Five Days

One

LOVE.

I woke with the dawn. The room was dark, festooned with shadow. Early-morning light creased in from the drawn curtains. Though I had only been asleep for a few incidental hours — sleep finally overtaking us in the wee small hours of the morning after hours of making extraordinary love — I felt wildly, profoundly awake. And wildly, profoundly in love.

Is this what’s meant by a coup de foudre? That huge overwhelming realization that you have finally met the man of your life, that individual for whom you were destined? Years ago, I thought that man was Eric. But one thing had struck me so forcibly over the past twenty-four hours: the Eric I so cherished and adored was, like me, such a kid when we came together. What did we really know about ourselves or each other? Everyone is, I suppose, a work in progress up until the day they are no longer part of the world. But when you’re nineteen you are still so unformed. Still so deeply naive (even though you do your absolute best to convince yourself otherwise). But you really know very little about life’s larger profundities. And even if you have — as I did — experienced the worst sort of loss at such an early stage of adulthood, your deeper existential understanding of loss won’t gain purchase until you have reached the halfway point of your temporal existence. It is then that you start to reflect on everything still not achieved, everything that underwhelms, everything that gives your life the undercurrent of an ongoing letdown. And it all congeals to remind you that time is now a diminishing commodity, that standing still (though the easier option) had rendered you static. And you quietly tell yourself: Life must be grabbed.

But then you throw up manifold excuses for staying put, accepting the cards dealt, telling yourself: Things could be far worse.

Until, out of nowhere — at a moment for which you are not prepared, in a situation which is so not designed to be conducive to such things — you meet a man who changes everything for you. And within twenty-four hours.

Love.

And the man in question.

I think it was the moment we started trading synonyms that I began to fall for him. And the way he told the story of his son without an ounce of self-pity. Then showing me the place he wanted to buy on Commonwealth Avenue. That’s when I knew. Standing in front of his future place, his new life, I understood the subtext behind this side trip. And just a few hours ago — when we were finally thinking about getting up after the evening in bed, entwined with each other, sharing the sort of intimacy that I never considered possible in my life — he took my face in his hands and said those extraordinary words:

‘Everything has changed. Everything.’

After I remarked that the truth was occasionally rather extraordinary he then said:

‘When I showed you the apartment today this crazy idea was rattling around my head: Laura and I will move here together. Of course I didn’t dare articulate such a thought at the time. Because I had no idea then if you were feeling what I was feeling. And because—’

‘I’ll move to Boston with you tomorrow,’ I heard myself saying. As soon as that statement was out of my mouth I didn’t have a stab of regret. Or a moment thereafter when I thought: Are you insane, uttering such a drastic, life-altering comment like that. especially as you have only known this man a little more than twenty-four hours?

But the truth was, I now possessed the sort of certainty that I had never thought possible. This certainty was as bemusing as it was absolute. Just as the rational side of my brain was telling me: You are convincing yourself of a future after just a day together. But this ultra-cautious voice was trumped by an equally logical voice, reminding me: What Richard said is veracity itself — everything has changed.

I’ll move to Boston with you tomorrow.

That wasn’t wishful thinking. That was a declaration.

Love.

We were both so apprehensive at first. Once in bed, desire was initially checkmated by fear. Richard was so apologetic, clearly mortified. I didn’t mouth all the usual clichйs — It happens to all men at some juncture. the less you think about it the more likely it will happen. I just kissed him deeply and told him I loved him. And he told me he loved me. And we talked, in hushed voices, lying face to face, about how lonely life had been for both of us and how what we both wanted was a chance. A chance at love. Real love. It might not be the answer to all of life’s complexities, all the struggles within. But it would be. a chance. And what I have so longed for, what Richard said he has so yearned to find. That prospect of possibility. Of a happier life.

Then we began to kiss even more deeply and passionately. Within moments he was inside me, fear having been banished. The sense of completeness was so immense. I had only slept with two men prior to Richard. I so remember the initial virginal awkwardness with Eric, and the way Dan and myself were, at first, clumsy — and how our sex life settled into a pleasant routine, but largely devoid of anything approaching real passion, real intimacy. But once Richard had entered me, once we began to move together — our bodies immediately, instinctively, attuned to what became, at once, a shared rhythm — the delirious sensuality of it all was heightened by an even more overwhelming sense of fusion.

Love.

I buried my face in his shoulder the first time I climaxed. And was astounded when I climaxed again just a few minutes later. Richard was determined not to rush things (this too was new for me) — and held off for such a long time. And when he came the shudder that ran through him, through us, was accompanied by another declaration of love.

Love.

When we finally got out of bed, slipping into the hotel bathrobes, it was late. Dinner was needed. We ordered room service. Richard also asked for a bottle of champagne. Part of me wanted to say, ‘Isn’t this all costing a small fortune?’ Almost reading my mind, Richard tempered this with the comment:

‘You have to toast a new life with champagne.’

Over dinner we couldn’t stop talking. About how we had both thought such happiness was beyond our reach, outside of the lives we were living.

‘We are all so absurd, aren’t we?’ I told Richard. ‘Always slouching towards some sort of Bethlehem where we hope to find a measure of peace within which we can act out our lives.’

‘“Slouching towards Bethlehem”. My dream was to fall in love with a woman who could quote Yeats. My dream came true.’

‘And you have fulfilled every dream imaginable for me.’

‘Even if you have no idea how I live my life? As in, I could be a complete slob.’

‘And so could I.’

‘I tend to doubt that,’ he said.

‘You’re right about that. And I would be very surprised to learn that you are all over the place when it comes to things domestic.’

‘Would that be a deal breaker for you?’

‘Nothing would change my love for you.’

‘That’s a dangerous statement. I mean, say I was part of some strange religious cult? Or if I was an amateur taxidermist?’

‘Your imaginative flair is impressive. But even if you were stuffing gerbils in your spare time—’

‘Gerbils?’ I said, laughing. ‘Why gerbils?’

‘They’ve always struck me as a profoundly useless rodent.’

‘And therefore worthy of taxidermy?’

‘So you do have a flair for the absurd.’

‘Like you, sir. Just like you.’

And he leaned over and kissed me.

We ate the dinner. We drank the champagne. We talked, talked, talked. I learned all about his childhood. How his father insisted on him joining the Boy Scouts and forced him to attend a military boarding school for two years — a hateful experience — and how he had a nervous breakdown after a few months and was sent home.

‘This is something I never discussed with anyone — and even never told Muriel about it. I was so ashamed of it all. But that place — it was like a prison camp. I begged my mother to talk Dad out of sending me there — that is, after my father refused to entertain my pleas that I was not military school material. But my mother never went against Dad’s rule of law. “You’ll just have to get through it,” was her statement to me. But I knew I simply wouldn’t get through it. Before Christmas rolled around, the endless drill formations and six a.m. reveries and the hazing and mean-spiritedness of the place finally did my head in. I was found by one of my fellow cadets, crying uncontrollably in a bathroom. Instead of getting help he ran off and got six other cadets. They gathered around me and began to taunt me. Calling me a sissy, a baby, all that wonderful macho American stuff which idiots in packs perpetrate against anyone who is perceived to be different or weak.’

‘You’re hardly a weak man,’ I said.

‘The truth is, I have always been weak when it has come to the voice of authority. Had I not been weak I would have stayed with Sarah. Had I not been weak I would have quit my father’s business years ago. Had I not been weak I would have left Muriel. ’

‘But you’re leaving her now. And you were leaving her even before I came into your life. Just as you started writing again — and you got the first new story you wrote in years published. All that sounds anything but weak to me.’

‘But I hate the fact that I was so compliant for years.’

‘You don’t think I hate myself for being equally acquiescing — especially when it came to making decisions that were counter-intuitive? Trust me, I am the poster girl for weakness and self-sabotage.’

‘But look at how you got your son through his breakdown. God knows I wish I’d had a parent like you when I went under.’

‘How did you get yourself out of it?’

‘I had no choice but to somehow shake it off. My father threatened me with a psychiatric hospital if I didn’t, as he put it, “snap out of it”. But we were talking about your strength. And you conveniently changed the subject.’

‘I still don’t think myself strong, forceful.’

‘You’ve never trusted yourself, right?’

‘What makes you say that?’ I asked, a little unnerved by the accuracy of this observation.

‘It takes a self-doubter to know a self-doubter. And I have wasted so much energy, so many years, thanks to my own profound lack of self-assurance, of any belief whatsoever in my ability. Just like you.’

‘But, hang on, at least you have a creative talent. Whereas I have nothing like that. I can shoot pictures of people’s insides, and that’s about it.’

‘And now I really do think you are engaging in the worst form of self-deprecation. You have hinted how all the radiologists you work with so rate you. And how you can usually work out a diagnosis at first sight of a pattern or shadow on a scan or X-ray.’

‘That’s just a certain technical know-how.’

‘No, sorry, that’s a talent. And it’s a talent that very few people possess. And one which you should salute yourself for having.’

‘It’s hardly creative.’

‘Define “creative”.’

‘Inventive, imaginative, visionary, inspired, talented, accomplished, artistic. ’

‘And how about original, ingenious, resourceful, clever, adept, adroit, skilled? You don’t think yourself adept, adroit, skilled?’

I just shrugged.

‘I’ll take that as a “yes”,’ he said. ‘You are creative at your work.’

‘I’ve not always been adept, adroit, skilled.’

‘I’m also sure you’ve never been told enough just how extraordinary you are.’

‘There’s a reason I’m in this room with you. There’s a reason I did something tonight I never thought I could actually do — sleep with another man while still married. The fact that I have fallen in love with you. that is to do with you, not my husband. But had there been a marriage still there — a sense of shared destiny, of love and support, of proper intimacy, everything you mentioned before — I would not be here. But I am so happy to be here. Because I never thought this possible for me. Because you too are extraordinary.’

