True Enough

by Stephen McCauley

  She put the card back into her shirt pocket and, a second later, pulled it out again. “You think I should call or wait a couple of days? Sometimes I scare people off. I’m too intense. That’s my problem.”

  Desmond nodded. Everyone claimed they were too “intense,” an amorphous term that usually indicated an obsessive-compulsive disorder they were trying to pass off as a surfeit of intelligence.

  “I’m getting sick of this whole thing, Desmond, chasing after people. I’m too old for it. See if you can find me a nice wife up there in Boston.”

  Whose nice wife? he wanted to ask.

  Russell strode up to the front of the store, and dropped down onto the sofa beside Melanie. He slipped the cigarette out of her hand and took a deep drag off it in a defiant way that seemed to be directed at Desmond. Russell was an occasional smoker. Desmond had felt obliged to discourage him from indulging although, in truth, he was turned on by the slutty way Russell held a cigarette between his middle and ring fingers and rolled the smoke around in his open mouth. “You didn’t tell me you were coming down here,” he said. “I don’t guess you’ve changed your mind about leaving?”

  “Surprise visit,” Melanie said. “He wanted to see if you were shacked up with someone else already. Don’t worry, Desmond, I’ll keep my eyes on him for you. One of the guys working next door spends half his day in here, ogling him. Some nerve, huh?” She shoved herself off the sofa and gave Desmond a pat on the cheek. “I’m used to keeping him out of trouble.”

  She slipped outside, letting in a blast of ovenlike air. The store was quiet, except for the clicking and dripping of the air conditioner over the door, and the buzz of construction work from the neighboring building. Desmond felt suddenly nervous in Russell’s presence, as if they’d already been apart for weeks and had begun the process of becoming strangers. Perhaps Russell was feeling the same way, for he stubbed out the cigarette and looked around the store shyly, as if he was trying to find busywork to distract him. “Did she tell you about this woman who came in here two days ago?” he asked.

  “She mentioned someone.”

  “I hope you tried to discourage her. Whenever she starts talking like this, I can see the crisis brewing. ‘I could tell she was interested by the way she was trying to avoid looking at me.’” Russell’s imitation of Melanie was perfect, forced machismo, thrust-back shoulders and all.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t get so involved,” Desmond suggested. “You’re always out on a limb with her and she doesn’t change. I worry she’s too dependent upon you.”

  Russell stared at him for a moment. “Why are you so afraid of dependence, Desmond?”

  “I didn’t know I was.”

  “You are, trust me. People who rave about their independence are just lonely people who’ve given up hope.” He pulled an Exacto knife out of his back pocket and slit through the masking tape on a carton on the floor. “Besides, I’m dependent on helping her. She’s my friend. I love her.” He went through the contents of the box—probably something Melanie had picked up at an auction—and held up a gray dinner plate that had no particular style or reference to period. “Quintessential ‘80s, don’t you think?”

  “Oh yes. I’d say so, sweetheart.” One of the great virtues of the 1980s theme was that it was so undefined, anything could be passed off as belonging to the period. Russell admitted that he couldn’t always tell by looking at it when a piece of furniture or clothing was from the 1980s, but as soon as he stuck a price tag on it, he knew. He had on a long-sleeved white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a pair of gray gabardine trousers that hung loosely off his legs. Desmond loved watching him go through all this junk—yellow eyeglasses on the end of his nose, long dark hair falling around his face—with the same studied concentration he had when he read Tolstoy. If I were a stranger, Desmond thought, and came into this store—not that he ever would—I’d fall in love with this little guy. Of course, the problem with being physically attracted to your lover was that you could imagine other people finding him equally attractive.

  “You’re looking especially handsome right now,” Desmond said. “But then, you always look handsome . . .” He was about to say “to me,” but after five years of living together, those little addenda had started to sound more like narrowing qualifications than compliments. “I like the way you look in that shirt” was now less flattering than “Mary (or Tom or Theresa or Rover) likes the way you look in that shirt.”

  “So that’s why you came down here? To tell me you like the way I look?”

  “I just wanted one more chance to say goodbye, that’s all.” And then, feeling a sudden urge to be completely honest about the small portion of the truth he wanted to discuss, he said, “Ever since that party, you’ve been so distant, I haven’t known what’s going on with you. I didn’t want to leave town feeling there was something unspoken between us.”

  Russell muttered some kind of assent. “Well,” he said, “you had to get a teaching job in Boston for the sake of the book.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You need the money.”

  “At the moment, yes.”

  “Right, right,” Russell said.

  And yet there was an edge of hurt, doubt, or disappointment in his voice that troubled Desmond. Desmond had always believed that the only way to keep mystery—and therefore romance and mutual attraction—in a relationship was by lying about or keeping secret a good third of what you were feeling at any given moment. Russell had always insisted upon full disclosure, and over the years Desmond had become addicted to knowing everything, if not always telling everything. “What is it you’re not telling me?” he asked.

