“Like what?” Laurel asked.
“Finances, caretaking, a living will, even suicide. It’s a terminal disease, after all, but one that takes away freedom of choice.”
Sybil darted a nervous glance at Edward, but he smiled at her. “Olga’s right,” he said. “There are things to decide. When Bee was dying …,” he began and then stopped to test his own ability to go on. “When Bee was dying, we—she had to decide about dubious experimental treatments, about when to tell people, about what to do with her last days.” He made it sound like a calm, sane period, without storms of weeping and irrational wishes—the terrible struggle to decide anything at all.
The whole table had grown silent. Henry looked solemn, Sybil close to tears. Edward had ruined the mood of their party, but at least he’d brought Bee back—if only briefly—to this room where she, too, had once enjoyed delicious food and vigorous, theoretical arguments among friends. He felt strangely relieved, even celebratory. He would have loved a glass of that wine right then. “Well,” he said to Sybil, “what’s for dessert?”
“I’d like to see your house,” Laurel said as soon as they were in the car again.
“It’s out of the way and it’s late. I want to get on the road.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she said, her tone turning it into a variant of Lighten up, Edward. “Just a quick look inside, and then we’ll go.”
There was no reasonable argument against it. So he drove the half mile or so in the opposite direction of the bridge to 31 Larkspur Lane. He parked in the driveway, thinking for a moment of leaving the motor running. The motion sensor lights blinked on as they went past the garage and up onto the porch. Somebody else’s vigilant dog barked in the distance, but Edward’s own house was silent. Mildred was keeping Bingo at her apartment for the weekend.
He couldn’t help it: he saw everything through Laurel’s eyes. At home by himself, he was hardly aware of the furnishings, which were always dependably in place and comfortable. He could find his way around with his eyes shut. When Bee was still alive, she’d point out the need for new slipcovers every few years, or that a fraying lamp shade should be replaced, and he’d agree. They both treasured what was familiar, though, and never made any radical changes.
But as soon as Laurel walked ahead of him into the living room, he saw a clump of dog hairs on the throw rug, and the way the cushions on the couch sagged from want of fluffing, or perhaps some extra filling. The seascape hanging above it was crooked. He had to keep himself from crossing the room to adjust it. She wasn’t a prospective buyer or renter. He didn’t care what she thought. Laurel turned to him then and said, “It’s really very nice, Edward. Homey. And now I can picture you here when I’m not with you. Is that your favorite chair?” She pointed to his deep, plush Morris chair that still faced Bee’s chintz-covered affair in a conversational pose.
Before he could answer, there was the scraping of a key in the lock and a woman’s singsong voice, calling “Hello?” Mildred. She must have forgotten the dog treats, or the drops for Bingo’s infected ear. But Laurel seemed stricken at the sounds, and Edward thought of that moment in Fiddler on the Roof when the shade of a woman whose husband plans to remarry demands, “How can you allow it? Live in my house? Carry my keys?”
After the introductions were made, and the eardrops retrieved, Laurel yawned and stretched like Goldilocks in the bears’ house, and Edward knew she was going to make another case for staying overnight as soon as Mildred and Bingo were gone. He could imagine some of her contentions: She was so sleepy, wasn’t he? All that heavy food. There’d be hardly any trucks on Sunday. And it looked like rain. His defenses were down. Even without the numbing effects of wine, he couldn’t think as fast as she did.
But then, Mildred, the psychic, said, “It was starting to drizzle when we were walking here. Would you mind giving us a ride home?”
Edward wanted to hug her. Instead, he said, “Sure. No problem. It’s on our way to the bridge.”
Lost and Found
On Monday, Laurel tried to coax Edward into staying on at her place for a few more days, but there were errands and chores he had to get to at home, like taking the dog to the vet to check out his ear, refilling the bird feeders, and catching up on the raking. During the remainder of the weekend at Laurel’s, she’d mentioned his house a couple of times—how charming it was, how peaceful his street seemed compared with the chaos of the city. She was hinting at being invited back without asking directly. He was tempted; they’d had a good time together—she’d been especially sweet and sexy—and despite his fears, her brief visit to Larkspur Lane hadn’t proved traumatic or even unpleasant. But he didn’t take the bait; he really did have things to do on his own.