‘Extraordinary? Me?’ He shook his head. ‘I am vin ordinaire. All right, I know a thing or two about words. I have written two published works of very short fiction. And I still like to lose myself in the Republic of Letters. But beyond that. I am a fifty-five-year-old man who sells insurance.’

‘And you accuse me of self-abasement? You are an amazing conversationalist. You have a fantastic take on what can be broadly described as life and art. You have passion — which, trust me, is something you don’t bump into every day. And that passion. well, the biggest surprise was. ’

Restraint and modesty suddenly took charge of my vocal cords. But, to my surprise, I shook them off and said, in a near-whisper:

‘I have never made love like that before.’

Richard reached for my hand, entwining his fingers within mine.

‘Nor have I,’ he said. ‘Never.’

‘Pure love.’

‘Yes. Pure love.’

‘And making love when you are madly in love. ’

‘. is sublime.’

‘Kiss me.’

Moments later we were back in bed. This time the passion built so slowly, so acutely, that the final release had me blindsided by its intensity and its immense amorousness. Pure love. With a magnitude and a benevolence that was so intoxicating, so potent, so enabling. As we were clinging to each other afterward Richard whispered:

‘I’m never letting you go. Never.’

‘I’ll hold you to that. Because — and this is another first for me — I actually think everything is possible now.’

‘It is. Absolutely, totally possible.’

‘But when you’ve lived for years without that belief. ’

‘That’s behind us now.’

And we talked on about how we had both, in our own distinct ways, given up on the notion of change; how romantic hope was a concept we had both dismissed as outside the possibility of future experience; and how now.

Everything is possible. Everything.

We finally succumbed to sleep around two in the morning, his arm enfolded around me, the aura of security, of safety, of invulnerability so pronounced. When I woke before dawn and sat up and reached out and stroked the head of my beloved, all the miraculous discombobulation of the last twenty-four hours was overshadowed by one simple, overmastering observation: my life had irrevocably changed.

Richard stirred awake.

‘Hello, my love,’ he whispered.

‘Hello, my love,’ I whispered back.

And he was deep within me moments later.

Afterward we both nodded off again, waking sometime after nine. I stood up, fetched a bathrobe, found a coffee maker in the living room of this vast suite — and returned some minutes later to the bedroom with two cups of freshly brewed Java. Richard was up, having just opened the curtains.

‘I don’t know how you take your coffee,’ I said.

‘Black works.’

‘Great minds think alike. and prefer black coffee.’

We kissed. I handed Richard a cup and we both slid back under the covers. The coffee was surprisingly good. Sun was streaming through the window.

‘It looks to be another perfect day,’ I said.

‘And I’m not returning to Maine tonight.’

‘Nor am I,’ I said, immediately considering my work schedule tomorrow — and how there were, as of Thursday, only two scans scheduled for Monday morning. Which meant if I could call my colleague Gertie this afternoon she could probably cover for me in the morning. And as for having to explain to Dan why I wouldn’t be home tonight.

No, I didn’t want to consider all that just now. I wanted to think about something I never thought I would be considering two days ago: a future in which happiness played a central role. And Richard — again uncannily reading my thoughts — took my hand in his and said:

‘Let’s talk about how and when we’ll move to Boston.’

A future. The future. Our future.

Love. An actual concrete reality.

Two

PLANS. WE NOW had plans.

Over breakfast, we could not stop talking about the project that was our life together. The more we discussed — throwing out ideas about how this huge change would be put into motion, the practical details, the larger overreaching personal concerns — I couldn’t help but marvel at the way we so easily bounced ideas off each other; the sheer inventive energy that existed between us; the way we were so much on the same emotional page.

Inventive energy. That was what was lacking within me for years. I was diligent at work, diligent at home, always engaged with my children, always trying to put a brave face on things with Dan, and using the world of books as my imaginative escape hatch from the humdrum. But there was never a sense of passionate engagement with life’s larger possibilities.

And now.

Plans. We now had definitive plans.

‘Say I call the realtor in around fifteen minutes?’ Richard asked me.

‘Ten o’clock on a Sunday morning? Won’t he mind?’

‘Like all salesmen, he always needs to be closing. The apartment is currently vacant. I know I can get my builder guy in Dorchester to do a structural survey on it this week. All going well we can close on the apartment in about three weeks. A new kitchen, bathroom, paint job, and the stripping and re-staining of the floors. that should take about two months tops. So we could probably move in sometime in January, or February at the outside.’

‘Well, I will get onto this medical employment service group I heard about here in Boston,’ I said. ‘They seem to be able to usually find placements for radiographic technicians in the area. Once I have secured something I’ll probably have to give at minimum one month’s notice at the hospital in Damariscotta. They won’t be happy — because there is actually a shortage of technologists in Maine. Still, they’ve had eighteen years of my life. I will be due around five months’ salary when I leave, as I haven’t taken enough vacation time over the years. Imagine that. I only allowed myself two of the three weeks’ vacation I was granted every year. What was I thinking?’

‘We feel guilty about vacations in this country. Something to do with our Puritan roots — and our fear that, while we’re away, someone will come along and replace us. Or, in my case, that the business will go elsewhere.’

‘Well, I am determined in the future to actually take proper vacations and go to interesting places with you. Just as I’d like to propose that I use half of that five months’ back pay from the hospital to buy furniture for our apartment. ’

‘Our apartment. I like that. But I can certainly cover the furniture. Anyway, you’ll still have Ben’s college tuition to pay, then Sally will also be starting college next year. ’

He was right, of course — especially since Dan would now be having to get by on his salary alone, which, at $15K per year after taxes, would barely cover his daily living expenses. At least the house was virtually paid off. If I could get around $85K per year in Boston — that’s the usual salary for technologists at big city hospitals — I could cover Ben and Sally’s day-to-day needs, with their tuitions being covered (as Ben’s was now) by financial aid from the U Maine system. Once I found a job at a Boston area hospital I was pretty sure I could negotiate a four/three working week deal — in which I put in four ten-hour days in a row, then took the next three off. I’d move out of the family home and probably ask Lucy if I could take over the apartment she has over her garage — which she usually rents out, but which is conveniently empty right now, and which she would probably let me have for a reasonable sum from now until next August. Then what I’d propose to Dan would be — Sally spends four days per week with him, then three days with me. Lucy’s apartment has two bedrooms. If Sally was insistent about returning to her room at the family home every night I’d still be around Damariscotta half the week for her.

I mentioned all this to Richard — and also noted that, per usual, my head was focussed on practicalities.

‘But a momentous change like this involves vast numbers of practicalities,’ he said. ‘And naturally you are going to have to be back and forth to Maine for Sally and to see Ben. Just as I will need to find an apartment in Bath. I’ll have to be there for business a few days a week. In fact, if Sally decides she doesn’t want to spend half the time at your apartment, you can stay in my new place in Bath.’

‘But then where would I see Sally?’ I said, knowing that Dan would not want me around the house after I moved out to live with another man.

‘You’re right. You’ll still need a place of your own in Damariscotta until she goes to college. My hope is that I can find a buyer in the next year for my insurance company, sell up, and try to write full-time. I also know of a guy who teaches business at Babson College here in Boston, and who told me they’re always on the lookout for adjunct professors. I might throw my rйsumй his way. Maybe they’ll need someone to teach actuarial science. It could bring in a little extra income, though I think I can get a good price for my company. And if I give Muriel the house outright I think she’ll have a hard time demanding a share of the company.’

‘How will she take you leaving her?’ I asked, knowing that I was venturing into complex territory.

‘I think she’ll be shocked, furious. But she knows that the marriage has been moribund for years, that we have been living very separate lives. Still, that’s been the status quo. I am about to change all that. And she will not be happy. But I’ll be happy.’

I reached for his hand.

‘And I’ll be happy,’ I said. ‘Beyond happy.’

‘And your husband will be.?’

‘Shocked, furious, etc. But we too have been adrift for years. He’ll probably tell me that he’ll change. But it’s too late for all that now. My life is, from this point on, with you.’

His fingers tightened around mine.

‘Life can be amazing,’ he said.

‘If you meet the right person at the right moment. Timing is everything. I was only asked to go to this conference ten days ago. Had I not said yes. ’

‘And I was due to see some clients in New Hampshire on Friday afternoon. The fact that they cancelled, the fact that I got to the hotel precisely when you did. ’

‘The fact that you started up a conversation with me while we were in line. ’

‘The fact that we both ended up at that movie house in Cambridge. ’

‘And I only decided to see that film when I saw an ad in the Boston Phoenix, and happened to be around the corner from the movie house at the time. ’

‘The fact that I didn’t show up until a few minutes later, when the lights were already dark. ’

‘Life is so predicated on the convergence of so many small details that land us in a certain place at a certain time. But happenstance doesn’t transform into anything unless choices are made, decisions rendered. Such as the fact that my initial private reaction to your offer of a drink after the movie was: No way. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I simply had never, in all my married years, gone out with a man I’d just met for a drink.’

‘And until last night I’ve always, like you, been faithful.’

‘That’s admirable.’

‘On a certain level, perhaps. But fidelity only works if there’s love. Muriel and I haven’t been in love for. well, knowing what I felt all those years ago with Sarah and, most tellingly, knowing what I feel now with you, I must ask myself if Muriel and I were ever really in love?’

‘It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself since yesterday about me and Dan. The thing is, we’re hardly unique. You scratch most marriages, you discover that people chose their spouse for all sorts of highly compromised reasons, and that they projected onto that other person what they believed they needed — or, worse yet, deserved — at a given moment.’

‘Which is what makes this, us, so singular, so extraordinary. I still find myself asking myself if this really happened. Can I really have met the woman of my life?’

