An Available Man

by Hilma Wolitzer

  “She’s changed,” Edward said, suddenly wondering why he hadn’t known Laurel’s eyes. People’s eyes, those famous “windows to the soul,” didn’t change, did they? And hers had been large and an unusual light grayish green.

  “Well, of course she’s changed,” Frances said. “How many years has it been?”

  “No, it’s not just that she’s older, or even that she has a new name. She might as well have been wearing a disguise. Her hair is dark, her skin, too. Remember her hair, Bern?”

  “Who could forget it? She was the White Goddess, the Snow Queen.” He collected himself. “And a first-class bitch,” he added.

  “Seeing her again like that must have been awful,” Frances said to Edward. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. I don’t know. It was a shock. And I acted like an asshole.”

  “Why, did you kill her?” Bernie said. “Trust me, no jury would convict you.”

  “No, but I felt murderous. She ran after me for blocks.”

  Bernie laughed. “That’s poetic justice, my friend. Revenge, in your case, is really ‘a dish best served cold.’ ”

  “Come on,” Edward said. “Revenge? What am I, a Blood or a Crip?”

  “What did she say?” Frances asked.

  “She said that she used to be crazy, that she was sick when she walked out on me.”

  “Sounds about right to me,” Bernie said.

  Bee had come to the same conclusion years before. When she and Edward were falling in love, they began to talk intensely about their previous lives, but not just about former lovers as Laurel had insisted they do, swearing it would be cathartic rather than cruel.

  He and Bee had exchanged episodes from childhood, tales of family and growing up. The time she’d forced a pussy willow bud up her nose and had to go to the emergency room to have it removed. Her impossible longing to look like Audrey Hepburn. The day that six-year-old Edward got lost at the beach in Far Rockaway, and believed he would have to get a job and live on his own.

  They’d met so late, Bee said, they had to catch up with synopses of the past to truly know each other. Of course, that included the saga of Bee’s first marriage and Edward’s experience with Laurel. Recounting the latter was embarrassing—a loss of face while he was still romancing Bee—but it also felt strangely confessional, as if he’d somehow been the wrongdoer, or that she would perceive him that way. “So, what do you think?” he’d asked when he was done, trying to sound casual.

  “That she’s nuts,” Bee said.

  Absolution! He was washed with relief. “Is that your professional opinion?” he said.

  “Well, I could look in the DSM and come up with an official diagnosis. Offhand, I’d say she had a borderline personality disorder, with narcissistic pathology.” She looked at him in that unnerving, concentrated way of hers. “But she was just plain nuts to give you up.”

  In Bruno’s, Bernie said, “It was a lousy coincidence that she found you again. What are the chances? But she’s gone for good now. If you ask me, you got lucky. Twice.”

  Frances shredded a paper napkin and made a careful little pile of the pieces. “I’m not so sure,” she said, finally.

  “What do you mean?” Edward asked.

  “I don’t think she’s finished with you.”

  Edward’s scalp crept. Were women more prescient than men, as Bee used to claim, or just less willing to be falsely reassured?

  “Now you’re the one who’s nuts,” Bernie told Frances. “Or maybe you’ve just seen too many Michael Douglas movies.”

  “I didn’t say she’s going to boil his kid’s rabbit,” Frances said. She turned to Edward. “She sounds—I don’t know, really persistent—running after you like that.”

  That was when he told them about the phone calls.

  Unknown Caller

  On Sunday, the day after Edward’s contretemps with Laurel, he stayed at home to do some gardening, and to catch up on his reading. The telephone rang while he was outside pulling up weeds in Bee’s perennials bed, and he decided to let it ring. He’d already spoken to Gladys and the children that morning. If anyone else really wanted to reach him, there’d be a message waiting when he went back inside. But when he put his tools in the shed and went into the house through the kitchen door, the message light on the phone wasn’t blinking.

