The Easy Way Out

by Stephen McCauley

  I was telling Sharon about the dinner during the commercial breaks of Jeopardy. Sharon, like Ryan, was an avid watcher, a fanatic, even. I was fairly certain she was intellectually capable of achieving almost anything she set her mind to, but she seemed to have only one clear ambition: to appear as a guest on the show. She claimed she’d never be allowed on because she was informed enough to send the network into bankruptcy. She did know the answers (or the questions, or whatever the silly format demanded) to almost everything. She’d rant at the contestants and then, as soon as a commercial came on, hit the mute button on her remote and engage in conversations with me as if there’d been no interruptions.

  “What did the sharks say when you were driving them home?” she asked.

  “Who knows? They were fighting, one in the back seat, one in the front. I couldn’t make out the content.”

  “Probably just as well. Poor Ryan. Those battles must drive him crazy.”

  “I guess. Although he’s used to them by now. I tried to call Tony and confess that I’d let Vivian out of the bag, but he doesn’t seem to be around. Maybe he’s moved in with her.”

  “Unlikely.”

  She clicked on the volume of the TV and grew increasingly agitated as some poor soul answered everything incorrectly. “Idiot,” she mumbled. “Did you hear that, Patrick? ‘Where is Mozambique?’ Ha! Where’s your brain? Please.” The idiot in question was a delightful little nubbin of a human being with a Fu Manchu mustache and, apparently, the intelligence of an Easter egg. He kept leaping on his buzzer even though he didn’t seem to have a clue about the answers. Sharon sat up on the sofa, stubbed out her cigarette, and tossed back her hair. “If I could only get on this show, I could retire. I’d move to Oregon, grow dope, and watch the rest of the world implode. Mozambique! What kind of a world are we living in? And did you catch that other genius? ‘Who are Leopold and Loeb?’ Try Lerner and Loewe, moron. And she’s a teacher, Patrick. Did you catch that? She thinks Leopold and Loeb wrote the score to Camelot. That’s priceless, absolutely priceless.”

  “Unbelievable,” I said, shaking my head. My guess would have been Rodgers and Hammerstein, a fact I didn’t reveal.

  I settled back and watched the show in guarded silence. For as long as I’d known her, Sharon’s background had been a bit of a mystery to me. What I knew for certain was that she’d grown up in Los Angeles and gone to school at Radcliffe. Her mother was an elementary school teacher and her father taught history at UCLA. She claimed that she’d decided to sever ties with them close to twenty years earlier, right after she graduated from college, because she was sick of being held back by their pretensions. Other times she hinted that they had cut ties with her because they considered her life an embarrassment. When we were living together, she did get infrequent calls from California, and more than once I’d heard her weeping in her bedroom afterward. She had an older brother, whom she rarely mentioned. She usually received a Christmas package from “The Driscolls” in Fort Lauderdale, her brother and his family, I assume. Over the years, I’d heard veiled hints of alcoholism, tax evasion, and darker family secrets, but it was impossible to pin her down on facts; if pressed, she’d simply state that she didn’t like to talk about any of it and shove the conversation in another direction. Whatever the truth, she obviously clung to many of her parents’ expectations and standards, even if she applied them to TV game shows. I suspect she liked to watch the program just to prove to herself that she was more informed than the majority of the contestants. Maybe that was the only reason anyone watched it. If I’d admitted that I didn’t know the correct response to the last question, she would have generously forgiven me, but only because we were friends.

  Sharon was always loyal to her friends, even when they disappointed her.

  * * *

  “Now listen,” she said at the next commercial break, “Tony is one thing, but Ryan is the one who concerns me. What are you planning to do for him?”

  “For Ryan?”

  “He’s being eaten alive by sharks, Patrick. Something has to be done.”

  “I’m not ready to take on Ryan.”

  She pulled her knees in toward her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. It was a surprisingly agile and childlike gesture. “I think I should meet Ryan,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve seen the rest of the circus; I might as well meet him. I like the sound of him. I can’t stand to see good people treated the way he’s being treated. Someone’s got to help him out of the dungeon.”