My fingers tightened around his again.

‘The man of my life.’

‘It’s astonishing,’ he said.

‘And just a little crazy.’

‘Nothing wrong with some long-overdue romantic madness.’

‘And so say all of us. But I know that, back in Damariscotta, people will talk. Especially when word gets around, people will accuse me of being irresponsible, immature, having a whopper-sized midlife crisis. And Sally’s classmates — having heard my news from their parents — will, no doubt, say the usual hateful things that teenage girls sling at each other. I will have to talk to Sally about all this — and what she might expect to encounter in school after my news is public.’

‘And what will you tell her?’

‘That life never operates according to plan. That love is the most longed for, yet most mysterious, of emotions. That I met you and, within twenty-four hours, knew that I loved you profoundly. That she knows her father and I have been rudderless for years. That I have a chance here — a real chance at happiness. And I am taking it. But that she will not, in the process, lose me. That I will still always be there for her.’

‘How do you think she’ll react to all that?’

‘Horribly. Especially since her first concern will be that overriding adolescent girl worry — I’m going to be made to look stupid. I am going to be the subject of public ridicule thanks to my love-gooey Mom. I can hear her already telling me how I have ruined her life. Not because I am leaving her father — but because she’s going to be taunted and tormented by her fellow cheerleaders. But Sally will survive this. Dan will survive this.’

‘And Ben?’

‘My wonderfully quirky and original son will probably say something ironic and knowing like, “Way to go, Mom.” I think he’ll like you as well.’

‘Even if I am not the bohemian he aspires to be.’

‘You write. You’ve changed your life. You love his mother and make her supremely happy. Trust me, he’ll be cool with all that.’

‘You’re so lucky having a son like that — talented, clearly sensitive and emotionally smart.’

I put my hand on his arm and squeezed it, saying:

‘I know you’re thinking about Billy right now.’

‘I’m always thinking about Billy. The fact is, there is nothing I can do about Billy anymore. His future is in the hands of the state. He is now so thoroughly institutionalized — and so personally lost — that I can’t see him rejoining his family, let alone society, for the foreseeable future. And yes, that tears away at me all the time. But I’ve also learned to accept that there are certain situations that cannot be put back together again, that are beyond redemption, let alone a happy ending. Like my marriage. And alas, like Billy.’

‘You know you can count on me when it comes to helping you through anything. And you must always tell me everything when it comes to Billy or anything else in your life.’

‘Just as you know, when it comes to Ben and Sally, I am always with you. And I certainly hope Ben manages to continue to lift himself out of that bad place he found himself in.’

‘Curiously, I am coming to believe that his breakdown might mark the beginning of the makings of a much stronger, more independent young man. I think, like all of us, he had the illusion that someone else can fill in all the psychic gaps and holes within you. But what I sense is that, in the wake of his collapse, he’s started to realize perhaps the toughest and most important lesson you have to learn as an adult is that no one but yourself is responsible for your happiness. Just as you are not ultimately responsible for anyone else’s happiness.’

‘And the other great truth behind what you’ve just said is that you have to want to be happy in order to be happy,’ Richard said. ‘I think, for years, I simply accepted my domestic unhappiness as my due — part of the infernal compromise I made. And now. ’

‘Now we can do this all differently. Now we can rewrite the rules of our respective lives.’

It did somewhat bemuse me, hearing myself say such things out loud. Just as I was so conscious of the hugely direct way Richard and I were expressing our love for each other. ‘I have never made love like that before.’ Take it out of context and you think it’s this side of treacly. But isn’t that one of the great wonders of falling in love; the way you start articulating emotional truths in such an unabashed, un-self-censored way? My father once admitted to me after my mother died that he had always had great difficulties telling her, ‘I love you’; that even though theirs was a good marriage, he rarely could bring himself to make that sweeping, crucial declaration on even an irregular basis. Dan was cut from the same reticent material. (Did I subconsciously choose him because he so mirrored my father’s emotional distance?) That, in turn, made the impassioned articulation of feeling between myself and Richard so revelatory. Here was a man who wanted to tell me how much he loved me at every opportunity.

‘“Life can change on a dime,” as my grandfather used to say. Far too much, I should add. But still. how to explain all this?’

‘Love. in all its manifest indisputability.’

‘Now you are showing off,’ I said, laughing. ‘But I still like the sentiment. Especially as it is so true.’

Richard glanced at his watch.

‘Just coming up to ten a.m.,’ he said. ‘I’m going to call the realtor and make the offer on our apartment.’

‘You are amazing, Mr Copeland.’

‘Not as amazing as you.’

He went into the bedroom to collect his cellphone. I used this opportunity to do something I was dreading: turning on my own phone and discovering what messages were awaiting me. I found my bag, dug out the phone, hit the power-on button, and listened while, in the next room, Richard was already speaking with the realtor. The price he would pay was two-forty-five. No negotiation. This offer was on the table for forty-eight hours, no more. His tone was perfectly pleasant throughout — but he was also making it very clear that he wanted to close this thing fast and with as little encumbrance as possible. What struck me so forcibly was the confidence in his voice, the sense of being reasonable, yet authoritative. Which also struck me as immensely attractive and reassuring.

There was another thought behind all this: The man I love is buying an apartment for us. Yesterday he talked about moving to Boston in ‘the next life’. Today the next life has actually begun.

An apartment for us.

Us. What a lovely pronoun.

Bing. The telltale tone informing me I had text messages.

Actually just two messages. Both from Dan. The first time-marked 6:08 last night:

Did I feel a stab of guilt when I read this? Yes and no. Yes because, yes, I had stepped outside my marriage and had slept with another man. No because Dan’s text was just another attempt to put a band-aid on what had been a slow, but steady, bleeding dry of any emotional connection between us. And it made me think: A man I just met two days ago can’t stop telling me that he loves me, and my husband of over twenty years can’t ever bring himself to make that declaration. Because he truly doesn’t feel that.

The next text from Dan was marked 10:09 last night.

Is everything OK? Actually, falling in love has made everything beyond OK. It has changed the landscape of my existence. But if I indicated now that ‘we need to have a serious talk’ — a hint that things between us had, as far as I was concerned, reached the endgame phase — I knew that he might start bombarding me with calls or texts today. And I wanted this day with my love to be free of such interference. There would be seriously trying days ahead with Dan; a rite of painful passage I’d have to negotiate, and help him through as well (though I already sensed that his initial shock would be usurped by rage when he knew that I was in love with another man). But for now.

Hi there. Girls’ night out yesterday evening with three radiologists. A little too much wine ingested. Am suffering bad head this morning. Remember my friend Sandy Nelson? Working at Mass General in Radiology. She’s asked me over for dinner to her home in Somerville tonight.

In the recent past I would have read through even the most benign text to Dan several times over before dispatching it — because I had become so super-conscious of my husband’s ability to find grievance in even the most seemingly straightforward of words. But this morning I just hit the ‘send’ button on my phone, while hearing Richard next door tell the realtor:

‘So if you can get a yes from the seller today I can come in and see you at your Mass Ave office tomorrow at nine a.m. to sign the paperwork, and arrange my bank to transfer the deposit — a deposit that will be refundable if my surveyor finds something very wrong with the place. But that’s not going to happen, right? OK, I’ll keep my phone on this morning and afternoon. But tell the guy, the offer is non-negotiable. And as you know, I’m a cash buyer.’

Bing. A new text on my phone. As expected, from Dan:

Leave it to Dan to think about the extra cost. But I decided to put his mind to rest:

As I dispatched this, a thought crossed my mind: might Dan somehow try to contact Sandy during the course of the evening? Then again, he hadn’t seen Sandy in years — we’d first met when we were both doing the radiographic technicians course at Southern Maine Community College — and she dropped in to see us with her then new husband (whom she subsequently divorced) once thereafter in 2002. We’d kept in touch since then by email — and I knew she was now living with a new man in Somerville. But if Dan couldn’t get through to me on my cellphone — that is, if he even tried to get through — would he call Information for Somerville and try to find Sandy’s number? Maybe I should give her a call and ask her to cover for me just in case. But I’d then have to explain everything to a woman I consider more an acquaintance than a friend. Maybe I am being wildly over-cautious here. Maybe this is the reason why I am so glad that Richard and I have cut straight to the chase, and are starting a life immediately together. No months of sneaking around. No cavalcade of lies, or the need to invent scenarios to cover our tracks. Just the blunt truth: I’ve fallen in love. Our marriage is over. I’m moving out.

But in the meantime, there were certain essential immediate things to take care of. Such as.

A fast text to my colleague Gertie: could she cover my morning shift tomorrow?

Bing. Gertie texted me right back:

Great news. This meant I wouldn’t have to rush back early tomorrow morning. More time with Richard. I texted straight back:

And then there was a very important text I needed to send to Lucy:

Well, that was being all but direct. But Lucy was my best friend. And I needed a best friend to talk to before I dropped the bombshell on Dan.

Bing. My luck was holding when it came to instant responses.

Intrigue. How I wanted to text back: It’s not intrigue. It’s the love story of the century! Prudence stopped me from such rashness. Anyway, Lucy would know the entire saga tomorrow. So I just wrote:

All will be revealed when we meet. You’re a great friend.

Bing.

Oh God, Dan again.

Seems like you’re doing your best to stay away from home as long as you can. and who can blame you, right? I mean, who would want to come home to me? But thanks for wishing me well in the new job. Really appreciated.

Now I did feel aggrieved. This was Dan’s ongoing repertoire, his schtick. Having made reconciliatory gestures here he was again, being bad-tempered and small — and knowing so well that such behavior always disquieted me.

As I read this a coldness — one that I had always fought off in the past — took hold of me, letting me know: This is truly finished.