  Russell glanced up from his cardboard box of treasure and stared into Desmond’s eyes as if trying to make a decision. He pushed the box away, sat back on the sofa, and used both hands to pull his hair off his face. “What I’m not telling you,” he said, “is something I’m embarrassed about, but what the fuck, I’ll tell you anyway. When you went to talk with Peter at that party, I hung around the living room for a while, trying to make conversation with some of your friends. Some sad little woman over in the corner bumped against a table and knocked over a vase of lilies, and Velan, who by this time had started to do some serious drinking, was about to make a scene. So I walked down the hallway to the bedroom—and here’s the embarrassing part—and stood outside the door listening in on your conversation with Peter.”

  “Well, that’s not so embarrassing. That’s what I do for a living.” And then, trying to remember if he’d said anything regrettable, he asked, “Which part of the conversation did you listen in on?”

  “The part where you told Peter—bragged might be the better word—that you had some dates or tricks ‘lined up’ in Boston. I’m sure I heard other things, but that’s what kind of”—he gestured angrily toward his temple—“stuck in my mind.”

  It was one of the few times Desmond felt tremendously relieved to have been caught in a lie. If your lover was going to overhear you bragging to someone about cheating on him, you couldn’t ask for better luck than to have the bragging be honest-to-God untrue. “But that was just something I said,” he laughed. “Of course I don’t have anything lined up.’”

  Russell frowned at this comment, with annoyance, not doubt. “I’m not sure I fully believed it to begin with,” he said. “If I had, I probably would have been a lot angrier. But what I’ve been left wondering for the past several days is why you’d go out of your way to say it.”

  The comment shattered the relief Desmond had been feeling a few seconds earlier. What had made him think it would be a good idea to drive all the way down here instead of shooting straight north?

  He doubted it would make Russell feel better about the entire incident if he confessed that the comment had been part of his attempt to gain psychological distance from him. What would he say: Oh, I thought it might help me pretend we’re not a couple, just so I can get my mind back for a few months? Surely
that was an even graver betrayal than merely wanting back his dick for a few months.

  “I suppose,” he said, tentatively, “I was bragging, although not about anything real. Peter had just confessed to his big conquest, and I didn’t want him to think I was—”

  “You were what? Stuck in something as pathetic as a happy marriage?”

  “Pathetic is a little harsh, sweetheart, but some variation on that thought might have crossed my mind. Fleetingly.”

  Russell got up and went to the door. “It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been together, Desmond. I still think of you as a conquest, and I wish you thought of me as one, instead of thinking of me as an embarrassing kid brother you’re forced to drag around to parties.”

  Calmly, without any particular animosity, Russell walked out.

  An embarrassing kid brother. Had he really made Russell think of himself that way? If so, he was undoubtedly a horrible person. Especially since there was something in the “kid brother” business that turned him on. Desmond looked around the store, at all the framed photos, amateur portraits, gaudy posters, plates, and pillow of Ron and Nancy Reagan. It was like being surrounded by a horde of disapproving relatives, which pretty much summed up the way he’d felt during most of the 1980s anyway.

  By the time he got outside, Russell was halfway up the block, his baggy pants flapping against his legs. It didn’t seem right to leave the store unattended, but without the price tags, most of the stock was worthless anyway. A workman stepped out of the doorway of the next building. “Russell!” he called out. “What are you doing for lunch?”

  “He’s busy,” Desmond said, hurrying past. He was sweating heavily when he caught up with Russell. He grabbed his arm and spun him around. “Where are you going, sweetheart?”

  “Coffee.”

  “But you don’t drink coffee.”

  “Surprise.”

  “Maybe I should wait and leave tomorrow.”

  “The car is packed. Anyway, I’ve got dinner plans for tonight.”

  Standing on the sidewalk, surrounded by the smell of exhaust and the heat of the buildings, it crossed Desmond’s mind, for the first time, that getting a little distance from Russell would mean that Russell had a little distance from him. Was that a good thing or bad? He glanced across the street. A police officer was standing behind a blue Volvo writing out a ticket. His car was next in line. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m illegally parked.”

  “If you’re illegally parked, you’d better go. I don’t think you have much choice. Call me when you get to Boston.”

  He kissed Desmond on the mouth with what felt like a mixture of love and aggression. Desmond watched him walk into a coffee place on the corner. It was going to be much more difficult to go to Boston and feel comfortably released from his relationship with Russell if he didn’t have the luxury of believing it was solid and utterly secure.

  Five

  Is This All Right?

  1.

  It was ten o’clock before Jane could convince Gerald to turn out the lights in his third-floor “apartment” and try to get some sleep. Earlier in the evening, they’d had an argument because she’d bought him a $5.99 Ace Hardware flashlight instead of the $15.99 Black & Decker version he’d requested. She’d expected there would be consequences for buying the cheaper model, but she’d vowed only two days ago that she wouldn’t let him bully her anymore and she had to start somewhere.

  Looking into his darkened room, she could see the big mound of his body under his sheet, his face turned away from her. “I hope you sleep well, sweetie,” she said.

  There was a sigh from the bed. “I intend to,” he said.

  Gerald had a phobia about sleeping with the windows open—another symptom Dr. Rose Garitty refused to discuss with her—and the room was stifling. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to turn on the air conditioner?”

