Five Days

One

‘THE MULTIX SELECT Dr is a cost-efficient digital radiography system particularly designed to provide doctors in private practice and smaller hospitals entry into the world of digital radiography. And with Mobilett Mira, Siemens launches a mobile, digital X-ray system with a wireless detector and a more flexible swivel arm to increase ease of use for the clinical staff.’

The gentleman pitching this machine to the fifty or so of us had great teeth. And a real slick salesman’s delivery which still didn’t do much for the turgid copy he was clearly reading from a prepared script. I tried to focus on what he was saying. I failed. And decided that ducking out of this conference early wasn’t going to make me miss much — especially as Dr Harrild had already hinted that he wasn’t likely to pick my brains too much about what, if anything, I’d gleaned from the conference. A light bing on my phone indicated the arrival of a text. I glanced down at the screen. I read:

Cleaning out the garage today. Hope the conference is interesting. D xxx

Part of me was touched by this text. Cleaning out the garage — which has been hopelessly stockpiled with all his home improvement equipment, car mechanic equipment, and the home gym stuff that he never uses — has been a request I’ve been making of my husband for the past eighteen months. I’ve not nagged him about it. I hate nagging — though in any long-term relationship there are always domestic details that seem to cause friction — like one person’s inability to make the bed, or do a load of laundry or, indeed, divest the garage of all his accumulated junk, so we can actually park our two cars there when the snow falls. The few times I have mentioned these ongoing annoyances to Dan, they have been met with gruffness or sheer silence. Which, in turn, has meant that I have quietly gone on making the beds, doing the laundry and parking my car outside of our overfilled junk-shop garage (and I am now really sounding just a little too put-upon here). The fact that he has just announced that he is now finally clearing it out. well, that too was his way of saying sorry for last night. But I don’t want acts of contrition. I just want a husband who desires me, who actually seems to want to be with me.

Reaching my room I texted back:

Thanks for doing that. It’s really appreciated. Love you — Laura

A text straight back from Dan:

Tell me if you want anything else done around the house.

He really is feeling guilty. Though I don’t want to say ‘good’, there is a part of me that was pleased he was finally conscious of the fact that his behavior frequently did undermine things between us. and actually hurt me. Just as I could only hope that this desire to do something to please me was the start of something more reasonable between us.

Something more reasonable between us.

Just playing those words over in my head saddened me. Because it underscored how distant and flat things had gotten between us; the continental drift that had become our marriage.

Cleaning out the garage will be more than sufficient. I am missing you. L xxx

I hit ‘send’. And moments later: Bing.

OK, on the job now.

Reading this I found myself taking a sharp intake of breath. My husband was tone deaf when it came to my gentle entreaties for affection. He couldn’t respond to a comment like ‘I am missing you’ with even the slightest hint of reciprocal fondness. He had to null and void it all. In doing so he made me feel small. and very isolated.

Bing. Another text. This one from Sally.

Hi Mom — any chance I could borrow fifty dollars from your secret stash?

Some time ago, I let Sally in on the fact that I was the proud owner of an old tin tobacco box, bought at a yard sale for $3 because I liked the 1920s Lucky Strike design on its battered cover. I keep the box on a shelf in my closet and always try to have about $100 in it as emergency, just-in-case funds. I told Sally about this box; I wanted to ensure that she had access to cash when she needed it, but also insisted that she would never dip into it without first asking me. Was this a little schoolmarmish on my part? Perhaps — but as Sally was something of a spendthrift, money remained an ongoing drama for her. Though she did regularly ask me for supplements to the $30 allowance she received from me per week — and the babysitting money she accrued — to her credit she never once reached into the money stash without first calling me. She knows that I know that she still owes me $320 (she reminded me of this recently when she did put $40 back in the box after a weekend of waiting shifts in Moody’s Diner up in Waldoboro). I haven’t pressed her for it. Just as I worry that this need to buy stuff all the time is a reflection of a larger despair — and one which I don’t seem to be able to help her shake.

What’s the fifty bucks for? I texted Sally back.

Bing. Her instant reply:

Cocaine and ecstasy and a tattoo of a Hell’s Angel I thought would look really good on my right arm. You cool with that?

I found myself smiling. Sally as Ms Irreverent was so far preferable to Sally as Miss Popularity.

I could live with the Hell’s Angel, I texted right back. The question is: could you?

Bing. Her instant reply.

Thanks for maternal words of wisdom. Jenny has last minute ticket for gig in Portland. All heading down there tonight. Need $15 for ticket, then dinner and stuff. Dad said I’ve been spending too much recently.

I texted back.

Did he say you couldn’t go?

Hasn’t grounded me or anything — but giving me no money is his way of keeping me home.

Well, at least he didn’t forbid her from going out — as I had never contradicted him when he gave a directive to one of our children.

Who’s driving?

Jenny’s sister Brenda.

That was reassuring, as Brenda was twenty-three and working as a receptionist at Bath Iron Works. The few times I met her Brenda always struck me as reasonably grounded. Very grounded, as she weighed around three hundred pounds and was trying to lose weight to realize her dream of joining the US Navy. From what I’d heard from Sally since then, she’d gained twenty pounds in the last few months. But even if she couldn’t get her girth together she was an absolute teetotaler (as Sally reported she was always lecturing her sister on the dangers of alcohol). So I was reassured that she’d be the designated driver tonight.

If it’s Brenda behind the wheel I’m OK with that. Will text your dad and get his OK.

He’s cool with all that.

Then let him tell me himself. And I immediately sent Dan a text, explaining that Sally wanted to go out and—

Bing. A text back from Dan.

I told her she couldn’t go. Why are you over-ruling me here?

Oh God. It never stops. Sally was, as usual, playing us off against each other.

I would never dream of undermining your authority. But is it really a big deal if she goes out tonight? She has money from me, and I see no reason why she should stay at home.

Bing.

She’s staying at home because I told her she’s staying at home.

I felt myself clench again. Until recently Dan had doted on his daughter — and was, at times, a little too lenient with her. But recently his wide-ranging dyspepsia has also clouded his relationship with Sally — to the point where she recently said to him: ‘When did you start resenting my existence?’ (This was after he grounded her for a weekend when she ignored his directive to clean up her catastrophe of a room.) Though I did try to play the diplomat then — even getting Sally to actually do a major tidy — Dan still wouldn’t budge.

‘You’re still grounded,’ he told her after inspecting her now squared-away room. ‘Because you need to be taught a lesson now and then.’

No, you’re wrong there, I should have informed Dan at the time — none of us need to be ‘taught’ lessons. We need to be shown love. But worried about being seen to undermine his paterfamilias stance I said nothing.

This time, however.

I texted:

This is an unwise move. Sally really wants to go out with her friends. Why be punitive here? You’re doing yourself no favors. You tell her that she is again grounded and you deal with the fallout.

And I hit ‘send’ before even reading it through.

Bing.

Dan’s angry reply, no doubt.

But actually it was a text from Richard.

Just out of meeting. Booked a table at the bistro in Beacon Street Hotel — on Beacon Street (no surprise there). See you in an hour? Richard. PS Had a boring morning. How was yours?

I texted back:

An hour it is. Looking forward.

After sending the text I decided that there was no further reason to stay put and listen to any more of this radiographic sales pitch. So I headed up to my room. Once there I changed my clothes, putting on a pair of jeans, a black turtleneck and the black trenchcoat that I’d had for around ten years — and which Ben had always complimented me on, saying that it made me look ‘Parisian’. Applying a little makeup to my face I paid particular attention to the area under my eyes. I seriously don’t like the ever-darkening crescent moons that now exist there. No amount of generic anti-aging serum (I can hardly afford the absurdly expensive stuff) or sleep seems to lighten them. With all those fine lines hovering nearby — lines that would ever deepen in the coming years — all I could feel (as I so often do whenever I have to face myself in a mirror) is that this middle passage of life is so much about damage limitation. But applying a slightly bolder shade of lipstick than I ever wear at work I also reminded myself of something my mother said in one of her few ruminative moments when she knew time was something she no longer had much of:

‘Until they bury you, you’re still young.’

I checked my lipstick again, thinking Mom wouldn’t approve of this shade. A little too rougey for her. A little too showy. Would Richard think the same?

Oh please. It’s hardly Electric Red. Just a shade up from what I usually wear. There you go again, endlessly examining the motivations behind a simple decision like choosing a shade of.

I re-rouged my lips, deepening the color. There. An act of defiance against that part of me which always acts like a permanent restraining order on myself.

Then, turning up the collar of my black raincoat (Mata Hari in an airport hotel?), I headed out. I didn’t get far, as my cellphone binged again.

So Dan had a volte-face after all. He was obviously trying to make amends.

Bing.

This time it was from Dan.

I texted back:

No terms of endearment this time. No entreaties for affection. Because what I so wanted to hear I knew would not be forthcoming.

There was a shuttle bus from the hotel to the airport T-stop. I was the sole passenger. For the first time today I was outside and cognizant of the fact that it was a peerless autumn afternoon. Getting into the shuttle bus outside the hotel I chose not to look at the big long-term parking lot across the street, or the series of gas stations that lined the road in all directions. Rather I turned my gaze up towards the hard azure sky, all the while blinking into the high-intensity sun. When the bus reached the T-stop a mere $2 whisked me away from all the concrete realities of Route 1. Ten minutes later it deposited me in front of the first public park ever erected in this once New World.

The rural girl in me — who’s always dreamed of living in a city — loves the idea of subways. The notion of criss-crossing a city subterraneanly. Of plunging through tunnels to a new destination. Of the noise and sense of possibility and sheer urbanity that comes from the rush of an underground train.

But as the subway charged towards central Boston, I found myself looking at four exhausted Latino women who had also gotten on with me at the airport stop. They were all dressed in maid’s uniforms. They all must have been working since four that morning, as they were now clearly going home. From the way they were slumped across their respective seats, so enervated and fatigued by that early Saturday shift, I’m certain they found this daily ride to and from the airport less than an uplifting experience. Especially with the drunk crashed out opposite them, his scrubby beard flecked with food and drool.

Still, when I got off at Park Street and came right up the escalator, the first sounds I heard were a couple of street guitarists singing that great Kurt Cobain number, ‘Moist Vagina’. Yes, I was a fan of Nirvana back in the 1990s. I remember one particularly happy moment just after we met when Dan and I were driving somewhere, a Nirvana cassette in the deck of his twenty-year-old Chevy, and he was crooning that tune at the top of his lungs. Back then Dan had frequent moments of sheer irreverence. He actually believed in the idea of fun.

Songs do that to us, don’t they? They bring us back to a moment in our respective stories. Because we seem to benchmark so much of our adolescence and early adulthood with music, a certain song will always trigger, later in life, an instant flashback to a time when, perhaps, life seemed so less serious, so less cluttered.

The two guys singing this Kurt Cobain classic (well, I think it a classic) were both very much carrying on the grunge look that he pioneered. Neither of them could have been more than twenty, and despite appearing just a little strung out, their musicianship and vocal harmonies were just sublime. The area around this entrance to the Common was bustling. Tourists in guided groups. Locals on bicycles or jogging or pushing baby chairs. Couples everywhere. The newly in-love ones with their arms entwined around each other’s waists. A few teenagers kissing a little too passionately on park benches, and one duo courting arrest up against a tree. A few evident first-date types, all caution and nervousness. The new parents with their babies in strollers, all so sleep-deprived, the domestic strain so apparent. The middle-aged couples — some distant with each other, some affable. And an elderly man and woman, sitting on a bench at the entrance to the park, both reading sections of that morning’s Globe, holding hands.

Naturally I was envious of that couple, and wanted to know their story. Were they childhood sweethearts who had met sixty years ago and had been in love ever since (a very Reader’s Digest version of marriage)? Or had they gotten together much later in life, after being widowed, divorced, profoundly lonely? Was theirs one of those marriages that had gone through huge upheavals and periods of true disaffection, only to find an equilibrium as it edged into twilight? Had they stuck together out of fear, or resistance to seismic upheaval or the pursuit of something better. and now were two old people on a park bench, holding each other’s hand, resigned to the fact that life held no further possibilities beyond this other person, whom they should have jettisoned years ago?

Of course I so wanted to believe the first scenario — the devoted couple for over sixty years. Of course I knew that this was the stuff of fantasy — that no relationship of such calendric magnitude could have been one long love song from the outset. But how we so want to buy into that fairy tale and how we always wonder if conjugal happiness is just outside our reach.

I checked my watch: 1:18. I was now three minutes late — and Beacon Street was. where, exactly? I asked someone for directions. He pointed me towards the State House on a raised piece of land just above the Common, and told me to turn left when I reached it.

‘Beacon Street is the first big one you come to,’ he said. ‘You can’t miss it. And I’m sure whoever is waiting for you will wait for you.’

I couldn’t help but smile — but I was still late, and I really didn’t want to have Richard thinking: So she’s the sort of woman who plays games by keeping a guy waiting.

But would he really think that? And why was I thinking that?

I reached the Beacon Street Hotel at 1:27, twelve minutes late. The bistro was on the street level. It looked stylish, chic. Richard was already there, seated in a booth in a far corner. I could see he was dressed in his idea of casual: a blue button-down shirt, a zip-up navy blue jacket, khakis. I suddenly felt silly about my Parisian boho look. He was hunched over his BlackBerry, tapping out a message with ferocious concentration. From the expression on his face, he was clearly disconcerted by something.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said as I reached the booth. Instantly Richard stood up, trying to put a smile on his face. ‘I misjudged the travel time and—’

‘No need to apologize,’ he said, motioning me to sit down. ‘In fact it’s me who should be apologizing. I might have to cut this lunch short.’

‘Oh,’ I said, trying to mask my disappointment. ‘Has something come up?’

I could see his lips tightening. He hit the off button on his BlackBerry and shoved it away from him, as if it was the harbinger of bad things.

‘Yeah, something kind of—’

But he cut himself off, forcing himself to look cheery.

‘Not worth ruining lunch over. I don’t know about you, but I could truly use a bloody mary.’

‘I wouldn’t say no to one.’

‘I wouldn’t say no to two.’

He motioned to the waiter — and put in the order for the drinks.

When the waiter was gone I could see that Richard had already reached for the napkin on the table and was twisting it between his hands — something I repeatedly did whenever I was feeling unsettled.

‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’ I asked.

‘Am I that obvious?’

‘You’re that distressed.’

‘Distressed, discomposed, disconcerted. ’

‘Vexed. And now I know you too are a walking thesaurus.’

A small, sad smile from Richard.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I really didn’t want to even talk about. ’

I reached over and lightly touched his arm. It was a gesture that couldn’t have lasted for more than a moment. But from the way he took a deep intake of breath when my fingers landed on his jacket. well, I couldn’t help but wonder when anyone had last touched him in such a reassuring way.

‘Tell me, Richard.’

He lowered his gaze from me, staring down at the varnished wood tabletop between us. Then, without looking back up in my direction, he said:

‘I lied to you about something.’

‘OK,’ I said, trying to maintain a neutral tone, and stopping myself from feeling distressed, discomposed, disconcerted. After all, this was a man I had spent all of two and a half hours with before now. A passing acquaintance. Nothing more. So why was he admitting that he’d already fabricated something?

‘My son, Billy,’ he finally said, still keeping his gaze downward.

‘Has something happened to him?’

He nodded.

‘Something serious?’ I asked.

He nodded again. Then:

‘When I told you he was living at home I wasn’t telling you the truth. Billy’s been in the psychiatric wing of the state prison for just under two years. I just found out they’ve put him in solitary confinement because he tried to stab a fellow inmate last night. It’s the third time he’s been in solitary in the past eighteen months. And as the prison psychiatrist just told me: “I can’t see him being let out of solitary for the foreseeable future.”’

Silence. I placed my hand again on Richard’s arm.

‘I don’t know what to say except, that is truly terrible.’

‘That it is,’ he said. ‘The end of hope.’

‘Don’t say that. There’s always hope.’

Now he looked up at me directly.

‘Do you really believe that?’

It was my turn to look away.

‘No,’ I finally said.

Two

‘HE WAS DIAGNOSED as bipolar when he was nineteen.’

The bloody marys had just arrived. Though Richard had been, after the initial revelation, reluctant to say anything more about his son (‘I don’t want to bore you with my troubles’), I gently insisted that he tell me all. A sip of his drink. Another long, tense stare at the tabletop, during which I could see him weighing up whether he could spill this story. I squeezed his arm tighter. He covered my hand with his for a moment, then reached for his drink and (in doing so) pulled his arm gently away. A second long sip, and I could see the slightest of twitches as the vodka worked its way into his system. Then:

‘We knew, from an early age, that Billy was not a normal kid. Withdrawn. Always keeping to himself. Secretive — or, at least, that’s how I saw it. Then there were the moments when everything came right with him — when, out of nowhere, he would suddenly become hyper-animated and wildly outgoing. A little too outgoing, if you ask my opinion. But after the episodes of sullenness, of being so shut off, so solipsistic. ’

Lovely word, I thought. As if reading my thoughts, Richard raised his eyebrows for a moment after he uttered it. I smiled back. Richard continued on:

‘We were both so happy when he had these periods of apparent high spirits. Especially as he spent so much of his adolescence keeping to himself. At the local high school in Bath, he was always regarded as the class weirdo. The school psychologist ran tests on him and felt that he had some “issues”. And he sent him to a therapist for a while, though Muriel — that’s my wife — was against it all.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Muriel is very much someone who believes that “mind stuff” — as she calls it — is a sign of weakness. I guess that kind of comes with her childhood territory. She was raised down in Dorchester, where her dad was the ultimate in tough-guy Irish American cops. A drinker, of course — and someone who regularly used his wife as a punchbag. Eventually Muriel’s mom could take no more. As she herself was raised in Lewiston, back she and Muriel and her two brothers went to the family home when Muriel was just twelve. She never saw her father again. He decided that, by following their mother back to Maine, all the children had rejected him. So he shut them out of his life until the bottle finally killed his liver five years later. and that’s all far too much detail, isn’t it?’

‘It’s interesting detail,’ I said.

‘You’re not saying that to be nice, are you?’

‘I’m saying that because I want to hear the story. Your story. How did you meet Muriel?’

‘My dad hired her as his secretary.’

‘When was that?’

‘Late 1981. She’d been to secretarial school in Portland and had been married briefly to a cop. ’

‘History repeats itself.’

‘Especially Freudian history. But that’s another story, me and Muriel.’

‘Just the one child?’

‘She’d had around three miscarriages before Billy. So we both considered him our great gift, our recompense for all the grief that the three failed pregnancies had caused. But when Billy finally arrived, Muriel was thirty-six, which is not an old age now for a first-time mother, but in those days was regarded as pretty darn late. From the outset, though Muriel did all the right things when it came to looking after Billy, I always had the sense that she hadn’t ever bonded really with the boy, that there was a part of her that always sensed he was so different from the start.’

‘Did he hit all the usual developmental marks?’

‘Absolutely. And when he had some of those early aptitude tests he was shown to be off-the-scales bright. Especially when it came to math. That was always his great saving grace throughout school — the fact that, when it came to all things mathematical, he was a wizard. I remember getting a call from his tenth grade calculus teacher — I think his name was Mr Pawling — asking me to come in, and him telling me that Billy had the most gifted theoretical mind he’d encountered in twenty-five years of teaching, and would I agree to extra tutoring after school, and enrollment that summer in an intensive math camp that was held at MIT, of all places. Muriel felt it was all too much — ‘What’s he going to do at a math camp except become more withdrawn?’ was how she saw things. But I argued that his was a great gift that we needed to encourage, and that math really could be a way out of the isolation and loneliness that had categorized his life so far. The way I figured it, once he got to that math camp at MIT he’d be with like-minded kids — what Billy himself called “us numbers geeks”, and of which there were none at Bath High School. Muriel also complained about the cost of it all — almost three thousand dollars, which was a stretch for us back then, despite the good times. Still, I prevailed. Billy went to MIT Math Camp. For the first two weeks he seemed so incredibly happy. Loved the professors. Loved his fellow math whizzes. I even dropped in on him after ten days. I had never seen him so focussed, so at ease with himself and his surroundings. And this professor who was teaching Lambda Calculus — I had to look up what that meant — took me aside and told me that he was going to put a word in with the admissions department about getting Billy fast-tracked for entry into MIT the following autumn.