‘Some bad news?’ Richard asked. I looked up from my phone, trying to wipe the tension off my face, then telling myself: Why don’t you, from the outset of this new love, make a commitment towards communicating what is actually on your mind. rather than self-censoring and shoving all that you are thinking, feeling, under the proverbial carpet. So:

‘My husband is making me feel bad about spending an extra day to see an old friend in Boston. And he’s also letting me know he already hates the job he’ll be starting tomorrow.’

‘He never really saw how wonderful you are, did he?’

I shut my eyes and felt tears.

‘You lovely, lovely man,’ I said.

He came over and put his arms around me.

‘You are extraordinary,’ he said.

‘As are you. And I bet that’s something she’s never told you.’

He just shrugged. And said:

‘Does that even matter anymore?’

I kissed him. Then said:

‘You’re right. All that matters is—’

‘Us.’

We began to kiss again. Deeply this time, our hands slipping into each other’s bathrobes.

Bing. It was Richard’s cellphone. He ignored it, especially as we were both so quickly aroused. Bing. The tone again. And when it went ignored again, the actual phone then started to ring.

‘Great timing,’ Richard said under his breath.

‘Whoever it is clearly wants to speak to you.’

‘To hell with it.’

‘Take it,’ I said, thinking maybe it was some update on Billy, and he needed to be on the other end of the line.

Richard fished into his bathrobe pocket, squinted at the screen, then answered the call.

‘Oh yeah, hi there,’ he said to whoever was on the other end. ‘I didn’t expect to hear from you until. I see. that was fast. right. and?. really?. just like that?. yeah, that makes sense. well then, there we are. that’s right. see you then. and yeah, I remember this address. and a very good morning to you too.’

He ended the call, his lips pursed in a near smile.

‘Good news?’ I asked.

‘Very good news.’

‘Tell me.’

Now the part-smile became a full smile.

‘The apartment is ours.’

Three

WE GOT OUT of bed again around midday. This was such new territory for me — the constant need to be making love, to have my love deep inside me. Yes, I remember, all those years ago with Eric, the way we were always falling into bed during those first heady months of our romance. This was coupled with the discovery of sex: the wide-eyed wonder at the pleasure of all that intimate friction, of bodies electric; the sheer animalistic abandon that accompanied the act itself. Even after this initial discovery period — heightened with that overwhelming feeling of being truly in love for the first time — there was still a desire that never abated. I cannot remember a night when we didn’t make love — and there was always this infectious delight in having each other day in, day out.

With Dan. well, the sex was just that. Sex. Pleasant. Reasonable. Semi-engaged, but never infused with the sort of passion that was ever transporting. I knew this from the outset — and accepted it as cosmic payback for losing the man I so adored. And then, when I got pregnant.

But I remember holding Ben for the first time after the delivery, and crying as I saw my son, and knowing immediately that, even if this child was not made in love, my love for him would be absolute, unconditional. Just as I felt the same way when Sally arrived two years later. So the passion I have for everything to do with Ben and Sally has always counterbalanced the lack of passion in the marriage.

Richard reported to me that his own marriage was even more sexually moribund than mine; that he and his wife only ‘coupled’ (her verb of choice, he told me) two or three times a year, and that he had essentially closed down that part of his life.

And then we came together. And.

I am not very experienced in the wider world of sex. Even Lucy was shocked to learn that Eric and Dan were the only two men I had ever slept with. She herself could count eight lovers ‘before, during and after my bad marriage. and the fact that I can count them all on less than two hands makes me think I really should have been having more sex with more men at that point when it wasn’t so damn hard to meet the sort of men you want to be having sex with, rather than the nightmares who only seem to be on offer to middle-aged women living in small Maine towns’.

I had to laugh when she told me this. Just as it also fueled a larger encroaching despair I’d had for years about the lukewarm physical life I had with Dan. Until he lost his job we made love at least three nights a week. Even if it was, at best, thermal and adequate, at least it was there. But when he lost his job, his libido also went south.

Making love with Richard was nothing less than revelatory. In the three, four times we had fallen into bed since arriving here yesterday evening, the profundity of the act itself — the way it so expressed the overpowering love we had just discovered and now shared — seemed only to augment and grow every time we were entwined together. Feeling him move inside me didn’t just trigger an eruption of sensuality so far beyond anything in my past experience; it was also so palpably intimate. What was even more extraordinary was the fact that this conjoining, this total fusion, was so immediate. From the very moment he first entered me.

‘I never want to leave this bed,’ I whispered as we clung to each other afterwards.

‘Well, we can stay here all day then.’

‘There is the little problem of all our things at our respective rooms back at the God-awful hotel. Sorry to raise this dreary practicality. but won’t they want us checked out of there by midday. which is kind of now? And my car is still there.’

‘Yes, that thought did cross my mind. But I use that place all the time and know all the duty managers there. So I’ll give one of them a call in a few minutes, and see if I can negotiate a late checkout. or even offer to tip one of the maids twenty bucks if she’ll pack up everything for us. Then we can run over there and pick everything up later this afternoon.’

‘A change of clothes and a hairbrush would be welcome. But this suite is a fortune. And we certainly don’t have to stay here tonight. In fact, we could—’

‘We’re staying here tonight,’ Richard said. ‘I’ve spent far too much of my life being cautious about money. And what has such frugality finally given me?’

‘Well, it’s given you the money to buy that apartment — and change your life.’

‘True — but I should have been really living before this weekend. I’ve gone nowhere, seen so very little. Haven’t been to a concert or a play in years.’

‘But you have been reading.’

‘The cheap escape route. It’s like what Voltaire said about marriage — it’s the only adventure available for the coward.’

‘But the fact that you can quote Voltaire—’

‘Big deal.’

‘Tell me another insurance man from Bath, Maine — or anywhere else for that matter — who can do that. Anyway, now that we’ll be here, in Boston, much of the time, there’s a great orchestra here. There are great museums, good theatres. We can do all that. And here’s another thing I was going to mention earlier — all right, I will probably use around two-thirds of my overdue vacation money from the hospital to help top up Ben and Sally’s college tuitions next year. But that will still leave me maybe seven or eight thousand dollars. Why don’t we go to Paris for six weeks on that?’

‘Paris,’ he said, mouthing the word as if it was almost proscribed; the reverie he’d never dared articulate. ‘You serious?’

‘Just last week, before you turned my life upside down in the most amazing way, I spent an evening at home, looking at short-term rentals in Paris. Traveling vicariously, so to speak. We could find a very nice studio in an area like the Marais for around five hundred dollars a week. Airfares — if we book well in advance — are around six hundred each. You can eat well and reasonably in Paris. And the studio will have a kitchen. so, yes, we could do a month and a half on seven thousand. I would negotiate with whatever hospital down here took me on to ensure that I’d either have six weeks’ unpaid leave sometime during the first year — or, better yet, to push back my starting date until after Paris. In fact, if the apartment renovations might not be finished until early February we could go to France right after Christmas. ’

‘Paris,’ he said again. ‘Six weeks in Paris. I never thought that possible.’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Let’s do it then.’

I kissed him, then said:

‘Well, that was quite a difficult negotiation.’

He laughed.

‘Nothing with you is difficult,’ he said.

‘And nothing with us will ever be difficult. I know that sounds maybe like far too much wishful thinking. But the truth is we’ve both done difficult. We’ve both done circumscribed lives. And now. ’

‘The art of the possible.’

‘Exactly. In fact, that must be our credo. Those five words. The art of the possible.’

‘It’s a good modus vivendi.’

‘The best.’

Bing. A text message on my phone. I hesitated reaching for it, but Richard told me to take it. He needed to call the airport hotel and get our late checkout organized. As he disappeared into the other room with his phone, I picked up my cell and saw that Ben had written to me (spread out over four texts):

Hi Mom — still in Boston? Working flat out on new painting, and have run out of a certain azure blue I really need. Can’t be found in Maine, so I get it from an art supply place in Boston. Would cost me mucho to get it here by Tuesday. If you could pick up today and drop at Portland Museum of Art on your way home, Trevor will be there tomorrow at noon and can collect it. Sorry to be a pain. Would be doing me huge favor. You’re the best. Love — Ben

Immediately I called Ben.

‘You’re up early,’ I said when he answered on the third ring.

‘Very funny, Mom,’ he said, his voice all amused irony. ‘You evidently got my text.’

‘I’m thrilled the new painting’s coming together so brilliantly.’

‘Don’t use the word “brilliant”, please. It might jinx it. But Trevor —’ Trevor Lathrop, his visual art professor and all-purpose mentor at Farmington — ‘is rather enthusiastic. For him that’s big. Anyway, if you could get the paint. ’

‘I’m still in Boston, as I’ve decided to stay on and see an old friend tonight.’

‘And miss Dad’s middle-of-the-night send-off tomorrow to L.L.Bean’s?’ he said, his tone light, but clearly pointed.

‘I do feel guilty about that.’

‘Considering how you’ve been carrying the entire financial burden for the past two years. ’

‘It wasn’t your father’s fault that he was let go during a cutback.’

‘But it was his decision to act like an ill-tempered grump all that time. Even now. I called him last night to say hello, make a gesture and all that, and the guy asked me standard-issue questions about school and stuff, “You feelin’ OK?”, that kind of “tick the boxes with your son” conversation. then when I asked him about the new job, he got all mealy-mouthed and sullen. All I could think was: Who’s the adolescent here?’

‘You’re hardly an adolescent, Ben.’

‘I’m only beginning to understand what you’ve been dealing with for years.’

‘That’s a conversation for another time. On which note. say I dropped by to see you sometime next weekend.’

‘Here’s a better idea. I get a lift down to Portland on Saturday and we hang out for the afternoon and evening. And you can take me to dinner at that groovy Italian place we both like.’

