I Bring Sorrow_And Other Stories of Transgression

by Patricia Abbott

  “You did, Dan. Congratulations! How long is the commute from here?”

  “Commute? Oh, this place is just for the occasional long weekend or the odd week in summer. Baltimore’s still our home.”

  “And New Brunswick’s ours,” Henry said inanely. It was far too late for either of them to be from somewhere else. They were stuck where they were, for better or worse.

  “So what do you think of the place?” Frances asked, husking the corn with a ferocity that seemed to come over her in waves. “I can’t believe I found it. I had to force the realtor to show it to me.”

  “It’s delightful,” Gillian said, basting the chicken. “You were lucky to find it.” Sniffing suspiciously, she asked, “Is there something hot in this marinade, Franny? Henry can’t eat red pepper, you know.”

  “Well, I don’t think so,” Frances said, sniffing too. “I threw a bunch of things in. But I don’t think we even have red pepper out here. It must be the cinnamon basil you smell. I’ve got oceans of it growing in the garden.”

  “You don’t think you’ll be bored up here? Take me away from the bookstores, the movies, the restaurants, and I’m finished.” Gillian picked up her glass of Chardonnay, draining it. “I couldn’t survive without my dance series at Lincoln Center.”

  “A pretty long trip from New Brunswick, no? Anyway, I grew up in the country. There’s a cycle to country life that’s reassuring. The season dictates your activity. For instance, right now it’s all about berry picking and swimming, but soon it will be time for apple cider, pumpkin carving, and caulking the doors and windows.”

  Gillian had forgotten just how banal Franny’s conversation could be. When Henry had put forth this observation last night, she’d denied it.

  Franny began placing the marinated pieces of chicken on the grill. Each piece trembled as she tossed it breast side down. “Anyway, Gillian, I’m sick to death of living in the city. How long can I look at the concrete stoops of Baltimore? What kind of people don’t bother to plant grass? Some might say it gives Baltimore distinction, but it’s a merciless surface to me.”

  “You’re not happy there?”

  “I might have thought so once, but since the kids went off to college, I’ve hated it. It’s stinking hot in the summer, much worse than New Jersey. And winter’s no picnic either.”

  Gillian got to Baltimore fairly regularly, and, weather-wise, it seemed much the same as New Brunswick.

  “What about Dan, is he happy?”

  “Well, you know Dan,” Frances said enigmatically, running down the steps to the basement for the roll of extra-long aluminum foil.

  Which was quite true, Gillian thought.

  Gillian headed out to the deck where Dan sat on an Adirondack chair with a badminton net rolled out before him.

  “Thought we might try this after dinner,” he said, trying to thread the net through the pole. “Never much liked the game though. How do you avoid bruising your forearm with the serve? Mine gets red and—”

  “Isn’t that volleyball? Anyway, will you please shut up for a minute? Your wife will be back here any second.” She looked warily back at the house, and then continued quietly. “Dan, are you planning to be up here every weekend? Because if you are, I don’t know how we’ll see each other this summer.” She looked around, trying to locate Henry. “I was counting on the weekends at least. Henry will be in his sweltering archives most of July and August.”

  Without looking up, Dan said quietly, “I wasn’t consulted on Frances’ purchase of this place. She took money inherited after her mother’s death and bought the house without even telling me.” He threw the end of the net he was holding down, trying another section. “Never mentioned her house hunting till the deed was done. Hugging trees was not my idea.”

  “When you should be hugging me. Think she knows about us and that’s what it’s really about?”

  “If she knew, I’d be dead. Here she comes.”

  He threw the net down and ran over to help his wife. She was carrying a large tray of condiments, bread, salad, a pitcher of iced tea.

  “The chicken’s almost done,” she told them, sliding the tray onto the table. “Where’s our Henry? I asked him to pick mint and pointed him in the right direction.” They all looked over to the tiny garden. No Henry.