  He took a shower and then lay down on the sofa with a Coke, The New York Times, and the pile of scientific journals he’d been meaning to get to. As soon as he was settled, the phone rang again. This time he answered it, but there didn’t seem to be anyone on the line. What now?

  There had been the usual rash of crank calls at the beginning of the school year. Most of the teachers had received them, so they’d likely come from students. It seemed to be an annual ritual that always lost its appeal as the term progressed. Not the stuff of Edward’s boyhood, when he and his friends, posing as agents of the electric company, advised mostly bewildered old ladies to blow out their streetlights or catch their running refrigerators. These modern kids didn’t say anything—they seemed to understand the greater psychological impact of silence—although occasional muffled giggling could be heard in the background.

  And several months later, between two of Edward’s failed blind dates, he’d had what seemed to be another silent caller. But it turned out to be only hesitation on the part of Lucy James, a member of the bereavement group he’d abandoned. It took her a moment to speak after he’d picked up, and a couple of moments for him to place her as the woman whose husband had died of a stroke. He remembered being wedged between her and another widow on the sofa. Lucy, he was pretty certain, was the one with blondish hair and that dispirited posture. She’d wrung her hands whenever she spoke, as if she was trying to warm them. He couldn’t picture her face, though.

  She said she just wanted to say hello and to see if he was all right—he’d never come back after the first meeting. The group missed him. Edward doubted that; he’d hardly contributed to the conversation that night. He had called Amy the next day to say that he was withdrawing, and even she hadn’t really pressed him to return. “That’s very kind,” he told Lucy James. “But I just needed to be on my own.”

  “Well,” she said.

  There was another pause, this one agonizingly long. He had to say something. “Please give my regards to everyone” was what he came up with in the end. Say hi to the gang for me.

  “Oh, I will,” she said. “And if you ever, you know, want to come back, I’m sure the others would …” Her voice trailed off.

  She was so bad at this that he felt a stab of sympathy. But not enough to prolong the awkwardness between them, or to lead her on. “I don’t think so,” he said, “but thanks very much for calling.” And that was that.

  Edward hoped this wasn’t going to be another uncomfortable exchange. He was still wearing his reading glasses, so he looked at the caller I.D. UNKNOWN CALLER came up on the screen for each of the two previous calls, the way it did for the students’ crank calls. The age of instant access and cunning secrecy.

  The third time the phone rang, Laurel said, “Edward, don’t hang up.” She sounded breathless, as if she were still chasing after him in the street.

  “What’s the point of this?” he asked. The sense of calm he’d achieved under the maple tree the day before had stayed with him. He’d been able to think about her since then without malice and with moderate curiosity. Where had she been and what had she done during all those intervening years? And now he sounded reasonable; he could have been speaking to anyone about anything.

  “I understand how you feel,” she said, “and I don’t blame you.”

  She didn’t blame him! A spark of anger ignited and just as quickly died out. “It’s all history now,” he said, as much to himself as to her. He was aware that he hadn’t yet spoken her name. “Let’s just let it go.”

  She sighed. “I wish I could,” she said. “But I can’t seem to.”

  The night before, Edward had taken
Bee’s DSM—the bible of mental disorders—down off the shelf. He still hadn’t gotten around to giving away her books. He’d looked up the on-the-spot diagnosis of Laurel she’d once made, and read about the prevalence of mood shifts, the intensity and instability of personal relationships. Fear of abandonment. Grandiosity and fragile self-esteem. Despondency.

  “Laurel,” he said into the phone, and she seemed to take this as a sign of reconciliation, or at least intimacy. “Please let me see you again,” she said.

  “That’s not a good idea,” he told her. “Listen, I’ve gotten past it and you should, too. It really is history—ancient history.” We’re ancient, too, or almost so, he might have added, although right then he was envisioning the silver-haired girl stretched out across his bed.

  He expected her to argue or plead, to continue their volley of words—he was even trying to ready his own response. But she only said, “All right,” in a weary, resigned voice, and then she hung up.