‘It’s a date.’

‘You sound in a good place, Mom.’

‘Actually I am.’

‘Not that you’ve ever sounded like you’re in a bad place. I mean, you could give lessons about “putting a good face on things”. Still, nice to hear a hint of upbeat in your voice.’

Time to change the subject.

‘So give me all the details about the paint you need, the shop, and all that.’

Ben told me that when I got to the art supply store, just opposite Boston University on the Fenway, I was to ask for a guy named Norm ‘who’s been running this place since the nineteenth century’ and always mixed up the azure blue exactly the way Ben needed it.

‘The thing about Norm — he will never mix the paint until he has cash in hand, or a credit card number that works. And he’s only open until four p.m. today. But I’ll call him and say you’re coming. if you’re sure that’s not going to be too much hassle.’

‘You’re my son, Ben. It’s no hassle. And I can drop the paints off at the Museum of Art in Portland tomorrow.’

‘I’ll also phone Trevor and tell him to meet you there at twelve noon if that works.’

‘I’ve got the day off — so, yes, that works just fine. Give him my cell number and text me his. And I’ll text you this afternoon when I have the paint.’

‘You’re a star, Mom.’

As I put down the phone I found myself beaming. Richard came in from the next room.

‘So they’ve got a chambermaid at the other hotel, packing up both our rooms. I talked them into letting you leave your car there until tomorrow. And that phone call must have been a happy one, as you have the biggest smile imaginable on your face.’

I told him about the exchange with Ben, leaving out his comments about his father. I could see Richard again trying to get thoughts about his own son out of his head.

‘He so obviously recognizes what an amazing mother you’ve been to him.’

‘He’s quite the amazing son. And I really think — if he can keep his nerve and not give in to all that self-doubt, and can also get out of Maine for a number of years and really keep upping his game — he’s going to be important one day. Maybe even major.’

‘With you behind him. ’

‘He still has to do it all himself.’

‘Without you having to tell me anything I know that you’re the parent who’s been there for him.’

‘All I know is this — I’m the parent who needs to pick up some special paints for him this afternoon.’

I explained all the details about the particular shade of blue that this particular art supply dealer mixes up near Fenway Park, and how I had to be there by around three p.m., as the shop closes an hour later, and my son’s major new masterwork — Hey, I’m his mother — was awaiting completion.

‘Well, you clearly need to be up there at three,’ Richard said. ‘So here’s a plan. ’

We decided that, after lunch, Richard would jump the T out to the airport and I’d head up to the other side of town and pick up Ben’s paints, then we’d reconvene back here at the room around five.

But first we had a shower together, soaping each other up, kissing wildly under the cascading water, clinging to each other, promising to be always there for each other, repeating how much we loved each other, talking with an emotional freedom and openness that I had lost decades ago and never thought I would find again.

After dressing I sent a fast text to Sally:

Spending an extra day in Boston, playing hooky from the workaday world. How did the evening in Portland go? Love you — Mom

Bing. Back came the reply.

Concert was boring. Have an essay now to write on Edith Wharton. B-o-r-i-n-g. Dad says you have hangover. Cool.

My daughter the purveyor of a literary style that could best be described as ‘sullen adolescent minimalist’. I dreaded to think the volcanic reaction that would follow my revelation to her about the major upheaval that was going to change the contours of our family life. But first. there was the rest of this wonderful weekend to get through.

Richard’s phone binged a few times when we were dressing. He glanced in a cursory manner at the screen but chose to send no replies.

‘Everything OK?’ I asked.

‘Just some business stuff,’ he said. ‘I’ve got this client — has about five hardware stores in the Lewiston/Auburn area — thinks he can call me day or night when he’s got a claim on the go. The thing is, one of his warehouses burned down three weeks ago. A disgruntled employee lit the match. The guy’s still on the run. My client suffered close to four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of damage. Between ourselves, because he’s had a couple of bad years, the insurance inspectors and the cops are wondering whether he might have talked the “disgruntled employee” into playing arsonist.’

‘You are going to write this story, right?’

‘Actually, it does have a nice James M. Cain feel to it. ’

‘Especially if you could add a femme fatale to it.’

‘You amaze me,’ he said.

‘Because I know who James M. Cain is?’

‘Because you’re so insanely smart.’

I kissed him.

‘Almost as smart as you.’

He kissed me.

‘You’re smarter,’ he said.

I kissed him.

‘You’re being kind.’

He kissed me.

‘Just accurate.’

‘I so love you.’

‘I so love you.’

On the way out of the hotel Richard stopped by the front desk to tell the woman there that we’d be staying in the suite another night. She checked its availability and said: ‘No problem.’

The gods were, without question, with us. Especially as we stepped out into another dazzling autumn day. The sun incandescent. The sky devoid of clouds. A light wind cascading the fallen leaves. The city spread out before us, so welcoming, so freighted with the great possibilities. Richard took my hand as we crossed into the Common.

‘Just yesterday. ’ I said.

‘Just yesterday. ’

He didn’t have to complete the thought. Just yesterday the world was different. And today.

‘Let’s go back and look at the outside of the apartment,’ I said.

‘I’m for that.’

We walked hand in hand across the Common, talking, talking, talking. About getting down here the weekend after next to meet with Richard’s contractor friend to discuss the renovations on the apartment. And also finding out who was conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra that weekend, and trying to get seats. And yes, we would finally get to the Institute of Contemporary Arts that weekend. And we should also find out what’s going on at one of the interesting professional theater companies around town.

‘Leave all that to me,’ I said. ‘I’ll play Cultural Event Organizer.’

‘And I’ll find us the hotel and arrange the appointment with my builder friend from Dorchester, Pat Laffan. Surprise, surprise, Pat is a retired Boston Irish cop turned builder. A rather plain-spoken guy, Pat, but reasonably honest. which is rare to find in a builder.’

‘We could also start looking at furniture then. if that isn’t rushing things.’

‘I like the fact that we’re rushing things. We’re right to be rushing things.’

Ah, romantic discourse! How we both revelled in it — like two strangers who had separately thought: I’ll never master the French language, and then woke up next to each other one morning to discover they were speaking it together with a fluency and a confidence that had seemed impossible before then. How we both wanted this love. How we both knew it was so right. I wanted to gush romantic. Just as I also wanted to tell myself that the shared will to make this wonderful was so immense that we were naturally going to cohabit beautifully and deal with the usual domestic stuff with an ease and a grace that comes out of knowing what a sad marriage is like on a year-in, year-out basis.

Again Richard seemed to be reading my thoughts as he stopped and took my hands and, looking directly at me, said:

‘You know and I know we’re still figuring each other out, still wondering if this can be actually happening, and if we can truly create this life together we so want. But the truth is, absolutely. I have no doubt about it. None at all.’

‘Nor do I.’

And we kissed again.

Half an hour later we were in a restaurant on Newbury Street, having a late brunch, discussing how we would negotiate the next few complex days with our respective spouses.

‘My desire is to simply tell Dan the truth when I get home tomorrow night,’ I said. ‘As I said earlier, I know it will hit him hard. I know he will be stunned by the news, then furious. I want to just get it over with — because I don’t want to have to go through the motions of pretending that all is normal when I am longing all the time for you. But there is one major consideration here — the fact that he starts this new job tomorrow and will be exhausted from his first early-morning shift. Mind you, he will be working a four-day-on, three-day-off week, so—’

‘So why don’t you wait until Thursday evening — when he can absorb the news without having to then face work a few hours later?’

‘It’s the kinder option — not that there’s anything kind at all about this. Still, given that I work until five-thirty Tuesday through Friday of this week, and he’ll be going to bed around eight to get up at four a.m., we will be ships passing through the night for the next few days — which is a blessing. The few days means I can see my friend Lucy and start quietly moving some basic things into the apartment over her garage. So when I give him the news Friday after I come home from work I can sleep that night at Lucy’s. It also means I can tell Sally that afternoon — and not have her reeling and having to go to school the next day. If she wants to come over with me that night to Lucy’s, that’s an option. But knowing her she’ll run to her boyfriend. Which might not be a bad thing. Then I have to do the early shift on Saturday at the hospital, but plan to meet Ben late Saturday afternoon in Portland for dinner — which means I can then tell him directly. I’m pretty certain he’ll take the news a lot better than his sister. and I’m really thinking out loud here, aren’t I?’

Richard smiled and reached for my hand (we were always reaching for each other’s hand, always there to reassure each other).

‘It’s huge what we’re about to do,’ he said. ‘And it is going to hurt people with whom we’ve lived for years. So, of course you have to be considering how best to break the news in a way where it can be absorbed as best as possible. Part of me thinks that Muriel, even if she is privately knocked sideways by the news, will probably come on all cold and vindictive — which is, I’m afraid, her usual style. But that will be no bad thing. Better arctic chill than a wildfire. And if you plan to tell Dan on Friday I’ll do it the same night.’

‘Then maybe we should meet somewhere afterwards. I mean, the idea of not seeing you from tomorrow morning until Thursday. ’

‘Could you sneak away maybe Tuesday evening?’

‘Actually, that would work fine. I could tell Dan I’m having dinner with Lucy, and could meet you.?’

‘Could we meet at Lucy’s apartment?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And then, on Thursday. ’

‘Come straight up to Lucy’s after you’ve broken the news.’

‘Unless Sally wants to spend the evening with you there.’

‘As I said before the chances of that happening—’

‘Just in case I can always give Dwight a call. He knows how difficult things have been with Muriel, and his wife is also very sympathetic and kind, and they will let me stay in their guest room for a few days—’

‘Anyway, we’ll first be seeing each other on Tuesday night.’

‘So there will just be a night apart.’

‘Which is a night too long.’