Dr. Sacco said that Bingo’s infected ear was slowly healing, but that his heart had fallen into a serious arrhythmia. He let Edward listen through his stethoscope to the erratic sounds, the booming drum and the flutter, and he prescribed medication that might help to control the condition without curing it. Surgery was available, too, but such an elderly dog probably wouldn’t survive any extreme measures. “Sometimes,” the vet said, “it’s best to let nature take its course.”
In the late afternoon, Edward put on a pair of old chinos to do the garden work. He found some twine in the crazy drawer to tie back a straggling viburnum. When he was putting it into his pocket, he felt something there—a piece of paper, crinkled and stiff. He often forgot to empty his pockets before doing the laundry. Once, a single Kleenex had caused a snowfall of lint he had to pick off his dark socks for days. Another time, he’d found a twenty-dollar bill that had survived the washer and dryer in a worn, but still spendable state.
Now he withdrew the crumpled paper and saw that it was a grocery receipt. He put it on the counter and smoothed it with his hand. The few items listed were faded but still legible: milk, peaches, Pond’s cold cream. He put his hand to his chest, found his own rapid, steady heartbeat. Bee had used that stuff, the Pond’s. He remembered the green-lidded white jar on her dressing table, the smell of roses on her gleaming face and throat. How old was this receipt? The date wasn’t readable, but the name of the store in the Vineyard was. Then he flipped the thing over and saw the telephone number scrawled there. It was only slightly blurry. That must have been a permanent marker rather than a pen that Ellen had borrowed from the checker.
Julie would say that this was a sign, and Mildred would probably back her up. Edward remained a pragmatist, though, even after finding what he had no longer been seeking, as if it had been seeking him. Serendipity brought about by mere random chance. Yet he remembered Laurel leaning toward him at the movie theater, asking if there was someone else, and he felt spooked by the notion of female intuition.
Bingo shuffled into the kitchen, and Edward reached down to stroke his head, careful not to touch the bad ear. “So, should I call her?” he said. He still hadn’t resorted to conversing with animals; he was really only talking to himself, although he didn’t appear to be any better than Bingo at coming up with an answer. So much time had gone by since he’d last seen Ellen. Maybe he’d missed his chance with her. He put the receipt back into his pocket and went out into the yard to work.
Crouching to lift and bag a pile of leaves, he remembered that when he was a boy and spent his allowance too quickly or foolishly, his father would say, “That money was burning a hole in your pocket.” That was how Edward felt about the grocery receipt with Ellen’s telephone number on it. It generated heat against his thigh, demanding his attention.
Still, he hesitated, remembering her cool demeanor at the market that July day, and holding Laurel in his arms this very morning. He had been careful not to commit himself to her, but that was mostly out of fear of being left again. Then why was he still thinking about Ellen? Maybe it was his turn to be selfish, even devious, but it didn’t come naturally to him. And there was no one he could comfortably confide in and ask for advice.
Perversely, he believed that only Bee could
have helped him straighten out his complicated feelings, and she had never been as absent as she was right then. Amy Weitz had said that the dead seem to hang around for a while, as if to guide and comfort us, and then slowly disappear into an unapproachable distance. How did we let them go?
Edward had only visited Bee’s grave a few times since her death, and then it was to escort Julie, who’d asked him to go with her. He had held her while she bawled, and they’d weeded the ivied plot together, and laid a few small stones on the monument, like primitive visitor’s cards, in the Jewish tradition. Edward had brought a handful of them from his own backyard. But he didn’t really sense Bee there, in the cemetery, despite her name and dates etched into the polished granite, the terrible memory of the coffin being lowered into the freshly turned earth. She was elsewhere, she was nowhere.
