“Straight to school,” Karen said. “And straight home. All right? I don’t want to be worrying about you.”
“Straight home,” Michael said—offhandedly, but with a seriousness under that, maybe even a little fear.
But that was good, wasn’t it? It would make him cautious.
She stood at the window with the curtain tucked back and watched her son walk down this empty suburban street until he was lost from sight, down beyond the intersection of Forsythe and Webster, where the McBrides’ big maple tree was shedding its leaves.
The mailman dropped a letter through the slot in the door: the letter was from Laura.
Karen carried it downtown, beside her on the front seat of her little Honda Civic, to the restaurant where she had agreed to meet Gavin. When he was late—predictably late—she took the letter out of her purse and turned it over in her hands a couple of times. The envelope was of some thick, clothy paper, like vellum; the return address was a P.O. box in Santa Monica, California.
California. She liked the look of the word. It radiated warmth, security, sunshine. Here in this Toronto restaurant everybody was dressed in fall grays and fall browns, fashionable downtown people scattered among these mirrors and tiles like leaves. Cold air prickled on her arms whenever the door swept open.
She opened the envelope slowly, with a halting motion that was eager and reluctant at once.
Dear Karen, the letter began.
Open loops and dark fountain-pen ink. The words as she read them took on Laura’s throaty contralto.
I got your note and have been mulling it over. Since you ask—and I know it’s none of my business— here are some thoughts.
First off, I am sincerely sorry about you & Gavin. Is it any consolation to say I think you are 100 percent correct on this? (Even if the divorce isn’t—as you say— your own idea.) We gypsies aren’t cut out for middle-class life.
I know the whole thing must come as a blow. And of course there’s Michael. Fifteen years old—dear God, is that possible? I really would like to meet my only nephew. Is he as cute as his pictures? (Don’t tell him I said that) But I take it for granted. A heartbreaker. Is he adjusting?
I’m convinced that we ought to be more than Christmas-card relatives. It would be nice to see both of you again.
Yes, big sister. These are hints.
Karen, listen: they play old songs on the radio and I think of you. “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” Remember? It’s better advice than you think.
I’m serious. Auntie Laura could use your company.
I can put you up for a week, a month, whatever. On short notice or immediately.
If you can’t say yes, say maybe. Ask and I’ll send directions, but RSVP.
It was signed in Laura’s unmistakable, overflowing script. Karen smiled in spite of her misgivings, reading it.
P.S., it said, under the bottom fold of the paper. The age of miracles is not over. Her smile faded.
She looked up and saw Gavin standing across the table. He gazed at her loftily and said, “You look like shit.”
She sighed. It was the kind of opener he seemed to prefer these days. “Well,” she said, “you don’t. You look impeccable.” It was true.
Gavin was nervous about clothes. He studied the fashion columns in Esquire as solemnly as a general planning a military campaign. He was tall, with a build he had developed at the racquetball club across the street from his office; he smelled of Brut and antiperspirant. “Seriously,” he said, pulling up his chair, peering at her. “Are you sleeping okay? You look tired.”
“Well, I am… hell, yes, I am tired.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“No,” she said. “I know.” It was just his way of talking. Truce, she thought desperately. What was important now was that Michael was in danger. “We’re here to talk.”
To talk. But it sounded ominous, so they ordered lunch instead. It was a restaurant Gavin knew, close to his office. He was in his element here. He ordered a seafood salad and a light beer. Karen ordered cottage cheese and fruit. Gavin talked a little about his work; Karen told him how Michael was doing in school. They were talking, she thought, and that was a beginning, but they were not talking—she didn’t mention the Gray Man.
There had been a time when talking to Gavin was easy. They had met at Penn State, where Karen was a year behind him in a B.A. course. Gavin was dissatisfied—not randomly rebellious in the way that was fashionable then, but looking for a way to inject meaning into his life. He was a Canadian, and he had resolved to go back home and study law. Law, he said, was a point of entry into people’s lives. It was where you could apply leverage, make a difference, change things for the better. We all want to change the world, Karen thought, recalling the Beatles tune, lately a TV ad for Nike shoes. Maybe Nike was one of Gavin’s clients.
The divorce was still pending. They were, in Gavin’s preferred language, “separated.” “Separated” meant he had left her last May to live with his girlfriend in her lakefront apartment. It had come as a shock: the separation, the girlfriend, both. Gavin cheated as impeccably as he dressed; Karen had never suspected. He just told her about it over breakfast one morning. It’s not working between us. I know that, you know that. Very cool. I’m moving out… Yes, I have somewhere to go… Yes, there is a woman.
She hated it. All of it. She hated the fact of his infidelity and she hated this feeling that her role had been defined for her: the jealous wife. Well, she told herself, to hell with that. I can be as cool as he can.
So she had gone along blithely: no yelling, no major scenes. Now she wondered if that was not simply another kind of surrender. Gavin, a lawyer, understood life as gameplaying, rough sport played in earnest, and what he had achieved with Karen was a kind of checkmate. Because she concealed her feelings he wasn’t forced to deal with them.
She had been bluffed and outmaneuvered.
No more. Too much at stake now for fuzzy thinking. She had made a list before she left the house: Questions to ask. Gavin was pressing to begin the legal proceedings, and she knew she shouldn’t agree to anything before seeing her own lawyer—as soon as she found one—but she wanted to raise the question of the house.
She wanted to move. She needed to move. Not only did the house contain what had become sour memories, but there was the problem of the Gray Man. She was vulnerable and alone in the big suburban house; she felt encircled there, besieged. For Michael’s sake, it was vital that they leave… and she wondered if they should not move out of the city entirely. The problem was that she had no independent income. Last week she’d gone to see an employment counselor and when he asked for a resume Karen was forced to admit she hadn’t worked outside the home for as long as her son had lived. Her prospects, the man informed her, were limited.
And now the household money was low and she didn’t want to ask Gavin, again, for cash. Come the divorce, she guessed he would be paying support. But that was in the future.
So she had worked out a plan. They would sell the house. With her share of the income Karen could relocate and take a vocational course, programming or something. And the support payments, when they finally began, would keep her and Michael fed.