The Beginner's Goodbye Page 15

  “So,” I said, “I hear you’re all done here.”

  My voice echoed hollowly in the empty room.

  “She’s good as new,” Gil told me.

  “Actually, better than new,” I said. “I appreciate the care you took, Gil.”

  “Oh, any time. God forbid.”

  “God forbid,” I agreed.

  “Monday I’ll send a couple of men to move the furniture back. You want to be here for that?”

  “No, that’s okay. It’s pretty cut-and-dried, in a house this small.”

  He nodded. He pivoted to survey the living room. “And window washers,” he said. “You’ll be needing those. We’ve got a list of names, if you want.”

  “I’m sure Nandina knows someone.”

  “Oh,” Gil said suddenly.

  He clapped a hand to the right front pocket of his khakis. A certain staginess in the gesture caught my attention. “By the way,” he said, falsely casual. He pulled a tiny blue velvet box from his pocket, clearly a ring box.

  “Oho!” I said.

  “Yeah, well …”

  He snapped the lid open and stepped closer to show me. (I caught a strong scent of aftershave.) The ring was yellow gold, set with a little winking diamond.

  “That’s really pretty, Gil,” I said. “Who’s it for?”

  “Ha ha ha.”

  “Does she know about this?”

  “Just in theory. We’ve had the talk about getting married. Gee,” he said, “I guess I should have asked you first. I mean asked for her hand or something.”

  “Take it,” I said, and I gave him a breezy wave.

  “Thanks,” he said with a grin. He looked down at the ring. “I know the stone is kind of small, but the jeweler claimed it’s flawless. Not the least little flaw, he said. I had to take his word for it. Would I know a flaw if I saw one?”

  “She’s going to love it,” I told him.

  “I hope so.” He was still studying it.

  “How did you know what size to buy?”

  “I traced the band of that opal of hers when she was in the shower once.”

  He reddened and glanced up at me, maybe worrying he had revealed more than he should have, and I said, “Well, great. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have for a brother-in-law.”

  “Thanks, Aaron.” He closed the box and returned it to his pocket. “There’s a wedding ring that matches it, but I figured I should make sure Nandina likes this before I buy it. I already know she wants me to wear a ring.”

  “Yes, that’s how people do these days,” I said. I started to raise my left hand to show him my own ring, which I still wore, but then I thought—I don’t know. It seemed that might have been tactless, somehow.

  No couple buying wedding rings wants to be reminded that someday one of them will have to accept the other one’s ring from a nurse or an undertaker.

  It was kind of a nuisance having to wait till Monday for the furniture moving. I started doing some of the work ahead of time—dragging the living-room rug into place and unrolling it, setting a few of the lighter-weight objects where they belonged. And on Saturday evening, when the sunporch floor was dry, I fitted what books I still owned into the new bookshelves. I carried the photo albums from the kitchen and lined them up in order, oldest first. Even the most recent wasn’t all that recent. The last picture in that album—my mother’s butterfly bush in full bloom—came immediately after our wedding photo, so I’m guessing it dated from late summer of 1996. Or ’97 at the latest, because my father died in early ’98, and he was the one who took the pictures in our family.

  This business of not labeling photos reminded me of those antique cemeteries where the names have worn off the gravestones and you can’t tell who is buried there. You see a little gray tablet with a melted-looking lamb on top, and you know it must have been somebody’s child who died, but now you can’t even make out her name or the words her parents chose to say how much they missed her. It’s just so many random dents in the stone, and the parents are long gone themselves, and everything’s been forgotten.

  Even my mother’s butterfly bush struck me as poignant, with its show-offy clusters of blossoms in a vibrant, electric purple. Although in fact that bush still existed; it stood right there in Nandina’s backyard, where I could see it every time I took the garbage out.

