True Enough

by Stephen McCauley

  “What bad timing. I wonder where Brian could be, on a Saturday night?”

  “Frankly, Desmond, I thought you might be able to answer that question.”

  No, he was happy to be able to tell her, he had no special insight into Brian’s whereabouts. And that was the honest truth.

  “My apologies for misreading our little encounter on the street. I had the most wonderful time imagining what was going on with you two while I sat at that café, attempting to read my students’ papers. I hate when someone all of a sudden develops a conscience and shoots your plans to hell. He couldn’t stand the thought of cheating on his wife?”

  “I couldn’t stand the thought of cheating on mine. After I did, that is. Which is too bad because I don’t think Russell, the wife in question, is having the same crisis of conscience.”

  “You’re one of the other widows.” There was a candle burning on the coffee table in front of the sofa, the flickering light sending shadows up to the high ceiling. Rosemary leaned down and put it out with her fingers, a surprisingly indirect signal, given her blunt personality, that it was getting close to closing time. “I have a certain amount of envy toward you, touched as you are by the glamour of abandonment and betrayal. Also because you, unlike me, have the possibility of making your dead husband feel sorry for what he did to you.”

  As he was walking home through the dark quiet streets of Back Bay—no piano music now—it seemed to him that perhaps Rosemary had offered him some advice, even if unwittingly. He should follow her example and send Russell a letter full of truths of the human heart, of his human heart, possibly adding a few details that might provoke the faint stirrings of regret. Knowing that it didn’t necessarily have to be honest made the whole project seem easier and a lot less threatening. They were leaving for Florida in a week. He could send off the letter before he left and wait to see where the chips fell.

  3.

  As soon as Desmond left, Rosemary snuffed out the rest of the candles, turned out the lights, and headed for her bedroom. The goddamned cat was curled up on her pillow. The Realtor had told her this was the best apartment she had to offer, but cat sitting was part of the arrangement. Fortunately it was an independent creature that required little attention beyond the occasional bowl of nasty food. There was no threat she was going to form an emotional attachment to the thing the way Jane had with that ancient dog she’d been taking care of. Poor Jane attached herself to so many unlikely people and things—both husbands, that obnoxious child, the dog, the highly unlikely project with Desmond. She wasn’t a good judge of character, which was just another way of saying she didn’t have a clue about who she was or what she wanted. Or maybe she knew but refused to admit it, which was pretty much the same thing.

  Rosemary poured the rest of the wine into a juice glass, shooed the cat off the pillows, and climbed into bed. She loved to lie in bed in this darkened room that belonged to someone else and look out at the great wall of lights on the other side of the street. Funny how such a big, imposing, impersonal thing as that could make her feel less alone, while a warm, furry cat cozied up against her stomach threw her into an existential crisis.

  She took a few more sips of wine and gazed at the big, enfolding building until the lights became a blur. She wrapped Charlie’s robe around her more tightly, pulled her knees up toward her chest, and, as she had done on so many nights over the years since the goddamned son of a bitch had gone and died on her, wept until she was exhausted and was finally carried off to sleep.

  4.

  It was after three A.M. when Thomas got home from the hospital. Jane was sitting in a chair in the living room, the radio tuned to the all-night jazz station, and a single lamp lit behind her. She was sleeping when he came in, or half asleep. Either way, she gave a start when she saw him. The whole of the long, confusing evening came back to her, and she groaned. He was wearing a blue windbreaker and was holding a can of beer. He’d earned it, there was no question of that, but it was so unlike him, drinking at this hour, that she started to laugh softly. He turned down the volume on the radio, and with a weary rasp in his voice, asked her what she found so funny.

  “With that jacket, that beer, you looked like a soccer coach, that’s all.”

  As he walked past her chair, he touched the top of her head, and then sprawled out lengthwise on the beige sofa. It was strange, she thought, that they’d moved in here almost four years ago, and she couldn’t remember ever before sitting here with him like this, in the quiet middle of the night.

