“I remember,” Joshua says quickly, and before I can ask what they mean, he says, “I still haven’t read the ending, unfortunately.” Which is surprising, since he wrested it from my grasp for that very purpose. “But what I’m saying is that I don’t care if it makes things up about the people it’s supposedly about—it’s a story. But I object to historical errors. The Tet Offensive was not in 1970! How could she not know that?”
“Are there a lot of mistakes?” I ask. I didn’t notice. “I didn’t remember when the Tet Offensive was.” I am dying to know whether any of the book is about real people—such as Joshua? The black guy at the end? I am determined not to ask.
“It couldn’t have been 1970,” he says testily. “Surely you know that much. Johnson wasn’t even president in 1970!” Joshua never speaks in a loud voice, but I have learned that when he cares about something, he enunciates more clearly, landing hard on the consonants, and he does that now (“Tet” has at least four ts), looking at me. I wonder if I’m still in trouble for saying that keeping people overnight on our third floor isn’t out of the question. I don’t like the snide remark about how much I might know.
“But if it’s fiction,” Ingrid says. “Why does it matter whether the facts are true? I don’t expect it to be true. In fiction, you can have a talking elephant, or what might have happened if the South won the Civil War. Isn’t that the idea?”
“You don’t expect the Tet Offensive to be in the right year?” Joshua persists. “Didn’t she think people would remember it?”
“You told me it’s a great book!” Olive calls from the kitchen. “You loved it. You wept!”
“I didn’t weep,” Joshua says, taking his napkin from the neck of his shirt and folding it carefully. “I don’t believe I wept.”
“You loved it,” Olive calls again.
“Well, it not David Copperfield,” Joshua says, in a voice loud enough to reach the kitchen.
“Not everybody thinks David Copperfield is a great novel,” Olive says, still shouting. All this is funny because of the shouting, and because they’re having a fake argument (I know they’re teasing each other) between two rooms in front of a group. But something isn’t funny about it. I’m afraid of both of them.
“But I loved it, despite myself, yes,” Joshua says. “As far as I got.”
“And why haven’t you finished it?” Olive calls.
He doesn’t answer.
“Because he doesn’t want to read the ending?” I say. “That guy Harry and everything?” Everyone looks at me, but someone had to say something.
“Can we please change the subject!” Joshua says.
I have done precisely what I determined I would not do. I have twice antagonized the president of my board. And I still don’t know if the character of Harry—the man who persuades the main character to carry a gun—is based on Joshua.
Olive and Lorna now bring in a coffeepot, a tray of dessert plates and unmatched mugs, and a chocolate cake. “It’s from a bakery,” Olive says, placing the cake in the middle of the table, then leaning over to cut wedges. We are suddenly a group of friends, eating cake and drinking what we are assured is decaf (Zak asks if he can have real coffee, and to my surprise, Olive says no). Those of us on the side of the table away from the wall pull our chairs back, so we’re arranged in a loose circle.
My mug is ridged and handmade, and the cake is good, not too sweet, with thick dark chocolate icing. I want to keep knowing all these people as I sit there sipping decaf, and I consider sending around a piece of paper on which we can write email addresses. But I don’t. Lorna is telling a long story about one of her grandchildren, whom Ingrid knew. It has to do with high school sports, on which everyone has an opinion. Yvonne, I notice, disagrees politely with the majority, whatever the subject. It grows late, and the table becomes pleasantly untidy, with crumpled napkins where people have finished eating. Some of us make our cake last. Zak helps himself to a second piece.
At last Olive begins gathering empty plates. A couple of people stand, but she says, “Don’t stand up; I’m just being compulsive.”
The dinner has been a success, and I am impressed. Olive and Joshua can do this kind of thing even when they can’t, I think fuzzily. As Olive carries the stack of plates into the kitchen, I am looking the other way, at Zak, who is talking about his own experience of high school sports (long-distance running), and at Martha, who is looking at him. But out of the corner of my eye, I see Olive’s sleek gray head abruptly tilt toward the table, and, with a cry, she grabs for something. And falls. A bad fall. She hits her head on the table; the dishes crash; she lands heavily. The chair she’s been sitting in, which must be what she grabbed, clatters to the floor. I run to her—I am kneeling before I notice that I’ve left my seat. The usual outcry—“Are you okay? Are you all right?”—and then people step back, except for Zak and me, because everyone remembers not to rush her. Olive says, tight-lipped, “Leave me alone.”