‘But as of Friday we will officially be a couple.’

‘We’re a couple already, my love.’

‘That we are. That we are.’

Richard’s phone binged several times during lunch. But he ignored it.

‘I know who it is — that awful man in Lewiston who may have hired a proxy arsonist. And he can wait until after this lunch for me to return his damn calls.’

My phone binged once as well: a text from Ben, telling me he’d spoken to Norm at the art supply store, and he’d be expecting me at three p.m., but he told me that he needs thirty minutes to mix the paints, and won’t begin mixing them until money has exchanged hands. So you really can’t show up later than three-thirty. I so appreciate this, Mom. Hope your good mood is even better this afternoon.

While Richard headed off to use the washroom I texted back:

As I hit the ‘send’ button Richard was back at the table.

‘Everything OK?’ he asked as I put my phone down. I explained the text from Ben and the fact that I really needed to get to the Fenway within the next fifteen minutes.

‘I’ll put you in a taxi,’ he said.

‘But Fenway Park is just seven or eight minutes away by foot.’

‘Then I’ll go with you.’

‘And have to wait nearly an hour while this guy does his prestidigitation thing with his paints? You jump the T to the airport, my love, get our bags. I’ll get my son his magic acrylics, then meet you back at the hotel by five at the latest, and promise to drag you back to bed.’

‘That sounds like a plan,’ he said, all smiles.

A few minutes later we were standing in front of the T-station at the intersection of Newbury Street and Mass Ave. I put my arms around Richard’s neck.

‘Now the idea of letting you go for two hours is not the most pleasing of prospects,’ I said.

‘Then let me come to the paint store.’

‘The faster you get to the airport and get back with our bags the faster we can be making love again.’

We began to kiss. A long, intense kiss.

‘I don’t want to let you go,’ he eventually whispered.

‘Two hours tops and we’re back in each other’s arms.’

‘Hurry back to me.’

‘I will.’

We kissed again.

‘How did we get so lucky?’ he asked.

‘We just did. And do you know what? We deserve it.’

One final long kiss, then I gently disentangled myself from his arms.

‘I really want to get there in ten minutes. If the guy is as finicky as Ben makes him out to be. ’

‘OK then,’ Richard said. ‘Two hours. I love you.’

‘I love you.’

He headed down the stairs of the T-station, turning back to blow me a kiss. For a moment — pulling up the collar of his brown leather Air Force jacket — he looked like a throwback to another era, and had suddenly lost around three and a half decades. He was a twenty-year-old, looking back with poignant wistfulness in his eyes at the woman he loved, as he was about to be shipped out somewhere potentially jeopardous. Then, with a sad smile, he was gone.

I headed out in the direction of Fenway Park, the sun beginning its afternoon slump towards the dark, but still bathing the street in a copper glow. The fall. A season whose peerless beauty — especially in New England — usually provoked a certain melancholy in me. Because after the kaleidoscopic crimson-and-gold hued wonders of the season, darkness then falls. With it the descent into the brumous shadow of winter, and the end of another year. Yet another twelve becalmed months behind me.

And then.

Just two days ago.

This entire extraordinary business underscored something I had not considered before: if allowed, life can also sidestep all its attendant mundanities and demonstrate its capacity to astonish; to remind you that you still have a capacity for the passionate. The thing is, you have to permit yourself to embrace such potential wonderment. If you have submerged your ability to marvel — to forget that you are truly worthy of love, and the benevolence it brings to you amidst all the middling concerns that crowd all our existences — fall after fall arrives with a metronomic regularity. You live a life of silent, ever-increasing longing for a bedazzlement that always seems tantalizingly close, yet so acutely out of reach.

I headed up the Fenway, leaving behind Newbury Street’s atmosphere of elegant consumerism and moving into something a little more gritty, a lot less connected with shopping as a leisure activity. Norm’s Art House was a nondescript shop on a nondescript corner of the Fenway. It was a small storefront, with one display window (in need of a cleaning), within which was a haphazard presentation of brushes, easels, tubes of paint. There was also a sign, in oversized stenciled letters, reading: ‘WE DO ART ’.

This no-nonsense approach continued inside the shop. It was a cramped space, brimming with oils and acrylics and watercolors and every conceivable size of brush, and rolls of canvas waiting to be stretched, and wooden slats for frames.

‘So you must be Benjamin the Brilliant’s mother.’

The voice came from behind a series of overstocked, rather rusted metal shelves behind the sales counter.

‘Are you Norm?’

‘So he’s briefed you. And you’re here for the Tetron Azure Blue — the most lazuline of all modern blues.’

‘Lazuline,’ I said, trying the word out. ‘Not bad,’ I finally said.

‘You have a better synonym, perhaps?’

‘Cerulean?’

Silence. Then Norm emerged from the shadows of his shop’s corroded shelves.

‘Well, I’m impressed. And as it turns out, you’re also beautiful.’

I tried hard not to blush. I failed. Norm was not what I expected. From his name to the way Ben hinted that he was crotchety, I had expected someone out of a Saul Bellow novel: an old-world merchant, avuncular, fussy, but with a knowledge of paints and artists that was as encyclopedic as it was passionate. But the real Norm was a tall stringbean of a man, around my age, with oversized, very hip black glasses and an equally hip goatee. You could easily imagine him lecturing on Abstract Expressionism at one of the colleges nearby — and being regarded by his students as benchmark cool.

‘And you are the Norm?’ I asked.

‘I am indeed “the Norm”. But not, I hope, the norm. ’

A small smile crossed his thin lips. Oh God, he’s flirting with me. Three days ago I would have been flattered. Today.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have much time,’ I said, ‘and I know you close at four.’

‘And Benjamin the Brilliant probably told you that I only mix paint when paid.’

‘Why do you call my son that?’

‘You mean, Benjamin the Brilliant?’

‘Yes, that.’

‘Because he is that — brilliant.’

‘Really?’

‘Did my tone suggest irony?’

‘Well, actually, it did.’

‘A bad habit of mine, as my ex-wife never stopped telling me.’

And thank you for that little snippet of personal information.

‘But how do you know that my son is so. ’

‘You can say the word. Brilliant. How do I know that? He’s been buying paints from me for around a year — and he’s been dropping down here every five or six weeks, so we’ve started hanging out a bit. Quite an amazing cognizance of art, your son. Quite a lot of self-doubt in the mix as well. When he told me about getting that large-scale collage accepted at the Maine Artists show last year, I made a point of driving up to Portland for an afternoon and checking it out. And I have to tell you, Benjamin is brilliant.’

I felt a great frisson of maternal pride — and also immediately sensed that, like his tutor Trevor, this Norm character had assumed a mentor role in my son’s life; the understanding, supportive paternal figure he’d never had.

‘I couldn’t agree more with you,’ I said, ‘but hearing you say it — someone who undoubtedly knows a lot of artists. ’

‘Your son’s got it. And I was really pleased and, quite honestly, relieved to hear him on the phone yesterday, wanting to order paint, and talking about the big new canvas he’s almost finished. I’d heard from one of his professors about his breakdown. I hope you don’t mind me calling it that. ’

‘Why should I mind when it’s entirely accurate?’

‘Anyway, I had something similar when I was at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design, and I ended up drifting away from the ceramic stuff that was my specialty back then. Fell into this and that — teaching, art design at ad agencies, eventually this little shop which is, at least, my own. But I never got back to what I wanted to do. and I’m monologing, another of my bad habits. Anyway, it’s great that Benjamin has found a way back to his work. And his need for my Tetron Azure Blue — that is, as they say in the San Fernando Valley, way cool. Because Tetron Azure Blue is, as you can gather, a highly rarefied color. Subtly, but significantly, different from other sky blues. But here I am, continuing to monolog as usual — too much time alone mixing paint — when you’ve obviously got better things to do.’

‘You said you needed payment first before you mixed the color.’

‘I’m afraid it’s a strict rule of mine, having once been the sort of artist who stiffed many an art supply dealer, and having been far too indulgent when I started this business about offering credit. So I’m afraid I need one hundred and twenty-seven dollars from you before I work my alchemy in the backroom. which should take no more than thirty minutes.’

I tried not to blanch at the price. Norm could see my shock.

‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘Mucho dinero. But if you want my Tetron Azure Blue, you pay a high price. But it’s a price worth paying — as it has the most exceptional depth of coloration.’

I handed over my credit card. As Norm swiped it in the terminal attached to his cash register he said:

‘I’ve got an espresso maker and a reasonably comfortable old Chesterfield chair in the back. So I’m happy to make you a good coffee and offer you more scintillating conversation while I mix the paint.’

I signed the credit card receipt.

‘Since it’s such a beautiful day. ’ I said.

‘I hear you,’ he said, trying to mask his disappointment. ‘The river’s two blocks over to your left. I will have all this ready to go by three-forty-five.’

I thanked him. Following his advice I walked the two blocks over to the Charles. It was the stretch of the river that ran, on this side, in front of the Boston University campus and gave you a perspective on Harvard imposing itself on the opposing Cambridge side. Two academic worlds — one ultra-elite, one several notches down the prestige food chain — staring out at each other. And separated by this river, along which a nascent colony was once constructed. From that early settlement emerged this city, this nation — and with it, so many hundreds of millions of stories of everyone who, in one way or another, did time here. Stories which largely vanished with those who lived them. An individual life is insignificant when considered against the metaphysics of an ever-flowing urban waterway. But one’s own life should truly be lived otherwise. Because there is never anything insignificant about any of our stories — even if we ourselves consider the tale to be mundane. Every life is its own novel. And we dictate so much more about the way the story can progress and change — or remain middling — than we ever care to admit.