  In our wedding photo Dorothy did not, of course, carry her satchel, but her dress-up purse was almost equally bulky and utilitarian—a heavy brown leather rectangle with a strap that crossed her chest in the same theft-deterrent fashion. She had said, “Would you like me to wear a white gown? I could do that. I wouldn’t mind. I could ask if our receptionist would take me to this place she knows. I thought maybe something, oh, not strapless or anything but maybe with a scoop neck, white but not shiny, not lacy, just a lustrous white, you know what I mean? And I was thinking a bouquet of all white flowers. Baby’s breath and white roses and … are orange blossoms white? I do know they’re not orange, although it sounds as if they would be. I’m not talking about a veil or anything. I’m not talking about a long train or anything like that. But something elegant and classic, to mark the occasion. You think?”

  “Oh, God, no. Good Lord, no,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  “We’re neither one of us the type for that, thank heaven,” I said.

  “No, of course not,” she said.

  In the photograph her blue knit was not very becoming, but in real life it had looked fine, as far as I can recall. (Photos have a way of frumping people; have you noticed?) Anyhow, I had never paid much heed to such things. At the time I was just glad that I’d landed the woman I wanted. And I believe that she was glad to have landed me—the diametrical opposite of that needy “roommate” who had demanded too much of her.

  Then why was our marriage so unhappy?

  Because it was unhappy. I will say that now. Or it was difficult, at least. Out of sync. Uncoordinated. It seemed we just never quite got the hang of being a couple the way other people did. We should have taken lessons or something; that’s what I tell myself.

  Once, when we had an anniversary coming up—our fifth, I believe—I invited her out to dinner. “I was thinking of the Old Bay,” I told her. “The first place I ever took you to.”

  “The Old Bay,” she said. “Really. Are you forgetting that we couldn’t even see to read the menus there?”

  “Oh, okay,” I said, but I felt a little disappointed. For sentiment’s sake, at least, you would think she could have agreed to it. “Where, then?” I asked.

  “Maybe Jean-Christophe?”

  “Jean-Christophe! Good grief!”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Jean-Christophe is so pretentious. They bring you these teeny froufrou bites to eat between courses, and you have to make a big show of being surprised and thankful.”

  “So don’t make a show,” she said. “Just fold your arms across your chest and glower.”

  “Very funny,” I told her. “What on earth made you think of Jean-Christophe? Is this another one of your receptionist’s ideas? Jean-Christophe didn’t even exist, back when you and I were courting.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize it had to have historical significance.”

  “Dorothy,” I said. “Would you rather just not do this?”

  “I said I would, didn’t I? But then all you can come up with is this fusty old place where your parents used to eat. And when I question it, you fly into a huff and turn down everything else I suggest.”

  “I didn’t turn down ‘everything else’; I turned down Jean-Christophe. It just so happens that I dislike a restaurant where the waiters require more attention than my date does.”

  “Where would you be willing to eat, then?”

  “Oh, shoot,” I said, “I don’t care. Let’s just go to Jean-Christophe.”

  “Well, if you don’t care, why do we bother?”

  “Are you deliberately trying to misunderstand me?” I asked her. “I
care that we have a good meal together, preferably without feeling like we’re acting in some kind of play. And I was thinking it might be a place with associations for the two of us. But if you’re so set on Jean-Christophe, fine; we’ll go to Jean-Christophe.”

  “Jean-Christophe was just a suggestion. There are lots of other possibilities.”

  “Like where?”

  “Well, how about Bo Brooks?”

  “Bo Brooks! A crab house? For our anniversary?”

  “We did go to Bo Brooks a couple of times while we were dating. It would certainly meet the ‘associations’ criterion.”

  “Yes, but—”

  I stopped and looked at her.

  “You really don’t get it, do you,” I said.

  “What don’t I get?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I’m not ever going to get it if you refuse to discuss it,” she said, and now she was using her doctor voice, her super-calm, let’s-be-reasonable voice. “Why don’t you just begin at the beginning, Aaron, and tell me exactly what you envision for our anniversary dinner.”

  “How about what you envision?” I said. “Can’t you be bothered coming up with any ideas of your own?”