  After Edward had related most of this to his friends at Bruno’s, Frances said, “Oh, God, Edward. She really might boil your kid’s rabbit.”

  He smiled. “No, I told you, she went quietly this time.”

  “A little too quietly for her, don’t you think?” Frances said. After a beat, she added, “Had you given her your number?”

  “I’m listed,” he said. In the fall, a whole new generation of student crank callers would be easily able to reach him. Anybody would.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be,” Frances said

  Bernie looked thoughtful, but he hadn’t said anything at all yet. “What do you make of it?” Edward asked him.

  “Have a great summer,” he said. “Eat lots of lobster and spill your seed freely.” He took a long swig of his beer. “But watch your back.”

  Reincarnation

  Edward and Bingo took the car ferry from Woods Hole and arrived in Vineyard Haven in the early afternoon. It was a radiant summer day, with slow-moving cumulus clouds in a cerulean sky. Their old real estate agent had left the keys to the rented cottage under the mat inscribed WIPE! at the front door. It was a two-bedroom saltbox that had been advertised to “sleep six.” Some of them would have to hang from the rafters in hammocks, Edward thought as he walked around, getting the feel of the place. But it would be big enough when Julie came to visit for a long weekend. And he liked the small, low-ceilinged rooms, despite the kitschy décor that made them seem even smaller. He wouldn’t rattle around in here.

  For the past few days, he’d had some misgivings about coming back to the Vineyard. What if his solo return triggered grief or anxiety rather than mere nostalgia? So far, though, even nostalgia was at bay. He couldn’t imagine Bee in this cottage with its Alpine cuckoo clock, its busy wallpaper and glut of Hummel figurines. Hansel and Gretel’s witch would have felt more at home. Edward opened all the windows, letting in a salty breeze that dispelled the scent of other people’s lives and the competing perfume of potpourri.

  That evening, he would have supper at Peggy and Ike Martin’s house on the lake, next door to the rambling place he and Bee used to rent. No doubt another family was staying there now. Maybe they were invited to supper, too, or would be visible from the Martins’ veranda, where they always dined in clement weather.

  Edward hadn’t seen Peggy and Ike since they’d driven down from Boston for Bee’s funeral, almost two years before. They’d spoken on the phone and exchanged emails, mostly to keep in touch and share family news. There was a grandchild now, Edward remembered. Photos had been sent via the computer, but he wasn’t sure now if they had been of a boy or girl baby, the sort of detail Bee would have known. Something bald and florid. Beloved, too, judging from the looming, gloating adult faces above the bassinet. He’d probably be clued in later, with a name or some other gender-defining fact.

  The realtor had placed the usual welcoming gifts in the refrigerator: a halfway-decent bottle of Pinot Grigio, a wedge of Brie, and a carton of orange juice. Edward would pick up supplies before he drove to the Martins’, to whom he’d bring the Pinot Grigio.

  He found himself whistling as he went out through the kitchen door to the backyard, a commensurately tiny space with some metal furniture and a silly, electric-powered water fountain, all overprotected by a tall stockade fence. There was an awning that screamed like a seagull as he unfurled it. But it would provide shade and, with a throw pillow or two borrowed from the living room sofa, he could have breakfast or read out here. He didn’t even regret leaving his laptop behind, a last-minute decision to be on vacation from everything, including the scientific research that helped fill some empty, late hours at home. I’m okay, Edward told himself, and realized that it was true.

  The feeling lasted for the rest of the day. But when he pulled up at the Martins’ and saw the yellow house next door, with the green wicker couches and two-seater swing on its wide porch, he had a bad moment. There were bicycles lying in the gravel driveway, a dilapidated doll—similar to one Julie once had—seated on the swing. This was what it would be like to come back from the dead, only to discover that you were replaceable, that the world continued without you. Something you always knew but didn’t have to witness. Bee had never made peace with that idea, but having children helped, she said, and that it would be much, much worse if you believed in reincarnation. To be an ant at the picnic of life was the way she’d put it.