‘I drove back to Bath elated. My son the math genius. My son the future math professor at MIT or Harvard or Chicago. My son the Nobel Laureate. And yes, I know this was all the stuff of pipe dreams. But what this professor was saying to me really made it seem like Billy could do it all.

‘And then, five days later, we got a phone call from MIT. Billy had tried to set fire to the sheets and mattress in his dorm room. Fortunately there was a fast-thinking proctor down the hall. He smelled smoke. He got a fire extinguisher and put the flames out. But Billy had caused several thousand dollars’ worth of damage. When he admitted that he’d started the fire himself he was expelled on the spot.

‘Of course I was devastated by what had happened. What devastated me more was the fact that, when I came to pick Billy up, he wouldn’t talk about what happened.

‘“Guess I just wanted to screw up,”’ was all he said.

‘When he repeated that statement to his mother she wanted him committed to the nearest insane asylum. Then again they hadn’t been getting along for years. Billy knew that his mother considered him nothing less than strange and different. Muriel has never been comfortable with anything or anyone outside of her comfort zone. She hates to travel. She’s only been out of Maine twice in the last five years — and that was owing to family funerals in Massachusetts. And she can’t really cope with her brilliantly gifted, but truly eccentric son. I’ve tried repeatedly to talk with her about all that — and tried to get her to show some empathy towards the boy. But when Muriel has decided that somebody is bad news, that’s that.’

He broke off the sentence, reaching again for the bloody mary. I too took a long sip of my drink, my mind now endeavoring to work out the complex contours of Richard’s marriage. From the way he was reporting things, Muriel sounded cold, judgmental, emotionally detached. But was I thinking that because I could see the immense distress that her husband was embroiled in right now?

‘We all have our private griefs, don’t we?’ he said. ‘And I certainly didn’t want to go upending our lunch with—’

‘Do not apologize. What has happened to your son is so evidently huge and terrible. ’

‘What has happened to my son?’ he said, his voice just above a whisper. ‘You make it sound as if all this was visited upon him. Whereas the truth is. he visited it all upon himself.’

‘But you said he was bipolar. And if you are bipolar—’

‘I know, I know. And you’re right. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Muriel threw that line from Luke at me when I tried to explain away Billy’s behavior after getting expelled from the MIT Math Camp. “Making excuses for him as usual. You should march him down to the nearest Marine Corps recruiting office and get him signed up. Three months of basic training at Parris Island will knock all that craziness out of him.”

‘Now I know that all makes Muriel sound rather extreme. But the truth is, when I brought Billy home from MIT and he refused to talk with her, I woke around three in the morning to find Muriel sitting in a chair by the window in our bedroom, crying uncontrollably. When I tried to comfort her she told me that she blamed herself for so much that had befallen Billy. “I know I’ve been a bad mother. I know I’ve never given him the love he needs.” And it was wonderful hearing that. Because she had articulated a certain truth that I was always afraid of discussing with her.’

But why were you afraid? I stopped myself from posing that question. Because I knew just how much of a long, difficult marriage is often based around sidestepping so many painfully evident truths, and how we all are afraid of opening up the sort of conversations that can lead us into the darker, distressed recesses of the lives we have created for ourselves.

‘I’ve always hated myself for not confronting her about the antipathy that she felt towards our son. And the way she was incapable of showing any nurturing affection.’

‘Towards him and towards you?’ I asked.

I could see Richard tense, and silently cursed myself for overstepping a mark.

‘Sorry, sorry, that was an inappropriate question,’ I said.

He took another sip of his drink.

‘Actually, it was a perfectly appropriate question. And one which I think you already know the answer to.’

Silence. I broke it.

‘So after the MIT Math Camp. did he get help?’

‘Naturally I got the school therapist immediately involved. She was a very nice woman, if something of a lightweight who talked all this touchy-feely stuff, but was very out of her depth when it came to dealing with the clinical reasons why Billy had done something so destructive, so calamitous. She did send him to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist diagnosed depression and put him on Valium. A reasonable year followed. He saw the psychiatrist once a week. The medication seemed to be working. Billy finished his senior year in high school. He scored high on his SATs — including a 750 in math. The incident at MIT was in the past. I paid the four thousand dollars in damages. They never pressed charges, so there was no record against Billy. Several colleges were seriously interested in him — including Chicago and Cornell. Another great triumph happened when CalTech came through with a complete four-year scholarship. CalTech! Billy was thrilled. I was thrilled. Even his mother was truly chuffed that her boy got into one of the world’s great science and math schools. The thing was, Billy was going out with a girl from his class. Mary Tracey. Lovely young woman. Quite the chemistry whizz. And she seemed to really understand our quirky son. She’d even gotten accepted on full scholarship to Stanford. It all looked so good.

‘Then, around three weeks before his high school graduation, he disappeared. Vanished completely. The local and state police were involved. His photo was in all the papers and on all Maine news bulletins. The fact that he had taken Muriel’s car and stolen her ATM card — he knew her PIN number because she’d asked him to get money out on occasion — well, naturally, this was serious stuff. The bank informed us that he’d only made one withdrawal of three hundred dollars on the day of his disappearance. We didn’t stop the card because, as the police advised us, they’d be able to easily track his whereabouts. But after that first withdrawal, nothing. No sign of him anywhere. The trail had gone cold. And I couldn’t help but fear the worst: that he’d taken his own life.

‘But then, eight days after he’d disappeared — eight days during which I had maybe slept three hours a night — we got a phone call at around four in the morning from our local police captain, Dwight Petrie. Bath’s a small town. Dwight and I had gone to high school together. His father had been in the police force. My dad had insured their family house and cars. Dwight came to me for all that when he got married and started a family. He was the only friend I confided in about the business at MIT. He was one of the few people I could trust to keep a secret. The fact is, the MIT business was kept pretty hush-hush. Billy’s disappearance, on the other hand, was big local news — and somehow word got out about Billy’s MIT business. I’m pretty damn certain it was a parent of one of Billy’s classmates. Her son was also at the same math camp, but he’d been passed over by CalTech and everywhere for scholarship. This woman — her name was Margaret Mallon — went around telling everybody that it was absurd that “that little freak Billy Copeland gets all the scholarships” and her boy got nothing. It was Dwight Petrie who told me she’d been overheard saying that. Being a police captain, Dwight never repeats anything incriminating unless he’s received it from impeccable sources. Next thing we know that too got into the newspapers. And the world being so linked now by Google and Yahoo, naturally someone in the admissions office at CalTech flagged it. The college guidance counselor at Bath High then got a call from the director of admissions at CalTech, demanding to know why the school had concealed Billy’s expulsion. The Bath college guidance counselor told him this was the first he had heard of it. Which meant that Muriel and I were asked to come into the principal’s office and were essentially carpeted for concealing this “felony”, as the principal put it. I tried to explain that, since the matter wasn’t reported to the police and it was all privately settled between ourselves and MIT, we didn’t feel it essential to “share” this information with the school. I knew this sounded lame — and that we were essentially guilty of a cover-up.’

‘What makes you think that?’ I asked.

‘The school should have been informed.’

‘Did MIT know the name of Billy’s high school?’

‘Of course. They had all his details.’

‘But they chose not to inform Bath High that he had been expelled. The very fact that MIT didn’t think it necessary to inform Bath High School of this unfortunate incident—’

‘It wasn’t an “incident”. It was an offense.’

‘Your son is bipolar. ’

‘That diagnosis came later. And arson is hardly a petty crime.’

‘Still, MIT decided the infraction was not so severe as to ruin the future of a hugely gifted young man.’

‘I lost around a half-dozen clients. And they all said the same thing — they didn’t want to do business with someone who played fast and loose with the truth.’

‘That’s awful and pretty damn judgmental, if you ask me,’ I said.

‘You’re being far too kind.’

‘Are you saying that because you’re not used to kindness?’

Silence. Richard closed his eyes for a moment. From the way his lips tightened I could only wonder if I had crossed a forbidden frontier, and if he might just stand up and end our lunch before it had ever really begun.

‘I’m sorry,’ I heard myself saying.

Richard opened his eyes.

‘For what?’

‘For prying into something that I had no business—’

‘But you’re right.’

Silence. I chose my next words with prudence.

‘How am I right?’

‘About me not being used to kindness.’

Silence. Now we both reached for our drinks. Then:

‘I know a thing or two about that as well,’ I said.

‘Your husband?’

I nodded.

Silence. The waiter broke it, arriving at our booth, all smiles.

‘How are you guys doing. Ready for another mary? And just to remind you of our brunch specials—’

‘Why don’t you do that in around fifteen minutes?’ Richard said.

‘No problem, no rush,’ the waiter said, getting the message.

‘Thank you.’ Then, when the waiter was out of earshot, he said:

‘So. your husband. ’

‘We’ll get to that. Anyway, my point was—’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Dan.’

‘And he got laid off at L.L.Bean and starts again in the stockroom on Monday?’

‘Good memory.’

‘Salesmen remember everything.’

‘But outside of the insurance business, you don’t strike me as someone who’s always selling, always trying to close.’

‘Maybe that’s because, when I’m selling, I’m playing a role. And outside of that—’

‘Aren’t we all playing a role?’ I asked.

‘That’s a point of view.’

‘But one with a certain veracity to it. I mean, we all construct an identity, don’t we? The problem is, do we like the identity we have made for ourselves?’

‘You don’t expect me to answer that, do you?’

I laughed, and Richard favored me with a sly smile.

‘OK — cards on the table,’ I said. ‘I look at my life and frequently wonder how I have ended up with this existence, this identity, this daily role to play.’

‘Well, we all do that, don’t we?’

‘So what role would you play, if you could?’

‘That’s easy,’ he said. ‘I’d be a writer.’

‘No doubt, living in a house by the water up in Maine. or maybe you do that already.’

‘Hardly. We live in town in Bath. And the house, though nice, is pretty modest.’

‘So’s mine.’

‘Anyway, if I was a writer I would be living here, in Boston. City life and all that.’

‘Then why not New York or Paris?’

‘I’m a Maine boy — which means Boston is my idea of a city. Small, compact, historic, in the East. And then there’s the Red Sox. ’

‘So you are tribal.’

‘Aren’t all Red Sox fans?’

‘Most everyone is tribal. Especially when it comes to their own flesh and blood. Look at that woman, Margaret what’s-her-name, who ensured that your son’s incident at MIT went public. Why did she do that? Because her own son wasn’t as talented or gifted as Billy. So she turned tribal and decided to wreak havoc. From where I sit, that’s five times worse than you and your wife saying nothing about Billy’s math camp problem. You were simply trying to protect your son. She was being deliberately malicious — and, in the process, damaging a young man. She ought to be ashamed of herself.’

‘Trust me, she isn’t.’

‘What happened after CalTech found out about Billy’s problems?’

‘The inevitable happened. They withdrew their offer of admission and, with it, the full scholarship. What made this even more terrible was that this transpired while Billy was still missing. Next thing I knew I had reporters on me from all the local and regional papers, even a TV team from the NBC affiliate in Portland, parked outside my house, wanting a statement from me about why I covered up for my son. I’m surprised you weren’t aware of it all, Maine being such a small place.’

‘I rarely watch TV. And I tend to get my news from the New York Times online. Dan always says that, for a Maine lifer, I have little interest in local stuff. Maybe because it’s often nothing more than local gossip. Other people’s small-town miseries and tragedies. I’m sure if I asked some of my colleagues at the hospital about the incident they’d remember it all. But, trust me, I’m not going to do that.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Did you release a statement to the press?’

‘I had my lawyer do it. A short statement saying that, as Billy was still missing — and we were genuinely fearful about whether or not he was still alive — we asked to be left in peace “during this very difficult time” and all that. To Dwight Petrie’s credit he came out on our side, declaring that since MIT had decided it was a private matter, he felt we were right to say nothing to the school — and he was appalled that “some very bad citizen felt it necessary to inflict more damage on a clearly troubled young man by leaking it to the press”. Dwight also made it clear that we had been friends for forty years — and under the circumstances he would have done what I had done. But the terrible fact was, Billy’s chances of getting into any college were null and void. And all thanks to the maliciousness of one little woman.

‘Meanwhile, the trail had gone cold in the search for Billy. Those eight days. they were beyond terrible.’

‘And how did your wife take it?’

‘She did what she often does when things get on top of her — she voted with her feet. Went to stay with her sister in Auburn. Called me once a day for an update. Otherwise she was elsewhere.’

‘And it didn’t get to you?’

Silence. His eyes snapped shut again for a moment — something I noticed that frequently happened whenever the conversation strayed into difficult territory. Yet he never tried to dodge the tough stuff. Instead, opening his eyes again he said:

‘I thought I would go out of my mind.’

‘Was there any specific reason why he’d vanished?’

‘His girlfriend told him it was over between them. Just like that. Out of the blue. I only found this out around seventy-two hours after Billy went missing. Early one morning — it must have been around six — someone started banging loudly on my front door. I staggered downstairs and found Billy’s girlfriend, Mary, standing there, tears running down her face. Once inside my kitchen, the whole story came out — how Billy had become over the past few months so remote, so difficult and unsettling, that she finally had no choice but to tell him that it was over. As she filled me in on all this, I felt a desperate sense of shame, especially when she asked me: “Did you notice him acting stranger than usual?” The truth was, I hadn’t noticed anything different about him, yet here was my son coming undone due to this break-up with the first woman who had ever loved him.’

As if reading my thoughts — or maybe the expression on my face told all — he looked at me and said:

‘That’s right. Billy never knew much in the way of maternal love. But in Muriel’s defense, I suppose she did her best.’

‘Do you really believe that?’

‘No.’

He met my gaze straight on as he said that — and I felt the strangest shudder run through me. Because from the way he was meeting my gaze I felt what he felt: that this was a moment of shared complicity. And a silent frontier had just been traversed.

‘So where did they finally find Billy?’ I asked.

‘Way up north in the County,’ Richard said, using the Maine verbal shorthand for Aroostook County: the most isolated, underpopulated, and largely unexplored corner of the state, defined by its vast forests and intricate network of logging roads that never appeared on any official map of the state.

‘How bad a shape was he in?’

‘Very bad. He told the state trooper who found him that he’d driven up to Presque Isle, went into a Walmart there, bought a garden hose and some thick electrical tape, and was planning to drive deep into the woods, tape the hose to the exhaust pipe, feed it in through the car window, use the tape to mask the crack in the window, then turn on the engine and leave this life.

‘But he also bought a week’s worth of food at the same time and a sleeping bag and a portable stove. So I can’t help but think that part of him still wanted to live. Then, once he had all these supplies, he started driving deep into the woods, crossing eventually onto those logging roads that are off-limits to anyone not working for one of those big paper companies up there. He drove and drove and drove until the car hit a ditch on one of those unpaved tracks. It broke an axle. There he was, in late April, snow still on the ground up there, the temperatures still well below freezing after dark, stranded in real wilderness. He had all the equipment necessary to take his life. But instead he simply lived in his car. Keeping the heater on at night until his gas finally ran out. Using the woods as a toilet. Eating meals made on the portable stove. All alone in the forest. And — as he told me some months afterwards — happy for the first time in his life. “Because I didn’t have to confront the fact that I was this freak of nature who couldn’t fit in anywhere. And because being alone is, Dad, the best place for me.” His exact words.

‘Then he got lucky. A logger came upon him at dawn. At this point, Billy had completely run out of food, and besides being starved and suffering from exposure, he was also delirious. He had locked all the car doors, and wouldn’t open them when the logger kept slamming his fist against the window, trying to get Billy to allow himself to be rescued. But Billy was so out of it that he refused to open the door. That’s when the logger drove off and returned around four hours later — that’s how isolated the spot was — with the state police. Again they tried to convince Billy to open the door and let them help him. This time, seeing the men in uniform, he became irrational. Refused to unlock the door. Started screaming abuse at the officers. When they finally had to jimmy open the door with a crowbar, he turned violent. So violent that they had to subdue him. After they’d handcuffed him, he still went crazy in the back of the squad car, and they drove him to the nearest doctor, who administered such a strong tranquilizer that Billy was under for over twenty-four hours.

‘When he awoke he found himself in the big state psychiatric hospital in Bangor. Dwight had gotten the call from the state police up in Aroostook County. Great friend that he is, he insisted on driving me up there. When we arrived at the hospital — a big Victorian place, somewhat modernized inside, but still pretty damn formidable and unnerving — Billy was in the secure wing. In an isolated cell. I was able to visit him. He looked so emaciated and rough from all those days freezing in that car. Unwilling to talk to me, though at one point crying wildly when I told him how much I loved him. But when I attempted to comfort him by putting my arms around him he went ballistic, throwing a punch at me — which I fortunately dodged — then hurling himself against a wall before barricading himself in the little bathroom. Four staff members — big, tough guys — came rushing in and ordered me and Dwight out while they subdued my son. Now Dwight — besides being my oldest friend — is also the king of plain talkers. After that incident in Billy’s room he marched me over to the nearest bar, insisted I have a double Jack Daniel’s to settle my nerves, then gave it to me straight: “Your son is in a very bad place — and after what’s happened there’s no way the state is going to let him out onto the street for a very long time.”’

‘Where was his mother at this moment?’

‘At her sister’s in Auburn, awaiting my call.’

‘Why didn’t she accompany you to Bangor?’

‘When I told her over the phone what had happened she started to cry like I never heard her cry before. I said that it was probably best for all concerned if I went alone with Dwight up to the psychiatric hospital. She didn’t disagree with me.’

‘But she did eventually see him?’

‘You don’t think much of her, do you?’

This comment caught me unawares — especially as its tone was so defensive.

‘I am just responding to what you’ve reported to me about her.’

‘She’s not that bad.’

‘I believe you.’

‘Even though I’ve painted her as a bad mother?’

‘Richard. your marriage is your business. And I would never dream of making a value judgment about—’

‘I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.’

‘That was hardly snapping. Your story is a terrible one.’

‘It’s not my story, it’s his story.’

‘But you are his father.’

‘I know, I know. As you can imagine, life’s never been the same since all this happened. Muriel went to see him with me around a week after that first incident at the psychiatric hospital. We first had a meeting with his psycho-pharmacologist. He told us that he had switched Billy onto Paxil — it’s a form of Prozac — and though it was early days, he seemed to be responding to the new medication. When we saw him that afternoon — it was in very controlled circumstances, with two burly male nurses in attendance, just in case things got out of hand — he seemed really animated and upbeat and happy to see us both. Promising us that he was going to “beat this thing” and would be entering CalTech as planned that autumn. We had both agreed in advance that we’d say nothing to him about the rescinded admissions offer or the fact that his disappearance had been a two-week media event. But poor Muriel almost broke down at that point. When we got back to the car she buried her head in my shoulder and cried for a good ten minutes. Later, on the drive south, her composure regained, she turned to me, all glacial, and said: “That boy’s lost to us now.”

‘Of course I didn’t believe that. I told myself: Look at how he’s rebounded since they put him on the new medication. I started scheming of ways to get him into a good college come autumn. I didn’t give up on him.