He went back into the house and returned the remainder of the twine to the crazy drawer, but left the grocery receipt on the counter. Then he took Bingo out for a walk. The dog was going to die before long. All the panting he’d been doing lately wasn’t due to the thermostat being set too high, as Edward had reasoned in his denial. And the uneven clatter of his ancient heart meant that it would probably suddenly stop. Still, he plodded from tree to bush to tree in his usual circuitous path, calmly attentive to business, and not for the first time, Edward felt as if he were the one being walked. He was already heavyhearted—he would miss Bingo’s company, his unconditional canine devotion. Another living presence in the house. But the vet’s words had gone right over that furry head. What separated man most notably from beast were language, the opposable thumb, and a knowledge of death. Oh, lucky dog!
He would have to prepare Mildred, though; it might happen on her watch. When he called to tell her, she said, “Yeah, I know.” But she was referring to her observation of Bingo, not her psychic abilities. “He’s been going downhill for a while,” she said, “and they don’t get much older than he is.” She agreed with Sacco’s advice to just let him be, as long as he wasn’t uncomfortable.
For a crazy moment, Edward considered talking over his love life with Mildred—a neutral party, widowed herself, as he’d learned the day they’d had tea together. Someone basically practical, despite her paranormal dabbling, and trustworthy. But she was liable to break out her Tarot cards, or look for answers in the lines on his palm, and fortunately the moment passed. Like Julie, he was responsible for his own happiness.
As soon as he hung up, Edward glanced down at the receipt on the counter, and reached for the phone again. It rang before he could pick it up, startling him. He expected it would be Laurel, stopping him from his intention, instinctively or accidentally. They often spoke at about this time, when most couples he knew—as he and Bee had always done—convened to prepare supper, to have a drink together, and to review their respective days. The lonely hour, as he thought of it now, and he regretted not asking Laurel to come home with him.
But when he answered the phone, Sybil was on the other end. In typical Sybil fashion, she eschewed the formalities and got right to the point. Did he have paper and a pencil handy? Her cousin had asked her to give Edward her work number, so he and Laurel could arrange that visit to the conservation lab at the Met. He took a pencil from the mug on the counter, and after looking around in vain for something else to write on, he ended up reversing the receipt to its faintly printed side. “Shoot,” he said, imagining himself framed in the sight of an executioner’s gun.
Afterward, he poured himself some dry sherry and turned the receipt over and over in his hand until he chose a side and slapped it down on the counter. Then he picked up the phone again and punched in Ellen’s number. A man answered and he hung up.
The Way We Live Now
During sixth period on Thursday, Edward was drawing a cross section of an animal cell on the blackboard: membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus, when the fire bell went off. It was cold and rainy, but they all had to leave the building immediately, without retrieving their jackets or slickers from lockers and closets. The headmaster’s sonorous voice over the PA system reminded them of the protocol. Out on the street, the students shivered and rejoiced in the fate that had freed them temporarily from the tedium of academe.
As usual, there was no fire, but this wasn’t just another drill, as Edward discovered in a quick conference with an eighth-grade dean. Someone had phoned in a bomb threat to the school, the third one since 9/11. They’d never found out who had called in the other two, although there was speculation: a student aspiring to new levels in telephone pranks, a disgruntled fired teacher, a crazy parent—it could have been anyone, really. And there were real bombs exploding somewhere every day. The way we live now, Edward thought as he herded his chattering, rain-soaked students in disorderly lines two blocks away from the police action. One girl held a page of notes over her head, its penned words dissolving into a blue blur.
It was another false alarm, they concluded, after the bomb squad had scoured the building. But by then the school day had ended, and the students were allowed to retrieve their belongings before being sent home. Edward erased the cell he’d been drawing on the blackboard, grabbed his briefcase, and headed for Englewood.
There was a message from Nick on the phone, asking Edward to stop by after dinner; he and Amanda had something to show him. There had been similar messages in the past, once to unveil a new car, he remembered, and once to surprise Bee and Edward with champagne and cake on their anniversary. He imagined he was going to be shown a sonogram picture this time, a swirly little black-and-white Rorschach in which one might discern a blip of new life, or pretend to, and he felt a buzz of anticipation, edged with sadness and something else he couldn’t identify. Envy? Fear?