  “Do you know, I used to be a soccer coach?” he asked. “It was maybe twelve years ago, before I met you, when I lived out in Watertown. A little neighborhood league that didn’t last very long.”

  The news shocked her, partly because she couldn’t imagine him standing on a field and coaching, partly because it made her realize she didn’t think much about what his life was like before they met. “How was your team?”

  “Everyone had fun, but I can’t remember if we won very often or not.”

  That was probably the only part of it she would have remembered. If only more of whatever it was he had had rubbed off on her in the past six years. “How are Joyce and the baby?” she asked.

  “Both fine. Considering all the tension at the start, it was a pretty easy delivery.”

  Shortly after midnight, Thomas had called her to say that Brian had finally showed up, claiming he’d gone to a movie and had rushed to the hospital as soon as he heard Jane’s many messages to him. It was an insultingly unlikely story—who went to a movie without telling their ultra-pregnant wife where they were going?—but it was easier for everyone to pretend they believed it.

  “So you stayed in the waiting room?” Jane asked him.

  He hoisted the beer can to his mouth and shrugged. “I wasn’t going to go into the delivery room. I just wanted to be sure everything went smoothly.”

  She was ashamed of Brian—abandoning his wife, leaving Thomas there to pick up the pieces. On top of that, she was ashamed to be his sister and, here was the hardest point to accept, to be so much like him in so many ways. Narcissistic, self-centered, unfaithful, unreliable. “Poor Joyce,” she said. “What’s going to happen to her? She deserves so much better.”

  “Joyce isn’t as fragile as you think, Jane.” There was something steely in his voice, as if he took this very personally, as if he were defending himself as much as he was defending Joyce.

  He’s in love with her, Jane thought. It became so obvious to her now—all the attention he lavished on her, the compliments he paid her, the interest he took in her work, the way he diligently read the children’s books that she’d edited—she couldn’t imagine how she’d missed it before. Then again, how typically self-centered of her to have missed it. How surprising that she finally recognized it. They were in love with each other, or infatuated with each other. When you thought about it, they were made for each other: two kind, honest, intelligent people. What a decent, happy, healthy couple they’d make. “She’d be happier married to someone like you,” Jane said.

  “She’s married to your brother.”

  “You’d be happier, Thomas, if she were your wife.”

  “Oh, Jane,” he said. He closed his eyes and rested the beer can on his chest. His breathing was heavier, with a slight whistle in it, a sign that he was about to fall off to sleep. “I’d be happier if you were my wife.”

  Nineteen

  The Last Dinner

  1.

  Chloe knocked lightly on Jane’s office door, pushed it open a crack, and peered inside in that halting, apologetic way of hers, as if she were afraid she’d find Jane in there torturing a small animal or rolling around on the carpet naked. Or maybe she was afraid she’d find Jane doing exactly what she was doing: staring out the window at the gathering clouds, watching the wind torment the trees, and banging a pen against her desk with nervous distraction.

  “Is there a problem?” Jane asked.

  Chloe looked over her shoulder.
She was catching on; she knew enough to know that there was always going to be someone standing behind you, peering over your shoulder, ready to knock you off your pedestal. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Did one of the guests cancel?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.” Jane wouldn’t have minded especially if one of the guests had canceled. They were doing a conversation on the recent turn of events in another of those kindergarten sex scandals that should have dropped out of the news decades ago. If Jane had booked the guests herself, she would have loaded the table with experts who’d debunk and discredit the recovered memory industry, but Chloe had done most of the booking for this particular discussion, so the guests would be a group of therapists who made their livelihoods convincing people they were miserable, and state prosecutors who’d made careers out of putting innocent people behind bars. This was the fourth show Chloe had booked, and even if Jane didn’t agree with her point of view, she had to admit—grudgingly—that Chloe did a masterful job of making sure the guests all arrived on time, were prepared to speak, and knew the importance of staying on subject. It was the thrill of the new for her. At her age, everything had the thrill of the new, and it was infectious. She swept back her curls and tapped her long fingers on the door jamb. “I was just upstairs. David asked me to see if you were free. To have a talk with him.”