There were sculls on the river, being powered by half a dozen young men, slapping the water with oars, their unified downstrokes a miracle of timed synchronicity. There were the requisite joggers and parents with young children and a couple in their mid-twenties in the midst of a wild embrace on a park bench; an embrace that would have sparked a wave of unsettling jealousy a few days ago.

I stared out at the brownish waters of the Charles, my mind’s eye full of my beloved, and how, in just over ninety minutes, we’d be naked together in bed, and he would, as before, be deep inside me, and we would tell each other again how this was the love of a lifetime, how we were no longer alone in the world.

My thoughts came back to that exchange with Norm. Clearly an interesting man. Clearly a lonely man. Clearly someone who wants to make a connection that might turn into the connection that changes the contours of his life.

He too was grappling with the fact that things had not turned out the way he wanted. Don’t give in to a bleak world view, I felt like telling him. Because life really can change on a dime.

Back at his shop twenty minutes later he handed me a substantial shopping bag with two one-litre tins of the paint. He also had a small sample of the tint in a jar lid. Dipping a thin brush into its bluish hue, he quickly outlined a square on a piece of artist’s paper, then (with several fast further dips of the brush) filled in the white space of the square so it was now all blue.

‘Now there is the standard-issue sky blue you see everywhere. And then there is Tetron Azure Blue — which has such a crystalline density to it, such a pure ultramarine depth. Look deep into that square and what do you see?’

‘Infinity. A very welcoming infinity. One with infinite possibilities.’

‘Nice,’ he said. ‘More than nice. And may I ask you a personal question?’

‘Yes, I’m married.’

‘Happily?’

‘Not at all.’

‘I see.’

‘But I am very much in love with somebody.’

His smile tightened into thin-lipped disappointment.

‘Lucky man,’ he finally said.

Forty minutes later — after deciding to walk all the way down Newbury Street and across the Common — I entered the hotel. My arm was a little stiff after lugging all that paint, but I didn’t care. I was full of rising elation and manic-adjacent physical desire. Taking the elevator up to the top floor I all but bounded down the hallway to the door of our suite, used my key card to pop the door open, and saw my suitcase just inside. Fantastic! He’s here.

‘Hello, my love,’ I shouted, thinking he must be in the bedroom.

But the only reply that came was silence.

‘Richard?’

Silence.

I moved into the bedroom. Empty.

‘Richard?’

Then I saw, on the bed, his new glasses folded atop his new jacket. Against a pillow there was a note. I reached for it. I read:

Four

HAVE YOU EVER noticed how, when terrible news is landed in front of you, the world suddenly goes so quiet? It’s as if the shock of the unbearable deadens all aural recognition of everything outside the reverberations of your extreme distress. I read the note once. I sat down on the bed. The same bed upon which we had consummated our love. The same bed to which we returned multiple times to lose ourselves in each other; to discover an intimacy that was hitherto a terra incognita for both of us.

‘I have never made love like that before,’ I whispered to him as we clung to each other after that first wondrous time.

‘Nor have I,’ he whispered back.

I read the note a second time. This time I tried to negotiate with it, attempting to unearth some sort of affirmative subtext in its language:

I love you more than anything. But I can’t do this. I have to go home.

The fact that he declared his love for me so absolutely. The fact that this was the first thing he wrote. Surely that was the complete and utter truth; the veritable heart of the matter. All right, something had happened. Maybe he had to call his wife and she played some guilt card, which panicked him into thinking he had to go home. That’s why he wrote: ‘But I can’t do this.’ Because she knew she was about to lose him, and had to reel him in. I wouldn’t be surprised if she used their poor tragic son as a ploy. And my Richard — who’s always been susceptible to familial pressure — felt stricken by this and decided he should simply get home and face the problem. But once he was back with the woman he described as arctic, removed, physically rejecting of him. surely he’d run for his car and find me. All would be restored between us. We’d be us again

I read the note a third time. And started to cry. Because I was replaying the absurd interpretation of his words that had just raced through my head. I realized that I was sounding like one of the many patients I have seen who — knowing that their cancer is probably Stage Four — still try to assure themselves they’re going to beat the terminal diagnosis that is sure to follow.

How can you sugarcoat the unbearable? It’s impossible. Read the note again. It couldn’t be more direct or to the point. Whatever about his declaration of love, the fact is that something has made him run off back home. And he is telling you: This is truly over.

Yet, just three hours ago, in that restaurant on Newbury Street, everything had been so loving, so forward looking, so happy. We’d even agreed how we’d tell our respective spouses, how we’d move to Boston, how we’d spend six weeks in Paris, how we’d go to concerts and interesting plays and.

I started to cry again. The initial shock of it all had kept me muffled, constrained. Perhaps that was my way of not allowing the actual terrible reality of all this to be given credence. But all such efforts at restraint proved futile. The sobs were now something akin to keening. Me the original tight-lipped stoic — who, in recent time, was unnerved by even the slightest choked whimper emerging from my once ruthlessly rational self — was now weeping uncontrollably. I made no effort to bring it under control. Life is littered with disappointments. Life is strewn with setbacks. We all learn how to weather the small defeats, the nagging reversals of fortune, those interregnums where quiet desperation seems to be the ongoing order of the day. But even in these difficult passages, the majority of us still travel hopefully. Because hope is the one true commodity we all desire. But when hope is destroyed in such a way that it is not simply dashed, but actually murdered.

Outside of the death of a child, is there any death more terrible than the death of hope?

I sat on the edge of the bed, crying for a very long time. A moment came when I was so spent I felt like crawling under the covers and shutting out the world and telling myself that when I woke with the dawn this entire nightmarish tribulation would be behind me, and I would stir into consciousness to find Richard beside me and all would be right again with our life, with us.

Us.

I stood up, pacing the room, thinking, thinking. Telling myself that all I had to do was talk with him — a good long loving talk, in which I would reassure him that he could do this, that what we had was magical. As he said to me just a few hours ago: ‘How often does this — us — happen in a lifetime?’

He meant that. I know he meant that. Just as I know he adores me. Love at its most authentic, its most veritable, its most unquestionable.

Richard told me he loved me. That was no projection. That was the truth.

My hands shaking, I dug into my bag and found my phone. The quasi-rational side of my brain proclaimed:

Don’t you dare call him. He told you it’s over. Why look for further desperate grief when you know there’s no hope here.

But another, seemingly logical, part of my psyche insisted that I make the call.

I hit Richard’s number, and sat down again on the bed, my free hand reaching for one of the metal slats in the headboard: a way of steadying me, of keeping me somehow grounded.

The phone rang and rang and rang. Oh God, he’s turned it off. To ensure there’s no contact, no conversation, no chance of any reconsideration of his decision to flee. Please, please, please, give me a chance to—

Click. He came on the line.

‘My love. ’ I said.

I could hear traffic noises in the background. And little else.

‘My love, my love? Richard? You there?’

Finally:

‘Yeah, I’m here.’

The voice was flat, denuded. There was a slight echo when he spoke. Coupled with all the ambient highway sounds it was clear he had me on speaker phone in his car.

‘I love you,’ I said. ‘I so love you and I know how huge this all is, how having to end a marriage — even a hugely unhappy one — is such a vast—’

‘Please, Laura. Stop.’

His tone chilled me. It was so emotionless, so vacant, with such a discernible sadness behind the void.

‘If you just turn back and meet me somewhere, I know we could—’

He cut me off.

‘I can’t.’

‘But you know that what we have is—’

‘I know that. And I still can’t. ’

‘But my love, after everything we said to each other. ’

‘Yes, I remember everything we said.’

‘Was it all one big lie on your part?’

I could hear what I thought was a sob, and one choked back quickly.

‘Hardly,’ he finally said.

‘Then you know that this, us. ’

‘Us,’ he said, his voice so quiet, so toneless.

‘Us. As we said, the most important pronoun. ’

Silence.

‘Richard, please. ’

Silence. I said:

‘Certainty. You talked about certainty.’

‘I know.’

‘Surely then you also know—’

‘That I just can’t. ’

‘But why, why, when you know how this sort of love only happens once, maybe twice?’

‘I know all that. I know everything. But. ’

Silence.

‘Richard?’

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Do you love me?’

‘You know the answer to that.’

‘Then please, please, turn around and come back here. We can—’

‘We can’t. Because I can’t. That’s all I can say.’

Silence. I could hear another choked sob. Then:

‘Goodbye.’

And the line went dead.

I immediately hit ‘redial’. And got a generic recorded voice:

‘The person on the other line is not answering the phone right now. Please try back at a later time.’

I tried back one minute later, then five minutes later, then every five minutes after that until it was almost six p.m., and sunlight had been supplanted by the darkest night imaginable. During that hour when I relentlessly kept ringing him back — and kept getting that generic message (had he done something to turn off his voicemail, so I couldn’t leave him a plea to reconsider?) — I kept running through our conversation, kept hearing the sob that choked his voice, kept trying to fathom why, when he all but declared his love for me, he had to keep saying: ‘I can’t.’

But the answer to that question was already there. He couldn’t start a new life with me because he just couldn’t.

I can’t.

There it was, in all its plain, unadorned truth.

I can’t.

As that distressing hour drew to a close — and I finally stopped pacing the floor, and bursting into tears, and telling myself repeatedly that if he’d just turn his phone back on we could solve this (solve — as if this was a problem with a simple solution) — those two words kept tolling in my head like a funeral dirge.

I can’t.

I so wanted answers, so wanted to know how he could, in just a few short hours, go from proclaiming I was the love of his life to ‘I can’t.’ But why look for answers when there is such a painfully evident one in front of you?

I can’t.

No explanations, no entreaties for understanding, not even an attempt to offer me the slightest possibility of hope, a sliver of light behind this wall of resistance.

I can’t.