  “I’ll find him.” Gillian sighed and walked back toward the house. If she knew Henry, he’d found a dark corner and fallen asleep. Set him down anywhere and he was off. It made him seem like a very old man. She couldn’t wait until he took off for his archives next month. The eight-week separation every summer was saving their marriage. Where was he?

  “Doesn’t Henry look older? When did we last see them?”

  Dan stood at the grill turning ears of corn. “Must be a year or two.”

  Although Dan scrupulously refrained from criticizing his old friend, he had certainly noticed how old Henry looked. His friendship with Henry dated to grad school. Henry’s doctorate was in history, and Dan’s in political science. They both left Columbia at the same time, marrying women they met there. It was the custom then.

  Oddly, Dan’s affair with Gillian started the same summer he married Frances and the year after her marriage to Henry. It sounded positively sinister or sick now, but it was just one of those stupid late seventies things. The two of them had been thrown together once too often at those strange academic parties where pairings and unpairings unfolded in every bedroom. It was very difficult not to have sex with every woman you met. People expected it of you, even when it was inconvenient. Which it was with Gillian, considering he was within weeks of marrying Frances.

  “You must have noticed it, Dan,” Frances went on. “His face is a series of pouches. Whoops, here they come.” She began taking the pieces of chicken off the grill. “Now, who needs a refill?”

  * * * *

  The Lovages beat the Liebolds at badminton. No one remembered the rules of the game but, assuming it was much like Ping-Pong, they adapted. Then they collapsed onto deck chairs, contemplating the evening ahead.

  “I brought a couple of movies along. I’ve got All the President’s Men. Or we could play poker or hearts,” Dan offered. “Oh, or charades if it’s not too retro.”

  “Oh shit!” Frances said. “We’re out of beer. Someone forgot to make a run.” She glared at her husband. “It won’t be much fun without alcohol. Whatever ‘it’ is.”

  Dan shrugged. “Sorry. I can be back in ten minutes. Anyone care to come along?”

  Henry was snoozing on the chaise lounge and didn’t answer.

  “I guess the antihistamine knocked him out,” Frances said. “It did the trick, didn’t it? He’s breathing more easily. He really is allergic to red pepper! I thought we were going to have to perform a tracheotomy and was looking forward to it. Sharpening those knifes at the hardware store yesterday would have paid off.”

  They all looked at Henry, admiring his ability to sleep so deeply after the scare he gave them.

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind a drive into town,” Gillian said, rising. “I feel like a Snickers bar. How about you, Fran? Coming along?”

  “No, someone should stay with Henry. And I’m going to call home. My mother-in-law’s housesitting, and I want to make sure she hasn’t burned the place down. She’s always dozing off in the armchair with a Marlboro in her hand. Does anything look worse than an old lady smoking? I mean, who smokes nowadays?” She waved them away.

  “I guess there’s no way we could have a quickie,” Gillian suggested after they’d pulled away.

  Dan looked doubtful. “I should’ve planned better beyond running out of beer. I think we’re too old to do it in a backseat this shallow and low. I don’t bend in too many places anymore. Or if I do, I don’t bend back again.” He turned around to reassess the backseat of his Prius. “And the woods are too dense around here to get out of the c
ar. Plus, they’re full of poison ivy and strange, almost mythical animals. Did you ever see a possum? Ugly suckers!”

  “I wanted to suggest taking our car instead, but it sounded bizarre.”

  He reached over to stroke her thigh. Why was it so much silkier than Franny’s?

  His hand felt unbearably thrilling on her bare skin, and she shuddered. “I’m willing to try the ground. How can I be so hot for you after so many years?” she wondered aloud. “Maybe I can straddle you.” When her thighs proved too long for that maneuver, she climbed off. “You know, I haven’t felt like having sex with Henry in ten years. I’d like to think he noticed, but I doubt it.”

  “If you’d married me, it would be Henry you were hot for.”

  “That’s a shitty thing to say. Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s strange we continue to remain married to people we don’t love. If we were both available, the sex might lose its energy. Maybe we’re addicted to the danger.”

