by Anita Shreve
“I need a drink,” she said.
“Red? White?”
“White’s good.” She eyed the paltry spread on the island. “We have any good bread?” she asked, already accusing him. If one or the other was going to be late, a dinner was not expected, but a decent snack the size of, say, a French picnic was certainly not too much to ask.
Mike prayed that they did. He found a brick-hard third of a round in a drawer. He hacked off a slice and popped it into the toaster. He slid a bottle of pinot grigio from the fridge and opened it, hoping the good wine might mollify his wife. He poured Meg a large glass.
“My, we’re generous tonight,” she said.
“You looked whipped. Bad meeting?”
“Long, unbearable, and utterly unnecessary meeting,” she said. She scrutinized her husband. “You don’t look so hot yourself,” she added. She cocked her head. “You’ve been drinking?”
Mike nodded slowly. “I have.”
“Where?”
“Coggeshall and I went out for a few drinks.”
“You hate Coggeshall,” she said.
“I do. Hence the need for a large number of drinks.”
“What did he want?”
“Damned if I know,” Mike said. “Ostensibly we were talking about certain faculty members who aren’t measuring up. Not you.”
“Well, I think Larry’s on thin ice,” she said.
Mike nodded dumbly, condemning a man he’d hardly given any thought to. He was drunk. Or nearly there. And yet, as inebriated as he was, he had not been able to stifle those electrical impulses, all that agitation.
Meg scanned the meager meal. “This is it?”
“I just got back, too,” Mike said. “I’ll fix us a salad.”
“No, don’t,” she said. “I want to talk.”
A tiny fillip of fear passed through Mike’s chest.
“About?”
“Sit,” Meg said. She took a chair at the kitchen table. Mike leaned against the island.
“I want a baby,” Meg said with characteristic abruptness.
“You hate children,” Mike said too quickly.
“I hate children as a collective, not individual children.”
Mike knew the difference but pretended not to. He furrowed his forehead.
“I’m forty-three,” she announced. “I don’t have a minute to waste.”
Meg seemed determined. Would she demand that he perform right there in the kitchen? In a few minutes in the bedroom? The little fillip of fear that had passed through Mike’s heart dug in and waited.
“You must have thought about the issue,” she said, exasperated by his silence.
“I thought we had decided not to,” he said.
“That was five years ago.” She held out her wineglass for a refill. He suddenly realized he was not drunk enough. He poured Meg another generous glass and one for himself.
“Can I think about this?” Mike asked. “For a few days?”
“It’s an instinctual thing,” she said. “You won’t need a few days. And, as you are perfectly aware, my biological clock is ticking away over here.”
“Louise had her first child when she was forty-five,” he said, referring to a fellow teacher.
“And I remember thinking at the time that it was a sin because she’d be sixty-five when the boy was twenty.”
“When your child is twenty, you’ll be sixty-three,” he calculated and said aloud, instantly regretting his unkindness.
“I’ll be a very good sixty-three,” she said.
This was true. Meg was nothing if not in fine physical shape.
“What made you change your mind?” he asked gingerly.
“I’m tired of always watching over someone else’s kids. I think I could do a better job with our own. We’d probably be able to have only one, if even that.”
“I just . . . I just don’t know what to say,” Mike said.
“Well, think about me when you’re thinking about this: You could decide to have a kid when you’re fifty — though that would certainly be a sin — but I can’t. This is it for me. We might even have to go the whole fertility route if we don’t get pregnant the first couple of tries.”
“When exactly would . . .”
“The first try be? Sunday. I’ve been reading articles and books on this. There’s a lot of new research.” She paused and studied him. “Are you game?” she asked.
Mike felt as though he had no choice but to open his palms in a noncommittal gesture.
“This cheese is rancid,” she said, bending over the table and sniffing it. “You got anything else? I’m starved.”