‘Then, forty-eight hours later, there was another call from the state hospital. Billy had gone berserk the previous night. Out of nowhere he’d gotten violent. Punched and bitten one of the guards. Tried to slam his head through a window. Had to be tranquilized and subdued — and was now in their version of solitary confinement. I wanted to run back up to Bangor immediately, but Dwight counseled me to stay put.

Days went by. The director of the psychiatric hospital then called me. All very concerned. All very mea culpa. It turned out the psycho-pharmacologist had completely misdiagnosed Billy, as it was now clear that he was bipolar. I discovered by asking around, if you put someone who is bipolar on Paxil they light up like a Christmas tree. No wonder the poor boy had those manic episodes.’

‘So they switched his medication?’

‘Yes — and put him on Lithium. The thing is, because of his attack on the state police officer, and because of his explosions at the hospital, the state decided to press for ongoing incarceration. I asked my lawyer to see if we could make a case against the hospital for misdiagnosis and putting him on the sort of medication that turned him psychotic. The lawyer got me in touch with a criminal attorney down in Portland. The guy charged nearly four hundred dollars an hour. He told me that if I was willing to spend twenty grand, they could mount a case against the state. But he felt the state would win out in the end, as Billy was already violent and unstable before he’d been wrongly put on Paxil. I took out a loan against my house — something Muriel truly objected to — and we mounted the case. And we lost. Even on Lithium, Billy was still showing signs of serious mental disturbance. The state had all the cards. The state was granted the right to lock Billy away in that hospital until such a time as they considered him fit for reintegration into society.’

Is there any chance of that happening? I felt like asking, though I already knew the answer. Again clearly reading my thoughts Richard said:

‘But that will not happen anytime soon. Because in addition to his bipolar diagnosis, he was subsequently classified as a dangerous schizophrenic. And now — now — there’s that phone call from the state hospital an hour ago. For the first time in four months he was allowed back in the common living area that is shared by the other male patients on his ward. A fight broke out and he stabbed someone in the throat with a pencil.’

‘Is the man all right?’

‘The wound was a superficial one, according to the psychiatric head of the unit where Billy is kept. But this means that my son is back in solitary confinement. And the chances of him being let out again in the foreseeable future. ’

He broke off and put his face in his hands. I reached over and put my hand again on his arm. This time he did not pull away.

‘Of course I called his mother as soon as I heard the news from the hospital. And I told you her response. “He’s lost now forever.”’

‘Do you believe that?’ I asked.

‘I don’t want to believe that. But. ’

Silence.

‘If you have to run up to the hospital now. ’ I said.

‘My son is back in solitary confinement. Which means no visitors. The resident psychiatrist told me that they would be keeping him isolated until they felt he was stabilized. The last time this happened, it was eight weeks before we could see him. The only reason I told you earlier I had to run was because I didn’t think I could face recounting all this to you. And you’ve been so kind, so patient, so. ’

The waiter was back at the table, all smiles. Richard withdrew his arm from my grasp.

‘So. any thoughts about brunch?’ the waiter asked.

‘We still need a few minutes,’ I said, and the waiter headed elsewhere. As soon as he was out of earshot I whispered to Richard:

‘Please go if you need to.’

‘Where would I go to? Where? ’ he asked. ‘But if, after hearing all this, you want to run off. ’

‘Now why would I want to do that?’

‘You sure about that?’

‘I’m sure about that.’

‘Thank you.’

‘No, thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For telling me about your son.’

‘Even though it’s a terrible story?’

‘Especially because it’s a terrible story.’

Silence. Then Richard said:

‘There are moments in life when one really needs a second drink.’

To which I could only reply:

‘Good idea.’

Three

WE DRANK THE second round of bloody marys. We ate the omelets that we ordered. We didn’t mention the subject of Richard’s son again during the course of the brunch. I would have continued the conversation about Billy, as there was so much I wanted to ask Richard about — especially when it came to finding a legal way through this nightmare story. Surely there’s a way of exploring other forms of treatment for him. Though he’d had violent episodes, he had not actually broken any laws — which had to mean there was some way for him to be in a form of managed care that was not state-sanctioned incarceration. And (this was the mother in me talking) surely heaven and earth could still be moved to rescue this boy from such an ongoing horror show.

But Richard had spent serious money on a lawyer. Unlike his wife he was not giving up hope. Though Muriel really did sound unable to cope with Billy’s monstrous illness, I knew it was wrong to judge her reportedly distanced reaction to her son’s mental collapse. That’s the thing about other people’s tragedies. You can stand on the sidelines and make all sorts of pronouncements about how they should be handled. But in doing so you forget an essential truth: there is no appropriate way to react to the worst that life can throw at you. To attempt to impose your own so-called ‘game plan’ on a nightmare that you yourself aren’t living is the height of heinous arrogance. That’s why we find other people’s tragedies so compulsive: because they so terrify us; because we all privately live with the knowledge that, at any moment, the entire trajectory of our lives can be upended by the most terrible and unforeseen forces.

But getting us off the subject of his son and onto my own children, he now got me talking about Sally and her considerable adolescent heartaches.

‘Maybe this Brad guy dumping her will make her consider looking beyond status when it comes to choosing the next boyfriend,’ he said. ‘But let me ask you something. Is Brad’s father Ted Bingham, the lawyer fellow?’

‘Sometimes the world is just too small.’

‘Especially when it comes to Maine.’

‘And yes, his dad is indeed Damariscotta’s big-cheese lawyer — though I might have just uttered an oxymoron.’

Richard smiled, then added:

‘Of course, had you said, “Damariscotta’s big-headed lawyer”, you might have stood accused of uttering a tautology.’

‘Well, Ted Bingham has the reputation of being both big-headed and very grand fromage. Don’t tell me you insure him?’

‘Hardly. He works with Phil Malloy, who has basically cornered the Damariscotta insurance market.’

‘Tell me about it. Phil insures our home and cars.’

‘That’s Maine. And the reason I know Ted Bingham is because his wife was at school with Muriel in Lewiston.’

‘That’s Maine again — and, of course, I’ve met the famous Julie Bingham.’

‘Hard to believe she ever grew up—’

‘—somewhere other than Palm Beach,’ I said.

‘Or the Hamptons.’

‘Or Park Avenue.’

‘Still, that big place they have on the coast by Pemaquid Point—’

‘—is my dream location,’ I said. ‘And I now feel so tacky for being so catty about Julie.’

‘But she is one of those people who invites cattiness.’

‘I’m afraid I know all about that. Sally actually once heard Julie on the phone with a friend, telling her: “Now I think Brad’s girlfriend is a cutey. but it’s a shame her parents are struggling.”’

‘And you worry about being catty about her. Sometimes people deserve cattiness. Especially when they look down their long noses at everyone else. And I’m certain that your daughter saw right through Julie’s noblesse oblige act.’

‘If only Sally understood what noblesse oblige was. She’s so bright and so intuitively smart. But she underestimates her own intelligence, and is so bound up in the superficial. even though I’m sure that, privately, she sees that this pursuit of the shallow is an empty one.’

‘Then she’ll hopefully move away from it all once Young Mr Bingham goes off to his Ivy League college.’

‘That is my great hope. But as you well know, when it comes to children, you can never really shield them from danger or themselves.’

‘That still doesn’t lessen the sense of guilt that accompanies being a parent. ’

‘True. But even if I keep telling you that Billy’s bipolar condition has no connection whatsoever to anything you’ve done as a father — and, in fact, from what you’ve reported, you’ve been the parent who has always been there for him. ’

‘Yes, I will still feel guilty about this until the day he’s allowed out of that hell hole. Even then I’ll still remain guilty about the horror he’s been through.’

‘Does parental guilt ever cease?’

‘Do you really want me to answer that question?’

‘Hardly. Because after all that happened with my son Ben. ’

That’s when I told him about my son’s amazing promise as a painter, the subsequent breakdown after that spoiled little rich girl dropped him, and how he’d already been in one major exhibition and.

‘So Ben’s going to be the next Cy Twombly.’

Again I found myself looking at Richard with considerable surprise.

‘You know your modern painters,’ I said.

‘I saw that big 2009 retrospective of his at the Art Institute of Chicago. Actually invented a reason to go to Chicago on business in order to catch the exhibition. Funny thing is — my dad, conservative ex-Marine that he was — still had a thing about art. Only his taste ran towards Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent, which is still pretty good taste. Dad always had a secret hankering to be a painter. Had a little studio in his garage. Tried his hand at seascapes. He wasn’t bad. Gave a few away to some family members. Even had a gallery in Boston take a few of the Maine coastal studies he did. But they never sold. Dad being Dad he decided that this was a sign they were no damn good. Even though my mother — who was some class of a saint — and his brother Roy told him otherwise. One night, after another of his big bouts of drinking — the guy could really put away cheap Scotch — he staggered out to the garage and burned all his paintings. Just like that. Dumped around two dozen canvases outside on the lawn, doused them with kerosene, lit a match. Whoosh. My mother found him sitting by the fire, looking sloshed, tears running down his face, so sad and furious with the world. but especially with himself. Because he knew he was burning all sense of hope and possibility, and a life beyond the one he had created for himself. There I was — a child of fourteen — watching this all from my bedroom window, telling myself I’d never live a life I disliked. ’

‘And your father never painted again?’

Richard shook his head.

‘And yet he then ripped several strips off you when you dared to publish a short story.’

‘Well, the guy was such a total hard case.’

‘Or just jealous. My dad had a father like that. He saw that his son was a brilliant mathematician — and had teachers and college guidance counselors encouraging him to apply to everywhere from Harvard to MIT, just like your Billy. Only my dad’s father was not a good father like you. Instead he was quietly enraged by his son’s brilliance and worked assiduously at subverting his progress. Insisted he turn down a full scholarship at MIT because he needed him to work in the family hardware store every weekend. Dad went along with this — agreeing to U Maine and returning every weekend to Waterville to put in a full Saturday at my grandfather’s shop. Can you imagine forcing a gifted young man to do that. ’

‘Actually I can.’

‘Oh God, listen to me talking before thinking. I am so, so sorry.’

‘Don’t be. The truth doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s just there. Right in my face. And the thing is, even though my father also played undermining games with me — and I was no way as brilliant as your father. ’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Why not? It’s the truth.’

‘But that short story. ’

‘A short story, written thirty years ago. ’

‘And one published a few months ago.’

‘You remembered that?’

‘Well, you did tell me about it yesterday.’

‘It’s just a small thing. ’

‘I actually Googled it this morning. And read it. And guess what? It’s very good.’

‘Seriously?’

‘A man looks back on a childhood friend who was allegedly swept off the rocks at Prout’s Neck. but who the friend knows was being investigated for fraud at the accountancy firm where he’s a partner. Very Anthony Trollope.’

‘Now you’re being far too extravagant.’

‘But you must have read The Way We Live Now — because the whole theme of personal and social corruption is—’

‘I am hardly an Anthony Trollope. And a small Portland accountancy firm isn’t exactly a great City brokerage house in London.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘Trollope was looking at the way money is the ongoing human obsession. And the fact that he used the grand canvas of London at the height of Victorian power—’

‘And you use a small New England city in the middle of a recession to highlight the same concerns about the way we all are in thrall to money, and how, like it or not, it always defines us.’

Richard looked at me with something approaching bemusement — and clearly found himself incapable of articulating anything.

‘You seem speechless,’ I said.

‘Well, it’s not every day I get compared to one of the great masters of the nineteenth-century novel. And though I’m flattered. ’

‘I know, I know — you don’t deserve it. It’s just a two-thousand-word scribble in a minor magazine. And your father was right about your writing all along. Happy now?’

He reached for his drink and finished it.

‘No one has ever been so encouraging about my writing before.’

‘Did your wife read the story?’

‘She said it was “readable, but depressing”.’

‘Well, the story really grabs you from the outset. But the apparent suicide at the end is incredibly disturbing. Still, I loved the moral ambiguity behind all that. It’s like that line from Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” — “Between the motion and the act. ”’

‘“. falls the shadow”.’

As he finished my sentence, finished the quote that I was quoting, I found myself looking up at Richard and thinking: This man is full of surprises. Perhaps the most surprising thing is the fact that I find him so. ‘compelling’ is the right word. And when he took those rather shapeless steel-rimmed spectacles off for a moment to rub his eyes I suddenly saw that, if you took away the dull golfing clothes and the actuarial inspector eyewear, there was a not unattractive man seated opposite me, and one whose initial grayness had now shaded into something warmer. I could also see, as he finished that T.S. Eliot quote, that he was regarding me in a different way now; that he too had discerned that the landscape between us was changing. Part of me was trying to tell myself: This is a pleasant, interesting lunch, no more. The other part of me — the person who always wondered why she imposed so many frontiers on her life — knew otherwise.

‘Have you always worn glasses?’ I asked.

‘They’re pretty damn awful, aren’t they?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘I’m saying that. I let Muriel choose them for me around eight years ago. I knew from the outset they were a mistake. She told me they looked businesslike, serious. Which are synonyms for dull.’

‘Why did you buy them then?’

‘Good question.’

‘Maybe a little too direct,’ I said, noting his discomfort. ‘Didn’t mean to be so blunt. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I’ve often asked myself the same thing. I suppose I was raised in a family where the women always chose the clothes for the men, and where I wasn’t interested in style or things like that.’

‘But the truth is, you do have a sense of style. ’

He tugged at his zip-up jacket.

‘This is hardly “style”. I don’t even play golf.’

‘But you certainly understand visual style, citing Cy Twombly and John Singer Sargent. And when it comes to the world of books, of language. ’

‘I often tell myself I dress like an insurance man.’

‘Then stop. Change.’

‘Change. One of the most loaded words in the language.’

‘And one of the easiest, if one can only accept the tenets of change. “I don’t like the eyeglasses I’m wearing, so I’ll change them.”’

‘But that might cause some eyebrows to be raised.’

‘And are those disapproving eyebrows that important to you?’

‘They have been. Change. A tricky business.’

‘Especially when it comes to eyeglasses.’

‘I promised myself a leather jacket last year.’

‘What happened?’

‘Tried one on in one of those outlets down in Freeport. Muriel said I looked like a middle-aged man having an identity crisis.’

‘Is she often so warm and praising?’

‘You really are direct.’

‘Not normally.’

‘Then why now?’

‘I just feel like being direct.’

‘Do you buy your husband his clothes?’

‘Do I dress him? The answer is, no. I’ve tried to encourage him to think about clothes, but he’s just not interested.’

‘So he dresses like. ’

‘A man who doesn’t care how he dresses. You will be amused to hear, however, that I did buy him a leather jacket last year for his birthday. One of those reproduction aviator jackets. He approved.’

‘Well, you clearly have taste. And you clearly know how to dress. As soon as you walked in, I thought, you really belong in Paris. Not that I know much about Paris, except for what I’ve read and seen.’

‘Maybe you should find a way to get there.’

‘Have you ever been?’

‘Quebec City is the closest I’ve ever come to France.’

‘Yeah, I did one trip to New Brunswick to see a client who had some business in Maine. That was thirteen years ago, before you had to have a passport to travel to Canada. Strange, isn’t it, not having a passport?’

‘Get one then.’

‘Do you have one?’

‘Oh, yes. And it sits in a desk drawer at home, ignored, unused, unloved.’

‘Use it then.’

‘I’d like to. But. ’

‘I know — life.’

The waiter showed up, asking us if we’d like coffee. I glanced at my watch. It was a bit after two-thirty.

‘Am I keeping you?’ I asked.

‘Not at all. And you?’

‘No plans whatsoever.’

‘Coffee then?’

‘Fine.’

The waiter disappeared.

‘I wish ninety minutes would always evaporate so quickly,’ I said.

‘So do I. But in your work, boredom can’t be a big problem. Every day a new set of patients. A new set of potential personal dramas, hopes, fears, all that big stuff.’

‘You make the radiography unit of a small Maine hospital sound like a Russian novel.’

‘Isn’t it? Like you said about my “small” story, the universal problems are always universal, no matter how minor the setting. And you must run into distressing stories all the time.’

‘What I see are dark masses and irregular-shaped growths and ominous shadows. It’s the radiographer who decides what they all mean.’

‘But you must know immediately if. ’

‘If it’s the beginning of the end? Yes, I’m afraid that’s one of the clinical fringe benefits of my trade — the ability, after almost two decades of looking at the bad stuff, to visually ascertain far too quickly whether it’s Stage One, Two, Three or Four. As such I’m usually privy to this news before the radiologist. Thankfully there are very strict rules about technologists never informing a patient whether the prognosis is bad or not — though, if pressed and the news is good, I’ve developed a code which most patients understand and which gives them a sense that there is no cause for concern. And our radiologist, Dr Harrild, will only talk to a patient if he has discerned that the all-clear can be sounded.’

‘So if a radiologist doesn’t come to talk with you after a scan or an X-ray. ’

‘It all depends on the hospital. In a big hospital, like the place down the street, Mass General, I’m certain that there’s an enforced protocol about never speaking to the patient. But we’re not a world-renowned hospital. As you know we’re completely local. So we bend the rules a bit when it comes to Dr Harrild meeting with the patient if the news isn’t sinister.’

‘Which means if he doesn’t meet with you. ’

‘That’s right. It’s probably pretty damn dire.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

‘Hopefully you’ll never get a diagnosis like that,’ I said.

‘The truth is, we’re all going to eventually get a diagnosis like that. Because my work is, in part, all about risk assessment. So I too am looking — in a wholly different way — at the frailty of others. Trying to ascertain whether they are the type whose heart will explode before they’re fifty-five due to lifestyle and the usual self-destructive habits. Or perhaps a family predisposition to cancer. Or the fact that, to my trained eye, they just look so beaten down and defeated by life that they are simply not a good bet.’

‘So you too have a trained eye.’

‘Well, if someone walks into my office carrying three hundred pounds in weight and looking like they have had trouble getting up the stairs to meet me. no, I am not going to agree to a one-million-dollar life policy.’

‘Then again, they might live well into their eighties, despite all that weight. Generic roulette, right? And there’s one empirical fact that none of us can dodge — the price of admission for being given life is having it eventually taken away from you. Anyone who says they don’t think about it all the time—’

‘I think about it all the time.’

‘So do I. That, for me, is an ongoing preoccupation since stumbling into middle age — the realization that time is such an increasingly precious commodity. And if we don’t use it properly. ’

‘Does anyone really use it properly?’ he asked.

‘Surely there are people out there who think themselves fortunate and fulfilled in their lives.’

‘But the truth is, no matter how successful or happy you may consider yourself to be there is always a part of your life that is problematic, or deficient, or a let-down in some way.’

‘That’s all a bit actuarial, don’t you think?’

‘Or just completely realistic. Unless you think otherwise?’

Before I could pause and appear to think this through I heard myself say:

‘No, I’m afraid you’re absolutely right. There is always something not working in your life. Then again, the great hope is. ’

I stopped myself from finishing that sentence, and was relieved when the waiter arrived with our coffees. I added milk to mine and stirred it many times, hoping Richard would not ask me to complete the thought. But, of course, he said:

‘Go on, finish the sentence.’

‘No need.’

‘Why “no need”?’

‘Because. ’

Oh God, I want to say this and I so don’t want to say this.

‘Because the great hope in life is being with someone with whom you can weather all the bad stuff that life will inevitably toss into your path. But that’s perhaps the biggest fairy tale imaginable. The idea of—’

The check arrived, allowing me not to finish the sentence, which was a relief. I suggested we split it.

‘Absolutely not,’ he said.

‘Thank you for such an excellent lunch.’