  She was nervous and it showed, and it was so uncharacteristic of her to display any professional discomfort or doubt, Jane started to worry. “What does he want now?” she asked.

  Chloe pulled her head back so her chin was tucked into her neck, a gesture she apparently intended to come across as astonishment. “I wouldn’t know!” she said. It was the first time Jane had seen Chloe look unattractive in all the months she’d been at the station. Jane had been hoping to see her look frazzled or homely or frantic since the day she arrived, but now she felt let down, the way you might feel let down by seeing weakness in an overbearing parent you longed to see diminished but needed to be strong. (The way Jane had felt betrayed by her own parents when they had up and died, father following mother into the grave at an early age, as if neither had taken into consideration the consequences for her and for Brian. Not to mention the consequences for Joyce and Thomas.) And besides that, Chloe’s gesture was thoroughly unconvincing. A bad actress doing Lady Macbeth.

  Jane pushed herself back from her desk and stood up, and Chloe came to life, as if seeing Jane trying to rouse herself from her stupor was cheering. She smiled brightly and announced that their tickets for Florida had arrived this morning. “Everything’s set,” she said. “Tim got the time off from work, and I got an incredible deal on the van. And you’re going to love the price of the hotel.”

  “You’re exceptional in every way,” Jane said. “I mean that.”

  They were leaving for Florida in less than a week, and although she hated to fly, didn’t like the stifling humidity of the South, and had discovered that the area of Florida they were visiting had so little to recommend it, it was generally passed over by guidebooks, she couldn’t wait to get out of town. She went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Then she looked into the mirror, hoping she’d see conviction and competence, something that might please David Trask, even if she wasn’t quite up to intimidating him these days. No such luck. Her hair was too long and stringy, had lost some of its luster, and her face was gaunt. She still couldn’t get Thomas’s words out of her mind, what he’d said the night he came back from the hospital. If only she didn’t have a guilty conscience, she would have asked him what he meant. But as it was, she had to assume the worst. And worst of all, she longed to talk it over with Dale. He was the only one who knew what was going on. Or had been going on. It had been two weeks since she’d left the message on his machine telling him she couldn’t see him anymore, and just as she’d predicted, he was doing the wretchedly honorable thing by not calling her back.

  2.

  David was pacing in front of his wide window, the sky a dark field behind it. “The threat of rain,” they’d said on the weather this morning. But how could it be considered a threat when it had scarcely rained all fall and everything seemed to be drying up? They should do a Dinner Conversation on the glib giddiness of weather reporting. She’d make a note of it when she got back to her office.

  David looked unhappy, as he often did these days. A little over a year ago, he’d made the colossal mistake of marrying a beautiful, younger woman—for love. It was generally assumed that David had family money—who in public television, aside from Jane, didn’t?—and he wasn’t unattractive, but he’d married out of his league. It was obvious to anyone who knew anything about women like Mara Kray that David was a stepping-stone on Mara’s path to somewhere else. She needed a bigger and more glamorous audience than she was likely to find in Boston, and Jane supposed it was only a matter of a year or two before Mara hooked up with a better connected and more powerful man. In the meantime, she tended to flirt with good-looking nonentities, her male counterparts, and publicly humiliate David in a gentle, condescending way. In the gray morning light, his skin looked sallow.

  As she took a seat in front of David’s desk, she noticed, with a quick stab of dread, that there were coffee cups and a few plates of half-eaten pastries stacked up on a table in the corner. This had to mean there had been a meeting here this morning, one to which she had not been invited. David was still pacing, had made no moves toward sitting down, and aside from mumbling a few words of greeting, was being unusually silent.

