“Could I interest you in some lemonade?” she had asked on that first afternoon, and her face had been so peaceful. Her back had been so straight; her gaze so steady. But after we’d been married awhile, she turned irritable and brisk. Any little thing I did wrong, flounce-flounce around the apartment. And I did tend to do things wrong. This weird kind of sibling rivalry set in; I can’t explain it. I just had to defeat her, had to prove my own brash, irresponsible, rough-and-tumble way of life was better. And yet I’d married her because her way was better. Just as some people marry for money, I had married for goodness. Ironic, if you stopped to consider.
When she left me, I thought, Well, finally! I stopped attending classes, and I did some serious drinking, and I slept till noon or two P.M., and nobody was around to nag or look disapproving.
Now I see that I went a little crazy, even. Like, the kitchen sink in our apartment had this spray-hose attachment. If you pressed the button while the faucet was running, the faucet cut off and the hose cut on; and I remember standing there on many an occasion, pressing the button and releasing it, alternating between faucet and hose, marveling at how polite they were. The faucet stopped to let the hose talk; the hose stopped to let the faucet talk. So mannerly, so genteel. I thought, All these years, I’ve underestimated the qualities of inanimate objects.
Or the view outside my bedroom window: a big, tall spruce tree leaning over the alley. Every morning, waking up, I noticed once again that it leaned at the exact same angle as the pine tree in the highway signs — those signs showing a tree and a table to indicate a picnic ground. And every morning, I went on to wonder why the tree in those signs was tilted. Was there some special significance? Was it meant to imply protection, shelter? I mean, I thought this every single damn everlasting morning. You try doing that sometime. It seemed my mind got into a rut, and it wore the rut deeper and deeper, and I couldn’t yank it free again.
And some nights I brought a girl home and we’d be going through the preliminaries, carrying on some artificial oh-isn’t-that-interesting conversation on the couch, and she would give me this sudden puzzled look, and I’d lift a hand to my face and find my cheeks were wet. Water just pouring out of my eyes. I won’t say tears, because I swear I wasn’t crying. But my eyes were up to something or other.
So many things, it seemed, my body went ahead and did without me.
Well, that stage passed, by and by. I moved out of the apartment, developed a new routine, forgot about Natalie altogether. I’d see her when I collected Opal and when I brought Opal back, but she was never really present in my mind. Not that I was aware of, at least. Not consciously.
Here I had been thinking that the train trip where I’d first glimpsed Sophia had changed my whole existence; and in fact it had, but it was Natalie who had set that in motion. I saw that now. It was Natalie in her kitchen, her face as sealed and peaceful as the day she had offered me lemonade. Could I interest you? It was the cookie jar on her windowsill — that humble, chipped birdcage jar we used to be so proud of when we were kids together. Oh, once upon a time I’d had all I could ask for: a home, a loving wife, a little family of my own. A place in the world. How could I have thrown that away?
At Rent-a-Back, I knew couples who’d been married almost forever — forty, fifty, sixty years. Seventy-two, in one case. They’d be tending each other’s illnesses, filling in each other’s faulty memories, dealing with the money troubles or the daughter’s suicide or the grandson’s drug addiction. And I was beginning to suspect that it made no difference whether they’d married the right person. Finally, you’re just with who you’re with. You’ve signed on with her, put in half a century with her, grown to know her as well as you know yourself or even better, and she’s become the right person. Or the only person, might be more to the point. I wish someone had told me that earlier. I’d have hung on then; I swear I would. I never would have driven Natalie to leave me.
Sophia looked so light-colored, when she arrived to pick me up. I felt a little shocked, as if I had forgotten which woman I was linked with nowadays. But also I was relieved. “Sophia!” I said. “Sweetheart!” And when she stepped out to let me slide into the driver’s seat, I hugged her so hard that she laughed at me.
I told her Opal had liked the hedgehog. I didn’t go into the rest of it. I certainly didn’t admit that I had spent the last couple of hours sitting alone on a bench. Sophia said, “Oh, good,” and pursued it no further. One of the qualities I loved in her was her willingness to accept the surface version of things. I reached over to squeeze her knee — a bounteous, soft handful encased in slippery nylon.
Then, after we reached the highway, she sailed into this saga about shopping with her mother. “She told me she needed new bras,” she said. “The only thing she won’t buy through the mail. So we got into my car — never mind that she lives in the middle of downtown; she has to drive out to the suburbs — and right away it was, ‘Oh, don’t take this road; take that road,’ and, ‘Don’t turn here; keep straight.’ ‘Mother,’ I said, ‘I promise I will get you there. Show some faith,’ I said, but would she listen? ‘That road is under repair now,’ she said. ‘Take the road I tell you.’ I said, I’m sure they’ll give us a detour route,’ but she said, ‘I don’t want a detour route!’ Then, when I turned anyhow, she fell into a pout. She sat there moving her lips for the rest of the ride — which was easy, incidentally. Nothing but a few traffic cones. But coming back, what did she do? Started the whole business over again. ‘Don’t take this road! Take that road!’”
It seemed to have escaped Sophia’s notice that she could simply have followed her mother’s instructions. What difference would it have made? But I didn’t point that out. In this new, contented frame of mind, I just smiled to myself.
“Mother inquired after you, by the way,” Sophia said.
“Hmm?”
“She said, ‘How is that young man you’ve been seeing?’ Then later she asked if I would be up for Thanksgiving, and when I said I didn’t know yet, she said, ‘You’re welcome to bring your friend.’ ”
“Oh,” I said. “Well. I guess I could come, if you want me to.”
“I told her no,” Sophia said.
This was fine with me. I said, “Whatever you decide.”
“She’d be needling us every minute. Believe me.”
“It sounds like our mothers have a lot in common,” I said.
Which I used as yet another excuse to squeeze that handful of knee. I was thinking I’d like to get her into bed once we reached Baltimore, but Saturday afternoons could pose a problem. At my place, the Hardestys would be everywhere — kids squabbling on the patio right outside my door, Joe hammering away at some little task from his Job Jar. And Sophia’s roommate had an annoying habit of cleaning house on Saturdays.
“She’d be sure to make all these not-so-subtle references to my weight,” Sophia said, evidently still talking about her mother. “ ‘More turkey, Barnaby? I won’t offer you any, Sophia. I know you wouldn’t want the extra calories.’ ”
“Don’t you dare lose an ounce,” I told her.
There was a luscious little pouch of flesh on her inner thigh just above where her knee bent. It sprang back beneath my fingers like a ripe plum.
“With you, it would be your career,” she said. “Mother’s asked me three times now whether you’ve ever thought of other employment.”
“She really does have a lot in common with Mom,” I said.