‘Thank you for being here. It’s been. well, wonderful is the word that pops to mind.’

‘And what are you planning to do next?’

‘As in tomorrow, the day after, the week after, the month.?’

‘Very funny.’

‘I have no plans for the rest of the day.’

‘Nor do I.’

‘Shall we invent some plans?’

‘Absolutely.’

Another smile from Richard.

‘Right then,’ he said. ‘Can I show you where I plan to live?’

‘You’re moving to Boston?’

‘I’m moving just down the street to the corner of Beacon Street and the Common.’

‘And when are you doing that?’

Without taking his eyes off me he said:

‘In the next life.’

Four

I MAY NOT know the world beyond the eastern corridor of the United States, but I can’t imagine I will ever encounter anything more perfect than the inherent perfection of a perfect autumn day in New England. Specifically, this day, this afternoon. The sun still radiant, but bathing the Common in coppery late-afternoon incandescence. The sky pure unadulterated blue. A light breeze, the mercury still hovering somewhere between the vanished summer and the impending dark chill of winter. And the foliage festooning the Common in its autumnal eruption of primary colors. The reds and golds of the oaks and elms electric in their intensity.

‘Can foliage festoon a park?’ I asked Richard as we crossed Beacon Street and entered the Public Gardens. Had I asked Dan such a question he would have rolled his eyes and accused me of one-upmanship for showing off my love of ‘big words’. Richard just smiled and said:

‘“Festoon” works. And it’s more poetic than “embellish” or “adorn” or “decorate”.’

‘“Decorate” is a synonym I would definitely sidestep.’

‘It depends how it is used. For example, “Back then, the Common was decorated with the corpses of the condemned, dangling from trees.”’

‘My God, where did that come from?’

‘Once upon a time, in the early moments of our country, this Common — our first public park in the then-colonies — was also the public hanging grounds. Being Puritans with a rather bleak view of human nature, they believed that public executions set a fine example for the community.’

‘And do you know where exactly the executions took place?’ I asked. ‘Is there a three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old tree in the Common with a plaque on it, informing all visitors that this was the spiritual home of the death penalty in America?’

‘I tend to doubt that the Boston tourist board would want to promote such a thing.’

‘But up in Salem you can see where all the witches were tried and, no doubt, burned.’

‘They actually hanged a witch here on the Common, Ann Hibbens, in 1656.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘History is a pastime of mine. Especially colonial American history. And the reason why the folks up in Salem have cashed in on the witchcraft trials is because they understand that they can make a tourist dollar or two by playing to that aspect of American Gothic which everyone embraces. It’s the Edgar Allan Poe part of our nature. Our love of the Grand Guignol, of the freakish and unsettling. The belief — and this is the big one which all the evangelical Christians embrace — that the apocalypse is coming, that we are in “the end of days” and it’s only a matter of time before the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse show up to announce that Jesus is returning to re-establish his dominion on earth, and all the born-agains will get shuffled off to heaven, leaving the rest of us heathens here to live out our lives of eternal damnation.’

‘But, yesterday, you were defending the family values that all those evangelicals trumpet all the time — and sounding very Republican.’

‘How do you know I’m a Republican?’

‘Are you denying it?’

‘I have voted Independent on a few occasions.’

‘But never Democrat?’

‘Once or twice. But they’re just not what I am about. Then again, neither is the new Republican Party — which has turned so extreme and mean.’

‘So where does that politically put you then?’

‘Confused — and unable to figure out where I belong anymore.’

‘I feel that all the time.’

‘About politics?’

‘About everything.’

‘“No direction home”.’

‘Exactly — and that’s Dylan, isn’t it?’

‘It certainly is.’

‘You like Dylan?’

‘Clearly — and that surprises you, doesn’t it?’

‘Did I sound surprised?’

‘Yes.’

‘Pleasantly surprised.’

‘Because I’m such a gray middle-aged man who dresses like a weekend golfer.’

‘If you don’t like how you dress—’

‘I know. The C-word. Change.’

Then, looking into the distance, he said:

‘A truly perfect day.’

‘I was just thinking that a moment ago.’

‘I wonder if the British were as entranced by the New England autumn back when this Common was used as a camp by the forces of the Crown during the Revolutionary War?’

‘You know your Massachusetts Bay Colony history, Mr Copeland.’

‘Anytime I start spouting off about such things my wife tells me I am showing off.’

‘That’s sad — and sadly not unusual. My husband does the same thing whenever my vocabulary obsessions get articulated.’

‘But doesn’t he see that this curiosity, this need to learn, is an expression of. ’

Now it was his turn to terminate the sentence before it was finished.

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Finish the sentence.’

‘I can only speak for myself. But. the reason I read so much, the reason my head has always been in a book. well, it’s an antidote to loneliness, right?’

‘I think so.’

We then fell silent for a few moments, continuing to stroll towards the Public Gardens. Richard broke the silence.

‘Now, as I was saying, the Brits used the Common as an encampment. And the hanging continued up until 1817. Oh, and there was a major riot here in 1713 when a big mob reacted against food shortages in the city. And do you know the Puritans actually hanged a woman here in the 1660s for preaching Quakerism, that’s how doctrinally extreme they were. And. oh God, will you listen to me, spouting on as if I’m on one of those quiz shows where you have a minute to show off everything you know about something so trivial as the history of Boston Common.’

‘But I actually find what you’re telling me interesting. And impressive. And when did you read up about it all?’

Without breaking stride, and with his gaze still very much on a distanced corner of this public park, he said:

‘Just last night, online back in the hotel. I wanted to sound erudite when I saw you today.’

I found myself smiling again.

‘Well, you succeeded. And I find it rather touching that you would go to the trouble of finding out so much about the Common for my benefit.’

We turned north towards the Public Gardens.

‘So, go on,’ I said, ‘tell me everything you know about this place.’

‘You sure you want to hear the prepared spiel. ’

‘No, I’m just saying that to show off my masochistic tendencies.’

Richard laughed.

‘You are a toughie.’

‘Hardly. though if I make a somewhat sarcastic comment like that one to my husband, Dan takes umbrage. Whereas you laughed.’

‘Familiarity always breeds. complexity.’

‘Why didn’t you say “contempt”?’

‘Because. I wish it didn’t breed contempt. But it does.’

‘In every marriage, every long-term domestic relationship?’

‘I can’t say I’m that knowledgeable about other people’s marriages — which are usually something of a mystery to those on the outside, let alone those actually in the middle of them. But from the ones I do know — and I don’t have that many friends who share stuff like that with me — I can’t say that I know a great number of people who are genuinely happy. Do you know many happy couples?’

‘No. And like you, I can’t say that I have many friends.’

‘That surprises me. You strike me as someone who—’

‘Outside of my family and my best friend Lucy I largely keep to myself. I was this way in school, in college. One or two close friends. Cordial working relationships with those around me, and always this tendency to be standoffish a bit. Certainly not towards my children. Outside of murder and mayhem, I would literally do just about anything for them. And, once upon a time, Dan and I were close.’

‘But now?’

‘I don’t really want to talk about all that.’

‘Understood.’

‘Now you are being too nice,’ I said.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because you told me a great deal about your son and your wife. And I’m hedging my bets, as usual.’

‘You shouldn’t feel in any way obliged to tell me. ’

I stopped in front of a park bench and suddenly sat down, no longer wanting to have this conversation while perambulating. Taking my cue, Richard joined me on the bench, sitting at the far end of it, giving me the distance that he cleverly understood that I needed.

‘Dan is a man I don’t know anymore. Though I’ve talked a little about this with my one great friend Lucy, the fact is, I’ve kept much of it to myself. Because he’s been through a major personal crisis with the loss of his job. And because I always felt that I needed to be loyal to Dan. God knows, I wanted things to somehow revert to that time before he was laid off when we had a reasonable and reasonably easy relationship with each other. Now I’m not saying that ours was ever the most romantic of stories.’

‘So who was the love of your life?’

The question — so unexpected, so deeply direct — threw me. But without pausing for a moment to reflect about the wisdom of even going there, I heard myself saying:

‘Eric. His name was Eric.’

I looked up to see my use of the past tense register on Richard’s face. Immediately I regretted letting this small piece of information out. Immediately I was so grateful to Richard for not bringing it up, though again I heard myself say something unexpected:

‘That is the first time I’ve mentioned his name in around fifteen years.’

I held my breath for a moment, hoping that Richard would not follow this revelation with a question. To his immense credit he said absolutely nothing, letting a silence hang between us as I scrambled to think what I should say next. Which turned out to be:

‘And now I’m dropping the subject.’

‘No problem,’ Richard said.

I stood up. Richard followed suit.

‘Shall we continue walking?’ I asked.

‘Absolutely. Where to?’

‘You told me you wanted to show me where you’d live in “the next life”. So show me.’

‘It’s not far.’

We headed further on through the Gardens, past a small pond and flower beds still festooned — that word again! — with the final vestiges of that summer’s flowers.

‘Let me guess,’ Richard said. ‘Does “festooned” work here?’

I laughed.

‘That’s impressive.’

The Gardens ended and we found ourselves facing a long avenue, fronted by venerable nineteenth-century residences, a central barrier of greenery stretching all the way north. Directly in front of us was a church clearly dating back to the colonial era, and an apartment building that looked like it belonged in some jazz-age Scott Fitzgerald story.

‘So is that where you want to live in the next life?’ I said, pointing upwards to the penthouse.

‘In my dreams. That used to be the Ritz. Now it’s apartments for the super-rich. Even in reserved, button-down Boston — where ostentation and flashing the cash are still considered bad taste — there is, like everywhere else these days, truly serious money floating about. Especially with the density of mutual funds and bio/info tech people concentrated here.’

‘Those mutual fund folk get two-to-three-million-dollar bonuses every year.’

‘Minimum two-to-three-million. If you’re at the top of that financial food chain, it’s probably somewhere over ten million. Unreal, isn’t it?’

‘What makes it even more unreal is that everyone who is not a member of that wealth club — by which I mean anyone who doesn’t make over a couple hundred thousand a year — is struggling. I speak from experience. The last eighteen months, with Dan out of work, have been very tight. As much as he hates the stockroom job he starts on Monday, the fact that we’ll have an extra three hundred dollars a week. well, there will finally be a little breathing space. Not exactly “take the family skiing in Aspen” breathing space. Just “we can now meet our basic bills” breathing space. God knows I don’t begrudge anyone their success or wealth. I chose my profession, my career. I also chose to stay in Maine where I knew that the salary would be small. And I am also someone who hates to complain.’

‘There you go again, making apologies for yourself, instead of just speaking the truth. Which is, in America nowadays, you either have big bucks or you just about get by. And I speak as a Republican — yet one who was raised with the idea that the middle class could actually have a very good life; that if you were a teacher, a nurse, a cop, an ambulance driver, a soldier, you could still have the house, the two cars in the garage, the two weeks by the lake somewhere every summer, put your kids through college without having to take out crippling loans, cover your family’s monthly health insurance bill without worry, even heat your home throughout the winter without fear. Now, the amount of clients I see who, even in full-time jobs, find the cost of living impossible. well, it’s a good thing that your husband took that job.’

‘Even if it’s going to make him even more miserable.’

‘Better to be miserable earning a salary than be miserable earning nothing. I wish I could say something upbeat and Horatio Alger-esque like, “If he hates the job so much, he can always find another.” But in this market. ’

‘Tell me about it. I keep thinking, maybe we should change our lives once Sally is off at college next year. But. ’

I didn’t complete the thought. Because I didn’t know how to complete the thought.

‘Change,’ Richard said. ‘That ferociously loaded word.’

We started walking up Commonwealth Avenue. I’d been along this boulevard several times before, and had always admired it in a half-fleeting touristic way. Today, however, I began to closely regard the townhouses and apartment buildings and mansions that lined the avenue, and seemed part of a Boston more rooted in Henry James than any contemporary realities. Maybe it was the way the venerable stone and brickwork interplayed with the late-afternoon sun. Maybe it was the matchless autumnal palette of the trees interspersed with the nineteenth-century streetlights. Maybe it was Richard’s animated commentary about the history of this avenue and the way he seemed to have a story about every residence we passed. and from the immense knowledge he displayed it was clear to me that he hadn’t gleaned all this off the Internet late last night; that, in fact, he had made quite the study of this historic thoroughfare, as he knew it with an intimacy and verve that bespoke of serious erudition.

This led me to imagine him in his home in Bath — a modest house, he told me, on one of those streets near the Iron Works. I’m certain it had an attic room he had converted into a home office: a simple desk, an old armchair, a computer that was (like my own at home) a few years out of date — because Richard didn’t strike me as someone who spent a lot of money on himself. This office was his escape hatch: the place he could quietly shut the door on a marriage that had evidently flat-lined and was so devoid of comfort, and away from the ongoing sadness that was his son Billy. Here Richard could lose himself in his considerable curiosity. Whether it be the OED (and I was pretty certain he had the full multi-volumed Oxford dictionary, that was one indulgence he would have treated himself to), or one of those Norton editions of American poetry, or the vast research possibilities of the Internet — once in that room Richard could vanish into the realm of language and historical detail. And envisage perhaps (as we all do) a life beyond the one that we have constructed for ourselves.

Change. The great ongoing desire that underscores all feelings of entrapment. Change. Richard was right: it was such a ferociously loaded word.

‘Now I don’t know who the architect was here,’ Richard said as we passed a mansion that he identified as being ‘so close to the American Regency style that Edith Wharton wrote about in novels like The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. even though most Bostonians would say that New York copied them when it came to mid-nineteenth-century grand houses.’

‘You know this avenue so well.’

‘I told you, I plan to live here in the next life.’

‘Where exactly?’

‘Next street up from here. Southwest corner of Dartmouth and Comm Ave.’

‘Nice to know what’s planned for oneself in the afterlife.’

‘“The next life” doesn’t mean the hereafter,’ he said.

‘So when does the next life commence?’

‘That’s the eternal question.’

‘Or not eternal, as life is so profoundly temporal,’ I said.

‘Do you believe in the notion of “time to come”?’

‘I know that faith is the antithesis of proof. Which means that all belief — especially religious belief — is bound up in the acceptance of a storyline which, though comforting, is rather hard to get your head around. Then again, if I was told tomorrow that I had Stage Four cancer, would I be tempted to ask Jesus to be my Lord and Savior? As much as I’d truly like to think there is something beyond all this, the leap of faith that is required is simply beyond me. It saddens me thinking that. But I have wrestled with it a bit — and my conclusion quite simply is, this is it. And you?’

‘I’d like to say I’m a hedger of bets. I know several very committed Christians who are absolutely convinced that they will be handed a locker room key and a towel from St Peter when they leave this life. I am certainly not against anyone believing all that — the primary function of religion being the lessening of fear about death. But. well, I read that when Steve Jobs was dying of cancer, he told one close friend that, though he was very much fascinated by all sorts of mystical and spiritual notions of the life to come, a great part of him couldn’t help but think that death was like the switch on all his computers that shuts everything down. Death — the ultimate off switch.’

‘Bizarrely, there is some comfort in that, isn’t there? The end of consciousness. The computer goes blank. Forever.’

‘The problem is, we are the only species with a proper consciousness, who can feel guilt, regret. And say you reach the end of your life. ’

‘. with the knowledge that you hadn’t really lived your life?’

We were on the corner of Commonwealth and Dartmouth, in front of a brownstone that had four floors, and whose brickwork was sooty brown, but which still looked (from the state of the door and the shutters on its windows) well-maintained. Compared to the other more lavish mansions and apartment buildings on the street this one was a little more modest but still utterly charming. There was a For Sale sign attached to the iron railings that fronted the street — the smaller print stating that the apartment seeking a buyer was a one-bedroom ‘with great Old World charm’.

‘So this is the place?’ I asked.

‘Third floor, those three windows facing the street.’

The windows were large ones, indicating high ceilings.

‘Nice,’ I said.

‘I actually sneaked down to Boston around two weeks ago to see the place myself. Really airy space. Great parquet floors. A living room that stretches the whole length of the building. A good-sized bedroom. An alcove off the living room that would be a perfect little office. The bathroom and the kitchen are a bit out of date. But the realtor told me that the asking price of three hundred and five thousand was negotiable; that the sellers had a deal which fell through last year, and they really want a fast closing, and if I could pay two sixty-five cash it was mine.’

‘Can you pay that?’

‘Actually I can. I’ve been one of those assiduous savers who’ve set aside twenty percent of his net income every year. I’ve got about four hundred thousand in the bank. A lawyer I consulted down in Portland — Bath is too small to be talking divorce with anyone — told me that if I was to give Muriel the house in Bath, she’d have no claim on any of that money. And I have another client down here, a builder in Dorchester, who told me he could get a spiffy new bathroom and kitchen installed, repaint the walls, strip and re-stain all the floorboards, all for around thirty-five grand. After taxes and the like, I’d come out with a paid-off Commonwealth Avenue apartment and about seventy-five thousand still left in the bank.’

‘Most of all, you’d be living here — where you’ve always wanted to live.’

‘That’s right. I know I could even run much of my business down here, and probably hire someone to take over Muriel’s administrative job at the agency — though knowing Muriel she’d probably insist on staying on, taking a salary, keeping busy, which would be fine by me. She is very competent.’

‘So when are you moving?’

I could see Richard’s shoulders tense, his lips tighten.

‘Life is never that straightforward, is it?’ he said.

‘I suppose not. Still, if you have it all worked out. ’

‘Does anyone ever have it “all worked out”?’

I smiled.

‘You’re far too right about all that. But this time I really do want to make the move. as messy and unpleasant as it might all be.’

‘Everyone I know who’s divorced has always said it’s the anticipation of the end of a marriage that is the most devastating. In the end, once they had finally moved out, they were always baffled as to why they hadn’t done it years earlier. But now I really am speaking far too bluntly.’

‘Or maybe revealing a thought that had also crossed your mind as well?’ he asked.

Now it was my turn to clench my shoulders and purse my lips.

‘Life is never straightforward, is it. as you yourself said.’

‘And maybe I’ve crossed a frontier I shouldn’t have.’

‘Then we’re even. And the truth is, I wish I was in your position.’

‘I feel a little stupid about regaling you with all the financial details of the sale.’

‘But the reason you are telling me this is because you’re still trying to see if you can go through with it. and are understandably struggling with it, as I certainly would too.’

‘You’re half right, But the other reason I told you all that is because nobody, not even my closest friend the police captain, knows about this. And because I can actually talk to you. And. well. a woman I can talk to. not something I’ve had much experience of.’

I reached out and touched his arm.

‘Thank you for telling me that.’

He covered my hand with his.

‘It’s me who should be thanking you.’

‘It’s also me who should be thanking you.’

‘For what?’

‘For getting me to let down my guard for a change. It’s something everyone at work always says about me. I am perfectly professional and pleasant, but completely guarded. Dan has often told me the same thing — I have this taciturn side.’

‘That’s news to me,’ he said, his hand still covering mine.

‘You don’t know me yet.’

‘You can know a great deal about someone in just a few hours.’

‘Just like I now know that you are going to buy this apartment.’

Richard glanced back up at the top of the brownstone, his hand leaving mine. And in a voice just a decibel or so above a whisper he said:

‘I hope that’s the outcome.’

Why shouldn’t it be? I wanted to ask him. But instead I held back, simply saying:

‘I hope so too.’

Richard’s gaze returned to me.

‘So. any thoughts about what we should do now? If, that is, you want to. ’

‘. . . continue the afternoon? No, I want to flee the elegance of Commonwealth Avenue to return to that God-awful hotel and attend the five p.m. conference on advanced colonoscopy techniques. not that I do colonoscopies.’

‘But it sounds so romantic.’

