“We need to vote on job candidates for next year. We’re doing the interviews at the AHA. We have about fifty serious candidates for two jobs, and we need to get a shortlist, otherwise we’ll never get out of the hotel room. So…”
He notices her left hand, not at rest. It tenses and releases, the knuckles emerging in peaks like a pianist’s, the diamond of her engagement ring glinting in the overhead kitchen light. He wants to take that hand and stop it moving, but he seems incapable of making contact.
“We can leave whenever you like,” Oliver hears himself say, and Marian nods and goes back to her paper. She does not leap to her feet and begin packing, tidying, setting things right for departure. She maintains a studied nonchalance, as if she were not really trying to get away from him, but of course she is, Oliver thinks. She is, she is. And this is all his fault!
Forty-five minutes later, she gets up, languid, unhurried. She puts the dishes in the dishwasher, the paper in the recycling bin, then sets about removing all traces of Oliver Stern from the house she shares with her husband. Sheets go in the washer, trash from the bathroom is brought to the kitchen, then bagged and carried outside, a copy of The New Yorker with his subscription label, thoughtlessly left on the coffee table, is thoughtfully placed in his bag. From the kitchen table, Oliver watches this subtle choreography with growing dismay, and when Marian emerges in fresh clothing, clothing for the journey, he understands that his inactivity is now officially detaining her. “I’ll just get my things,” he says sadly.
“No rush!” she says, with forced cheer.
They drive out on the uncharacteristically empty Route 27, passing the closed farm stands and the self-consciously retro motels, the garden centers with their stock wrapped in burlap and the sad-looking summer restaurants. Oliver sits stiffly in the passenger seat, staring out the window. Leaving the Hamptons, they head for Riverhead and the LIE, and when Oliver sees the first signs for the highway, hunger occurs to him. He is hungry. He would like to stop and eat. And perhaps, at the same time, talk. “I’m so hungry,” he says, floating the concept. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Not really,” says Marian.
“Well, I am. Really hungry. Can we stop?”
She looks briefly at him, trying—and failing—to hide her annoyance. Then she nods and turns off into Riverhead, driving slowly along Main Street and looking for something likely. “How about this?” she asks, meaning the diner.
“Great,” says Oliver enthusiastically.
They pull in and get out of the car. The lot is nearly full—a good sign for the food but a bad one for seating, and indeed when they get inside there are seats available only at the counter, chrome-edged octagons with red leatherette tops. Marian takes one as Oliver hangs up their coats by the door.
“The diner that time forgot,” she says when he returns. “What do you think?”
Oliver looks around. A half century of continuous grease seems to hang about the place. Still, it’s cheery and loud, with photos of—Oliver supposes—local celebrities hung above the chrome-backed work area behind the counter. Marian reads the menu. When the waitress stops expectantly at their place, Marian asks for coffee and an omelet. Oliver just asks for coffee.
“I thought you were hungry,” Marian reminds him.
“Hamburger, please,” he says automatically, though he isn’t really hungry; he’s too sad to be hungry. Just desperate, thinks Oliver, avoiding Marian’s eyes. But for what, exactly? “Tell me about your job candidates,” he says. “Do you have any favorites?”
She sighs. “No. To tell you the truth, I haven’t given it much thought. I went through the applications once, but nothing’s jumped out at me.”
“Why do you have to go to the meeting, then?”
“Because of Carter Hawes. My department head?” She prompts.
“Oh. Yes,” Oliver says, briefly shamed that he hadn’t known the name of her boss.
“Carter takes these things very seriously.”
“Choosing which applicants to interview?”
“No,” says Marian with a brief smile. “Who attends the meeting and who skips out.”
“Ah.”
Their coffees land with a little slosh before them. Oliver pours the overflow from his saucer back into the cup, and passes Marian the sugar.
“So I really need to be there. I’m sorry I forgot to mention it.”