Mike was tempted to point out that she was merely hungry. He wanted to be alone to think, but that would have to wait until he had fed his wife. Sunday was four days away, which was a kind of reprieve. He could not imagine how he would be able to say no to the woman standing across the island from him, now sniffing the olives as well. Did olives ever go bad?
“OK,” she said, “you think about it. We’ll talk tomorrow night.”
Tomorrow night, Mike thought, his head spinning. Tomorrow night, he had hoped to be happy.
Ellen
After stopping at the general store to buy toothbrushes, you pull into the parking lot of the first motel you come to, a motel you normally wouldn’t ever enter. Beside you is your eighteen-year-old son, wearing his maroon sweatshirt and his Red Sox baseball cap. He has not voluntarily said a word to you, though he has answered your rudimentary questions. “Do you have your books? Is that all you’re bringing?” You didn’t ask him if he wanted to spend the night in a motel with you. You announced it, just as you announced it to the headmaster’s secretary, not waiting for permission. You would not have your son staying in his dormitory another night, even though he has not formally been expelled. You wanted him with you. It was as ferocious a desire as you have had in some time, and it surprised and pleased you that this might still be possible: this ferocity, this desire. He is your son, and you will look after him, as indeed you now think you ought to have been doing all along. You refuse to think about the irony of having sent him away from home so that he would not be in harm’s way, only to have him end up in harm’s way. Worse. To have allowed him to cause the harm. A notion that never occurred to you before.
No, you will not think about irony just now. You have moved past irony. You tell your son, who is looking out the window, who has been looking out the window the entire ride, who will not look at you, that you’ll be right back. You find it remarkable that he has the wherewithal, the insolence, to wear his baseball cap backward.
A small thing, but a choice nevertheless.
There is no one in the office of the Mountain View Motel. You notice the small Formica desk, a chair in the corner, a maple table such as one might find in a doctor’s office, large enough for only a magazine and a tented card listing a variety of margaritas at a bar you guess must be nearby. You look for a bell to ring.
“Hello?” you call tentatively. “Hello?”
You hear a sound, a movement from a back room. A man with a belly like a large serving bowl comes through a door. He has been eating. He has a paper napkin balled in his hand.
“I need a room,” you say. “My son and I.”
It occurs to you suddenly that the man may not believe you; he may think you are covering for an affair with an underage child.
“He’s from the school,” you say, instantly regretting that admission, too. Perhaps the locals hate the school. You don’t know anything about town-and-gown relations. It never seemed important to you before.
“My son and I,” you begin again, “need a room.”
“For how long?” the man asks.
You don’t know. Until Friday, the day of the disciplinary hearing? Is your son allowed to be away from school that long? Will you take him back to his dorm tomorrow? The news of the tape will be campus-wide, will it not? A moment of panic seizes you, and you involuntarily bring your purse to your sto
mach and press hard.
“Two nights,” you say, though the prospect of spending two nights in a room with your son, who will not speak to you, who will not even look at you, seems an impossibility.
The man, perhaps impatient to get back to his dinner, names a sum. You mention you will need twin beds. If the man hears you, he does not acknowledge the request. You wonder if you should repeat it. He asks you for a card and you sign. He gives you a plastic key inside an envelope with the room number on it.
“Do you know of a good place to get some dinner?” you ask, and as he is answering, you think about the reality of sitting across another Formica table from your son, his eyes expertly avoiding yours. “How about pizza?” you ask. Pizza in the room might be bearable, you think, though you cannot imagine eating anything at the moment.
You return to the car and drive to the parking space meant for your room. You get out of the car with your purse and put the key in the lock. Rob, behind you, has a backpack slung over his shoulder, his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt. He is obedient in the way a prisoner might be. Giving only what is absolutely necessary.
The room has two narrow twin beds, each covered with a dark paisley print quilt. You reach to turn on a lamp between the beds, but it doesn’t work. Your son finds the switch for the overhead light and then drops his backpack on one of the beds, claiming it. He immediately walks into the bathroom. There is no closet in the room, merely a rod with coat hangers, over which one can draw a plaid curtain. You hang up your coat. You don’t want to call your husband.