I laughed. Then said:

‘If you’re agreeable, what I’d like to find now is a museum or art gallery, because that’s something I can’t walk to back home. And I’d prefer something I’m not going to see in Maine. Heard of the ICA?’

‘That new place on the harbor front?’

‘Exactly. I read an article about it in some magazine. The Institute of Contemporary Art. Modern, edgy, out there. And with a water view.’

‘And, no doubt, filled with people wearing black and looking modern, edgy, out there.’

‘So. we can gawk at all the urban boho types.’

‘The way you’re dressed you’ll fit right in.’

‘And you think you won’t?’

‘The way I’m dressed I will look like the most boring—’

‘Then change,’ I said, again my mouth working ahead of my usual cautious thought processes.

‘What?’ he said, staring at me with confusion.

‘Change — that treacherous verb. As in, if you don’t like the way you’re dressed now, change your clothes.’

‘And how will I do that?’

‘How do you think?’

He considered this for a moment. Then:

‘That’s a crazy idea.’

‘But you’re not totally against it, are you?’

He considered this for another moment.

‘Well. “change” does rhyme with “strange”. And strange is. ’

‘Maybe not as strange as you think.’

Five

SYNONYMS FOR ‘RANDOM’: ‘unselected’, ‘irregular’, ‘chance’, ‘by hazard’, ‘happenstantial’.

Happenstantial. As in happenstance. As in, the business of stumbling into something new, unforeseen, unpredictable. Like the happenstantial way I met Richard. And met him again at that movie theater. And agreed to lunch. And the happenstantial way we drifted into the trajectory of this afternoon — which, like all events predicated on randomness, had no foreseen trajectory to it; the fact that we had proceeded from Commonwealth Ave and Newbury Street was predicated on a wholly aleatorical set of circumstances. though aleatorical almost implies chance by design, which perhaps makes it the right synonym to be used to describe all this. Because behind the random lies choice. Which, in turn, means that subtext always lurks behind the happenstantial — except that the subtext is something that only arises courtesy of the pinball-like way an event begets an event, which, in turn, begets the fact that we are now on that exceptionally elegant and luxe stretch of Boston real estate known as Newbury Street, and have just stepped into a boutique (because this is certainly not ‘a shop’) that sells eyeglasses.

‘So do we call this place an opticians, an ophthalmologist, an eyeglass store, or a spectacle emporium?’ I asked.

‘Spectacles — specs — is still, I think, parlance in England. And as we are in New England. ’

‘Well, the place is called Specs.’

‘Don’t think this is the place for me,’ Richard said. ‘I mean, look at the guy behind the counter.’

The fellow he was speaking about had a shaved head and a pair of high-modern pince-nez glasses hugging his nose. He also had large black circular earrings implanted in both earlobes.

‘He looks reasonably friendly,’ I said.

‘For someone who belongs in 1920s Berlin. This guy is going to look at me—’

‘And see a potential customer. Now stop all the fretting and just—’

I opened the door and all but pushed him into the shop. Rather than being all cold and ‘too cool for school’, the fellow behind the counter was charm itself.

‘Now I surmise from the way your wife had to shove you in here,’ he said, ‘you are just a little reluctant to try a change of style.’

Richard did not correct him about the ‘your wife’ comment. Nor did he seem to blanch when the guy accurately read his unease. Instead he said:

‘That’s right. I’m a style-free zone.’

The guy, who had a name-plate on the counter in front of him — ‘Gary: Spectician’ (is there such a word?) — reassured Richard that he was ‘among friends here’. He then proceeded to expertly take charge. Within half an hour — having put Richard at ease — he talked him through various frame styles, quickly discerning that, when it came to wanting a particular look, Richard hadn’t a clue what he really was after. So Gary showed him all sorts of permutations. After talking about how — given his coloring and his oval face — highly geometric frames ‘might be just a tad too severe. and I really don’t think we want the harshness of metal again, now do we?’ he convinced Richard to choose a brownish, slightly oval frame: highly stylish, but simultaneously not a radical statement. Nonetheless, seeing them on him, it was clear that they changed his look. Rather than appearing angular and actuarial Richard now came across as somewhat hip, professorial. Bookish. Thoughtful.

‘You think they work?’ Richard asked, clearly approving of the image reflecting back to him in Gary’s mirror, but also needing my sanction.

‘They’re a great fit,’ I said.

‘As long as your optician in Bath can give me your prescription over the phone, I’ll have them ready for you in about an hour.’

Luck was on our side. The optician in Bath was able to scan Richard’s prescription down to Gary — and we headed back out to Newbury Street.

‘Now let’s find you a leather jacket,’ I said.

‘I feel strange,’ Richard said.

‘Because I’m being bossy?’

‘You’re hardly bossy. But you are persuasive.’

‘But, as a salesman, surely you know the thing about persuasiveness is that you can only persuade someone if they truly want to be persuaded.’

‘And I clearly want to be persuaded?’

‘I’m not going to answer that question.’

‘Four hundred dollars for a pair of glasses. I never thought. ’

‘What?’

‘That I could be so self-indulgent.’

‘Glasses are hardly indulgent.’

‘Designer glasses are.’

‘And let me guess — you had a father who told you that. ’

‘A father and a mother who counted every penny. And, wouldn’t you know it, I married a woman who also thinks that thrift is one of the more profound virtues. And since she is my bookkeeper and sees all my credit card statements. ’

She’s not your mother I suddenly wanted to tell him, simultaneously wondering why so many men turn their wives into mothers, and why so many women seemed more than willing to play that emasculating role. And this thought connected to another one: how Dan himself had, in his ongoing resentful moments, talked to me as if I was the actual disapproving woman who had raised him and who had always let him know he was a disappointment to her. Knowing so well the pain that he had carried with him from childhood, I had always tried to tack away from the criticism that so haunted him. And yet, ever since all went wrong with his career, he’d cast me in that mother role. A role I certainly didn’t want.

‘When she sees the designer glasses,’ I said, ‘tell her—’

‘“I needed new glasses. and, by the way, I’m moving to Boston.”’

‘That’s pretty definitive,’ I said.

‘So where do we find a leather jacket around here?’

We wandered up several blocks, all lined with the big designer label boutiques. Stopping in Burberry, there was an amazing black leather jacket in the window which looked like something a modern Byronic figure would wear. and with a list price of over $2,000.

‘Even if I had that sort of money I don’t think I could carry that jacket off,’ Richard said. ‘Too Errol Flynn for me.’

A few shops later he also passed on something that — as he interestingly put it — ‘looks a little too Lou Reed for me’.

‘You know Lou Reed?’ I asked.

‘Personally? Can’t say that he ever bought a policy from me. But Transformer? Great album. Can’t say I’ve kept up on his career since New York. And Muriel’s always been more Neil Diamond than the Velvet Underground. ’

Richard Copeland: secret Manhattan demimonde wannabe! Or maybe just a fan. No wonder he wanted to get rid of those golfing clothes he had worn assiduously for all those years. Like the suit I first saw him in at the hotel check-in. The same flat style that his father had undoubtedly worn. The uniform of the strait-laced American businessman. Clothes are a language. So often we don’t like the language that we’ve forced ourselves to speak. Look at me. At the hospital, my white lab coat is my daily uniform. Around the house and in downtown Damariscotta I have always dressed soberly. But in my closet there are a few items that hint at another me — like my leather jacket and this black, very Continental raincoat I’m currently wearing, and even a wonderful fedora that I found in a vintage clothing store during a trip to Burlington. But these clothes — including a pair of black suede cowboy boots that I stumbled upon at a yard sale in Rockland (they fit me perfectly and only cost $15) — stay largely out of sight. Were I to walk around town dressed as I am now, nobody would say anything. That’s the Maine way. But everyone would notice. Comments would be passed when I was out of sight. So this somewhat Left Bank wardrobe stays locked away unless I’m heading down to Portland for something cultural. And when I recently put on the leather jacket and the suede boots to hear a jazz concert with Lucy, my daughter caught sight of me getting ready. Surveying my sartorial choices for the evening she said:

‘Are you going to a costume party, dressed as a hipster?’

I wanted to tell her that, quite frankly, this is the way I would prefer to dress most of the time — but felt constrained by small-townness and my own innate sense of decorum (which, in uncharitable moments, I thought was also a form of cowardice). Now seeing Richard trying to mask his tenseness as we went into another high-priced boutique in search of the leather jacket he was so fearful of wearing, I couldn’t help thinking: He too is someone who has kept so much of what he’s wanted to express under wraps. And when he eyed, in a shop that sold hip military-surplus-style clothing, a reproduction 1940s Air Force jacket in a dark, somewhat distressed brown (it really was rather stylish) I could see that he was weighing up whether he could get away with wearing it.

‘That’s the jacket,’ I said.

‘People will look at me strangely back home.’

‘And I never wear this outfit around Damariscotta — because I fear the same thing. Anyway, Boston is going to be home soon.’

Richard tried on the jacket. It was a great fit — but his pale blue, very button-down shirt clearly didn’t work with it. So I walked over to a display table where a pile of stylish work shirts were stacked. I figured he would take a large and chose one in black with small steel buttons on its pockets.

‘Black?’ Richard said when I proffered the shirt. ‘Isn’t that a bit extreme?’

‘It will work so well with the jacket, especially if you match it up with black jeans.’

‘I’ve never worn black in my life.’

‘But I bet you’ve wanted to. Lou Reed and all that.’

‘I’m a little gray and boring to entertain such—’

‘You’re the most interesting man I’ve met in—’

When was the last time I met such an interesting man?

‘You’re being too kind again,’ he said.

‘Just accurate. Now. what’s your waist and inseam size?’

‘I’ll get the jeans.’

‘No — I’m choosing them. And you can veto them if you disagree.’

‘Thirty-four waist, I hate to say. ’

‘Dan is thirty-six. And the inseam?’

‘Thirty-two. But do you really think black jeans with the black shirt will—’

‘What? Make you look “too cool for school”?’

‘Or ridiculous.’

‘Try it all on and then tell me if you think it’s ridiculous.’

I found a wall of shelved jeans and chose a pair of black Levi’s in the appropriate size. Then I handed them to Richard and pointed him in the direction of the changing rooms. As he headed off I asked him his shoe size.

‘Ten and a half. But really, I feel as if—’

‘If you don’t like the look you don’t have to wear the look. But at least try the look, OK?’

In another corner of this emporium, which was decorated with vintage World War I and II recruitment posters, there was one pair of black lace-up boots — ankle-high, the leather grained, stylish, but not flamboyant — in Richard’s size. I brought them over to the changing rooms, knocked on the door of the cubicle where Richard was getting into his assorted new clothes, and slid them under the large gap between the door frame and the floor, saying:

‘These might work.’

‘More black,’ came the voice from within.

‘And what’s wrong with that? Give me a shout when you’re ready.’

A minute later out stepped a very different man. Richard had taken off his soon-to-be-replaced glasses. The effect — coupled with the new clothes — was more than striking. The jeans, the black work shirt, and the black boots all fit him perfectly. And the leather jacket worked wonderfully with the rest of this outfit, though the detachable fur collar was a bit too overblown, reeking of some 1940s war movie set on the Russian front. But that little detail aside, what stood out most was how the clothes so absolutely suited him, and took about ten years off him immediately. Freed from the cost accountant outfit, his face no longer dominated by the dull metallic oval of his glasses, he suddenly assumed a different outward identity. He now looked like a somewhat hip English professor who was at ease with his age. Sidling up next to Richard and looking at ourselves in the mirror — dressed up like a rather stylish metropolitan couple — all I could think was: Why had I spent years dressing myself in such a sober, restrained way? And the most disquieting aspect to this question was the realization that the only person making me conform was. myself.

‘Well. ’ Richard said, eyeing us in the mirror.

‘What do you think?’

‘Not bad.’

‘Understatement will get you nowhere.’

‘OK, the truth — I love the look. Even if it also scares me.’

‘Just as I love my look — and would never dream of walking down Main Street, Damariscotta, like this.’

‘Well, if you think I could get away with this in Bath. ’

‘I’m sure you could. Just as I’m sure that your clients and your neighbors would accept the new style.’

‘If that’s the case then why don’t you dress the way you want to when you’re home?’

‘I was just asking myself the same question. Maybe I will do just that. if I can get up the courage.’

‘Same here.’

‘You look like a very different man now.’

‘And you look even more beautiful than yesterday.’

I felt myself blush. Yet I simultaneously found myself reaching for his hand and threading my fingers through his. We didn’t turn to look at each other. Truth be told our shared nervousness was clearly palpable, as his hand was as damp as mine. Yet he did not pull away. Rather his grip tightened. Staring straight into the mirror we saw ourselves holding hands, looking so profoundly different than we were just twenty-four hours ago.

‘Hey, you guys look cool.’

It was one of the shop assistants — her tone somewhat spacey, an amused smile on her face, as if the subtext behind what she was saying was: Hey, you guys look cool. but I’m really humoring you because you’re my parents. Immediately we let go of each other, like a pair of guilty teenagers caught in a compromising position. The girl also saw this and added, rather dryly:

‘Sorry if I interrupted anything.’

‘You interrupted nothing,’ Richard said, his tone corrective. Reaching for my hand again he told her: ‘I want to wear all this out.’

‘No problem,’ she said. ‘When you’re ready I’ll just cut all the tags off. There’s a theft device in the coat that’s got to be removed.’

She left us alone.

‘That shut her up,’ I said with a smile.

‘I have my occasional assertive moments. And just to make an assertive point, I’m going to take all my old clothes and dump them in the first Goodwill charity box I find.’

It was my turn to squeeze his hand back.

‘That’s a good call.’

Now we did turn towards each other.

But then.

Bing.

My cellphone interrupted the moment; that telltale prompt letting me know that a text was awaiting me. Again, the guilt impulse took over. I let go of Richard’s hand, but hesitated about reaching for the phone. Richard read this immediately. Not wanting to put me in an awkward position he said:

‘I’ll get the girl to deal with all the tags. See you up front.’

Richard headed off in search of the shop assistant. I dug out the phone and read:

Garage all cleared. Love — Dan

I shouldn’t have looked at the damn phone, as a stab of remorse caught me. Becoming very friendly with a man I just met yesterday. Shopping for clothes for him. Holding hands with him.

Oh Lord, I sound like a twelve-year-old.

Yes, I could see that Dan’s text was a further attempt to make amends. That made me feel somewhat guilty. But. but. that was the first time he had used the word ‘love’ in a text to me since. well, I couldn’t remember the last time he’d said or written anything of the sort. And even the fact that he didn’t say, ‘Love you’. Just writing ‘Love’ — good friends use that at the end of emails. Whereas had he come out and made a direct declaration of love.

In that very instant, as I read his five-word text again, something within me shifted. It’s curious, isn’t it, how a small detail — the fact that my husband left off a pronoun after a somewhat charged word — can suddenly change everything. And the sad thing was: he was trying to be loving. Yet what he had done was underscore, once again, just how thwarted he was; how he could never really engage with me, let alone be talked into changing his clothes.

Glad the garage is cleared. Thank you. Up to my eyes in mind-numbing conferences. Hope you’ll get some rest tonight. See you tomorrow. L xxx

Initially I wrote ‘Love you’ before my initial and the multiple vacuous xxx’s. But then I deleted it. I no longer felt like articulating something I actually did not feel.

As soon as the text was sent I did something I’d never done before. I turned off the phone. If Ben and Sally were to text me — and this being a Saturday night, the chance of that happening was up there with a meteor shower directly above Boston Common — it could wait until tomorrow. If there was an emergency Dan knew the phone number of the hotel where the conference was being held, and a message would be awaiting me upon my return. But when had I ever received an urgent message from Dan or Sally? Even when Ben had his crisis, his breakdown (to give it its proper word), the information about all that only came a few days after he’d been found.

No. No. Let’s not revisit that. Because what you are doing, in fact, is trying to crowd this wondrous afternoon, the hugely unexpected moment, with all sorts of unnecessary freight. Because you are feeling no longer guilty but still rather tentative about holding that man’s hand.

Correction: about bumping into a man who’s literate and thoughtful and curious, who takes me seriously and seems genuinely interested in my view of the world.

And who, in turn, I actually find rather attractive.

He called me beautiful. When has anybody called me beautiful?

By the time I put my phone away Richard was back at the changing rooms.

‘So she’s de-tagged me,’ he said. ‘And I’ve told her that she can give all my old clothes to charity. She’s promised me to put them in a Goodwill bin on her way home.’

‘I’d be a little dubious about that. I mean, she’s hardly a Girl Scout.’

‘Well, it’s now her conscience she’ll have to talk to if she simply dumps them in a garbage can out the back.’

Leaving the shop without bags — Richard’s old glasses back on (‘I can’t see further than four feet without them’) — we walked the two blocks south to the eyewear emporium. Newbury Street was abuzz. This perfect autumn day on this perfect Victorian New England street had brought out the crowds. What struck me immediately was the sense of pleasure on most people’s faces we passed by. Yes, I did see one couple — early thirties, with a young baby in a stroller — arguing fiercely as they negotiated their child through the crowds. And there was a woman around my age who came hurrying past us, her face awash in tears, making me want to know immediately what it was that was causing her so much grief. Richard noticed her as well, saying:

‘As my misanthropic father used to say, you walk down a street, you bump into unhappiness everywhere.’

‘Even on the most glorious of days.’

‘Especially on the most glorious of days.’

‘So if I were to say to you, But look at how happy everyone else appears to be, you’d reply.?’

‘Bless your positive view of the human condition.’

‘But if we all don’t travel hopefully. ’ I said.

‘Hey, I just let you talk me into. ’

With a downward sweep of his right hand he motioned towards the new clothes he was now wearing, then said:

‘So surely this is traveling hopefully?’

He laced his fingers into mine. At that very moment I so wanted him to pull me towards him and kiss me. From the way his grip tightened on me I sensed that he too wanted to do that. Just as I also knew that part of me would have been unnerved and panicky had he embraced me right there, amidst the stream of people on Newbury Street. Just as I also knew that such a kiss would mean the traversing of a frontier I had never considered crossing, Correction: of course I had imagined, at particularly difficult moments, a life without Dan. Of course there were instances when I saw a photograph in some book review of a particularly handsome, clearly intelligent novelist in his mid-thirties and contemplated a night of passion with him. But. between the motion and the act falls the shadow. This is an afternoon of make-believe, with nothing to anchor it to actual reality.

But then I felt my fingers tighten around Richard’s hand. We exchanged a fast, telling look that said everything, but behind which I could also clearly glimpse his own sense of hesitancy, of apprehension. Yet his hand remained in mine until we reached the eyeglass boutique.

‘Well, look at you, sir,’ Gary the ‘spectician’ said as Richard approached the counter. ‘Clothes make the man — and you are evidently in re-fit mode this afternoon. Bravo.’

Richard accepted this comment with a nervous smile.

‘And to complete the new you. ’

Now Richard’s discomfort was manifest again as he looked down at the tray on which his new glasses were displayed. I put my hand on his shoulder.

‘You OK?’ I asked.

‘Fine, fine,’ he said, not succeeding at masking his unease. Gary noted this as well.

‘If I may, sir,’ he said, reaching out to remove Richard’s old frames. Richard initially took a step backwards, as if he was trying to dodge the idea of giving up this last vestige of his old look. But Gary — almost anticipating this — put a steadying hand on his shoulder and quickly pulled the frames off. Then he proffered the tray to him.

‘Try them on, sir.’

Richard reached for the new glasses, then slowly raised them onto his face. Was his anxiety due to the fact that, with these glasses, his outward transformation would be complete? Or because, like me, he too felt we were veering far too close to a frontier he had never been within the proximity of during all the years of his own sad marriage?