He looks up. She does not seem to realize what she has just said, how she has just contradicted herself. A wave of sadness comes over Oliver so swiftly that he is nearly unbalanced on his octagonal stool. It has ended. It is ending, right now, right here. But Marian cares for him too much to say so.
“Marian,” he tries.
“You know,” she rushes on, “it’s a circus, the AHA. Everyone wants something—a job or a book contract or a recommendation. What happens to history in the midst of it all? And you’d be amazed how much plagiarism there is. Not the kind you can prove, necessarily—not text, but research. People help themselves to the work of other people, then rewrite the conclusions. They appointed a committee a few years back to look into it, and all they came up with was a statement about paying closer attention. Like we should all stop doing our own research in order to research other people’s research?”
Oliver shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“On the other hand, everybody’s desperate for jobs. The pressure to get hired is astounding. Fifty serious contenders—fifty serious contenders, that’s not counting the people who merely have Ivy League degrees and three or four years teaching at the post-doc level—how are we supposed to pick a shortlist, let alone a single applicant? It’s humbling, you know. If I were coming through now, I’d probably be thrilled with an adjunct position at a South Dakota community college. I’m not saying it’s an excuse for plagiarism, though.”
Marian stops. She looks, thinks Oliver, as if she has no idea what to say next. Then the arrival of her omelet saves her.
“This looks good,” Marian says weakly, and begins to eat it with unconvincing enthusiasm.
Oliver watches her. She will not turn to him. He can’t see her eyes. What color are her eyes? he thinks. In the future, how will he remember them?
The door of the diner opens, then closes. He imagines the miasma of grease disturbed by the puff of cold air. He removes the bun from his rapidly cooling hamburger and looks around for ketchup, though he cannot be said to truly want that, either. The ketchup is inches from Marian’s right hand, and he is about to ask her for it when he sees that she is at last looking at him—eyes brown, he thinks fiercely. She’s looking past him, really, but close enough. Oliver smiles in vague relief.
Then, quite abruptly, she is on her feet beside her stool. “Oliver,” Marian says, “I need to leave. I don’t feel well.” She opens her purse. She takes her wallet out. She puts money on the table, a twenty-dollar bill, far too much, and moves away toward the door. Helpless, Oliver goes after her.
“Are you going to be sick?” he asks. “Don’t you want to go to the bathroom?”
“No, no,” Marian says, pulling her coat off the hanger by the door. In her haste it falls to the floor and he reaches down for it, fumbling against her own hand, which is also fumbling.
“What’s happened?” he says. He holds the coat for her and she throws an arm into a sleeve and dives against the door.
“I’m fine, I just have to go. Can we go?”
“Well—” he starts to follow. She has her hand on the door, holding it open. She has her other hand on his sleeve. She is, Oliver realizes, actually pulling him outside.
“Wait, Marian,” he says. “I need my coat.”
She lets go with visible reluctance and stands on the top step, her eyes on him, waiting. Dimly, Oliver goes back and reaches up for his coat, and defiantly puts it on right where he stands. At the counter, the waitress is holding the twenty and looking at him. She seems reluctant to question the tip, in case he might change his mind, but he is too confu
sed to explain himself to her. “Sorry!” he says. “Just remembered we were supposed to be somewhere else.”
The waitress nods, relieved, and sticks the bill in her apron, then heads down the counter, away from him. Oliver watches her go to a booth in the back. And then he sees something.
“Oliver, come on,” Marian says from the open door, but he does not come on. He moves back into the diner. His coat is on. There is a fine cord of amazing strength drawing him closer and closer to the booth at the end of the diner, which is in a town he has never visited before, where he knows no one, and this is why he cannot understand why he is approaching the person he is approaching, who is a person Oliver has always despised, in spite of the person’s being married to Oliver’s mother.
Perhaps Henry Rosenthal takes him for a waiter. Perhaps he is as impervious to the notion of running into someone who might know him in the Riverhead Diner as Oliver himself was, only moments ago. Perhaps that is why Henry is here, with a woman clearly not Oliver’s mother, just as Oliver himself is here with a woman he should not be seen with. So why is Oliver so stunned by his stepfather’s audacity?