  “He’s not your type, Sharon, I promise.”

  “That wasn’t what I was thinking. But I know lots of women who’d love to meet a gentle puppy like your brother.”

  “Ryan doesn’t need a dog trainer.”

  Taking responsibility for introducing Sharon to Ryan sent chills down my spine. I could picture my brother collapsed in fits of nervous laughter, listening to her conversation. Sharon was exactly the sort of person who’d intimidate him into a panic. She was too open and confrontational. I could hear her pummeling him with embarrassing questions about his marriage and his sex life with Elaine. Besides, I was convinced that Ryan needed to hook himself up with someone who’d allow him to take care of her. Even Stacy, his four-year-old daughter, had started to mother him.

  I couldn’t think of a way to say all that without risking an insult. Sharon pulled a calendar out from under the sofa, and we set a date for dinner at my place. With luck, she and Arthur would be so locked in argument, she wouldn’t have time to take on my brother.

  * * *

  When Jeopardy was over, Sharon led me into the kitchen and threw together one of her famous stews. She tossed almost everything that was in the refrigerator and half of what was on the shelves into an enormous pot, dumped in spices and hot peppers, stirred, and heated. She was wearing a navy-blue Laura Ashley jumper over a black peasant blouse she’d bought on a trip to Greece. The jumper had been given to her by a client who’d lost twenty pounds and could no longer wear it. The blouse had unmanageably wide sleeves with tassels on the cuffs, which kept falling into the stew as she tasted. In twenty minutes, she was serving up steaming portions of the stuff in deep mismatched bowls. These stews were among the most improbably delicious things I’d ever tasted. I’d tried making one or two myself, but the efforts always failed. Such subtleties as the sleeves probably made the difference.

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” she asked, watching me eat a spoonful.

  “Delicious.”

  “Of course it is. I’m a great cook. Great cooks make great meals, that’s what they do.” Sharon considered false modesty an insult and a waste of time. “I should open a restaurant. I could retire from the travel business, move to Maine, and open a nice little restaurant. People would kill for food this good.” She tasted a spoonful and shook her hands. “God, that’s fantastic. Where do you think I learned to cook like this? By the way, I give Roberta ten minutes, tops, before she’s down here sniffing.”

  “Does she ever cook?”

  “She lives on caffeine. That and the scraps she nibbles all day long. She stirs peanut butter and seeds and I shudder to think what else in little cups and squirrels them off to her bedroom.” Sharon actually did shudder. “Every time I boil water she promenades down. Ben did all the cooking. Cleaning, too, from the looks of her room.”

  “If you want my opinion,” I said, “I think you should ask her to leave. You’ve kicked people out of here before.”

  “The house is too big. I hate the thought of one single person using up so much housing space.” She refilled her bowl from the bubbling caldron and ate leaning against the stove. “I never used to think about it, but lately I’ve been getting lonely here. Too many empty rooms all around me.”

  This second admission of loneliness in less than two hours was unprecedented. “Still, it might be better without some horror like Roberta,” I said.

  “Maybe. Next time I’ll try to get some rich housewife from Wellesley to
move in. The type who’s looking for a little bohemian garret away from her husband and ends up having Bloomingdale’s redecorate the place for her before she moves in. That way I’ll be left with something when she goes back to the old man.” She spooned out more stew for me and set the bowl on the table. “Tell me if you want me to bring anything to this dinner with Ryan. The last time I was over your place, I had to stop for pizza on the way home. I think you served Jell-O.”

  “Impossible.”

  Roberta clomped into the kitchen and rinsed out her thermos. She made a great show of scrubbing and drying it before she went to the stove and sniffed. “Fantastic.”

  Sharon frowned at me. “Help yourself, Berta. There’s plenty.”

