“But this is what you’ve wanted from the very beginning,” she said. “Proof. Evidence.”
“Where’s the guarantee of that?”
“And what’s the alternative?” she asked. “Give up? Lose hope?”
“I’m sorry,” he said to the doctor. “It’s something I’ll have to think about.”
“Perfectly understandable,” said Bagdasarian.
15
She ran into the grocery store to pick up dinner. She was waiting at the meat department for the butcher to come out with her veal chops when she turned and saw the man standing next to her. Her heart leapt.
It was a girl’s heart. She couldn’t explain what made her, even now, forty-six and twenty years married, want him. He was in a suit and tie and overcoat and his designer eyeglasses marked him as a man who loved jazz and art magazines. He went to the gym and pressed weights and his lovely sweat dripped down his neck. He couldn’t be a day over thirty-five. It was unkind of the universe to make a man so finely match her ideal of physical beauty and to place him a few feet from her at the moment she was trying to buy veal chops for her family. If she inched a foot closer to him, people passing by would think they were a couple. If she inched over, people would think they had a place in the city set high above the noise where music played across the open loft and the walls were hung with contemporary art. Maybe he had two kids, maybe he abused cocaine in club stalls — she didn’t know the first thing about him. It only made her want him more. She kept desire down and kept it down because of vows and obligations and an entire moral structure that could not collapse at the sight of one man in a grocery store, but it had collapsed.
She couldn’t recall the last time a person affected her so painfully. He turned to her and she quickly lost her nerve and faced the meat again. She turned back eventually. He was still looking. He smiled at her. It wasn’t one of those firm-lipped hellos with a polite little nod. It was a smile with locked eyes. He was flirting. She wanted to cry out. She wanted to wrap his tie around her hand. She wanted contact information.
What was it? Something encoded in her genes? Something reaching all the way back to the primates? The body talking. She disliked it intensely. The man’s smile was a totally negating force. It stirred complete abandon in her. It tapped into what was reckless and selfish. She saw herself stealing out of the store with him and getting into a different car and being driven past the car she shared with Tim where he sat in the passenger seat with his eyes closed, listening to public radio. A different life, a totally different life. How easy it would be. They would arrive at the man’s place and she would never leave. Give him to me and I will change. I will see the point again. I will discern the code. I will laugh into the pillow at my unbelievable luck. I will inhabit a bed for hours with a fullness I thought gone forever. I will not look at anything as a chore again. I will smile unprompted. I will be in love. I will have boundless energy. I will not complain. Get me out of my life and I will wax again. I’ll make trips to boutiques in SoHo and pick out garter belts and babydolls, and as the clerk wraps them in tissue, it will take every possible restraint not to cry out with happiness.
The calls in the middle of the night, the long car rides out to God knows where. The worry, the frustration, the uncertainty, the sacrifice. Let Becka pick him up from now on. Make him take cabs.
She left the meat counter and walked to the far end of the store. She walked down the wine aisle. She chose the most expensive bottle. She left and then returned to the aisle for a second one.
“Where’s the food?” he asked.
She shut the door. “The line was too long. I thought we could pick up something on the way.”
“I was looking forward to veal,” he said.
She set the two wine bottles in back.
“You could buy wine but not veal?”
“I bought the wine at the liquor counter. There was no line there.”
“You couldn’t buy the veal there, too?”
“You know, it really pisses me off that you won’t let Bagdasarian try to help you,” she said. “With the exception of me, he’s the only one who hasn’t accused you of being crazy. I mean, he’s gone out of his way to argue that this is a real disease, and now he has something that might offer some evidence, some hope, to do for you what you’ve wanted, what you have searched and searched — what you have begged for, Tim — he says to you here it is, possibly, maybe, can’t guarantee it, but hey, it’s more than we’ve ever had. Good news, right? Exciting stuff! And you look away and say, let me think about it? What the hell is wrong with you? How many times—”
“Hey,” he said, “where is this coming from?”
“How many times have I sat with you in waiting rooms? How many specialists have we seen? I have flown to Ohio, to Minnesota, to California, to The fucking Hague! to be with you while you track them down. All the big names, all the experts. I have been there. Do you remember the chart, Tim? The log? What did you call it? Every day. Every day we recorded what you ate, what you drank, how you slept, how many hours, on and on… when you had your bowel movements, what change in weather that day, the temperature, the barometric pressure, for fuck’s sake. What else? Every insane insignificance! I kept a map full of pushpins! Here’s where you walked to on Monday. Here’s where you walked to on Wednesday. I listened to your rants, your rage, your frustration—”
“Can I get a word in?”
“And after all my struggle and all my patience, you can’t make one — more — fucking — effort?”
“Don’t you understand that if he comes up empty, I’ll want to kill myself?”
“You said you’d never do that.”
“But I would want to, Jane.”
“So that’s it? That’s the final word?”
“I said I would think about it.”
“And I get no say in it? After everything, I get no say?”
“It has to be my decision,” he said.
“Don’t think I don’t know why,” she said. “You’d have to wear that helmet at work. Don’t think I don’t know that’s your thinking.”
She threw the car in reverse, then suddenly slammed on the brakes. She had come close to hitting a mother and daughter as they passed by.
They drove home in silence and did not stop for dinner. On their way up the drive, they saw the lights from Becka’s Volvo coming down. The two cars edged into the snowy margins. They rolled down their windows.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
“Where are you going, Rebecca?”
Becka turned impatiently to look through the windshield and then back to her mother. Tim leaned into Jane to better see his daughter. “I have a show,” she said.
“This is a school night.”
“School night? Are you serious?”
“Where’s the show?”
Becka unclipped her seat belt and pivoted around to the backseat, where her guitar case lay. She straightened herself and held a flyer out the window. Jane took it and read. Then she passed it to Tim without looking at him.
“It’s not an open mike?”
“I just gave you the flyer, Mom.”
Tim was reading the flyer. “This has your name on it,” he said through the window.
“It’s just around here,” she said. “Not like in the city or something.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this sooner?”
“Because I didn’t want you coming,” she said. “Besides, what were the chances of that anyway? Can I go now?”