Sad marriage. Now I could stand guilty of presumptuousness. Just as I knew I was talking about the domestic life I’d been leading for so many years.

Glasses on, he didn’t look at the mirror in front of him. Rather he turned directly towards me. As before — when he first tried these frames — I couldn’t help but think just how perfectly they suited him, giving him a canny, worldly, academic mien. Seen now with his leather jacket, his black jeans and black work shirt.

‘You look amazing,’ I said.

‘Really?’ Richard said.

‘Madame is speaking the truth,’ Gary said. With a gentle hand on his shoulder he turned Richard around to face the floor-length mirror nearby. Watching Richard now take himself in I couldn’t help but remind myself of the way I stared at myself in the hotel mirror this morning: the fear of casting off my everyday image; the unspoken pleasure in seeing myself transformed into the person I always imagined myself being. Richard was engaged in the same process right now. The old identity, the new identity. I knew just how painful and arduous it was to actually shake off everything you have told yourself you have to be. You can dress up differently. You can change all the externals. But there are still all those ties that bind.

Richard must have regarded himself for a good minute in the mirror — and I instinctually knew it was best not to say anything right now. Gary also was astute here — as he too was watching Richard talk himself out of the anxiety that had overtaken him again as soon as we stepped back into the boutique. And during that very long sixty seconds, I watched as his face divested itself of its dread, his shoulders lost their taut hunch, and a small smile crossed his lips.

‘Thank you,’ he finally said to me.

At that moment I caught Gary out of the corner of my eye. I could register him working out that we were, in no way, husband and wife, and that what had just transpired was, in its own unspoken personal way, rather huge. His only comment was a most appropriate one:

‘Congratulations, sir.’

A few minutes later we were back on Newbury Street.

‘Ready to blend in with the fellow hipsters at the ICA?’ I asked.

‘I feel somewhere between an imposter and—’

‘Trust me, you’re far smarter and more learned than the hip brigade.’

A smile between us.

‘It’s a bit of a walk from here, I think,’ he said.

‘Down in South Boston on the bay. And it probably closes at six.’

We both glanced at our watches. It was now almost four-thirty.

‘A taxi then.’

As luck would have it one was cruising right by. Richard hailed it. Within moments we were being driven down Boylston Street, passing by several upscale hotels, and a long cliff of tall nineteenth-century office buildings and a theater that Richard said now all belonged to a performing arts college. He started explaining how, just down the street twenty years ago, the remnants of Boston’s red light district — better known as ‘the Combat Zone’ — was still in full ‘drug-dealing, porno-cinema, working-girls-on-the-street splendor’. Now it was just a cleaned-up theater district. Though it was a more pleasant environment, ‘there’s part of me that thinks we’ve sanitized everything nowadays, to the point where cities have lost an essential raffishness. not that I am the biggest expert on things metropolitan’.

‘Still,’ I said, ‘you have a point. I made a couple of trips during college to New York with my then-boyfriend. Even in the late 1980s, Forty-second Street and Hell’s Kitchen and the East Village were still the wrong side of sleazy, and we loved it. Because it was so not what we knew in Maine. Then, the one time I’ve been back since. well, Forty-second Street now looked like an outdoor shopping mall in any major city in the country. And the city — though still amazing — struck me as having lost an essential edgy vitality. But hey, having never lived there, having never lived anywhere but Maine. ’

‘That door isn’t shut, is it?’

‘As you said earlier, you have to travel hopefully. And believe that you can reinvent yourself anew.’

‘Isn’t that the real American dream? The illusion of liberty. Hitting the road and all that? If it doesn’t work out for you in Maine, get in your car, burn up the highway for a couple of nights, find yourself in New Orleans, start all over again.’

‘You ever do anything like that?’ I asked.

‘In my dreams. And you?’

‘A cross-country trip once with Dan. And before that I did end up in Central America for a few weeks with someone.’

‘Was that somebody Eric?’

‘And here we are in Chinatown,’ I said, changing the subject quickly, while also thinking of a moment years ago in a restaurant somewhere near here when Eric told me he loved me, that he was mine forever. A summer night it was. The mercury nearly hitting three figures. The restaurant wonderfully dingy and very authentic and badly air-conditioned. And the two of us holding hands so tightly, as if we were each other’s ballast. Though we were kids at the time, we just knew.

‘You OK?’ Richard asked.

‘Fine, fine,’ I lied.

Richard touched my arm in a reassuring way, but I shrugged him off. Not forcibly, but with enough clarity to let it be known that I had just decided not to initiate any further contact with him. I’d go around the gallery with him, maybe agree to a coffee in the cafй there, then make my excuses and head back to the hotel. Why was I suddenly walling myself up? Because he had mentioned Eric. And because any mention of Eric threw into sharp silhouette all that my life had not been since those extraordinary two years towards the end of the eighties. And because I had padlocked that part of my past so thoroughly that even the slightest reference to it threw me into freefall.

Will you listen to yourself, trying to push this man away.

I just can’t cope with the jumble of things that are playing havoc with my psyche right now.

You want directness? Here’s directness: you can’t cope with the fact that he is so right for you. And you are so right for him.

And I am married. And I have made a commitment. And I cannot.

Change.

I put my face in my hands. I stifled a sob. Richard put his hand on my shoulder. I shrugged him off. But as soon as that happened the sobs started again. This time, I turned and buried my head in his shoulder. He held me tight until I brought the sobs under control. When they subsided he did something very smart. He said nothing except:

‘Want a drink?’ To which I immediately replied:

‘That sounds like a very good idea.’

Six

RICHARD WORKED HIS phone and discovered two salient pieces of local information: the gallery was open until nine o’clock this evening (if we did want to head there eventually), and there was a cocktail bar in the same vicinity with the straightforward name of Drink.

‘Sounds like it will do the job,’ I said, impressed with Richard’s ability to glean all this information in under a minute on his phone. I am still such a Luddite when it comes to most things technological. Just as I so appreciated the way he said nothing about my crying fit and didn’t even gently enquire why I had broken down. And when, in the wake of him telling me about the late museum hours, I said: ‘You know, I might head back to the hotel after a drink,’ he worked hard at disguising his disappointment, telling me:

‘Whatever works best for you, Laura. There’s no pressure whatsoever.’

Again I found myself thinking: He is such a truly gentle man. And so much in the ‘kindred spirit’ realm. No wonder you’re pushing him away.

Drink turned out to be an uber-stylish lounge, filled with uber-stylish types drinking uber-stylish cocktails.

‘Glad I changed my clothes,’ Richard said as the hostess on the door seated us in a rear booth.

‘You fit in perfectly here. But the thing is, even if you were dressed as before it wouldn’t have mattered one bit to me.’

‘Even though I bet you initially characterized me as a gray little man.’

‘All right, truth be told, I did consider you, when I first saw you at the hotel, somewhat traditional.’

‘Which is a euphemism for “dull”.’

‘You are anything but dull.’

He touched my arm with his hand.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘The thing is, I have deliberately allowed myself to be perceived as dull. Outside of Dwight — who actually is quite the reader — I never allowed myself to appear too informed or interesting in public. When I’d tried that as a younger man — with my writing, my editorship of the U Maine literary magazine—’

‘You edited The Open Field?’

‘You remember its name!’

‘Of course I remember its name. I was on the editorial staff during my time in Orono.’

‘Doing what exactly?’

‘The poetry editor.’

‘That’s extraordinary.’

‘Not as extraordinary as being the editor-in-chief, especially as I presume you weren’t an English major.’

‘Wanted to do English, but my dad put his foot down. So it was economics and business administration. But I still managed to end up as the first non-English major to edit The Open Field. That was a real source of pride for me. I spent my first three years at the college working my way up the editorial ranks. Of course, when Dad also found out that I had been named editor-in-chief — and he gleaned that little detail when it accompanied the short biographical note that appeared alongside the short story in the Bangor Daily News — he was even more livid. Told me I had to resign the editorship immediately.’

‘Did you?’

‘I did.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘Indeed it is. The thing is, though I always hated him for making me give it up — and I only had one more issue to put to bed — the person I really hated was myself. Because I had given in to his limiting meanness. Because I allowed myself to be intimidated by him. Because I was always so desperate to please a father who could not be pleased. And how did we get on this subject?’

‘It’s all right to be on this subject,’ I said. ‘That man—’

‘—was a bastard. Excuse my language. But it’s the only word to describe him. Small, mean, petty, angry at the world, and determined to keep me confined to the limited horizons within which his own life had been lived. The truth of the matter is that I accepted those limitations. I resigned the editorship of the magazine. I followed him into the family business. I never wrote a word again for almost thirty years. I married a woman who matched him for coldness and thrift. On his deathbed, when we were alone together in his hospital room and the colon cancer that was killing him had spread everywhere, and he had maybe forty-eight hours to live, he took my hand and told me: “You were always something of a disappointment to me.”’

I reached over and threaded my hand into his.

‘I hope you told him what a monster he was.’

‘That would have been the good Eugene O’Neill ending, wouldn’t it? “May you go to your grave knowing your only son despises you. and he’s now selling off your nasty little insurance company and is setting sail for the Far East as a crewman on a tramp steamer.”’

‘Did that thought cross your mind?’

‘Variations on that theme.’

‘Like me with the French Foreign Legion when I was a teenager.’

‘Even though their all-male rule might have put a dent in your plans?’

‘Like you, it was all about dreams of leaving. But even my rather cool, distant mother at her chilliest couldn’t match your father. He was clearly beyond contemptible.’

The waiter arrived, asking us what we’d like to drink.

‘I’m not too knowledgeable about cocktails,’ I told Richard, ‘but I remember once drinking a very good manhattan on my one visit to New York.’

‘Then two manhattans,’ he said.

The waiter asked us if we preferred ours with bourbon or rye. We both professed ignorance. The waiter recommended Sazerac rye — ‘for a manhattan with a slightly more syrupy texture, but with a complex smoothness’. I could see Richard trying to keep a straight face.

‘“Complex smoothness” sounds fine to me,’ he said.

‘Me too,’ I added.

As soon as the waiter was out of earshot, Richard said:

‘It’s one of the more curious things about modern life: the amount of choice on offer. Back twenty years ago, rye was that cheap Canadian Club stuff my dad used to drink. Now there are probably two dozen different ryes on offer. Just as Scotch was always J&B, and wine was Gallo red or white. We don’t just live in a consumerist culture. We live in a wildly consumerist culture.’

‘But there are benefits to all that — like the fact that good coffee is a given just about everywhere. ’

‘Even in Lewiston?’

‘Poor Lewiston — the butt of all in-state Maine jokes. But I’m sure you can still find a decent cappuccino even there.’

‘And a decent rye manhattan?’

‘That might be a stretch. Maybe I’ll give up radiography to open a cocktail bar in Lewiston.’

‘And I know a good bankruptcy lawyer you can talk to when it all goes south.’

‘“O ye of little faith.”’

‘Matthew eight, twenty-six.’

‘That’s impressive,’ I said.

‘Another legacy from my father. A real Presbyterian. Scots-Irish — the most dour Celtic combination imaginable. No joie de vivre. A real Hobbesian view of the human condition.’

‘And I bet this is the first time that Thomas Hobbes was ever mentioned in this cocktail lounge.’

‘Let alone Matthew eight, twenty-six.’

‘Well, there’s a first for everything.’

‘And thanks to dear old Dad — who made me go to Sunday school for fifteen years — my brain is crammed with far too many scriptural references.’

‘Can you do The Book of Mormon as well?’

‘That’s a little beyond my realm of knowledge.’

I found myself laughing — and quietly realized that Richard, in his own canny, quiet way, had just managed to talk me out of the sadness that had overcome me in the taxi, simply by being smart and funny and interesting. And by sharing all that terrible stuff about his father.

‘I am so sorry for blubbering like that earlier,’ I said.

‘Never be sorry for that. Never.’

‘But I am. Because I was brought up by a mother who thought crying was something akin to a profound character flaw, and a dad who spent much of his life dodging any direct emotion whatsoever. So to cry, openly. I’ve managed to sidestep that one for most of my life. Until recently.’

‘And what changed recently?’

‘Good question,’ I said as the drinks arrived.

‘Hope you approve,’ the waiter said as he put the two cocktail glasses before us.

‘Here’s to. complex smoothness?’ Richard asked, raising his glass.

Hoisting mine I said:

‘How about. to us.’

Richard smiled. And touched his glass against mine.

‘I like that,’ I said. ‘To us.’

‘To us.’

I sipped the manhattan.

‘My word,’ I said, ‘dense libidinous fluency.’

‘Or. libational eloquence.’

‘Or. spiritous volubility.’

‘Or. no, I can’t top that,’ Richard said.

‘I bet you can.’

‘You’re wonderful, did you know that?’

‘Until this afternoon. no, I didn’t know that. And you’re wonderful, did you know that?’

‘Until this afternoon. ’

I raised my glass again to his.

‘To us.’

‘To us.’

‘And yes,’ I said, ‘I do find myself crying frequently these days. Half the time I think it’s about all the usual unsettling thoughts that arrive with middle age. But maybe it’s also about my husband. And about my children and all the stuff that seems to be blindsiding both of them all the time. Maybe also about the fact that my work now seems to impact on me in a way that it never used to. That’s what unnerves me the most — the loss of professional detachment.’

‘But surely that’s linked with all the stuff at home.’

‘When Ben had his breakdown. ’

Over the next half an hour or so, Richard got me talking in more detail about all that had befallen Ben; how his depression had only widened the gulf between him and his father, and the way he was inching his way back to some sort of stability.

The first manhattan cocktail was drained. And so was I.

‘I’ve talked far too much,’ I said.

‘Not at all.’

‘I’ve bent your ear.’

‘But I wanted my ear bent. And after having told you all about Billy this afternoon. ’

‘I’m not usually comfortable talking about personal stuff.’

‘But it’s about you. And I want to know everything about you.’

‘Can we ever know everything about another person?’

‘Everything? As in, the whole, the aggregate, the entirety?’

‘Or to be colloquial, all but the kitchen sink, the whole megillah.’

‘No, we can hardly know the corpus, the lot,’ he said, while motioning to the waiter to bring us two more drinks. ‘But if you are drawn to someone, surely you want to know about—’

‘Eric,’ I heard myself saying. As I said it, it struck me that, outside of this afternoon, when I mentioned his name, the word ‘Eric’ had been banished from my vocabulary. Outside of Lucy — to whom I told the story early on in our friendship — no one else knew about his existence. No one except Dan and my parents. But Mom and Dad never raised the subject of Eric — largely because they both knew it was something I didn’t want to talk about, let alone consider. And Dan dodged it completely — for all sorts of self-evident reasons. Even Lucy — having heard the tale — never made reference to it. She understood it was so off-limits. The forbidden topic.

But now.

‘Eric Lachtmann,’ I said. ‘A New Yorker. From Long Island. German-Jewish background. His grandfather was a jeweler in the Diamond District of Manhattan, his dad a CPA, his mom classic frustrated housewife territory. Two older brothers, both heading into business careers. And Eric — who had decided at the age of fifteen that he was going to be a Great American Novelist — also spent much of high school pursuing arty pursuits and not caring very much about class work, with the result that his college choices were not exactly prestigious ones. A couple of the better state universities in New York wanted him. He was wait-listed at Wisconsin. But — as he told me later — something about being “way up in the Maine sticks” really appealed to him. If I remember correctly, he told me that his decision was partially based on the fact that, during his senior year in high school, he’d been reading all those early Hemingway stories set up in northern Michigan — and had this romantic notion that landing himself into the boondocks was an essential part of his “writerly training”. Of course he was also planning to live in Paris, and travel overland to Patagonia, and get his first novel published by the time he was twenty-five, and marry me and bring me everywhere.

‘That was so Eric. Big talk. Big plans. Big brain. Probably the smartest person I’d ever met. But the thing about him was, though he talked in a grandiose way, there was always real substance behind the talk. Even at eighteen he put his money where his mouth was. And he was already, by the time I met him, living a writerly life.

‘He was quite the character at U Maine. You remember how conservative the school was, how State U, how the student body was largely rural and backwater. And how few out-of-staters there were. Here was Eric — this “Manhattanite in waiting” as he called himself — dashing around the campus in a black trenchcoat, sporting a fedora, with these ultra-smelly French cigarettes on the go all the time. He’d found a place in Orono where he could actually buy Gitanes — those cigarettes he so adored — and a daily copy of the New York Times, at a time when that newspaper was something of a cargo cult up in Maine. And he was always talking books, books, books. And foreign movies. Within his first semester at Orono, not only had he taken over the college Film Society and was programming an Ingmar Bergman retrospective, but he was also fiction editor of The Open Field. Which is where I met him. I had talked my way onto the editorial committee of the magazine, even though I was pre-med and clearly not the type the magazine attracted. As you no doubt remember from your own time up there, Orono did boast a small bohemian coterie within their student body — who, like Eric, had ended up there after less-than-brilliant high school careers, but still were very determined to act as if they were all up at Columbia during the era of Ginsberg and Kerouac.’

‘And was that your story?’ Richard asked. ‘Did you end up there because you hadn’t been as rigorous as you should have been during high school?’

‘No — I ended up there courtesy of my own profound need to self-sabotage.’

And I told him all about being accepted at Bowdoin on a partial scholarship, and turning it down because I could go to U Maine for nothing.

‘So that is still a source of immense regret?’

‘Of course it is. Because — and I only realize this now — it was the start of a process in which I began to deliberately sell myself short. Clip my wings. Limit my latitude. Still, had I gone to Bowdoin I would never have met Eric. And had I not met Eric. ’

The second round of drinks arrived. We touched glasses. I took a long sip of the manhattan, part of me telling myself that I should stop talking now.

But the other part of me — fueled, no doubt, by the alcohol, by the low lighting and subdued intimacy of the lounge, and (most of all) by the profound need and desire I felt to impart this story to Richard — forced myself to keep talking.

‘So I walked into an editorial meeting of the magazine, having heard word around campus about this smart-assed New York guy who talked a mile a minute and seemed bent on refashioning everything arts-wise at the university to his own liking. Here I was this bookish, science-oriented girl from a middling Maine town, still a virgin —’ (God, the manhattans really were playing havoc with my sense of propriety) ‘and someone who always felt herself plain, unattractive, especially when compared to all the so-called “popular” girls at school. As I walked into the magazine’s office, Eric looked up at me. In that very instant. well, I just knew. Just as Eric knew. Or so he told me three days later, after we slept together for the first time. That’s right — even though I was just eighteen and completely inexperienced, and Eric, as it turned out, had only had one serious girlfriend before me, and that was just a summer fling — we became lovers in a matter of days. Immediately after that editorial meeting where we first met, he invited me to a local bar — remember when you could drink in Maine at eighteen? — and we must have spent the next six hours there, nursing beers, talking, talking, talking. By the time he walked me home to my dorm that night, I knew I was madly in love. We saw each other the next evening — talking, talking, talking until around three in the morning. Even though we were in his dorm room, he made no move, put me under no pressure whatsoever. Instead he walked me home, kissed me lightly on the lips and told me that I was “nothing less than extraordinary”. No one had ever said that to me before. No one after Eric ever did either. until you said something very similar just a little while ago. The next night — it was a Saturday — when we found ourselves still talking in my room at two, and he wondered out loud if he should go home, I told him I wanted him to stay. It was my choice, my call. When we awoke the next morning, he told me, quite simply, that he loved me — and that we were now inseparable. And I told him I loved him, and would never love anyone else.