  “I doubt that will be necessary, Jane. You know how I feel about that thing.”

  “All right, sweetie. Good night.”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  There were moments when Jane felt that Gerald was one of the most mysterious people on the planet. She didn’t understand how he made decisions, where his strong likes and dislikes came from, how he’d developed such an adult sense of irony and outrage. Sometimes she looked at him with admiration—So independent! So intelligent!—but other times, most times, his independence was the source of free-floating anxiety. Perhaps he was picking up on some subtle, unconscious message she was sending out, and that was what kept him so aloof and inaccessible. Thomas was amused by his behavior. The casual way he laughed off Gerald’s opinionated outpourings and the ease with which he engaged him in serious discussions had created a bond between them that she envied. The one time she’d greeted Gerald’s pretensions with a lighthearted, if slightly forced, laugh, her son had looked at her with disgust, as if she were foaming at the mouth.

  As she made her way down the staircase, she reached into the pocket of her shorts, pulled out a rumpled piece of paper towel, and wiped sweat off her forehead. This humidity was beginning to make her feel claustrophobic, as if she were wrapped in a wet sheet and couldn’t catch her breath. The other day, Dale had dismissed her environmental concerns and claimed the weather was just part of the natural cycle of things, a comment she’d interpreted to mean he’d become a Republican. Dale didn’t have real political convictions and never had; he had social ambitions. When they’d met this afternoon, he’d described in detail the restaurant he’d invested in, using words like “tasteful” and “quality” about three hundred times. Caroline had obviously weaned him off “classy,” but the echo of it was there in everything he said. If you didn’t know better, you might find this eagerness to fit in almost touching.

  She decided to unload the dishwasher, a mindless chore that was infinitely less odious at this hour than in the clear light of morning and always made her feel she’d accomplished something.

  Since the day they moved into the house, Jane had hated the kitchen, the big rambling room facing the shady backyard with the tongue-and-groove wainscoting and the bleached pine cabinets and the long cool pantry with the worn butcher block countertops. Everyone who came into the house fell in love with the kitchen immediately, which was, in itself, enough to make her look at it with doubt. Loving a room like this was so obvious and easy, like a politician approving of tax cuts. Like the way people reacted to her friend Rachel’s thirteen-year-old son. How unchallenging to love blond-haired, six foot, athletic, polite, brilliant Joshua. What about loving a person, or a room, whose virtues you had to hunt for a little bit?

  For starters, she didn’t like to cook. Not because she had any political objections to women slaving away over a stove—the lives of most of the women she knew revolved around food anyway, cooking it, eating it, or lusting after it through a fog of self-deprivation—but because it required too much patience and precision, qualities she’d never been able to nurture in herself. Thomas was the cook in their family, and a brilliant cook, too, although at times she found herself wondering if all the care he threw into cutting and slicing vegetables and reducing sauces wasn’t just more passive-aggression.

  She put away three plates and two glasses, decided it would be best to let them cool off for another hour or so, and headed to the refrigerator to check out the leftovers. As she was reaching for a plastic container of shrimp, she noticed that there was only a spoonful of Thomas’s chocolate mousse concoction left in a bowl that had been half full two hours ago. That meant that Gerald had crept downstairs at some point and furtively gorged on it.

  She took out a Tupperware container and sat at the kitchen table, poking through the broccoli and linguini until she found a plump shrimp. Gerald had always been heavy—he had Thomas’s body type—but she hadn’t given his weight much thought until the past year or so, when she started to worry about it. She didn’t want to mention it and draw attention to what was a potentially explosive issue, not that all issues w
eren’t potentially explosive where Gerald was concerned. On the other hand, it seemed irresponsible to turn a blind eye to what was a legitimate health concern. Dear old (young, really, and that might be part of the trouble) Dr. Garitty was evasive on this subject and had looked at Jane with disapproval the one time she’d mentioned it. As for talking about it with her own shrink, that was another lost cause. Dr. Berman was immense. In one session, she’d made a passing reference to Thomas’s incipient potbelly and found herself blushing. To make matters more uncomfortable, she’d apologized to Berman.

  As she was hoisting another dripping shrimp to her mouth, Thomas walked in the back door, fresh from a visit with his mother in the carriage house. He had on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, both of which looked limp. Thomas himself looked a little limp, his light hair stuck to his wide forehead in strands. She felt a stab of almost unbearable poignancy, seeing him look so disheveled and overheated, the T-shirt stuck to his stomach with sweat. She had no illusions that she looked her best in this weather. Maybe people would finally become outraged over global warming when they realized how adversely it affects your appearance.

  “How’s Sarah?” she asked, popping the shrimp into her mouth.

  Thomas shrugged and went to the refrigerator. “She seems fine. Cranky, but that’s the norm.” The kitchen was suddenly bright from the refrigerator bulb.

  From time to time, Thomas offered Jane these mild criticisms of his mother, mostly as a way to appease her and show her that his allegiance was to his wife. One day, she’d love to hook him up to a lie detector and ask him which one of them he’d save first from a burning building. She heard his knees crack as he squatted down to forage. After a moment, he asked, “Any of that mousse left?”