  “Meeting?” she asked, desperate to break the ice.

  He stopped pacing and stared at her for a moment, apparently trying to decide how to respond, stroking his wispy goatee with his index finger. “Chloe told you?”

  That cleared up that suspicion: Chloe was now officially inside a loop she’d been booted out of. She indicated the table with her chin. “I was guessing.”

  “Ah.” He seemed to be relieved by this and sat at his desk. “Good guess.”

  “I assume it wasn’t anything that concerns me, because I assume that if it were something that concerned me, I naturally would have been included. Especially since you were serving breakfast.”

  He put an arm across his chest, rested his chin in his hand, and scrutinized her. In a matter of seconds, she saw the look of restive discomfort and apology melt off his face, replaced by a look of barely controlled contempt, and she understood her tactical error. She was living up to her reputation for being hard-edged and sarcastic. Difficult. And in doing so, she was making his job infinitely easier than it would have been if she’d played against type and sat there like a wounded bird.

  He let his hands drop to his desk and rose up taller in his chair, puffed up on self-righteousness. “The meeting concerned a lot of people, Jane.” He nodded at her and arched one eyebrow, as if to put her in her place.

  She’d been told, by more than one person, that she never knew her place. “Including me, correct?”

  “Yes, including you.”

  “And I wasn’t told about it.”

  All those years with Dr. Berman had at least produced some shred of self-awareness. She knew very well what she was doing here: Trying to divert attention away from the significant issue—the content of the meeting to which she pointedly had not been invited—and onto the irrelevant insult of not having been included. Trying to give herself a moment of reprise before he told her what he was going to tell her, which was, obviously, that Dinner Conversation was about to grind to an official stop.

  “I called you up here now to tell you about the meeting, Jane. Do you want to hear about it?”

  She felt a terrible wave of pride swell up inside her, and she leaned her elbows on his desk with as much casual arrogance as she could muster. “Let me guess,” she said. “The announcement we’ve been waiting to hear for the past twelve months: Dinner Conversation is on the way out. Correct?”

  He glared at her, not even grateful that she’d done him the huge favor of making this unhap
py announcement. “Correct. I’m truly sorry.”

  She tossed it off. “The only surprise is it didn’t come sooner.” Her legs were beginning to feel peculiarly heavy in the chair, and the strange gray light was making her slightly dizzy. “When?”

  “We figure we’ll do the last show sometime in early January.”

  That was a blow. In the last few seconds, she’d done some calculating and had concluded the show would probably run for another six months. “That obviously means you have a replacement lined up.” She nodded, trying to look impressed by his skills and foresight. “What is it?”

  “We’re working on a few ideas, nothing final. I’m sorry, Jane, I know how much this show has meant to you over time.”

  “Granted, it has a certain nostalgic appeal, but I’m not about to shed tears over it. I’m going to need more time to devote to the series, so it all works out pretty well. How’s Mara?” Toss her into the conversation just to remind him that he had problems, too. Just to balance things out here. Just to change the subject.

  “I’m afraid I have another bad piece of news for you.” This time he got up and went to the window where unpromising slashes of rain were beginning to strike the glass. “I heard last night that the funding we’d been counting on from the station has been turned down.”

  “Oh, really? Well, I’m not . . . shocked. I’ve got proposals out to about thirty-five other foundations, so this was really just a small bit of seed money.” The small but essential seed money, the money she’d been counting on to pay back her loan from Dale.

  David leaned against the window and folded his arms across his chest, telling her, without actually saying it, that the meeting was over and she should get up and leave now. There was some kind of new and awful selfconfidence in this gesture. All the years they’d been working at the station, he’d been her boss, but somehow, she’d always felt she had him in her pocket. She thought for a moment that perhaps she should just sit there and make him all the more uncomfortable, but he didn’t look uncomfortable at all. She’d be reassigned to another show, but unless it was her own, unless it was the series, she’d be starting at the bottom again.