  The Martins’ door was open and Edward went inside, calling, “Hello! Hello!” Then he was in Peggy’s ample arms before he was passed like a baton to Ike, who crushed him in a wrestler’s hold. They’d always been bone-breaking huggers; he’d almost forgotten that. But for once their physicality didn’t feel excessive or make him shy. He seemed to have come a greater distance than ever to get here, as if he’d traveled through time itself, and this was only a proper hero’s greeting.

  Peggy linked arms with him as she led him through the house to the screened-in veranda facing the lake. There were other people already standing there—Edward heard the murmur of voices as he and Peggy approached, and detected that sensory cocktail of sunblock and gin. Some were old acquaintances, others new. There were friendly handshakes and more modest embraces than Peggy’s and Ike’s, for which he was grateful. He was no sci-fi spaceman, after all; only another vacationer who’d gone by ferry over the sound from Woods Hole, along with his dog and his Honda Civic hatchback.

  The new renters next door, Louise and Howard Glass, had been invited. They were somewhere between their mid-forties and early fifties; Edward always had trouble discerning anyone’s age. They offered him a look around at the house later, if he’d like. For some reason, maybe the instant martini buzz, that struck him as an excellent idea. And when he became aware, after a while, of the one woman at the party who’d come there alone, on her bicycle, he didn’t have paranoid thoughts of betrayal, of having being set up.

  She was attractive, somewhere in the same broad age range as the Glasses, with sun-streaked hair; tanned, athletic legs; and the kind of bangles Bee used to wear, sliding musically up and down her arms. Her name was Ellen—he lost her surname in all the chatter around them—and she was separated from her husband and sold real estate in Connecticut. “Have you been up this way before?” she asked.

  “For years,” he said. “My wife and I rented the place next door.” He glanced at the yellow house, where lights were on, as if someone was home. She waited, and he filled in the rest, about Bee dying and his reluctance to come back the previous summer.

  “That was my first time here,” she said, “so we missed each other.” She said it matter-of-factly, without coyness. “But I intend to make this a habit.” An ambiguous statement: did she mean the Vineyard or him? It didn’t matter; he felt emboldened by her open, attentive face, and by the fact that she said, “Shall we sit here?” indicating a cushioned wicker love seat, after they’d filled their plates at the buffet table.

  At the end of the evening, when Louise Glass asked Edward if he’d like to go next door, he invite
d Ellen to come along, too. He’d already offered her a lift home. The new hatchback, which Amanda had dismissed as “a date repellent” when he’d bought it, would make it easy to stow Ellen’s bike.

  They went in through the back of the house, the way he and Bee always used to after a party at Ike and Peggy’s. The Glasses had left the door unlocked, too. There was the kitchen, unchanged as far as Edward could see. His family’s favorite room, because it was so big and had that large, butcher-block table at its center—a gathering place. As Bee used to, Louise kept the blue striped bowl there filled with cherry tomatoes. What did Edward feel? That he had to ask himself this question was a good sign, or simply the grace of temporary emotional numbness.

  He remembered the way the light crashed in through the picture window in this room every clear morning and the cool feel of the Spanish tiles under his bare feet. But he didn’t expect to see Bee or one of the children appear in the doorway, or even sense a lingering specter, an after-image of their occupancy. It was an old house and a recurrent rental; people had come here before them, and still others would follow. All of them transients, really. This place, revisited by everyone at once, would be like heaven, if it existed—a mob scene of phantoms.

  Maybe he was helped by having Ellen at his side, not picking at the scab of memory but asking questions about the architecture of the house, guessing correctly, with her realtor’s eye, the decade it was built, and that the sunporch had been a later addition. “Lovely,” she said, about the layout of the rooms, the uncluttered furnishings. They could have been a couple considering a rental themselves.

  In the car, she said, “That was brave of you,” and he said, “Thank you for coming with me.” Then he said, “I have to ask you something. That baby, the Martins’ grandchild. Is it a boy or a girl?”