  “I’ll have a taste,” she said. She filled something the size of a demitasse and sipped delicately. “Fantastic. But you can tell Sharon’s a good cook by the way she looks. Robust, healthy. God, I wish I could let myself go the way you do. So what’s the discussion down here?”

  “My brothers,” I said. “One’s getting married and one isn’t.”

  “Brothers. I happen to know a lot about brothers. My brother is the one who introduced me to Ben. Can you believe it? They were college roommates. This from my own flesh and blood.”

  Sharon shook her head wearily. “I’ve heard this, Roberta. In fact, I’d guess I’ve heard it three times.”

  “‘Michael,’ I said to him, ‘I am not interested in meeting some roommate of yours.’ Next thing you know, I’ve been married ten years. Ten years! You want to hear a synopsis of the ten years of my marriage, Patrick?”

  “He doesn’t have time,” Sharon said. Roberta merely hugged her, as if she, Sharon, had been joking.

  “We met,” she said, her arms around Sharon, rocking her from side to side, “fell in love, moved in together, got married, got to know each other, got sick of each other, and fell out of love. As for the next nine years, they’re a blur.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t until after dinner, when it was late and the house was turning cold and Sharon was getting bored and restless and—I knew the signs—eager for me to leave, that I mentioned, in as casual a way as I could manage, that I was going to New York that weekend. It took a fair amount of throat-clearing before I got the words out. Sharon gave me one of her frowning looks of dismay, and I quickly told her that I was planning to fly under the name S. Driscoll so she could get the points on her frequent flier account.

  “I accept,” she told me, “but that doesn’t mean I approve. I still think you’re making a mistake.”

  “Approve?” I said, as if the thought had never crossed my mind. “What makes you think I’m looking for approval? I’m just letting you know in case you need to get in touch with me.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind. Anyway, I’m going to bed. You can stay as late as you like. Just leave quietly.”

  Part

  • • •

  3

  Fifteen

  In the days before I left for New York, I called Tony repeatedly, but he was never at home. His answering machine had an impersonal recording of a computerized voice, something that had come with the tape. “I am sorry,” it announced, “there is no one to answer your call at this time. At the sound of the tone, please speak loudly and clearly.” I’d never had the courage to respond. Although I was annoyed he’d told Rita about the house, I was a lot more concerned about my own, greater indiscretion, and I figured I should get a confession out of the way as quickly as possible.

  When I called Ryan to invite him to dinner, I asked if he had any news of Tony’s whereabouts. “Your parents seem to think he’s in Miami on business,” he said. “Tony’s got all the luck. I’d give anything to spend a few days in Miami.”

  “Don’t waste your envy,” I told him. “It used to be nice, but now it’s close to a hundred degrees every day, and it hasn’t rained for at least a decade. By the year 2000, the city will be uninhabitable.”

  “Go on, Patrick. Don’t you remember Jackie Gleason used to call it the Sun and Fun Capital of the World?” Jackie Gleason and Jimmy Piersall, the Red Sox player whose father drove him to a nervous breakdown, were Ryan’s childhood heroes. “Between you and me, Pat, I hope you get Tony before your parents do. He should at least be warned the lovebirds know about this other gal.”

  “Vivian,” I reminded him.

  “No names, please. It seems more loyal to Loreen if I think of this new one as ‘the other woman.’ Not that I’m thinking of her very much.”

  Ryan was enthusiastic about the dinner. He laughed uproariously when I asked him if he could make a particular night, as if the idea that he might have other plans was absurd. Most of Ryan’s friends were either dour, alcoholic bachelors he knew from high school days (many of whom still lived with their parents) or married couples he and Elaine had met at childbirth classes. Elaine socialized with the latter, and even Ryan found the former too depressing to spend time with. He spent his evenings in the basement, watching game shows and sporting events on cable TV. He was always about to join the YMCA, or “one of those goddamned gyms,” but he never did.

  “Promise me one thing,” Ryan said. “Just promise me you’re not trying to fix me up with this Sharon. I’ve heard too many stories already, and the last thing I need right now is some kind of matchmaking deal to complicate my life.”

