Immediately, selfishly, I was relieved. Obviously she had a problem, not Artie. But still I took off early from work and drove out to Long Island to see her. Artie lived on the North Shore of Long Island and I lived on the South Shore. So it really wasn’t much out of my way. I figured I could listen to her and be home for dinner, just a little late. I didn’t bother to call Valerie.
I always liked going to Artie’s house. He had five kids, but they were nice kids who had a lot of friends who were always around and Pam never seemed to mind. She had big jars of cookies to feed them and gallon jugs of milk. There were kids watching television and other kids playing on the lawn. I said hi to the kids, and they gave me a brief hi back. Pam took me into the kitchen with its huge hay window. She had coffee ready and poured some. She kept her head down and then suddenly looked up at me and said, “Artie has a girlfriend.”
Despite her having had five kids, Pam was still very young-looking with a fine figure, tall, slender, lanky before the kids, and one of those sensual faces that had a Madonna kind of look. She came from a Midwest town. Artie had met her in college and her father was president of a small bank. Nobody in the last three generations of her family had ever had more than two kids, and she was a hero-martyr to her parents because of the five births. They couldn’t understand it, but I did. I had once asked Artie about it and he said, “Behind that Madonna face is one of the horniest wives on Long Island. And that suits me fine.” If any other husband had said that about his wife, I would have been offended.
“Lucky you,” I had said.
“Yeah,” Artie said. “But I think she feels sorry for me, you know, the asylum business. And she wants to make sure I never feel lonely again. Something like that.”
“Lucky, lucky you,” I had said.
And so now, when Pam made her accusation, I was a little angry. I knew Artie. I knew it wasn’t possible for him to cheat on his wife. That he would never endanger the family he had built up or the happiness it gave him.
Pam’s tall form was drooping; tears were in her eyes. But she was watching my face. If Artie were having an affair, the only one he would ever tell was me. And she was hoping I would give away the secret by some expression on my face.
“It’s not true,” I said. “Artie always had women running after him and he hated it. He’s the straightest guy in the world. You know I wouldn’t try to cover for him. I wouldn’t rat on him, but I wouldn’t cover for him.”
“I know that,” Pam said. “But he comes home late at least three times a week. And last night he had lipstick on his shirt. And he makes phone calls after I go up to bed, late at night. Does he call you?”
“No,” I said. And now I felt shitty. It might be true. I still didn’t believe it, but I had to find out.
“Will he be home for dinner tonight?” I asked. Pam nodded. I picked up the kitchen phone and called Valerie and told her I was eating at Artie’s house. I did that once in a while on the spur of the moment when I had an urge to see him, so she didn’t ask any questions. When I hung up the phone, I said to Pam, “You got enough to feed me?”
She smiled and nodded her head. “Of course,” she said.
“I’ll go down and pick him up at the station,” I said. “And we’ll have this all straightened out before we eat dinner.” I burlesqued it a bit and said, “My brother is innocent.”
“Oh, sure,” Pam said. But she smiled.
Down at the station, as I waited for the train to come in, I felt sorry for Pam and Artie. There was a little smugness in my pity. I was the guy Artie always had to bail out and finally I was going to bail him out. Despite all the evidence, the lipstick on the shirt, the late hours and phone calls, the extra money, I knew that Artie was basically innocent. The worst it could be was some young girl being so persistent that he finally weakened a little, maybe. Even now I couldn’t believe it. Mixed with the pity was the envy I always felt about Artie’s being so attractive to women in a way I could never be. With just a touch of satisfaction I felt it was not all that bad being ugly.
When Artie got off the train, he wasn’t too surprised to see me. I had done this before, visiting him unexpectedly and meeting his train. I always felt good doing it, and he was always glad to see me. And it always made me feel good to see that he was glad to see me waiting for him. This time, watching him carefully, I noticed he wasn’t quite that glad to see me today.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he said, but he gave me a hug and he smiled. He had an extraordinarily sweet smile for a man. It was the smile he had as a child and it had never changed.
“I came to save your ass,” I said cheerfully. “Pam finally got the goods on you.”
He laughed. “Jesus, not that shit again.” Pam’s jealousy was always good for a laugh.
“Yep,” I said. “The late hours, the late phone calls and now, finally, the classic evidence: lipstick on your shirt.” I was feeling great because just by seeing Artie and talking to him I knew it was all a mistake.
But suddenly Artie sat down on one of the station benches. His face looked very tired. I was standing over him and beginning to feel just a little uneasy.
Artie looked up at me. I saw a strange look of pity on his face. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll fix everything.”
He tried to smile. “Merlyn the Magician,” he said. “You’d better put on your fucking magic hat. At least sit down.” He lit up a cigarette. I thought again that he smoked too much. I sat down next to him. Oh, shit, I thought. And my mind was racing on to how to square things between him and Pam. One thing I knew, I didn’t want to lie to her or have Artie lie to her.
“I’m not cheating on Pam,” Artie said. “And that’s all I want to tell you.”
There was no question about my believing him. He would never lie to me. “Right,” I said. “But you have to tell Pam what’s going on or she’ll go crazy. She called me at work.”
“If I tell Pam, I have to tell you,” Artie said. “You don’t want to hear it.”
“So tell me,” I said. “What the hell’s the difference? You always tell me everything. How can it hurt?”
Artie dropped his cigarette to the stone cement floor of the train platform. “OK,” he said. He put his hand on my arm and I felt a sudden sense of dread. When we were children alone together, he always did that to comfort me. “Let me finish, don’t interrupt,” he said.
“OK,” I said. My face was suddenly very warm. I couldn’t think of what was coming.
“For the last couple of years I’ve been trying to find our mother,” Artie said. “Who she is, where she is, what we are. A month ago I found her.”
I was standing up. I pulled my arm away from his. Artie stood up and tried to hold me again. “She’s a drunk,” he said. “She wears lipstick. She looks pretty good. But she’s all alone in the world. She wants to see you, she says that she couldn’t help-”
I broke in on him. “Don’t tell me any more,” I said. “Don’t ever tell me any more. You do what you want, but I’ll see her in hell before I’ll see her alive.”
“Hey, come on, come on,” Artie said. He tried to put his hand on me again and I broke away and walked toward the car. Artie followed me. We got in and I drove him to the house. By this time I was under control and I could see that Artie was distressed, so I said to him, “You’d better tell Pam.”
Artie said, “I will.”
I stopped in the driveway of the house. “You coming in for dinner?” Artie asked. He was standing by my open window, and again he reached in to put his hand on my arm.
“No,” I said.
I watched him as he went into the house, shooing the last of the kids still playing on the lawn into the house with him. Then I drove away. I drove slowly and carefully, I had trained myself all my life to be more careful when most people became more reckless. When I got home, I could see by Value’s face that she knew about what happened. The kids were in bed, and she had dinner for me on the kitchen table. While I ate, she ran her hand over the back of my head and neck when she went by to the stove. She sat opposite, drinking coffee, waiting for me to open the subject. Then she remembered. “Pam wants you to call her.”