‘Saying all that now, part of me thinks, how wondrously naive, how innocent. But the truth is — and this is the middle-aged woman talking — the love I felt, the love given, the love shared. it was nothing less than matchless. Yes, we were kids. Yes, we were living in that bubble which was college. And yes, we knew nothing of the larger world and its infernal compromises. But here was a man I could talk to about anything. Here was a man who was so original, so curious, so thoughtful, so vital. and who made me feel capable of everything. After the first semester we shocked everybody by finding an apartment off campus and moving in together. When my parents met Eric they were completely charmed. Of course they both found him a little over the top. But they also saw his love for me — and the way he was, in his own determined way, pushing me to do my very best. And Eric’s parents — very formal, very stiff, very much in despair over what they saw to be their wayward son — simply adored me. Because I was the small-town Maine girl who clearly loved their son and also seemed to keep him grounded, within the earth’s gravity.

‘It was love. Absolute extraordinary love. We were both so profoundly happy. Because it was also so easy together. My grades that first year skyrocketed. I made Dean’s List. I was asked to join the Honors Program. Eric, meanwhile, was establishing his hegemony — yes, that is the correct word — over the literary magazine, the film society, and even managed to talk his way into staging a radical reworking of Twelfth Night set in a suburban high school. The guy was just bursting with talent. Hearing me say all this now. I know it all sounds so romanticized, so quixotic, too good to be true. I know it was all twenty-two years ago, and time has a habit of soft-focussing so much, especially when it comes to first love. But. but. I think I see life with a certain clarity. My work forces me to do that all the time — because being a radiographic technologist is all about being able to view the most elemental cellular forces within us with absolute pellucidity. But one’s emotional life is always more murky, isn’t it? There’s no clarity when it comes to matters of the heart. Except one thing about which I am still absolutely clear — Eric Lachtmann was the love of my life. I had never been happier, more productive, more fulfilled. Everyone who knew us back then saw that we were, in a word, golden.

‘Of course we had plans. So many plans. The summer after our freshman year we both got teaching jobs at a rich kids’ prep school in New Hampshire, tutoring the far too well off and stupid who weren’t going to get into college if they didn’t bump up their grades. The money was pretty good. Good enough for us to head to Costa Rica on the cheap for the last two weeks of the summer vacation. Eric had an artist friend of the family there with a place on the Pacific coast. Even though it was the rainy season, the sun still came out six hours of the day and, hey, we were in Central America, how cool was that? While in Costa Rica we agreed to go to Paris for our junior year, and spend the next twelve months doing intensive French. Eric was pretty certain there was an exchange program for pre-med students at the Fac du Mйdecine at the Sorbonne. There was, and I got in.

‘But then a small bit of drama landed in our laps when I discovered I was pregnant. I knew how and why it had happened. While in Costa Rica, I forgot to take the pill two days in a row. Bingo. Back in our apartment in Orono I started getting sick every morning for five straight days. I told Eric my suspicions and how guilty I felt about missing those two doses of the pill, though he already knew that because I told him immediately about it when I realized that all the mezcal we’d drunk one weekend with that crazed artist friend of the family — a real Bukowski type — had led me to slip up on the contraception front. Eric and I had that kind of relationship where we promised to tell each other everything. And did. So when one of those home pregnancy tests confirmed what was readily apparent — I was going to have a baby — Eric being Eric he told me: “Hey, we’ll keep it. Bring him or her to Paris. Raise this baby to be the coolest citizen imaginable and just carry on with our lives.” His exact words. That also was pure Eric — the art of the possible. Nothing too arduous that couldn’t be countered with wild enthusiasm and work. Of course the guy had his dark moments like anyone — and could get into these occasional black funks where he sometimes refused to get out of bed for two days. But that’s what came with living life at such a manic, exalted level. Those episodes. they were maybe a quarterly event. He always pulled himself out of them. And he always joked afterwards that it was his body’s way of telling him to stop trying to be endlessly brilliant — as the guy was a straight A student in English and philosophy, on top of everything else. But outside of those occasional moments it was always “the art of the possible”. And part of the “everything is possible” was this baby. Our baby.

‘As upbeat and persuasive as Eric was it was me who said: ‘Not now.’ I was still very young, after all. Even though I was living with a man, and very much in love, and knew that Eric was the person I would travel through life with, I was also very cognizant of what having a child would mean. How it was a non-stop responsibility. How it would limit so much at a time in our lives when we should really be unencumbered. And how Paris would not be Paris with a baby.

‘So, very rationally and with, I must admit, little guilt whatsoever, I told Eric that it was best for us if we waited a few years — frankly, after I finished medical school — before starting a family. He was cool with that. I sense he was privately relieved — but also would have gone along with it all had I insisted on keeping it. Eric being Eric he took charge of everything. Found me a really lovely, sympathetic clinic in Boston where the termination took place. Booked us into a nice hotel for the weekend, so I could recover after the procedure. Was so supportive and loving throughout. Honestly, I got through that all so easily because, of course, Eric and I loved each other, and we were going to be together for all the decades to come. So, of course, I’d be pregnant again in a few years with Eric’s baby. Only this time the moment would be right.

‘Just thinking about that — only this time the moment would be right — when you’re young you are never really conscious of the way time will later on accelerate at such a ferocious speed. Just as you also think that you are invulnerable to that terrible underside of life which is dictated by the random, the happenstantial.

‘Anyway, the pregnancy was terminated in mid-September. Our sophomore year was another golden period — where we both continued to surpass ourselves academically, where Eric became fiction editor of The Open Field and I was promoted to poetry editor, where we both got into the Sorbonne on that junior year exchange program for the following September, and both did accelerated French to the point where we agreed to spend two hours a day talking with each other dans la langue de Moliиre — one of the few phrases I remember from back then.

‘Life was, in a word, splendid. Yes, Eric still had those “black dog” moments — and they had started creeping up on him every other week. But he always shook them off. Always kept going. Always amazed me with his resilience and his ability to constantly embrace life with both hands.

‘That Easter we were thinking of heading down to see some friends in Cambridge. At the last minute I got a bad stomach bug, and was up sick the night before we were due to leave. So we stayed put at our place in Orono. I started getting ill again and Eric said he’d run up to the pharmacy and get me something to curb the vomiting. We both had bicycles. Eric took his. Before he left he gave me a kiss and told me he loved me. Then he headed out — and never came back. After an hour I was panicked, but was so weak from being sick that I couldn’t get out of bed and go searching for him. Around two that afternoon the police came to my door. A woman social worker was with them. That’s when I knew. They told me that Eric had run a red light on his bicycle a block away from the pharmacy and had been knocked down by an oncoming truck. He’d been thrown clear of his bicycle and slammed into a lamppost. Death, they told me, was instantaneous. He probably felt and knew nothing. That’s when I started to collapse, to weep uncontrollably. Eric dead. It was beyond unthinkable. It was as if my entire future — all possibility of happiness — had just been permanently decimated.

‘The next eighteen months were a depressed blur. My father was never good at emotional ballast. And my mother — though initially sympathetic — essentially told me to snap out of it, that I was young and had my whole life ahead of me, and what I needed to do now was look forward. My college friends were nice. I did talk for a bit to a psychologist on campus. But he wasn’t making me feel better, so I stopped the sessions, which I now realize was a bad idea. Back then, I didn’t want to feel better. I was so consumed with grief. So profoundly devastated. Everything just started to come asunder. Though my professors were, at first, kind to me, my grades really started to slip, as I no longer cared whether I did well or not. I cancelled the year abroad in Paris because I thought it would be unbearable without Eric. I kept largely to myself. I did middling class work, and my straight A average slipped into the Cs. But so what? I no longer had a purpose. The love of my life had been snatched from me. Though several professors and friends really did try to get me to start some serious therapy I refused. I was wildly depressed, but still functional enough to get through the day, to keep my apartment clean, to do just enough course work to pass my exams and not flunk out. What I realize now is that I was on a self-destructive kick — and really needed to punish myself. I went about it with profound determination.

‘Somehow I made it through junior year. My mother looked at my grades and shook her head and said: “There goes your medical career.” I didn’t care. My dad — when I had his attention — told me I should really think about doing something outside the box for a couple of years, like maybe joining the Peace Corps. But when I started to cry and ask him where and when I would meet another Eric, he just put a hand on my shoulder and told me that life would go on and — if I allowed it — it would get better.

‘Actually that was smart advice — especially about joining the Peace Corps and taking myself off to some extreme Third World country where I could maybe get a great deal of distance and emotional perspective. But did I follow it? I was so bent on hurting myself — something that I only understood rather recently — that, in the final trimester of my junior year, I managed to allow myself to be asked out by a guy named Dan Warren. A computer science major from way up north in Aroostook County. A nice enough fellow — whom I met when I got talked into joining an outdoor club by a friend who thought that getting me hiking might improve my mental state. Dan came from a different planet than Eric. Though intelligent he wasn’t an intellectual, had no imaginative flights of fancy, preferred the concrete to the realm of ideas, and his basic philosophy could be summed up as: Feet firmly on the ground is the only way to travel. Still, he was kind. And he really seemed to get me and couldn’t have been more sympathetic and canny when it came to dealing with all the deep, residual grief I still felt for Eric. We were friends for a month before we became romantically involved. Though there was none of the passion I felt for Eric it was an antidote to the past months of agony. Dan himself couldn’t have been more thrilled. He thought I was a catch. My friends found him “nice”, “straightforward ”, “uncomplicated ” — all those euphemisms for dull and less than animated. My parents met him. “Decent enough guy” was my dad’s rather flat verdict. Mom was more direct. “I hope he gets you out of your dark wood and then you move on to someone with a little more depth in the outfield.”

‘Still, that summer before our senior year, he took me cross-country on a road trip, which was kind of wonderful. Even if I did frequently wonder what I was doing with this guy. But it was comfortable and easy. So on it went. Then, another small disaster. We’d always used condoms as birth control, as I’d gone off the pill after Eric’s death and it really didn’t agree with me. One night — around two weeks before our graduation — a condom that Dan was wearing broke while we were making love. At the time it was difficult, but still possible to get the morning-after pill. It required a drive down to that clinic in Boston where I had my termination. I had a biology final on Monday and I was frightened of failing it — that’s how much I had let myself slip, even after hooking up with Dan — who, truth be told, wasn’t much of a student when it came to chasing high grades. And I was due to have my period in seven days. And.

‘Oh, the excuses I invented. I think now, deep down, I couldn’t bear the idea of terminating another pregnancy, even though the morning-after pill — despite what the born-again lobby thinks — is a far cry from a termination. There was another part of me that, ever since Eric’s death, had been carrying a huge amount of guilt about not doing what Eric suggested and having our baby. You can’t believe the amount of times I’ve told myself, if only we’d had the baby Eric would still be here today. If only I had listened to him, and hadn’t pushed for an abortion. If only. ’

Richard reached out and took my hand.

‘You can’t think that. You did absolutely nothing wrong. Nothing.’

‘I would have had his baby. That part of him would still be here. ’

‘Had Eric not run that red light at the time—’

‘The only reason he ran that light is because I’d gotten sick. Had we gone to Boston despite my stomach flu—’

‘Laura, please, stop. You had no hand in what happened to Eric. It was the music of chance, nothing more.’

‘But afterwards I did have a choice — and what did I do? I walled myself into a life I didn’t want. My mother — who never knew about the first abortion — firmly told me that she would “take care of everything” if I wanted to terminate the pregnancy. Even Dan was OK with the idea of ending it. But no. The guilt I felt was so rampant, so unexamined, so self-punitive that I insisted on keeping the child. And to keep Dan’s very conservative, very Baptist parents happy we were married that same summer. Even a week before the wedding Mom tried to talk me out of it. Saying I was making the mistake of my life. But. ’

I reached for my drink and drained it, gripping Richard’s hand even tighter as the alcohol provided momentary balm against all I had refused to confront for years, decades. Then:

‘Every day I give thanks for the fact that I have my two wondrous children. When I think how, had I terminated that second pregnancy, Ben would not be here now — my brilliant, extraordinarily talented son — that nullifies all the other regrets. Just as Sally — whom I so adore, and who I see is in the midst of a gigantic struggle right now — would also not be here had I not chosen to stay with Dan. So, there are huge recompenses for a life otherwise—’

I broke off, feeling my eyes welling up, a sob in my throat. But I managed to stifle it and say:

‘And here’s the question with which I keep torturing myself — had Eric never set off on that bicycle, would the entire course of my life have been different? Would I be a doctor somewhere now? Would my brilliant husband still tell me how extraordinary I am? Would I feel loved? Would I be happy?’

Seven

‘WOULD I FEEL loved? Would I be happy?’

Those words lingered for a very long moment after they were uttered. They filled the silence that followed them. A silence during which Richard took my other hand and fixed his gaze directly on me. Then he said:

‘But you are loved.’

This statement landed with such quiet force that I felt myself involuntarily tense. Having avoided Richard’s gaze while telling him that very long and terrible story, now I could not take my eyes off him. Though I wanted to say exactly the same thing — ‘But you too are loved’ — an innate fear kicked in. I was now in a terra incognita that I hadn’t known since I was eighteen. But when I fell so madly for Eric, I knew nothing of life’s larger intricacies and the disenchantments that begin to pile up within you. Having decided in recent years that there was little future prospect of intimacy, passion, ardor, yet alone the possibility of actual love.

No, this was all too strange, all too fast, all too perplexing. I was terrified of being even somewhat adjacent to all that I was feeling right now, to all that I wanted to blurt out in a mad romantic rush. and which I knew I couldn’t bring myself to do. Because that would mean taking my foot off the emotional brakes for the first time in more than twenty years.

I withdrew my hands from Richard’s grasp.

‘Have I said the wrong thing?’ he asked.

I took my eyes off him, using the swizzle stick from my cocktail glass to draw invisible circles on the paper coaster in front of me.

‘No,’ I finally said. ‘You said a wonderful thing. But one which I can’t. ’

Synonyms came rushing to mind: accept, acknowledge, concur with, mirror, embrace, agree with, acquiesce to.

I didn’t finish the sentence. My swizzle stick kept making manic circles on the paper coaster. I told myself: You are being absurd. You are closing down the possibility of something for which you’ve longed since.

Soon after Eric’s funeral, I drove myself in his Volvo to a river not far from our apartment. It was a perfect late-spring afternoon — the sun at full wattage, not a cloud up above, the water unruffled, becalmed. I couldn’t help but think: This is an immaculate day that I can see, but Eric can’t. Just as the realization hit that I would never hear his voice again, never feel his touch, never have him deep inside me, whispering how much he loved me as our passion rose. My grief that afternoon was so new, so raw, so overwhelming and acute that I felt as if the very act of breathing was an affront to Eric’s memory. I so remember being so numb, so spent, that I could no longer cry — having spent the past week crying nonstop. Staring at the river, considering that I had lost the man of my life, I told myself that I would never, ever encounter such love again — that there was nothing but emotional sterility ahead. And yes, I do know how wildly melodramatic and bereavement-laden all that sounds now. But in light of what Richard just told me — and my timorous backing away from it — another uneasy rumination clouded my mind. By deciding all those years ago that I would never know such love again, had I actually set myself up to ensure that this prophesy came true? Was that the reason I married Dan — because I knew he could never be the man that Eric was? As such, our relationship — so lacking the zeal and heat of my time with Eric — would ensure that my sense of loss would never dim?

Out of nowhere, I reached for Richard’s hands again.

‘The truth of the matter is,’ I said, ‘I’m scared.’

‘Me too.’

‘And when did—?’

I stopped myself just before the pronoun ‘you’ came forth.

‘When did I know?’ he asked. ‘From that moment yesterday when you recited that poem.’

‘As bleak as it was?’

‘It was hardly bleak. It let me know what I had sensed from the start — the fact that, like me, you have been lonely. Lonely for years.’

My hands tightened within his.

‘You got that one right,’ I said.

‘And that story you just told — the story of Eric — the fact that you perceive yourself to have walled yourself into a life you don’t want. ’

‘I know that’s your story too.’

‘Just as I know you are everything I’ve hoped, dreamed, of finding. ’

‘But how can you know after just a few hours?’

‘Because when it is right you can know after five minutes.’

‘And have you ever known.?’

‘Certainty like this? Never.’

‘And real love?’

‘Like what you had with Eric?’

‘Yes, love as profound as that.’

‘Once. When I was twenty-three. A woman named Sarah. A librarian in Brunswick. At the college library there. And—’

He broke off for a moment, then said:

‘This is not a story I want to tell.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Because it’s a story I’ve never told.’

‘Because.?’

‘Because she was married at the time. Because I made a huge mistake. Because I’ve regretted that mistake ever since. Because. ’

Now it was his turn to withdraw his hands from mine, and to drum his fingers anxiously on the table, something my ex-smoker father used to do when he was trying to push away that desperate craving for a cigarette.

‘Go on,’ I said quietly.

More finger-drumming on the table. I could discern the tension coursing within him. A secret lived with for years — never discussed, never re-examined in front of another sentient being — is the most private form of sorrow. Especially if it is the confidential mirror you hold up to everything that has happened in your life since then. From the way that Richard was resisting divulging anything further than her name, the fact that it was an affair, and (to his mind) an error.

‘Sarah Radley,’ he said, avoiding my eyes. ‘Her full name. Sarah Makepiece Radley. As you can gather, just a little WASP. In fact, ultra-WASP. A big Boston family that had fallen on its uppers, as they say in a certain kind of Victorian novel. She’d gone to Radcliffe back when it was still called Radcliffe. She’d had a brief career in magazine journalism in New York. She met a doctoral candidate at Columbia. They’d had a fling. She got pregnant. She convinced herself it was love, whereas she privately knew there were manifold problems, the most prominent of which being that she suspected Calvin — his name — of being a rather closeted gay man. Still, the upright Boston WASP in her decided she had to do the right thing when she found herself “with child” — and Calvin was hugely bright and intellectually agile. So when he got an assistant professorship at Bowdoin she married him and off they went to Brunswick. This was the mid-1970s — a time when Maine was still rather isolated and less than metropolitan. But Sarah liked the college, liked the smart people she met on the faculty, and got a job in the cataloging division of the library. She also gave birth to a little boy, Chester — yes, she and her husband went for truly nineteenth-century WASP names. Seven months after he was born she came into the nursery one morning to find her son lying in his crib, lifeless. One of those crib deaths you sometimes read about, and which are so devastating because they are so out of nowhere, so random, so profoundly cruel.

‘Sarah, however, surprised everyone in Brunswick with her fortitude, her need to keep the immense grief she was feeling so clearly out of sight, to propel herself forward with what can only be described as a steely dignity. When I first met her — she needed to get her house reinsured and someone had recommended our company to her — it was eight months after her son’s death. Though I’d heard about it all before she came into my office, what surprised me most was how she didn’t betray the horror of what she had been living with. You know, from your own work, that there are many people among us who, at the drop of a dime, unload their entire life story onto you. Just as there are others who, with a little coaxing, also begin to recount the heartbreak that has been their life. When Sarah came into my office she was business itself. At some point, when we were filling out the policy forms, she said that, though married, there were no dependants, then added: “But you must know that already.” I was just a little thrown and impressed by her directness. Just as I was also immediately taken with her elegance and intelligence. Sarah wasn’t a beautiful woman like you. In fact, there was something rather plain about her. But the plainness had the sort of formal poise that you see in those sharp-featured, but still curiously sensual wives of Dutch burghers that kept Vermeer’s bank account topped up over the years. From the outset it was also clear that hers was a mind of great agility. She also happened to be — until I bumped into you — the best-read person I’d ever met. When I found out she worked in the Bowdoin library I asked her if she could, perhaps, locate a book for me.’

‘What was the book?’