“Careful,” Zak says. “I think you hit your head.”
Obviously she hit her head.
Olive turns on her side, pulls her knees up, and turns her face away from all of us, like someone alone in bed.
“Zak, do something!” Martha says. She’s shoving the dog away from her mother.
Ingrid picks up the chair.
Zak is holding Olive’s wrist. Surely she has a pulse! “Ice, Martha,” he says, and she scurries into the kitchen. Zak says, “I think you’ll be fine pretty soon, Olive.”
“Zak, do we need an ambulance?” Joshua asks sternly.
“I don’t think so,” Zak says.
“I’m getting up,” Olive says.
“Are you dizzy?” someone asks. Zak—not Joshua—kneels in front of Olive, and she leans on him, then says, “No, I can’t. My ankle.”
Lorna puts a cushion from the couch under Olive’s head. Martha brings ice wrapped in a dish towel and kneels to put it against her mother’s forehead. Ingrid leans down to pick up whole and broken plates. Then she says, “Oh, my God!”
“What?” Olive says. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s my fault,” Ingrid says. “I think you tripped on this.” She holds up something, and I see that it’s one of her barrettes. Ingrid was at ease with these people who began to feel like friends—and of course she ran her hands through her hair, as she does when she’s comfortable.
And that has caused Olive’s accident, and maybe everything that will follow. (It’s the last time I will see barrettes fall off Ingrid’s head. She will cut her hair short the next day. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)
Nobody but me pays attention to Ingrid. I stand up, uncomfortable so close to someone I barely know who is as dignified as Olive and now in need. I sit on a chair, watching, but then I turn to Ingrid and put my arm on her shoulder. “Maybe not,” I say, but I think she’s probably right, that Olive’s foot skated across the wooden floor on the little metal clip and pulled her off balance.
“No,” Olive says. “The floor was wet.” I’m grateful for that, though it won’t convince Ingrid.
Olive lies there—now with ice on her ankle—making tense wisecracks about taking it easy at her own party, where the guests will do the work and she’ll supervise from the floor. Indeed, the table is now cleared and the sound of dishwashing comes from the kitchen, where Lorna and Yvonne have gone. But Olive makes a sharp sound when she tries to move, and Zak says, “We need to get you to the ER.”
“No,” she says. “I just want to go to bed. Sorry, everybody—go home. I’m going to bed.”
“That’s what you should do, throw us out!” I say, crouching at her side again, though Olive isn’t the sort of person who needs encouragement to do as she likes. She ignores me. I look around for my purse, then decide to take my time leaving. I have been present at emergencies, and I know Olive needs to be examined, but it’s impossible to insist on that with both her husband and a doctor present. I think they both agree with me. Maybe because Zak knows Olive better th
an I, he knows he has to take it slowly.
While I dawdle, Ingrid and Lorna are sent on their way. “You, too,” Olive says to Joshua. “Go upstairs. You’re too worried. I can’t stand it. Get out of here. These people will get me up.”
“No,” Joshua says. He’s been hovering, silent, distraught.
“Yes,” Olive says. I consider quickly and selfishly that Joshua is being dismissed and will not forgive anyone who witnesses it.
Yvonne comes in from the kitchen. “I’ve been on the point of going for the last hour,” she says. “I’m sorry—I’m worried about my kids.”
Zak, who’s been leaning over Olive, stretches and stands, saying, “I can’t leave yet—but someone will drive me later.”
“I will,” I say quickly—which gives me the right to stay. Joshua has disappeared, and finally everyone else is gone except Martha, Zak, and me. “Maybe the ER?” Zak says quietly.
“But no ambulance,” Olive says, so I know he’s won. She can roll onto her stomach, crawl to the sofa, and stand with help, then lean on Martha and Zak.
