Fourteen years later he met Abby and they got married in three years. About twenty-seven years after that he visited Vera and the next day invited her to visit him. She’s called him several times since — around once every four months, he’ll say. And when he learned how to receive and send e-mails on Abby’s computer, she’s e-mailed him a few times too. Always wanting to know how he is and what he’s been doing. He always says on the phone “I’m fine, keeping busy, writing something new. How are you?”
The Vestry
He was going to leave the house. Planning to, he means, around 7:40, to go to the church across the street to see a play being performed there. He felt he had to get out of the house, and it might be interesting. The whole experience of seeing the play, he means. He didn’t know about the play, though. It was by a writer who held no interest for him. Hack works, he thought of them, even if one won a Pulitzer years ago and another won some other prestigious award. He hasn’t read anything about the writer for years and assumes he’s dead. But he had to get out, is what he’s saying. He almost never does, except for the usual things: the Y, markets, post office, an occasional coffee. He had thought he’d go to a few concerts at the symphony hall downtown, but without ordering the tickets first as he used to do when his wife was alive. Just park the car in the hall’s garage, go up to the ticket window and get whatever’s available. Apparently, the hall is never filled. They used to go to about six concerts a year and two to three operas at another concert hall. They also, for the last ten years of her life, got season tickets, which means about six plays, to the best theater group in the city. He meant to go to those too, at least once or twice, meaning one or two plays, though preferably more if the lineup of plays was good, and at least one opera. Sometimes he even got dressed for one or the other of them — for movies too — meaning he took off his sweatpants or shorts and long- or short-sleeve polo shirt. He has no dress shirts and wouldn’t wear one to one of those events if he did. But a few minutes before he was to leave the house and drive to the theater or symphony hall or place where the opera was to be performed, he said to himself, and sometimes, maybe the first part of this, out loud to himself, Does he really want to go? He does. He wants to get out, to do something different and perhaps be entertained or moved or whatever would happen. But he doesn’t like driving at night, and if it’s an afternoon performance or showing, especially around this time of year, then chance driving back at night. He also doesn’t much like sitting in a concert hall or theater or opera house, he’ll call it, for two hours and usually more. A movie theater he doesn’t mind, and also movies are almost always much shorter. He also doesn’t like going alone, and he doesn’t know anyone to go with, not that he’d ask anyone if he did know someone who’d want to go. That wasn’t always what he was like. So he went back into the house, if he was outside and got that close to getting in his car and driving to one of these places, and went back to his bedroom and changed into the clothes he took off to put on the dressier ones. Sometimes he never even got that far. He’d go into the bedroom to change his clothes, as preparation for going to one of these events, and think Why bother? He knows he’s not going anywhere, so he should stop fooling himself and wasting his time getting dressed when he’s just going to get back into his old clothes again. One time, he now remembers — it was to a concert that was playing one of his favorite pieces, Mahler’s Third Symphony — he was in the car, had started out maybe a half hour earlier than usual because he thought for this concert—Das Lied von der Erde was also on the program — the hall will be filled — and said to himself, Where does he think he’s going? He knows he’d rather stay home and have a drink or two and some snacks and read and listen to music on the radio or CDs than drive to the hall and go through the hassle of parking the car and standing on what he’s almost sure will be a long ticket line and maybe not even be able to get a ticket, and so on. And it’s getting dark, so it’ll be dark when he drives back and he’ll probably be tired then, since it’ll be an hour or more after he usually goes to bed. And he’s seen this symphony performed twice already, both times with his wife. Once here in the same hall about ten years ago and the other time almost thirty years ago at Carnegie Hall, maybe a few months after they first met. So he turned around and drove home. That was as close as he got, far as he can remember, to go to one of these things since his wife died. Or really, since she got sick — very sick; had to have a trach put in and other serious procedures done to her, and they didn’t want to risk going to anything like a concert or movie again. “You go,” she once said. It was about an hour before the concert was to begin. “Two late Mozart piano concertos and the Jupiter Symphony? You love them. I’ll be all right by myself here.” “You kidding?” he said. “No way.”
But tonight he’s going to a play. It’s being performed by a group calling itself “The Good Shepherd Players,” which could mean it’s affiliated in some way with the church of the same name across the street or just calls itself that because it’s being performed there. It could be, for all he knows, that if this group performs in other places, it calls itself after these other places, but he seriously doubts it. He’s never heard of a theater group or opera company or music ensemble or any kind of performing troupe like that that changes its name to the place it’s performing at, and he doesn’t know how he could have even thought that. This group puts on, for two consecutive weekends — Friday and Saturday nights at eight, Sunday afternoons at three — a play every year, it seems, or has for the past three. Someone once told him it’s a pretty good acting company, a cut above being amateur. Sort of between professional and amateur, so semiprofessional. Maybe it was his wife who told him, having heard it from someone else. He seems to remember that. He knows she never went to one of its plays. He first saw a sign advertising this year’s play in front of the church about a month ago. The sign was professionally done. Tickets were fifteen dollars, it said, ten for children sixteen and under. He wrote the dates and times in his memobook when he saw the sign and transferred them to his weekly planner when he got home. Today’s the first Saturday the play will be performed. He didn’t want to go to the Sunday matinee. It’d break up his day, or just change it too much, though he’d be less tired after than if he went to an evening performance. But he likes to spend Sunday reading the Times and then writing for a few hours and then going to the Y and then after that to either one of the two markets he does most of his shopping at and then to a small restaurant he likes about two miles from his house. He goes there with a book, the only time he does anything like that during the week, and reads for about half an hour while he eats a sandwich or salad and has a medium-sized latte or Americano. So Sundays were out. And Friday he thought would be the first performance in front of a paid audience, so maybe not the best one to go to. Let them get the opening-night jitters and kinks in the production out of the way. The next night would be better. He also thought he might see someone he knows from the neighborhood at the performance. That’d be nice. Someone to talk to, however briefly. If he sees an attractive woman with an empty seat next to her, he might sit in it, first asking if it’s taken. Oh, what’s he talking about? Forget women. Just try to get an aisle seat, if there’s a middle aisle, so he can see the stage better, though of course if nobody tall’s sitting in front of him. He doubts the seats are reserved, if they’re all the same price. And there’ll be refreshments there, he’s almost sure. In fact, he remembers now the sign saying so, the proceeds from it going to some medical research organization. No, a soup kitchen. But the point he’s making is he has to get out. He means, not doing just the same things every day. No, he doesn’t mean that. He means he has to stop giving himself excuses not to go to things. And the play’s right across the street. What could be more convenient? A two-minute walk. Doesn’t have to drive to it. No problem about coming home at night. And it’ll break the ice, sort of. If he goes to this, maybe he’ll go to other things like it. The theater downtown, and its Sunday matinee, if he has to. Opera, if the season isn’t over. He stopped subscribing to the local newspaper months ago, so he doesn’t know what’s going on in town. Concerts at the symphony hall he knows will be going on another four to five months, all the way into May. So it’s settled for tonight. He’s going.