When your son returns from the bathroom, he sets his back-pack on the floor and lies on the bed, splayed like a cadaver. He wears his chinos a little looser now. You can see several inches of his boxers. He throws an arm over his eyes, so that he cannot see you or the ceiling or the future. You walk into the bathroom and wash your hands, drying them with the thin towel hanging from a bar over the toilet. You have not spent a night alone with your son in a motel room in years. On holiday trips, Rob usually brings a friend, and they have a room adjacent to the one you share with your husband.
Arthur.
Who should be called.
You have not stayed in a motel room such as this since childhood — though it feels familiar to you. You could have described it before you entered, could even have described the texture of the thin towel. When you walk back into the room, you sit at the edge of the bed closest to your son.
“Is it true?” you ask.
After all, it might not be. It might all be an elaborate misunderstanding.
Your son turns away from you and faces the wall.
You could demand answers. You could demand he look at you. You could ask, Why? Could he articulate the Why? Could he say?
You bite the inside of your cheek. You know instinctively that to cry now is to lose it altogether.
You find your cell phone in your purse. You call your husband.
Noelle
In November, Silas and I drive to a party at which there are day students as well as boarders. Silas takes a drink, and so do I. We dance. I have never seen him dance before. Although he is as sleek and graceful as a cat on the basketball court, he is a bad dancer, and I laugh at him. He laughs, too, and we dance again. I become aware of people watching us. Noelle and Silas, they are thinking. We are a couple. It feels as though we have taken something precious and put it on display. Silas feels it, and I feel it. This is supposed to be normal, but I think that who we are together is in danger of being cheapened.
I remember everything. I remember the first time we stop at the Mobil station, and Silas gets out of the car to fill the gas tank. When he is done, he goes inside the store and buys me a doughnut. His aunt makes the doughnuts, he says, and they are best at about six o’clock at night, just when they are starting to go really stale. Silas smells of gasoline. I break the doughnut in half, give the rest to him. I kiss him. He tastes now of sugar and spices. Silas walks back into the Mobil station to buy more doughnuts to get more kisses. He buys all the doughnuts that are left. We drive up into the mountains, eating doughnuts and laughing. We eat until we both feel a little sick.
Silas has a heavy beard, even though he shaves every day. After we kiss, my mouth is raw.
In late November, there is a snowstorm. Boarders have school because they can walk to classes, but some of them pretend they can’t. Day students are excused. Silas drives to school, even though the roads are terrible and he doesn’t have his snow tires yet. The day-student parking lot is not even plowed, and Silas has to leave his car at the gym. I go to my English class, and there are only three people in it. We chat with Mr. Taylor about what we are all going to do for Thanksgiving break, but Mr. Taylor looks as though he wishes he could go home and crawl back into bed.
When I leave the classroom, Silas is standing in the hall. I am so glad to see him, I hug him right there in the doorway. A day without Silas is an empty day, good only for finishing homework or for practicing.
Silas has on a quilted parka and a maroon knit cap. His nose is reddened, and he has forgotten to shave. I know that he didn’t come to school to turn in a paper or to take a test. He has come for me. I want to kiss him right there in the hallway, with the dead white light from the windows all around us. Ms. Epstein and Mr. Taylor are talking in a corner, but Mr. Taylor keeps looking over at Silas and me, as if we had signaled to him.
Silas drives me to Bennington, where I am to be in a recital. In the car, he keeps his hand on the thigh of my skirt while I picture my fingering over and over again. We do not talk. Silas knows I am nervous, so he doesn’t ask me if I am nervous. In this way, I learn not to ask him questions before a game.
The road is white at either side, full of wet grit and salt that sprays all over the windshield when a truck passes. There are days when Vermont is almost unbearably grim, and it is all you can do not to get into a car and drive out of the state. I will be playing with college students, and when I picture myself up on the stage, my mouth goes dry and my breath gets shallow. Silas doesn’t say, You’ll be fine, and I like it that he doesn’t lie.