He did a quick calculation—the baby he and Bee hadn’t been able to produce would be in college now. It wasn’t like Edward to think this way, to sentimentalize something—somebody—that had never materialized. Even Bee hadn’t done that. Despite her disappointment, she’d finally said, “But we have a lovely life just as we are, don’t we?” She was thirty-eight by then, and her pregnancy with Julie had been difficult and tenuous. They decided not to seek medical intervention.
It wasn’t the nonexistent child he mourned now, but those months of hopeful lovemaking, their blinkered gaze fixed on the infinite, lucky future. And he wasn’t afraid of moving up into the next generation, of making that leap toward the precipice. He was already almost there, even without a replacement in the wings. When his sister Catherine was pregnant with her first, their father had joked, “I don’t mind becoming a grandfather, but I’m not crazy about sleeping with a grandmother.” Well, that wouldn’t be Edward’s problem, or his pleasure.
But he envisioned telling people—Sybil and Henry, his friends at school and from the Vineyard—and the air of celebration. When had he last had any good news to share with anyone? What would Laurel think, or say? He stopped at a liquor store on his way to the kids’ house and bought a bottle of chilled Taittinger, but he left it in the car, just in case the news didn’t turn out to be what he’d expected. Maybe they were only going to show him a garden catalog and ask his advice about plantings, or roll out plans for finishing their basement, which Nick had been talking about for a while.
But there was Julie, peeking through the front window and waving at Edward, and when he went inside, Gladys was in the living room, too. The whole family hadn’t been assembled to consult on some home improvement. “Close your eyes, everyone,” Amanda ordered before she and Nick left the room. They all laughed, looking at each other like disobedient, scheming children. “I think I’m going to be an aunt,” Julie whispered. Gladys took Edward’s hand and squeezed it. “Be ready to call 911, honey,” she said. “Surprises are dangerous at my age.” Her bony hand was cold, but her grip was fierce.
Then Amanda and Nick came back in, and he was carrying a carton. “You can open your eyes now,” Amanda said, although they were all staring at her and at the carton, which appeared to be shifting on its ow
n in Nick’s arms. “Voilà!” Amanda cried, and drew a white puppy from it, like a rabbit from a magician’s hat. Gladys dropped Edward’s hand and put it to her breast.
“This is Chanel, everybody,” Amanda said. “Say hello, sweetie.” The puppy was yipping and wriggling convulsively by then and Amanda dropped her into Julie’s lap. The letdown Julie must have been experiencing seemed to be immediately replaced by her enchantment with the fluffy little dog. “Oh, look at you! Aren’t you the cutest,” she crooned, and Chanel reciprocated by lavishly licking Julie’s face and neck.
“Mazel tov,” Gladys said weakly.
Edward was glad he’d left the bottle in the car. He’d be damned if he’d break out good champagne for a French poodle.
“She’s a bichon frise,” Amanda said, as if she’d been reading his mind. “What do you think of her, Dad?”
Edward couldn’t help himself. “I thought you weren’t ready for a dog, for the responsibility,” he said. He sounded as peeved as he felt. “That’s why you couldn’t take Bingo.”
“That was such a long time ago,” she said. “But we’re ready now, right, Nick?”
Nick didn’t look directly at her or at Edward. “Right,” he said.
“And we thought we could ask what’s-her-name, Mildred, to do some dog walking for us, too.”
“Bingo and Chanel will be like cousins,” Julie said, and Edward wondered if there was something wrong with her, if she was even more immature than he’d thought. He had planned on telling them all about Bingo’s heart and his prognosis, but now the timing didn’t seem right. Julie might even suggest that he get a puppy, too.
Amanda said, “Well, enjoy yourselves, we’ll get some coffee,” and she and Nick and the carton disappeared from view.
“A dog,” Gladys said, the moment they were gone. “I was hoping … I thought we’d have someone to name for Mommy.” Edward reached over and patted her arm.
An Available Man Page 18