He is very close before Henry Rosenthal looks up, and the shock on his stepfather’s face is gratifying, but not gratifying enough. No wound Oliver can inflict, nothing he can say will be gratifying enough. Words race through his head and depart. The woman detaches her hand from Henry’s and puts it demurely in her lap, but she does not otherwise move.
“Well,” Henry says, and Oliver hates, afresh, the nasal buzz of his stepfather’s voice.
“Does she know?” Oliver hears himself say. He means his mother, but regrets the pronoun instantly. Without knowing the first thing about the woman seated before him, he does not want Henry to think he cares in the slightest about her.
“I think so,” says Henry. “If I had to bet, I’d say yes.”
“If you had to bet,” Oliver says in sickened wonder.
“Your mother’s very smart,” Henry offers, as if in explanation.
The woman in the booth ducks out, swinging long, exquisite blond hair behind her. Even without looking at her directly, Oliver senses her extreme beauty. But his mother is beautiful, too, he thinks frantically. Henry should not be allowed to simply exchange one beautiful woman for a younger one. Henry should not be allowed access to oxygen.
“Were you going to tell her?” Oliver manages to say.
“Of course,” Henry shrugs. “I care for your mother.”
“Oh, fuck you,” he says, for the second time in a handful of hours, and for the second time it comes out much louder than expected. In the next booth, hands freeze on the way to mouths. “If you cared for her, you wouldn’t be here,” Oliver hisses.
“The situation is complex,” Henry says, offhandedly. “And I don’t owe you an explanation, Oliver. Caroline, arguably, but not you.”
“She’s your client,” Oliver observes. This fact has occurred to him and flown from his mouth in a single, fluid instant, propelled by outrage.
“True. It’s not what anyone wanted.”
“My God, you’re such a hypocrite! You’re whining to the press about how she deserves more money from her husband, and meanwhile you’re screwing her.”
“Hey!” Henry says sharply. He rises, as best he can from the cramped booth. Oliver, amazed, understands that he has insulted the honor of his stepfather’s mistress. “I am in love with this woman,” Henry pronounces. “I am going to marry this woman.”
Oliver steps back. “Good,” he spits. “Then I hope she gets her next divorce attorney to clean you out. I hate your fucking guts.”
For a moment, Henry does not react. Then he sinks back onto the banquette, shaking his head. “I’m wounded,” he says finally, laughing.
“I’ve never liked you,” Oliver adds. This is actually for his own benefit. Loyalty to his mother has not permitted him to voice this for fifteen years, but he wants to get it on the record, and now seems like the last possible moment to do so. It does not have the desired effect, however. Henry’s laugh broadens, then peters out in a chuckle.
“Well, you know, Oliver, I’m not going to take that personally. You wouldn’t have liked any man screwing your mother who wasn’t your father.”
He steps back, stunned that someone thinks this of him and then stunned to realize that it’s absolutely true. He wants to leave before the blond woman comes back. He does not want to see her again, to see how beautiful she is. “You tell her today,” Oliver manages to say. “Or I tell her tomorrow.”
Henry appears to consider this like the master negotiator he is, then he nods. “I agree,” he says, with maddening gravity, and Oliver turns and rushes away, his face hot with rage. He bursts out through the door and stands for a moment, lost on the top step of the diner, until Marian calls his name from the window of her car. He stumbles forward and climbs inside, and they drive in leaden silence to the highway.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Its Necessary End
At the best of times, it’s a long trip; today, it feels interminable. The exit numbers diminish with wearying lethargy and the mood in Marian’s Volvo stays intractably grim. Oliver feels by turns enraged and humiliated, alternately full of pity for his mother and disgusted with her for failing to recognize Henry’s perfidy. He does not know whether he hopes his stepfather will indeed tell her tonight or not; he does not know whether he wants the privilege for himself or not; and he can barely hold one thought in his head before another comes crashing into it, like a pileup on an overcrowded highway.