  “Ryan, you know there isn’t much I can say with honesty, but I can honestly say I am not trying to fix you up with Sharon.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. Or a disappointment. Something, anyway.”

  * * *

  The Friday I was to leave to visit Jeffrey, the rattling of the bedroom windows woke me. I got up from my air mattress, lifted the venetian blind, and saw a threatening sky. It was my favorite kind of late-March weather—bleak. I even like the sound of the word “bleak”; it’s so reassuringly harsh. There was a chill in the room, which made me hope it might even be a few degrees below the normal high temperature, which for that particular date was 46 degrees in Boston, 48 in New York.

  I was planning to leave on the Pan Am shuttle right after work. The Trump would have been marginally more convenient, and they were giving away pens on each flight, but I didn’t want to risk flying on a morally bankrupt airline. I’d packed my knapsack the night before. All I had to do was take a shower, get dressed, and sneak out. On the weekends I went to New York, I always tried to leave the apartment long before Arthur got up, to reduce my feelings of guilt, feelings Arthur might easily have exacerbated by following me from room to room, making sure I’d packed a toothbrush, a towel, and clean underwear. Arthur could play me like a pinball machine. Whenever he sensed I was drifting, he’d either turn mercilessly kind or do something Arthurishly inept, like accidentally sticking his finger in the socket as he changed a light bulb or starting a fire while making toast.

  Before leaving the house, I went to the kitchen table and wrote a sentimental mash note on the back of a shopping list, telling him how much I loved him and was going to miss him. I always missed him when I went off to betray him, and I never thought of him as fondly as I did when I was on the shuttle heading south. I taped the note to the mirror in the bathroom, knowing he wouldn’t find it for at least an hour after he got up. Arthur used mirrors to shave and to make sure his tie was on straight, and that was that. Vanity, thy name is not Arthur. The first thing I usually did after stumbling out of bed was check the mirror to make sure I was still alive and to assess the damages of another sleepless night.

  Since I had almost two hours to kill before work (meaning I was due at the office in an hour), I took the subway to Porter Square for one of my dreary triweekly workouts.

  I belonged to an absurdly flashy health club that was a kind of discotheque and fitness palace combined. Virtually every wall was covered with mirrors, and there were so many high-tech laser lights and flashing chrome exercise machines, I was sometimes tempted to wear dark glasses. Most of the members were perfectly pumped and toned, but where th
ey got their exercise was anyone’s guess. The majority of the people I observed used the place for professional networking and displaying their million-dollar leotards and sneakers. I’d been going there for almost six years now, since the very week, in fact, that I moved in with Arthur, but I’d never felt I belonged. More often than not, I felt like the only black-and-white weakling in the middle of a Technicolor gladiator epic.

  There was practically no one at the gym that morning, which gave it a little of the morning-after feel of an empty nightclub. I sat on the sparkling red-and-blue benches, wearily pushing and lifting. I finished off my workout with three bracing minutes on an exercise bike with a computerized control panel that did everything but tell you your red blood cell count and your fortune.

  I left feeling more deflated than pumped up. It had been a complete waste of time, and there wasn’t even anyone in the shower interesting enough to compensate for the risk of athlete’s foot. In six years of working out, I hadn’t noticed any significant change in my body. What really discouraged me, though, was realizing that in the course of those six years of working out—and living with Arthur—I’d reached the age where absolutely no change in my body might be considered an accomplishment. At thirty-one, I’d begun fighting against the tide.

  It was raining lightly when I got outside. I put up my black umbrella and walked slowly down Mass Ave toward Harvard Square, window-shopping in all the hilariously useless boutiques that had recently moved into that part of Cambridge. If I ever wanted a six-thousand-dollar quilt hand-sewn by a ninety-seven-year-old Amish grandmother, I’d know where to go. The whole of Cambridge was slowly but surely being turned into a theme park.