‘I was looking for Pepys’s Diaries — which I could have probably ordered at the time from one of the antiquarian booksellers around the state, but which I really didn’t have the money to afford. The Bath Public Library’s only copy had recently fallen apart. No matter how often I asked the librarian to order it for me, she seemed resistant to the idea of dropping forty dollars of taxpayers’ money — a lot of money back then — on a volume that nobody, except for me, was ever going to borrow. So I asked Sarah if she might be able to loan me a copy. This large smile crossed her face as she said: “You are the first man I’ve ever met who has shown the remotest interest in one of my benchmark writers.” Her exact words. Benchmark writers. I think I was in love with her as soon as she uttered that phrase. And I think she saw that immediately as well.

‘She invited me to lunch. No woman had ever invited me to lunch before. Though she was only seven years older than me — she was thirty when we met — she immediately struck me as so worldly, so cosmopolitan. She brought me to a really nice place in Brunswick and insisted we share a bottle of wine — it was a Saint-Emilion, I always remember that — over lunch. My dad was still very much running the agency — and monitored all my working-hour moves like the Marine drill sergeant he once was. I was also still living at home, as Dad saw no reason for me to be wasting money on an apartment, though he did buy me a secondhand Chevy Impala as a gift when I left college and “joined the firm”, as he called our two-person business. So I was still living at home — albeit in a basement apartment that gave me a certain amount of autonomy in the evenings, though Dad would often chide me if he discovered I was up late reading. Dad was something of an insomniac — and even though he was in bed most nights by nine-thirty, he’d always be up around midnight, stepping outside for a few minutes for a walk, but really checking on whether I had the lights on in my place. Why I didn’t move out, why I was so cowed by him into joining the firm, instead of forging my own life. it remains perhaps the biggest regret of my life to date.

‘Anyway, some of this came out at that first lunch with Sarah. She was quite the polite interrogator. She got out of me the fact that I wanted to be a writer, that I had published a story, and that I had an impossibly dictatorial father. She also had me talking about my literary tastes, and ascertained that, outside of a brief, inconsequential four-month thing with a graduate student named Florence during my U Maine years, I was largely inexperienced when it came to the world of women. Sarah, in turn, volunteered several things about herself.

‘You know I lost a child,’ she told me. ‘I doubt I’ll ever get over that — though to the outside world I will always maintain a certain decorum. And you possibly know that my husband, of whom I am inordinately fond, has fallen in love with a professor at Harvard named Elliot. but for the sake of “decorum” we are maintaining a proper public front for the time being. We live together during the week as he teaches at the college. Calvin goes to see Elliot at the weekends. My husband remains my great friend. We will never have children again — which is my choice, because were I to become a mother again the specter of possible tragedy and appalling loss would always be there, and I know I could never support the fear that would haunt me every day. I am very accepting of that decision, as painful as it is. Just as I am very accepting of Calvin’s new life — as I knew, more or less, all this about him from the moment we met in New York eight years ago. As far as Calvin is concerned I have carte blanche when it comes to my own personal life and how I choose to conduct it. Which is why, when we finish lunch, I suggest we return to my house — Calvin is away today — and go to bed.”

‘She said it just like that. No hemming or hawing. No “Let’s get to know each other”. No apprehension or fear. She chose me. I certainly wanted to be chosen. And in the seven months that I was Sarah’s lover she taught me so much. Both in and out of the bedroom. And God, that must be the second manhattan talking.’

‘You’re telling me this because you want to tell me this,’ I said. ‘Keep going.’

‘Was it love? I certainly think so. We saw each other three times a week. We managed to sneak off for a weekend to Boston, and to Quebec City. ’

Quebec City. The adjacent Paris for entrapped Mainers.

‘. and Sarah told me, around four months into our relationship, that what I needed to do, as a matter of urgency, was walk out of my father’s “firm” and apply for a top MFA program in writing at Iowa or Michigan or Brown. She was sure I would get in somewhere good. And she would come with me — because she could always find interesting work in a college town. And because she knew I had talent.

‘“I may have a talent for life,” she told me. “I may know how to make a wonderful coq au vin —” that was no lie — “and what wine to pair with it, and which new emerging Polish surrealist poet I should be reading —” she was always glued to literary magazines — “but I don’t have any real creative spark in me when it comes to words or music or paints. You, on the other hand, have the possibility of a proper literary career, if you can only shake off your King Lear father. He has been determined to break you of your talent from the moment he read that short story of yours in print.”

‘Of course she had hit the bull’s-eye — as unsettling as it was to hear such truths being articulated. We were sprawled across her bed at the time. And that was the afternoon she told me that she loved me, that we were kindred spirits, that together everything was possible. and Sarah was never the most emotionally effusive of people. I told her that I too loved her, that she had changed my life, that, yes, I would start to apply for MFA programs and quit my job at the end of the summer and.

‘All these amazing plans. All within the realm of possibility. Because love — at its truest — allows all the impediments to fall away. You see a vision of the life you want to lead. A happy life. A fulfilled life. With someone who wants to share everything with you, who so completely gets you, as you get her. A love also based on deep mutual desire. And passion. And a shared curiosity about everything in life. That was my life with Sarah — the whole fairy tale we tell ourselves we so want, and then do everything in our power to subvert.’

He fell silent. I reached out and took his hand.

‘Did your father find out?’ I finally asked.

‘Your interpretative powers are impressive. I applied to about a half-dozen MFA programs. Though I didn’t get into Iowa — which is the most prestigious and competitive — I did get accepted to Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, Berkeley. An amazing choice of schools. Sarah and I agreed that Michigan was the best option. It was ranked second in the country as an MFA writing program, and Ann Arbor is a great college town. Sarah even had a friend who was a senior librarian there, and who told her there was an opening in the cataloging department. It was all so serendipitous. Here was our immediate future. Here was the life ahead together. I’d even started writing again. A new short story about a man who cannot force himself to leave a bad marriage — even though he knows that the marriage is killing him. It was, at heart, the story of my dad and my mother, but also about my father’s anger at me, at the world in general, all fueled by the fact that my mother was such a dry, cold woman. The only good thing I can say about her is that, as she knew my dad was doing the heavy guilt reinforcement on me, she didn’t criticize me the way that Dad did. She was just cold and distant.

‘Anyway, Sarah and I used her address in Brunswick for all the MFA applications. After I accepted Michigan — which came with a partial scholarship, by the way — they needed my official mailing address. So I put on the form my address in Bath, but also enclosed a note stating that all correspondence should continue to be sent to the Brunswick address I’d been using. Of course, my father discovered it. But being the truly manipulative man he was he kept this knowledge from me for weeks. Then, one evening, as I was about to head down to Brunswick and a weekend with Sarah, he asked if I could step into his office for a moment. Once seated in the chair opposite his desk, he began to talk in this ultra-low voice that he switched into whenever he was angry, whenever he wanted to be ruthless and menacing.

‘“I know everything,” he told me. “I know about your plans to go to Michigan and pursue a useless degree in writing. I know about your relationship with that married harpy down in Brunswick. I know all about the fact that she is planning to move to Ann Arbor with you. I know all about her pederast husband. I know the name of his boyfriend at Harvard. And I know if word of all this got around the community it would profoundly harm our family name and that of our family firm.”

‘I said nothing during all this — though I started to feel that dewy chill which accompanies fear. I couldn’t help but wonder if Dad’s friend, the cop, hadn’t done a little detective work himself on my father’s behalf. The fact that he knew so much about Sarah slammed home the point that he had quite a dossier put together. And remember — in the late 1970s homosexuality was still somewhat closeted. As Dad put it:

‘“Bowdoin’s the sort of liberal-minded place that doesn’t care about such things. But the man is still untenured. Think what will happen if word gets around about his wife and her very young twenty-three-year-old lover, and the fact that the professor is living most weekends with another man. well, it might not deny him tenure, but it will certainly be great newspaper copy, won’t it? And if you think the college wants that kind of publicity. ”

‘At that point I stood up and told my father he was a bastard. He just smiled and said that if I walked out of the door now I would never be allowed back, that I was effectively dead to him and to my mother. My reply? “So be it.” I walked out his door, my father raising his voice just a bit to tell me: “You’ll be back here, begging my forgiveness, in a week.”

‘My mother, as it turned out, was standing outside his office door — having clearly been primed by my father to be there, and to hear everything. She had tears in her eyes — my mom, who never showed an iota of emotion. And she clearly was very thrown by all that she had just heard.

‘“Don’t do this to us,” she hissed at me, choking back this terrible sob. “You are being ensnared by a man-eater. You will destroy yourself.”

‘But I pushed by her and kept walking.

‘“This will kill me,” she cried as I headed out the front door. I was now on autopilot. I remember getting into my car and driving at high speed to Brunswick. And falling, punch-drunk, into Sarah’s house. And telling her everything that happened. And Sarah stopping me at one point to give me a glass of Scotch. And listening to the whole terrible emotional blackmail story in silence. And then coming over to me and putting her arms around me and saying: “Your real life begins now. Because you have finally walked away from that third rate tyrant.”

‘I didn’t sleep that night. I was wracked by the worst sort of guilt. I also worried enormously that my father would make good on his threat and expose us all. Sarah reassured me, telling me she would be talking to her husband the next day and that there would be a very robust fight-back should my father make good on his promise of trying to destroy the two of them.

‘That did reassure me. But in the days that followed this rupture I felt something close to deep depression. The exhilaration of standing up to that repellent man was overshadowed by the realization that I had essentially cut the bridge between myself and my parents, that I was now an orphan. Sarah saw the effect this was having on me — and suggested that I might want to speak to someone professionally about all this. Copeland Men don’t go spilling their guts to some therapist, is what I remember thinking at the time — and how absurd was that? I was resolute about moving forward. I was completely frightened. Even though I now had time on my hands — as I no longer had any gainful employment and it was another four months before we headed to Michigan — I found myself unable to do what I should have been doing during this difficult interregnum, which was writing. I was blocked. The words wouldn’t come. Total creative impotence. It was as if the old man had put a curse on me, willing me to be unable to do the one thing that I knew would get me away from his tentacles. Truth be told, a creative block comes from within. Some writers have worked through the most appalling stuff. Me — a rank beginner? I allowed myself to be cowed into a block of major proportions.

‘Then came the coup de grвce. My mother made good on her threat. No, she didn’t die. But she did suffer a major stroke. So major that she lost the capacity to speak and was catatonic for over three weeks. It was my father who called me with the news. He was crying, and the bastard never cried. He told me to hurry to Maine Medical, as she might die that night, that he needed me there, that he needed me. I felt something akin to horror. I’d caused this. I’d killed her. Sarah kept telling me this was a distortion — that strokes are not caused by emotional distress, and anyway, wasn’t it my damn father who had caused all this distress? So to now be running back to him.

‘Of course she wasn’t trying to stop me from seeing my mother. She was just warning me of what was going to befall me if I accepted my father’s embrace. “He’ll weep on your shoulder and tell you he loves you and that he was wrong to cast you out. Then he’ll beg you to come back ‘just for a little while’, to put graduate school on hold for a year. Once you’re back you’ll never be free of his clutches again. He’ll see to that — and you will tragically go along with all this, even though you know it’s self-entombing — even though one of the terrible results of this decision will be that you’ll lose me.”

‘As always Sarah said all this in the most preternaturally calm voice. But I was so overwhelmed by the terrible blow dealt to my mother — and still convinced that I had pulled the cerebral trigger which had leveled her — that I raced down to Maine Medical and fell into my father’s outstretched arms.

‘Being such a profoundly well-read woman, Sarah had a huge understanding of subtext. Especially the sort of subtext which is anchored to the worst sort of emotional blackmail. Everything she predicted came true. Within a week I was back at the firm. Within two weeks I had written to Michigan, asking for a twelve-month deferment owing to my mother’s illness. Within three weeks Sarah wrote me a letter. She was very much someone who didn’t like melodramatic finales and preferred the nineteenth-century epistolary approach to the end of a love affair. And I remember her exact words: “This is the beginning of a great grief for both of us. Because this was love. And because this was an opportunity that would have changed everything. Trust me, you will rue this decision for the rest of your life.”’

Silence. I reached out and took his other free hand. But he pulled away from me.

‘Now you feel sorry for me,’ he said.

‘Of course I do. But I also understand.’

‘What? That I was a coward? That I allowed myself to be blackmailed into a life I didn’t want by a man who always needed to hobble me? That not a day goes by when I don’t think about Sarah and what should have been? That only now, all these years after the event, I’m finally getting back to writing, and only because my damnable father finally died a year ago? That I feel I’ve wasted so much of this opportunity that is life? Especially as, four years after Sarah, a young, quiet woman named Muriel came to work for us in the firm. I knew from the start that she was somewhat reserved and certainly didn’t share much of my bookish interests. But still she was relatively attractive and seemingly kind and genuinely interested in me. “Good wife material,” as my father put it. I think I married Muriel to please the bastard. But there was never any way I could actually please the bastard. The tragedy is, I secretly knew this truth about my father from the age of thirteen onwards. And now listen to me, sounding like a self-pitying—’

‘You are hardly self-pitying. You just made choices that were fueled by guilt and a sense of obligation. Just as I did.’

He looked directly at me.

‘I don’t have a marriage,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had one for years.’

He didn’t have to tell me more — or to underscore the subtext of that comment. I too was so conversant with this territory: the slow, quiet death of passion; the complete loss of urgency and desire; the sense of distance that accompanied occasional moments of intimacy; the intense loneliness that had installed itself on my side of the bed. and, no doubt, on his as well.

‘I know all about that,’ I heard myself telling Richard, realizing that another forbidden frontier had just been traversed.

Silence.

‘May I ask you something?’ I said.

‘Anything.’

‘Sarah. What happened to her?’

‘Within a week of me receiving that letter from her she was gone out of Brunswick. Off to Ann Arbor — as her friend did find her a job in the university library there. Divorced her husband who did get tenure at the college and is still with — in fact, married to — the Harvard professor. Around two years after she left I got a letter from her — formal, polite, somewhat friendly — telling me that she had met an academic at Michigan. He was a doctoral candidate in astrophysics, of all things. And she was seven months’ pregnant. So she did decide to take the risk again. As desperate as this news made me feel, another part of me was genuinely pleased for her. I didn’t hear from her again for another five years — when her first volume of published poetry arrived in the mail. No letter this time. Just the book from her publishers — New Directions, a very reputable house. On the dust jacket there was a biographical blurb, saying she lived in Ann Arbor with her husband and two children. So she’d become a mother twice over again.

‘Since then. we’ve dropped out of each other’s lives. But that’s not totally the truth, as I have bought her five subsequent books of poetry. I also know that she has had a professorship in the English department at Michigan for the past twenty years, and that her last volume was a finalist for the Pulitzer. She’s done remarkably well.’

Silence.

‘And she did love you,’ I said, ensuring that this statement didn’t sound like a question.

‘Yes, she did.’

I touched his hand, threading my fingers in his.

‘You’re loved now,’ I said.

Silence. He finally looked back up at me.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

Eight

NIGHT HAD SERIOUSLY fallen. It was cold outside. Cold and dark, with a low mist coming in off the nearby bay. As we stepped out onto the street I felt another jolt of doubt course through me: that reproaching voice telling me I was entering a true danger zone. Make that move and all will change. Change utterly.

What melodrama. What a good child I had always been. What a responsible young woman, an intensely responsible adult. Faithful, loyal, always there. And though I doubt that Dan has ever cheated on me, I’d come to see his isolation as a form of betrayal.

Will you listen to yourself. The ongoing endless, sad negotiation you conduct all the time. The blockades you are putting up now in the nanoseconds after you’ve just declared love for this man. A man who also knows a thing or two about lost love and self-entrapment. A man who is telling you what you are telling him: we are so right for each other. There is a chance here, if only we can both keep our nerve and.

‘Shall we head over to the water?’ he asked me. ‘Unless you want to try for the gallery?’

‘I want—’ I said.

In an instant we were in each other’s arms. Kissing passionately, wildly, grasping each other with such desire, such need. It was as if there had been, between us, a mutual detonation. A sudden eradication of all those years of longing and inhibition and frustration and emotional washout. How wonderful to feel a man’s hands on me again; a man who so clearly wanted me. As I so wanted him.

He broke away from our mad embrace for a moment, took my face in his hands, and whispered:

‘I’ve found you. I’ve actually found you.’

I felt myself tighten. But this tightness wasn’t due to any reticence or fear or some sort of ‘I wish he hadn’t said that’ reaction to what he had told me. On the contrary, that moment of internal tautness was just a direct, instantaneous confirmation of everything I was sensing; everything that was overwhelming me right now.

‘And I’ve found you,’ I whispered back, and we began to kiss again like a couple who’d been separated for an age — and had been envisaging this moment of passionate reunion for weeks, months, years.

‘We should go somewhere,’ I finally whispered.

‘Let’s get a room.’

‘Not the rooms we have at that hideous hotel.’

‘My thought entirely.’

‘Glad you’re a fellow romantic.’

‘A fellow romantic who has looked for you his entire life.’

Another long, wild kiss.

Then:

‘A cab is necessary, I think,’ he said.

Still holding me tightly with one arm he put up his hand and a taxi stopped. We climbed in the back.

‘Ninety Tremont,’ Richard told the driver. As soon as the cab took off we were kissing again wildly.

Richard’s hand had slid up the back of my turtleneck. His skin against my bare skin. I stifled a little groan of pleasure; the same pleasure that shot through me as I felt his hardness against my thigh, and the way he was grasping me with such barely controlled ardor. I wanted him in a way I had wanted nobody since.

The taxi pulled up in front of an entrance to a hotel. Within moments we were in a lobby. Chic. Modernist. Executive. Cool. My hand in his, Richard led me to the front desk. The clerk was a woman in her twenties — and studiously blasй.

‘We’d like a room,’ Richard said.

She gave us the once-over and I saw her take in the wedding rings on both our hands. Just as the way we were holding hands — and the way we had arrived off the street, without baggage, clearly in a hurry to get upstairs and slam the door on the world — must have told her: They may be married, but not to each other.

‘Do you have a reservation? she asked, all disinterested.

‘Nope,’ Richard said.

‘Then I’m afraid the only thing I can offer you is our King Executive Suite. But it’s seven hundred and ninety-nine dollars per night.’

I could see Richard try not to blanch at the price. Certainly I was appalled at the cost. It was almost one week’s salary for me.

‘We can go elsewhere. or even back to the airport hotel,’ I whispered in his ear.

Richard just kissed me, then reached into his pocket and brought out his wallet.

‘We’ll take the suite,’ he told the clerk, slapping his credit card down on the countertop.

Two minutes later we were in an elevator, heading to the top floor. My hand was still in his, our gazes firmly locked. But we had both fallen silent. Desire and fear: that’s what was so engulfing me. But the longing, the immense carnal need, was shoving whatever dread I was feeling away. I wanted him. I wanted him now.

The elevator arrived on the top floor. We followed a hallway down to a large set of double doors. Richard used the key card. There was a telltale click. He pulled me towards him. We fell into the room.

I took in very little of my immediate surroundings, except for the fact that the suite was capacious, the bed was in an adjoining room, the lights were preset low. From the moment the door shut behind us we were locked in an unrestrained embrace, and falling backwards into the bedroom, and pulling each other’s clothes off, and kissing wildly, and tumbling together headlong into the sort of unbridled passion that, if you are lucky, you have experienced once or twice in your life — and which might just be the closest thing to raw love imaginable.

Time meant nothing now. All that mattered was the two of us together on this bed, submerged in each other, silently overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all.

And then, in a moment of quietude afterwards, he took my face in my hands and whispered:

‘Everything has changed. Everything.’

Sometimes the truth is a wondrous thing.