  “I already offered an idea of my own. I offered two ideas, as I recall, and you rejected both of them. So it’s back in your court now, Aaron.”

  Why am I telling this story?

  I forget.

  And I forget where we ended up eating, too. Someplace or other; I don’t remember. What I do remember is that familiar, weary, helpless feeling, the feeling that we were confined in some kind of rodent cage, wrestling together doggedly, neither one of us ever winning.

  I was rinsing vegetables for my supper, and I turned from the sink to reach for a towel, and I saw Dorothy.

  “You’re here,” I said.

  She was standing next to me, so close that she’d had to step back a bit to give me room when I turned. She wore one of her plain white shirts and her usual black pants, and her expression was grave and considering—her head cocked to one side and her eyebrows raised.

  “I thought you might never come again,” I said.

  She appeared unsurprised by this, merely nodding and continuing to study me, so that it seemed I’d been right to worry.

  “Was it the cookies?” I asked. “Were you upset that I ate Peggy’s cookies?”

  “You should have told me you liked cookies,” she said, and I don’t know why I’d ever doubted that she actually spoke on these visits, because her voice was absolutely real—low and somewhat flat, very level in tone.

  I said, “What? I don’t like cookies!”

  “I could have baked you cookies,” she said.

  “What are you talking about? Why would I want you to bake cookies? How come we’re wasting this time discussing cookies, for God’s sake?”

  “You’re the one who brought them up,” she said.

  Had I lived through this whole scene before? I felt tired to death all of a sudden.

  She said, “I used to think it was your mother’s fault. She was such a fusser; no wonder you fended people off the way you did. But then I thought, Oh, well: fault. Who’s to say why we let one person influence us more than another? Why not your father? He didn’t fuss.”

  “I fended people off?” I said. “That’s not fair, Dorothy. How about how you behaved? Wearing your white coat even to go out to dinner; carrying your big satchel. ‘I’m Dr. Rosales,’ you’d say. Always so busy, so businesslike. Bake cookies? You never even made me a cup of tea when I had a cold!”

  “And if I had? What would you have done?” she asked. “Swatted the cup away, I guarantee it. Oh, it used to bother me when I saw what people thought of me. Your mother and your sister, the people in your office … I’d see your secretary thinking, Poor, poor Aaron, his wife is so coldhearted. So unnurturing, so ungiving. Doesn’t value him half as much as the rest of us do. ‘Shows what you know,’ I wanted to tell her. ‘Why didn’t he marry someone else if he was so keen on nurturing? If I’d behaved any other way, do you suppose he and I would ever have gotten together?’ ”

  I said, “That wasn’t why we got together.”

  “Oh, wasn’t it?” she said.

  She turned away to gaze out the window over the sink. Earlier I’d switched the sprinkler back on, and I could see how her eyes followed the to-and-fro motion. “I had a job offer in Chicago,” she told me in a reflective tone. “You never knew that. This was one of my old professors, somebody I looked up to. He offered me a much better job than what I had here—not better paying, maybe, but more prestigious and more interesting. I felt honored that he even remembered me. But you and I had just gone to our first movie together, and I couldn’t think of anything but you.”

  I stared at her. I felt as if heavy furniture were being moved around in my head.

  “Even after we were married,” she said, “I’d have patients now and then who wore braces or splints or the like with Velcro fasteners, and they’d be undressing in a treatment room, and from my office I’d hear that ripping sound as the fasteners came apart, and I would think, Oh! I would think of you.”

  I wanted to step closer to her but I was afraid I would scare her off. And she didn’t seem encouraging. She kept her face set toward the window, her eyes fixed on the sprinkler.

  I said, “I probably did save up that barberry thorn.”

  I wasn’t sure she would understand what I was referring to, so I added, “Not to make you feel bad about the L.A. trip, though. Just, maybe, subconsciously to … oh, let you know I needed you, maybe.”

  Now she did look at me.