During the concert, I can see Silas sitting at the back of the small auditorium. He looks nervous, the way he does at a football game when the score is too close. I think he must be like a parent watching his child perform on a stage — it’s worse for the parent than for the child.
When the recital is over, Silas is jubilant, elated. He takes my face in both hands and kisses me on the mouth in full view of Ms. Irving, my music tutor, who doesn’t seem too happy to see Silas. She has notes for me, she always has notes for me, but the notes can wait. Silas thinks I was wonderful.
For my birthday, just before the Christmas break, Silas asks me if he can take me to dinner. There is only one good restaurant within a thirty-mile radius of Avery. He says he has made a reservation.
I have never been on a real date before, and I am guessing Silas hasn’t either. I wear a white top and a black skirt and a pair of ballet flats. I have to wear my parka over my shirt because my good coat is at home in Boston. I brush my hair and trim my bangs, and then I decide to give myself a razor cut on the sides, which turns out awful, and so I stop.
I meet Silas in the common room. He is dressed in a navy sport coat and a blue dress shirt with khakis. He has on an overcoat, like a grown man would wear, and he looks so handsome and sexy, it is all I can do not to touch the front of his shirt. There are kids in the common room watching reruns of The Simpsons, and they stare at us as if we might be going to a funeral.
The melting snow soaks my ballet flats before I even reach the car. My feet turn bright red with cold. Silas apologizes for the fact that the heater in the car is pathetic. He reaches around and gives me a blanket to make a nest for my feet.
When we get to the inn, a man takes our coats. Silas tugs at the cuffs of his shirt. I fix my skirt, aligning the zipper with my spine. My feet are still pink. Silas asks for a table near the fireplace, and maybe the waiter really likes the
look of Silas because we are given a good table right in front of the hearth. The restaurant is small and expensive, but I can see, even in the low light, the way the curtain has been stapled to the wall, the way the electric wires run along the baseboard. To one end of the dining room is a bar that looks like an English pub. I order a Diet Coke and Silas orders water. Before we have even looked at the menu, Silas brings a small blue velvet box from the inside pocket of his sport coat. For one panicky minute, I think he is going to ask me to marry him. Maybe I gasp, because the bartender looks over. Silas puts the box on the table in front of me.
“I didn’t have any wrapping paper,” he says.
I am afraid when I open the box, but then I am relieved. Two tiny studs wink up at me in their white satin bed. The earrings are set with zircons, my birthstone. Some people might think it is a corny gift, but when I put the earrings on, I feel beautiful, as if my ears are twinkling.
I go away for Christmas break, and though I love my family, I am homesick for Silas. I think that must be what happens when you fall in love. The boy is home now; the family is away. I am so homesick, I go back to school a day early, which we are allowed to do if we are athletes or if we need the practice rooms. I text Silas to tell him I have arrived, and he comes at once. We go straight up to my dorm room, even though this is a major school violation. The RA is listening to music down the hall. I know she is resentful that she had to come back a day early because of me, and I think she is pretending to still be on vacation.
Silas and I fall onto the bed, and we kiss. We go through a lot of doors that afternoon. This door and that door and this door.
Mike
Mike sat at the desk in his glass box atop the inn. He set down his pen. He wanted to be able to do justice to the next part of his story — that of Anna and him — but he found that writing about love wasn’t easy. It seemed that no matter where he headed, he was confronted with clichés or phrases so worn, they had lost their meaning. He couldn’t easily describe sex. Wasn’t it enough, he wondered, simply to be able to remember and not recall it in words on a piece of paper? But no, it was an important part of his story, perhaps the most important part for him personally, and to be hasty there seemed a kind of moral laziness. The cost had been very great, and if Mike was to be entirely honest with himself, which he was determined to do in this document, he had to admit that the affair, however brief, however incandescent, had been the catalyst for much that followed.