The rain has stopped. I run the block to my car and drive it to the house, and the two of them manage to get Olive into it, then climb into the back seat. I drive to Yale New Haven Hospital, feeling odd—I didn’t know these people three hours ago—where Olive is taken in quickly and Martha goes with her.
Zak seems hesitant to make himself known as a doctor. He and I sit in those hard chairs for a long time. He tells me that he and Martha were sweethearts in high school—his word, “sweethearts.” It’s clear that whatever they were, it didn’t end well. Also, he has to be forty, or younger. I’m disappointed. I want him to be closer to my age. He has a comfortable smell, and sitting next to him makes me a little giddy. I’m also wary of him, a little surprised that any doctor hasn’t identified himself to the ER staff and offered an opinion. It’s like he might be overstepping if he says he’s connected to Olive, even though they’re such old acquaintances. By now, I’m headachy, worn out, but Zak is buoyant. He asks more questions about Barker Street.
Olive has a mild concussion, we learn, and has torn a ligament in her ankle. I expect that they may admit her, but eventually she’s put into a long, rigid cast and sent out with crutches she can’t manage, leaning on Martha. It’s 2:00 a.m. I bring my car around, and we get her into it somehow. I drive everyone back to the house and watch Zak help Martha get her inside.
Then Zak comes back to my car and gives me directions to his apartment, not far away. “Come in and have coffee,” he says when we get there.
I say, “Coffee sounds good.”
“Not decaf,” he says.
“Definitely not.”
“We did well, Jean,” he says, pulling out his keys and ushering me in. “We got her there.” I’m trying to figure out the age difference. I stand next to him in my coat in the cold apartment, while he makes coffee. Later I won’t remember anything about the layout except a long hall to the bathroom and bedroom, but I haven’t seen those yet.
He turns and faces me as the coffee drips through the machine. “Would you be offended if I kissed you?” he says.
“No,” I say, and his mouth is suddenly biting and thrusting at mine, and then we are all over each other, grasping and clutching as if we’ve waited for months. I know this is a discharge of anxiety, but so what? I’ve been trying to keep myself from knowing that I’m attracted to him. It’s a relief to let myself feel it. We delay going to bed only long enough to have a few swallows of coffee each, between struggling to press our bodies together, standing up. We do need coffee.
The corridor is narrow, and we laugh, stumbling down it moments later, leaving the coffee in the kitchen. The bed is made—I am grateful for that—and smells clean, and Zak helps me out of my clothes and into it. Then he climbs joyfully on top of me, but soon he thrusts me around to be on top of him, which I prefer. It doesn’t occur to me to be self-conscious about anything, including the age difference. I get that he’s one of those younger men who likes older women. I guide him into me and thrust my tongue into his mouth, while he seizes my buttocks with both hands and, thrusting and bucking, brings us both to climax.
Later—I sleep briefly—I get up, freezing, and reach for my clothes. Zak is asleep, wrapped in blankets, the back of his dark head visible; he looks like a boy. Half-dressed, I remember Yvonne. I forgot that the man I was in bed with apparently has a girlfriend. Might they only be friends? No. I am not in the habit of competing for men with other women—especially with a woman who, like me, is old enough to be delighted and a little surprised to have a boyfriend at all, let alone a young one. I feel a little bewitched and a little guilty.
I find the bathroom, find my raincoat. Our cups of cold coffee are on the kitchen table, and I put mine into the microwave for a bit, then drink a few more swallows. I begin talking to myself as if I were a troubled client. “Go home and warm up,” I say. But I write my phone number in large numbers on a piece of paper I see on the counter, then anchor it with my cup.
I let myself out and try to remember where my car is. Down the street, three or four cars to the right. I have left my umbrella at Olive and Joshua’s house, and it’s raining again. On the way home, I feel the elation of new love, managing to separate it from the fear and remorse I also feel. A woman who sleeps with a man someone else loves knows that he may do to her what he just did to the other woman. Women of fifty-two side with other women. And Yvonne is so good— all those foster kids. I get home—it’s 5:00 a.m.—and put on flannel pajamas, which I already put away for the season. I take some ibuprofen. Everything hurts, but I’m happy. I sleep.