The LIE is not, actually, overcrowded. The car moves swiftly enough but the exits still tick, tick slowly toward zero and the city, while Oliver fumes in the passenger seat and Marian drives in dour silence. They are nearly to Queens when she finally speaks.
“Poor Caroline” is what she says.
Oliver looks over at her. “She’ll be rid of him.”
“And that’s good?” Marian asks.
“He’s an asshole.”
“To you,” she says sadly. “But you’re not the one married to him.”
“I hate him,” says Oliver.
Marian sighs. “I know.”
The city’s backbone slips into view. Marian gets in the lane for the Queens Midtown Tunnel.
“What are you going to do?” she says.
He looks at her as if she’s insane. “Tell her. Of course.”
“Oliver, don’t.”
“I will if he doesn’t,” he says bitterly. “I said he had to tell her tonight or I’d tell her tomorrow.”
“I’m not sure that’s wise. Right now,” she adds, cutting him off. “While your feelings are so…”
He gives her a grace period, then he jumps in. “So?”
“I was going to say, ‘emotional.’ Not that there’s anything wrong with being emotional, under the circumstances, but it might do Caroline more good if you cooled off a bit. Besides, you’ll have to explain what you were doing in the Riverhead Diner.”
Oliver frowns. This thought had not occurred to him. What if Henry tells Caroline about the encounter? Won’t she get around to requesting the details eventually?
“I don’t think he saw you,” Oliver offers.
“No, I shot out of there pretty fast. I’m just sorry I didn’t get you out, too.”
“Why?” he says harshly. “Is it your responsibility to protect me? Or were you protecting him?”
Marian gives him a brief look. “I wasn’t thinking of him. I couldn’t care less about him. I was thinking of you. And not,” she adds, with discernible hurt, “because it’s my responsibility. Or are you confusing me with your mother again?”
It is an unfortunate slip. The temperature in the car drops again. All that restrains Oliver from shouting at her is his weariness, and the fact that they have just entered the tunnel, which is full of rapid, weaving traffic. He has also begun to be concerned about the question of their destination, an anxiety that leaps as Marian turns south on First Avenue.
“Where are you going?” he says tightly.
She frowns. “To Commerce Street.”
“No!” Oliver says, with a force he hasn’t expected. It has suddenly become clear to him that he does not want it to end this way, though he cannot yet examine the nature of “it”: Their trip to the Hamptons? Their love affair? He does not want to be dropped off, left behind by her, at least not with this knot of tension between them. The notion that she might wish to be free of him, even for a short time, is terrifying. “I want to come with you,” he says, straining not to whine.
“But I’m going to the office,” she says deliberately. “For my meeting.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Oliver, that’s…look, who knows how long it’s going to go on? It might be hours!”
“Fine. I’ll wait. We’ll have dinner.”
She bites her lower lip and turns right on Fifty-seventh. It is a non-committal move.
“By then I’ll just want to collapse,” she says. “By then, you’ll want to collapse!”
“No,” he shakes his head. “It’s fine. I’ll hang out somewhere. I’ll go have coffee.”
“All afternoon?” She brakes for the light on Lexington and looks at him. “Oliver, look, let me take you home. I’ll call you. We can meet for dinner somewhere if it’s really important to you.”
He shakes his head. “No, you won’t call. Or you’ll call me and say you’re too tired. I’ll come with you. I’ll wait.”
Marian glares, but not at him. She glares at the weaving bodies, moving in front of her car, even behind her car, pedestrians impervious to danger. “You’re being stubborn,” she tells Oliver. “I don’t want to spend the afternoon worrying about you and feeling bad that you’re sitting in some coffee shop waiting for me. It’s going to be boring enough without that.”
“Fine!” Oliver shouts. “The last thing I want to do is bore you.”
“Oliver!”
The light turns green. He reaches back between them to his bag, on the floor behind her seat. It knocks her shoulder as he pulls it forward but he doesn’t apologize.
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