the side garden. The azalea was at peak, making its blaze against the far wall, and bees toiled among the near flowerbeds. Laura watched a tall coneflower swaying just outside the screen, a bumblebee hugging the yellow-gumdrop center and scrambling pollen against its belly. The property was a marvel in spring. As a child, Laura had been unimpressed by her first American winter—cold and snow had seemed part and parcel of the unwelcoming strangeness of the return—but spring had been a magnificent surprise, the dead land resurrecting in a way she had never seen. It was a reliable annual miracle. Everywhere she looked now, things were budding and blooming. From here, she couldn’t see any lassitude on the part of the gardener. Goddamn Beatrice anyway.
“How wonderful,” said Genevieve. “Have you set a date?” Was it cruel, having this conversation? Her mother wouldn’t remember it tomorrow. “There’s a narrow window, of course, if you want to have it outside.”
“We’re not outside-wedding people,” said Laura. Of course, they might not be wedding people at all. They’d agreed last night to shelve the subject, put a pin in it as Edward had said; they’d both pretended that everything was all right. But it wasn’t all right.
“Good for you,” said Genevieve. “All the bugs, and everyone’s heels sinking into the grass.” Her face became thoughtful. “The InterContinental has a generator. They do book up fast in the rainy season, though.”
“We don’t have to worry about a generator. Or the rainy season.” To the uncertainty that flitted across her mother’s face, she said, “We’re in Washington.” And the old Siam InterContinental had been demolished decades ago, she didn’t add.
“Well, that’s convenient,” said Genevieve.
She doesn’t lay down new memory, the neurologist had explained to the daughters at the time of diagnosis four years before. He’d added with an apologetic air that he couldn’t be more specific about what type of dementia it was. It didn’t behave exactly like Alzheimer’s, which kept long-term memory intact well into the process, nor like Pick’s disease, which came with characteristic MRI findings, nor Lewy body dementia with accompanying Parkinsonian traits. Laura hadn’t known that there were so many eponymous ways to be senile.
The damage wasn’t limited to Genevieve’s frontal lobes (the doctor pointed to the pinched tops of the walnut-looking brain on the MRI, then moved his hand in a loose claw around his forehead); it was more scattershot. The result was a stunning erasure, great swaths of memory taken and occasionally, unpredictably restored, like an electrical short buzzing on and off. Which meant that Genevieve’s social behavior was fundamentally preserved, and casual conversation with her could often seem quite normal. Probably that had helped to delay the diagnosis, said the neurologist.
He’d brought Beatrice and Laura into his office to discuss his findings. She was where? he’d said, frowning down at the referral letter from the primary doctor. After hearing the details, he’d maintained an air of slight reproach, clearly feeling that the daughters had been wickedly irresponsible to let their elderly mother travel so far from home. As if anyone could have stopped her. It doesn’t matter what it’s called, Bea had said. Is there any treatment? The doctor’s expression had answered before he opened his mouth to reply.
“I don’t know if I want to get married,” Laura said now.
“Why not?” asked Genevieve. Simply curious. No undercurrent of At your age, it’s astonishing that anyone is asking. This unlayered, gentle inquiry was so unlike Genevieve in her prime that Laura felt pierced anew by loss. She was reminded of what Edward had said: it’s what the absence means.
“I don’t know,” Laura said. “He’s sweet to me, and we’re very companionable. It’s hard to think of my life without him.” For that seemed to be the alternative. She and Edward had retreated from the cliff edge, had turned their backs on it, but now they knew it was there. “Still. I panic when I think about it.” There it was again, that threatened feeling of being swallowed, of being ingested and made null. She hadn’t felt that when Adam proposed—but when she looked back, she could see how juiceless and rote that decision had been, how she and Adam had been simply doing the expected, following some heteronormative pathway laid down over centuries, like a pheromone track for an unthinking column of ants, love and marriage and baby carriage.
“Is there a spark?” said Genevieve. “You know what I mean.” She raised her eyebrows, those two delicate paintbrush strokes above her still-brilliant blue eyes. “Are you compatible physically?”
“That part of things is quite good, actually,” said Laura, feeling prudish and uncomfortable. Never in her long life had Genevieve alluded to sex in Laura’s presence.
“Well then,” said Genevieve, leaning back again, flapping a hand. “That’s not everything, but it is important.” She lifted her iced tea glass and pursed her mouth at the straw, but an exhaled breath made it slide around the curve of the rim and she didn’t quite capture it.
Laura leaned forward, caught the straw and held it steady between two fingers. Genevieve laughed, as if Laura had done something inexplicable and amusing.
“Have some iced tea,” prompted Laura.
Genevieve sipped obediently. “I think that’s gone off,” she said, releasing the straw with a moue.
Laura took the glass from her and put it onto the table. There was nothing wrong with the tea; her own tasted fine. Their taste buds can change, the doctor had said. They’ll like things very sweet or very salty; they might dislike things that they’ve always enjoyed. So what’s left of the self, wondered Laura, after personality traits and memory and personal preferences have all been taken away? When does one stop being the same person?
Genevieve hadn’t yet transformed in some ways Laura and Bea had been warned to expect: no combativeness or paranoia or incontinence. At this stage, she most resembled a forgetful Girl Scout: polite, cheerful
, and resilient, folding new facts into an invented narrative and then forgetting the whole thing, letting it go like someone dropping a package into a stream. Not for the first time, Laura wondered if loving this softer Genevieve as much as she did constituted a betrayal of the mother who’d raised her.
“Bea and I are in disagreement about something,” Laura said. Another freedom of conversation with Genevieve 2.0: non sequitur was totally acceptable. “I’m nearly at the point of eeny-meeny-miney-moe.”
“Catch a tiger by the toe,” said Genevieve.
“Exactly,” said Laura. “I know what Bea would do. And I know what you would do.” The old Genevieve, she meant; who knew about the new one? “I’m trying to figure out what I should do.”
Genevieve took the iced tea glass from the little table beside her.
“Well, what’s the downside?” she said with the glass halfway raised, and when Laura didn’t answer right away she lowered it and explained, enunciating carefully as though to a foreigner. “Consider the worst possible outcome, and the degree of risk you’re willing to bear that it will come to pass. Doing that will often make a difficult decision quite easy.” She raised the glass again, nimbly caught and held the straw between two fingers, took a long pull of tea.
The lucidity was startling and sudden. Was it just a bit of the past, hiccuping up whole into Genevieve’s consciousness like a tangled knot of kelp rising to the surface of the ocean? Or had the shorting circuits made a true connection—was Laura actually conversing with the old Genevieve?
“That’s a good way to think about it,” Laura said, cautious, as if trying not to frighten off a bird that was hopping toward her hand. “There isn’t really a downside.”
“There you are, then,” said Genevieve in that same crisp voice. She took another sip of the tea and grimaced. “That’s gone off, we’ll need to tell someone.” She looked around, as though for a waitress. The old Genevieve, glimpsed so briefly, was gone again. In a hotel lounge, perhaps. There had been so many hotel and airport lounges in her history, so many club sandwiches and iced teas.
What Could Be Saved Page 2