  “We should have gone to Bo Brooks,” I said. “Who cares if it’s a crab house? We would have gotten all dressed up, you in the beautiful long white gown you were married in and me in my tuxedo, and we’d eat out on the deck, where everybody else was wearing tank tops and jeans. When we walked past they would stare at us, and we’d give them gracious little Queen Elizabeth waves, and they would laugh and clap. Your train would be a bit of a problem—it would catch on the splintery planking—so I’d scoop it up in my arms and carry it behind you to our table. ‘Two dozen of your jumbos and a pitcher of cold beer,’ I’d tell the waitress once we were seated, and she’d roll out the big sheets of brown paper, and then here would come the crabs, steaming hot, dumped between us in this huge orange peppery heap.”

  Dorothy still didn’t speak, but I could see that her expression was softening. She might even have been starting to smile, a little.

  “The waitress would ask if we wanted bibs but we would say no, that was for tourists. And then we’d pick up our mallets and we’d be sitting there banging away like kindergarteners at Activity Hour, with bits of shell flying up and sticking to your dress and my tux, but we would just laugh; what would we care? We would just laugh and go on hammering.”

  Dorothy was smiling for real now, and her face seemed to be shining. In fact she was shining all over, and growing shimmery and transparent. It was sort of like what you see when you swerve your eyes as far to the left as you can without turning your head, so you can glimpse your own profile. First your profile is there and then it’s half not there; it’s nothing but a thread of an outline. And then she was gone altogether.

  9

  I never saw Dorothy again after that. I did keep an eye out, at first, but underneath I think I knew that she had left for good. Nowadays, I step into the backyard without the slightest expectation that I’ll meet her. I hoist Maeve into her toddler seat and start her gently swinging, and all I have on my mind is what a beautiful Saturday morning it is. Even this early in the day, the sunshine feels like melting liquid on my skin.

  “More, Daddy! More!” Maeve says. “More” is her favorite word, which tells you a lot about her. More hugs, more songs, more tickle-game, more of the world in general. She’s one of those children who seem overjoyed to find themselves on this planet—a sturdy little blond squiggle-head with a preference for denim overalls and
high-top sneakers, the better for climbing, running, rolling down hills, getting into trouble.

  I have become expert at grabbing the back of the swing seat in the very center, so that, even one-handed, I can send it off perfectly straight. When it returns I push it higher by pressing a palm against the puff of denim ballooning between the slats. (Underneath her overalls, Maeve still wears diapers. Although we’re working on that.) She bends double over the front bar and wriggles her legs ecstatically, skewing her trajectory, but I’m patient; when the swing approaches again, I grab the top slat to restart her. We have a couple of hours to fill before her mother gets home from her errands.

  “Here goes,” I say, and Maeve says, “Whee!” I don’t know where she learned that. It’s a word I associate with comic strips, and she enunciates it just that precisely, so that I can almost see it printed inside a balloon above her head.

  There was a time when the thought of remarriage seemed inconceivable to me. I could not wrap my mind around it. When Nandina once or twice referred to it as a possibility for my very distant future, I got a lead weight in my stomach. I felt like someone contemplating food right after a heavy meal. “Oh, that will change, by and by,” Nandina said in her all-knowing way. I just glared at her. She had no idea.

  The Christmas after she and Gil got engaged, we went to Aunt Selma’s for Christmas dinner as usual, except that this year Gil came, too. And as I was driving the three of us over, Nandina just happened to drop the information that Roger and Ann-Marie would be bringing Ann-Marie’s girlfriend Louise. I cannot tell you how I dislike the word “girlfriend” when it’s used to mean the platonic female friend of a grown woman. Also, I knew perfectly well who this Louise would be. She was the famous Christmas Eve Widow, the one who could presumably have handled her husband’s death just fine if he hadn’t died just before a holiday. Ah, yes, I could see the machinery spinning here.

  “This was supposed to be a family occasion,” I told Nandina.

  “And so it is!” she said blithely.