A Likely Story

Friday, October 7th

Is it as though I’ve never been away?

Wednesday night, I wasn’t sure if Mary and I would or should go to bed together, so I dithered about it until she reached up to grab my jaw and shake my head, saying, “Tom, I haven’t had a friend on the side for the last nineteen months. That’s a long time. And don’t say you’re sorry.”

“I didn’t plan to say a word,” I assured her, though some time later I did say, “Thank you,” which made her laugh again. And yesterday morning she was the one who said, “Thank you,” adding, “We’ll have to do that at least three times a day for a good long while to get caught up.”

“I’ll give it my full attention,” I said. “But you aren’t going to be ogled and fondled and propositioned by all those guys out there in the world any more.”

“Of course not. When they look at me, they’ll see you in my eyes.”

“You bet they will.”

Which was the only moment she showed any uncertainty at all. About to get out of bed, she paused to look back over her shoulder, frowning slightly. “Tom,” she said, “you are home to stay, aren’t you?”

“You bet I am.”

“Why?”

“Because you wouldn’t put up with it twice,” I said. “And I do love you, Mary, and I don’t want to lose you.”

She smiled, saying, “I wasn’t sure you’d realize that.”

“I’m beginning to catch on. You probably even know what you’d do if it happened again.”

“I’d leave New York,” she said.

I nodded, knowing I’d known that, and feeling scared, because I just might have been dumb enough not to know it. To avoid looking in the abyss, I said, “Do you know where you’d go?”

And that made her laugh, too. “Helena’s been writing me,” she said.

“Helena?”

“Lance’s old girlfriend, the one who went to—”

“Santa Fe!” I said, remembering. “The one who forced Lance back into Ginger’s apartment!” Which started the chain of events, really.

“That’s right. She’s been writing me for months, saying I should take the children out of school and move to Santa Fe.”

“What a bitch!”

“She says I could take wonderful pictures there.”

“All those sunsets,” I said. “Cactus. Pick-up trucks. Golly.”

“She says it’s wonderful in Santa Fe. She says the men there aren’t insecure,” she added, openly laughing at me.

“Oh, sure they are,” I said, but I hunkered down under the covers for a few extra minutes.

If the kids were surprised to see me that early in the morning, they were too hip to show it. (On the other hand, if they weren’t surprised to see me, they’re too hip to think about.) We sat around the kitchen table together, me with my coffee and Mary with a plain yogurt and the kids with Cap’n Crunch and peanut butter and jelly on English muffin and orange juice and a sliced-up banana and coffee with lots of milk (Bryan) and Earl Grey tea (Jennifer). We talked about nothing in particular, and when the kids left for school Jennifer said, “See you tonight,” almost but not quite making it a question. “See you tonight,” I told her.

In the grandness and folly of my round-trip renunciation on Wednesday, I’d forgotten that all work and no play makes Tom a naked man. I’d brought my office home, but all my clothing was still up at Ginger’s place. Therefore, early yesterday afternoon I called her apartment, got my own voice telling me to call where I was calling from (which meant the coast was clear), and then cabbed uptown, let myself in with my keys, and went into the bedroom to see if Ginger had taken the scissors to all my shirts, in traditional scorned-woman style.

No. Nothing of mine in either the bedroom or bathroom had been touched, and I was surprised and somewhat touched to realize Ginger expected me back. She thought we were still dancing the mating dance, that we were still just doing things to keep our interest up, and so she wouldn’t do anything irrevocable. Once she understood that she was dancing alone, that the music had stopped, then she would be really mad.

I packed. I left my keys on the kitchen table, and went away. I would have done something about my voice on the answering machine, but what was there to do? “This is Tom Diskant, I’m not here right now, call me at...” and so on. Well, exactly. Everything in the world was topsy-turvy, and my answering machine message was still accurate.