“That’s what’s important, all right.”
“Of course if it ever came to the point of having children—”
“Then we would get married. But until then there’s no point to it. We’ve had this conversation so many times, Mother, and I—”
“I know, and I’m sorry. Well—”
“How’s everybody in Dayton?”
She got the question out and closed her eyes and tuned out the answer. Everybody in Dayton was about the same, except that so-and-so got married and so-and-so got divorced and so-and-so had a coronary, his second, poor man, but he was recovering nicely all the same, and Mrs. Something was getting cobalt treatments and when they got to that stage, it was as much as saying there was nothing to be done, but doctors of course would never come right out and admit this so they sent you for cobalt instead of telling you to go die quietly, and—
She said the right words in the right places, grateful for a stream of talk that she could half listen to, the endless stream of vital statistics about people whose names she barely recognized and in whom she had not the slightest interest. Sometimes she felt that she ought to be interested. She had spent eighteen years in Dayton plus summers during her college years. The people who filled her mother’s monologues were the people she had known for the greater portion of her life. Insofar as she had a home, Dayton was that home. If she were to die tomorrow, Dayton was where the body would be shipped, Englander’s Funeral Home where the rites would conducted, Park Hill Cemetery where she would be tucked into the earth.
Dayton was where she had run when her marriage broke up. The day she and Alan acknowledged it was over, she flew instinctively to Dayton and moved immediately into her old bedroom. And after a trip to Alabama had officially terminated that marriage, she again returned to Dayton. Because it was all the home she had, and when things fell apart, you went home. She had gone there knowing she could not stay there, could not live there, knowing that whatever life she was going to make for herself had to be made someplace other than Dayton. But it had still been the only place to go each of those times.
“Here’s your father now, Linda.”
“Hello, Dad.”
“Well, Linda. When are we going to see you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s hard to get away.”
“Keeping busy, are you?”
“Well, there’s always something to do. I understand you’re having car trouble.”
“My own fault for not trading the damned thing. You spend four thousand dollars on an automobile and you expect to get more than two years out of it. Fix one thing and something else goes. I’ll tell you something, you and Marc are just as lucky not to have a car. Is he around there? I’d like to say hello to him.”
They had met Marc once the previous Thanksgiving. She had wanted some time to herself and suggested the trip to Dayton, positive he would tell her to go alone. He surprised her by accepting the idea enthusiastically, and the visit had gone far better than she had dared to expect. Marc was consistently polite, projecting warmth and interest in tedious conversations with her parents. He was acting, of course, playing a role in what seemed to her a transparently phony way, but he had gauged his audience well and they warmed to him. For their part, her parents avoided any mention of marriage and in no way showed disapproval for the nature of their relationship. On the last night her father, loosened slightly by brandy, took Marc aside and put a paternal hand on his shoulder. “I’ll tell you something,” he had said, “you kids have the right idea. You’re young and you’re enjoying yourselves. You know what marriage is? Marriage is the number one cause of divorce. That’s what it is. If you don’t have the one you’ll never have the other.”
“Probably the most profound thought either of them ever had in their lives,” Marc commented later. “Christ, how did you stand it for all those years?”
“They liked you, you know.”
“Listen, don’t get uptight about it. Everybody’s parents are terrible. Mine are worse than yours. ‘Marriage is the number one cause of divorce.’ The man’s a fucking philosopher.”
“Well, this is costing you a fortune,” her father was saying. “And your mother’s putting dinner on the table. You give Marc our love, Linda.”
“I will.”
“And take care of yourself. You want to say good-bye to your mother? Never mind, she’s got her hands full. I’ll say good-bye for you.”
She cradled the telephone and lit a fresh cigarette. She had called to tell them about the break, to tell them she was coming home again, but her conversation had not taken her in that direction. Marc is fine. Everything is fine. She would not go back to Dayton. She was not sure what it was that she needed, could not define it, but whatever it was she would not find it in Dayton.
There was a red leatherette address book in her purse. She thumbed through it trying to find someone to call. She dialed a New York number and let it ring twelve times before hanging up. She dialed another New York number and got a recording telling her that the number had been temporarily disconnected. She tried a third number and got a busy signal. The fourth number rang twice before she decided that she did not want to talk to that person after all, so she rang off without knowing whether the call would have been answered or not.
She supposed that she ought to eat dinner. Her father and mother were now sitting over the dinner table, talking about how nice a boy Marc was and wouldn’t it be nice if things worked out and they did get married and settled down. She sighed and went to the refrigerator again, checked the cupboards again. Nothing appealed in the slightest. She put up water and was fixing a cup of instant coffee when there was a knock at the door.
She said, “Marc?” And put her hand to her mouth, surprised at the automatic response.
“It’s Peter.”
“Oh. Come in, it’s open.”
When she had first seen Peter Nicholas with Gretchen Vann, she’d taken them for mother and son. Gretchen’s hollow cheeks and darkly circled eyes made her look far older than her thirty-seven years. Peter, blond and slim-hipped and open-faced at twenty-two, could have passed for eighteen. They shared a large one-room apartment on the ground floor with Gretchen’s three-year-old daughter, and had been living there several months before Marc and Linda moved in.
Marc had found them amusing. “She probably started nursing Peter the day she weaned the kid,” he had said. “The bond that holds them together is that nobody on earth can guess what either one sees in the other. God knows they have a strange effect on each other. Every day she looks a little older and he looks a little younger. One of these day’s he’s going to crawl right back into her womb and never get out.”
“I was making coffee,” Linda said now. “Want a cup?”
“Thanks, but — actually I’d like a cup if it’s no trouble.”
“The water’s hot. Cream and sugar?”
“Just cream.”
“Well, it’s milk.”
“That’s okay. I hardly ever drink coffee anyway. It’s supposed to be terribly yin.”
“Is that macrobiotics? I didn’t know you were into that.”
“Well, that’s the thing. I keep thinking I ought to be, but I never manage to get into it. I’ll have brown rice for three meals running and then I’ll go and have a Coke, which is ridiculous, and then I’ll see how ridiculous the whole thing is and I’ll have a cheeseburger and that’s the end of the macro thing. Things like that are only possible if you’re living alone, anyway. Or if the person you’re living with is into it. And Gretchen. The thing is, she’s just the kind of person who ought to be into something like that. Some discipline that would help her get herself together.”