  Gillian didn’t answer him, wondering for a minute if he had someone else back in Baltimore. Then she discovered her seat went all the way down.

  “Clever girl,” Dan said, loosening his belt.

  “Clever girl,” said Henry, from his prone position on the sofa. Though his eyes were closed, he was wide-awake. “I was wondering how you’d find a way to get them out of here. What if he’d thought to buy beer? Where would we be then?”

  “You make it sound like we’re having an affair, Henry.”

  They both cringed as Henry reached for his scotch.

  “Should you be drinking after all that antihistamine?” Her concern surprised them both. Embarrassed, she quickly added. “Do you have it? They’ll be back in a minute.” Her hands perspired with excitement and she wiped them on her shorts.

  “Would I come without it? I must warn you again, Frances, this is the last payment. I’m prepared to resign my position at Rutgers and hang wallpaper rather than continue. I refuse to allow your extortion to become the defining experience of my life.”

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. That ship sailed long ago. It was your suggestion, after all. Way back when.” She put a hand on his cheek. “Keep the little typist happy.”

  He slapped her hand away, getting up. A moment later, he shouted from the bedroom, “My jacket must be out there. See it?”

  She looked around, spotting it on a doorknob. Springing to her feet, she found the breast pocket and pulled out the long white envelope. She ripped it open immediately and was counting the bills when Henry returned.

  “So that’s it, Frances! I think fifty thousand dollars is enough. With the incredible investments you made during the nineties and again in the last few years, my little faux pas bought this summer place. Who knew when I pledged you my royalties, that book would be so successful.”

  She laughed. “Nice for both of us. And your threat rings a little hollow. You couldn’t stand being someone as anonymous as a paperhanger. You don’t even have the clothes for it,” she said, stroking his linen shirt. “Of course, plagiarism has a certain cachet nowadays with book tours and talk shows.”

  “Oh, we’ve been through all this a million times. Could you stand being publicly labeled an extortionist? Or even more to the heart of it, could you bear for Dan to know that about you?”

  “It might make me more interesting. You and I could appear on the circuit together. Each of us pleading their case. If you just hadn’t been too lazy to research your own dissertation, Henry! Or if you hadn’t thought I was too uneducated to see the parts you’d stolen.”

  “Didn’t you ever wonder if I might kill you? Put an end to blackmail in that time-honored way?”

  She was fumbling in her purse, and for a minute, Henry thought she might be about to pull out a gun. But she removed a pack of cigarettes. “Funny how only the silly little typist spotted it in all this time. I’d have thought scholars would be pouring over your work. Looking for every nuance, every resonance. And no, I never thought you had the gumption to kill me. It was laziness that got you into trouble and laziness that kept the checks flowing.”

  “I got rid of the worst of it by the time the book came out, and I’ve never repeated my mistakes in subsequent editions. It would be hard to prove any of it now.”

  “Maybe all scholars do it. A line here, a paragraph there. Except poor Dan, of course. He should have found someone to plagiarize.” She lit a cigarette and went to stand by the window. A small fan blew the smoke away.

  “Christ, he still won’t let you smoke! It’s your house, damn it. Tell him to fuck off.”

  A minute later, she stabbed her cigarette out in the philodendron, tossing the butt out the window. He smelled rather than saw the mouth spray she applied. Sighing, he lay down on the couch again, their business completed.

  “He’s the most boring man in the world,” Gillian told Dan, her head on his shoulder as he drove as quickly as he dared. As much as Gillian claimed she didn’t love Henry, maybe never had, Dan noticed his name was never long from her lips.

  They’d been gone over an hour and were still miles from home. Their lovemaking took a very long time. First, he was slow to arouse: the woodland noises distracted him. Then he was slow to finish. And around the main event lay several smaller failures. Such a locale for sex was better left to teenagers who did such things more easily. To top it off, the damned convenience store was closed, leaving no choice but to drive to the next town.