Olive Grossman
When Griff found Bright Morning of Pain, I put it on a corner of the large table in the living room, under some papers. I didn’t need to start work on it yet, and keeping it out of Griff’s sight seemed wise. But I had to finish another essay soon, so as to be free for this one. On a warm Thursday in April, I made up my mind to reread a novel I planned to write about over that weekend and start a draft of the essay.
Griff hadn’t asked to borrow Bright Morning of Pain again. Finding it seemed to have done away with his wish to read it. I ate early Thursday evening and settled down at the big table. I’d answer some emails then, to give myself even more time over the weekend. Griff was at an obligatory fundraising dinner for I forget which worthy organization. He had asked me to go with him, but I’d refused. I hadn’t been able to think of a good reason. I didn’t want to go—but he didn’t want to go either. “No,” I’d said; that was all. He looked upset.
Griff came in about nine. He’d chat in his coat—there was something about coat-chatting that kept the conversation light—and take it off only when he was on his way upstairs to watch basketball or baseball on the TV in Annie’s old bedroom. It interested me that I knew so precisely how he’d behave, from the moment I heard his tired footsteps. I stood to open the door instead of waiting for him to fumble for his key.
That all happened, just as I expected. But ten minutes after going upstairs, Griff came down again, in his socks. I could hear the sports announcer in the background. Basketball. Griff’s step irked me—there was something not quite straightforward about it. I turned around from the email I was writing. “What?”
“I should have mentioned this,” he said. “I mean, I know I did mention it—but I should have reminded you. I think you’ve forgotten.” I looked at him. His worry lines were deeper. He was embarrassed. “And you’ll need to take everything off that table, of course.”
The fundraising dinner on Saturday. I had agreed to cook but never put it on my calendar, thus never planned or shopped. And once I’d agreed, he hadn’t talked about it. He must have forgotten, too.
If I hadn’t been looking forward to a weekend without obligations, I might have forgiven him. We could laugh at ourselves for forgetting and then rapidly figure out how to hold a dinner party anyway. But after a moment of reverse nostalgia—a longing for what hadn’t happ
ened: the friendly and consoling conspiracy we wouldn’t enjoy—anger won out. If only cooking hadn’t been involved. I had a store of feminist rage always ready: over toilets I’d scrubbed, meals I’d cooked, diapers I’d changed, because women did these things. Our household had been formed and our children born just as the women’s movement called into question any old assumptions we’d been carrying around about what women did and what men did. As marriages go, ours wasn’t sexist. But Griff didn’t clean toilets, and he knew how to cook only two or three meals, all basic weeknight stuff. I was no hostess, but I’d gotten used to cooking for company when the children were little.
“I should have remembered,” I said, “but you should have reminded me.”
“I know,” he said.
“How many people? Did you ever invite Jean Argos?”
“Yes, she’s coming.”
For some reason, that was the detail that sent me into a rage. Though while I was raging, I knew it made no sense. Maybe the anger had to do with Griff’s abstractedness, his being elsewhere—and Jean Argos was connected with the reason for that. In another marriage, I might have been accusing him of sexual infidelity. Griff would never be unfaithful—he was too moral; he was irritatingly moral. But it was more than that. We had a reasonably satisfying sex life, but it didn’t dominate our dreams, our fantasies, our insecurities. That was true for me, and I was fairly sure it was true for him. What interested, threatened, and consoled both of us was work, and the rest of the serious business of life—politics, ethics, civic obligation. Infidelity, in our lives, didn’t have to do with bodies. Griff was unfaithful because he had stopped being curious about me.
When I said something about that, he said, not for the first time, that I was always pushing him out. “You refuse again and again to have anything to do with me,” he said. “I asked you to come with me tonight, and you said no. When I come home, your feet are on my chair.”
“And why not?” I said, though my feet were nowhere near his chair at that moment. “Your butt is never on it.”
Conscience Page 12