  “I can’t imagine how Henry’s students keep their eyes open. He quotes himself, for God’s sake. ‘As I wrote in the first volume of my study on Robert E. Lee…’”

  “Still, he’s had a sterling career,” Dan said, counting off the books Henry published. “Seven, if I didn’t miss one.” Why did they always talk about Henry, especially after sex? He was their joint guilt, their joint regret. Perhaps even their joint obsession.

  Gillian stroked his cheek consolingly. “Everything went into his career. He didn’t have enough juice left to satisfy a wife. The great man—that’s how he thinks of himself. The great man gives a lecture. The great man writes a book. The great man takes a piss.”

  “He couldn’t help but think favorably about himself when success came so easily. Publishers stood in line for his second book. His first, which was not much more than his dissertation goosed up, was reviewed in the New York Times, for Christ’s sake.”

  “So what?” she said harshly. “He’s never made a dime off of any of them. At least, that’s what he tells me. Every time I think we’re getting ahead, the money disappears.”

  “You’re awfully hard on him, Gillian. He’s basically a sweet guy. Look at how well he took that frightening allergic response. I thought I was going to have to slit his throat and insert a straw. And academics rarely make any money on books. They sell a thousand copies if they’re very lucky.”

  “I’d think it was Henry you wanted to fuck if I didn’t know better.”

  But Dan wasn’t listening. His one book sold two hundred and ten copies. The remainder of the first printing sat moldering in his basement in cardboard boxes, the bottoms damp from the spring rains.

  “I guess it’s very hard loving a good man when I feel so evil all the time.” They pulled up to the house and she followed him inside. “Don’t forget the beer, Dan.”

  * * *

  “I knew I was in trouble when I didn’t feel the next step,” Henry said, rubbing his twisted ankle. “Did you find an ace bandage, Frances?” This was so delightful, Henry thought to himself. I can just sit back for the next two days and do nothing. The three of them were buzzing around him like honeybees. Let them play childish games and swim in that cesspool.

  Frances looked in the medicine chest, knowing very well they had no ace bandages. Hopefully, Henry was not the litigious type. First the red pepper and now this. Could they be held responsible for the arch
itect’s whimsical design? she wondered.

  “I can make one out of an old towel,” Dan suggested. “At least it would immobilize it.” He began to shred it into long strips, almost whistling with delight. How obliging that Henry had chosen their moment of return to twist his ankle. Frances had not even commented on their tardiness.

  “You’ve certainly had an exciting evening,” Gillian said, handing her husband a glass of water. A bag of ice, deemed too cold by Henry, lay melting on the table. “Do you ever wonder why so many things happen to you, Henry? Nobody is more prone to accidents.” She looked at the two men for confirmation. “It must mean something psychologically, honey.”

  “I can’t think of what.” Henry and Dan said this in unison, but nobody except Gillian noticed. How queer we all are after twenty-five years.

  “Come on, Gillian,” Frances said, rising to Henry’s defense. “Lay off the poor guy. It’s my fault about the pepper, and we’re always stubbing our toes and banging our shins on these steps.” Frances put an almost proprietary hand on Henry’s shoulder. What a witch Gillian can be. Poor fool had no idea what lengths Henry had gone to in order to keep her.

  “Yeah, I’m just a poor schlub. An old shoe,” Henry said. And one you’ll have to wait on for the rest of the weekend.

  For a second, Gillian wondered if there was something between the two of them: Henry and Frances? Was it too much to think they had also engaged in a long-term romance? There was an air of intimacy in Frances’s touch. But a second later, Henry shrugged her hand away, his lips twisted in distaste.

  It was just too ridiculous, Gillian decided. From the beginning of their friendship, Henry and Franny had never quite clicked and she doubted they’d ever had a private conversation. Perhaps he’d never seen Franny as more than the woman who typed his dissertation.

  “Well, it’s great having you guys here,” Dan said, helping Henry into the bedroom. “We’ll go to a movie in Mt. Pleasant tomorrow. That’ll keep you off the ankle, Hen. Sorry I won’t get the chance to get even in volleyball.”