The door had been slammed shut. Conclusively. Permanently. Try as I could to negotiate with this, the truth was non-negotiable.

I can’t.

My head was reeling. So this is what it must have felt like when that truck slammed into Eric and he was sent into free-fall. The trauma of losing all control of your immediate destiny; of having everything you believed was solid, true, there, pulled away from you. With the result that you are now heading, with great velocity, towards the hardest surface you’ve ever encountered. Eric. My love. How I had wondered, in my darkest moments, if, in those terrible seconds between the initial impact and the landing that twisted his neck and flattened the entire left side of his head, he had the horrible nanosecond realization that he was going to die. That’s the thing about free-fall. Even someone deliberately jumping out of a window must not think that there will be that horrendous impact. Until it actually happens.

I moved away from the hotel window — this jumble of free-fall thoughts spooking me.

But this was free-fall. And the landing would be a hard, despairing one: the return to my old life. The re-entry into a marriage that was lifeless, devoid of love.

The death of hope.

A living death. Based upon the recognition that the prospect of happiness had just been extinguished again.

Could I race to my car, race up to Bath, run to his front door, pound on it until he answered, fling myself in his arms, tell him we had to act upon all that we knew and felt for each other, fend off his angry wife, and convince him to drive off into the night with me?

I can’t.

Now that was me talking.

I can’t. I want to make a scene. I want to beg him to reconsider. I can’t. Not just because I know it wouldn’t change anything. But also because, quite simply, I can’t.

With this realization came more tears. I had not cried like this since the police told me about Eric. But now the anguish was underscored by twenty years of life, in which real love had been absent.

The death of hope.

I moved over to the sofa, oblivious to the fact that there were no lights on in this room; that I was alone in the dark. I replayed everything that had happened since Friday. Every remembered conversation, every story we told each other, the first time he touched my arm, that moment in the Public Gardens when he first took my hand, the nervous delight he showed when he cast off the dull insurance-man clothes, my confession about Eric, his confession about Sarah, the dawning shared realization that we were falling in love, that extraordinary first kiss, the taxi ride to this hotel, the way he promised me to be mine forever when he first entered me, all the proclamations of love and excited future plans.

And then.

The death of hope.

I can’t.

I wish I could dismiss it all as a fever, a virus, to which I briefly succumbed. But I knew it to be so concrete, so authentic, so rooted in reality. That made it even more unbearable. If it had been just some gushing, crazed romance. But this was it. The connection that I so privately longed for; the great love story I so wanted to have in the time remaining for me. To have been given a passionate glimpse of this new life — to have been told this was my future reality — and then to have had the whole magnificent edifice decimated only moments after it seemed so secure.

I now wanted to be furious, to turn my grief into pure undistilled rage. But I’ve never been able to do anger at such a vehement level. More tellingly, this was a man I was certain that I loved — and who’d shown me, in turn, the most extraordinary love. So there was just the most profound sense of loss. And of hurt.

The room seemed to grow darker. I felt completely immobile. The fact that he had also left his new jacket and glasses behind — he couldn’t have been more absolute about divesting himself of the man he had decided to transform himself into, and return to the self and the life he didn’t want. A stunned rationality had taken hold of me — which I knew would soon be overtaken by even more acute grief as the reality of what had just happened truly gained purchase.

Bing.

Oh my God. A text! He’s texting me. Telling me he’s made the mistake of his life, and is en route back to me right now.

I scrambled for the phone. There was a text. It was from Lucy. I felt myself get shaky again. Tears welling up in my eyes. A cry working its way up my throat. So much for that alleged moment of clinical calm. I wiped my eyes and peered at the screen.

Just wanted to check in and get an update. You have me guessing! The apartment is yours when you want it. See you tomorrow. I am so envious. And that’s from only surmising what your news is! Love — Lucy

Before I could break down again I dialed her number. Lucy answered on the second ring.

‘Hey there!’ she said, her tone intimating that she knew romance — that commodity we both lacked — had come into my life. ‘So can you tell all now?’

‘I need a friend,’ I said, my voice lifeless, flat.

‘Oh God, I thought—’

‘That the news was good? It was. But—’

I broke off, forcing myself not to break down.

‘Oh, Laura. ’ she said, sounding so sad.

‘I’m still in Boston. I have to go get my car, which is over by the airport. But I could be with you in about three and a half hours.’

‘You get here whenever. I’ll be up and waiting.’

I went into the bathroom and threw some water in my face, managing to avoid looking at myself in the mirror. Then I went into the bedroom and quickly folded up the leather jacket — dealing with it the way I had dealt with a leather jacket that belonged to Eric, which he’d bought in a Cambridge Army and Navy shop and which I had to fold up after he died. Though I gave away most of his other clothes I kept his jacket. Because he so loved it and wore it all seasons except for the sticky height of summer. Because it too was an old Air Force jacket. Like the one which I was now folding and stuffing into my little suitcase as quickly as I could. Then, pocketing his glasses, I pulled up the telescopic handle of my suitcase and headed to the door, not wanting to look back in case the tears were triggered again.

I headed out the hotel entrance and to the street. There were a couple of cabs outside. I asked one of the drivers how much it would cost to get me to the Fairfield Inn Airport Hotel. He said around thirty bucks, plus three-seventy-five for the tunnel and, of course, there was the tip. Forty dollars. I don’t spend that sort of money on luxuries like taxis. So I crossed the street, entered Park Station, and at a cost of two dollars I made it to the airport half an hour later. Then I had to wait twenty minutes for the hotel courtesy coach — which stopped at all the terminals and didn’t deposit me at the hotel until around seven-thirty p.m.

My car was in the lot, exactly where I parked it just two days ago. Loading my suitcase in the trunk I thought: I am a different person than the one who got out of that vehicle just over forty-eight hours ago. But another part of me simultaneously reasoned: The only thing that has changed in your life is that you now have a huge sorrow to carry forth with you.

The highway was clear all the way north. I blared the radio, trying to lose myself in that evening’s NPR programing, to keep the anguish at bay, occasionally wiping tears from my eyes, keeping my foot down on the pedal, making it to Lucy’s front door just before ten-thirty. All the way up to Maine, one supposition kept dogging and unnerving me: had I been more attune to the subtext of the moment — had I said to him, ‘Yeah, let’s do the art supply shop together, then get our suitcases at the airport’ — would we be in bed at the hotel right now, telling each other yet again how lucky we were to have found such love at this juncture in life?

This question got raised around an hour after I arrived at Lucy’s house. When I reached her door she took one look at me and put her arms around me, saying:

‘You need a very large drink.’

She produced a bottle of something French and red. We sat down in the two overstuffed armchairs by her fireplace. The whole story was recounted by me in the sort of hushed, emotionless tone of someone who has just witnessed a terrible accident and is reiterating her account without realizing that the calmness she is displaying is a byproduct of the trauma suffered. When I finished, Lucy said nothing for a very long time. But I could see her trying to keep her own emotions in check. I looked at her, bemused.

‘You’re crying,’ I said.

‘Does that surprise you?’

‘I’m. ’

Words were suddenly beyond my reach. It was as if I had lost all my bearings, my way in the world. Whatever small reserves of equilibrium had gotten me through the past few hours had just run dry. I was truly lost.

That’s when I found myself letting go again. As the crying escalated Lucy came over and held me for the many minutes it took me to subside, never once trying to soothe me with any kind words or the sort of specious bromides that well-meaning people often invoke when faced with someone in the throes of grief. Instead she just let me cling to her until I was cried out. Then I staggered off to her bathroom to wash my face and attempt to do something with makeup that would lose the terrible darkness that had formed around my eyes. When I returned she handed me my refilled glass of wine and the following smart observation:

‘I won’t say something stupid like, “You’ll get over it.” Because I don’t think you will. But what I will say is this — that man has already realized he’s made the mistake of his life. Though part of me despises him for his cowardice — and most especially for causing you such horrendous anguish — part of me pities the sad bastard. Because even if it will always hurt you in some way — as I know it probably will — the truth is you will find some sort of accommodation with this heartbreak. And as to your earlier question, would the two of you still be together if he hadn’t gone off to fetch your suitcases—’

‘If I hadn’t been clueless to what he was actually telling me,’ I said, cutting her off.

‘Clueless? Oh, please. Even if you were together now, his doubts, panic, whatever, would have started the moment he was away from you.’

‘But had we been together tonight, perhaps he would have—’

‘What? Had the Pauline conversion that would have kept the two of you together?’

‘It was love, Lucy. Real love.’

‘From everything you reported, I believe you. And that’s why he too will be broken by this. But still too frightened, too cowed, to get back in touch with you.’

Silence. Then Lucy said:

‘Do you know why I cried earlier? In part, because of the hurt rendered on you. But also — and I hate to admit this — because of sheer, sad envy. How I have longed to feel what you’ve felt for the last few days. To be wanted that way by someone. To find actual love — even if it just lasted a weekend. To think: I’m no longer alone in the world.’

I shut my eyes and felt tears.

‘You have your children, you have your friends,’ Lucy said.

‘And I’m still alone.’

Another silence.

‘We’re all alone,’ she finally said.

We talked until well after midnight, finishing the bottle of wine. I managed to avoid another bout of tears. Then exhaustion hit. Lucy pointed me in the direction of her guest room, telling me that I should sleep as late as I wanted. If I woke and she was gone, I should make breakfast and coffee and loiter here as long as needed.

‘And if you don’t want to go home, the garage apartment is yours,’ she said.

‘I’m going home,’ I said.

‘I hope that’s the right decision.’

‘Whether it’s right or wrongheadedly wrong, it’s the decision I’m making.’

‘Fine,’ Lucy said, her tone lightly hinting at a disapproval she would never actually articulate, but which she clearly felt.

Lucy’s guest room had a double bed with the sort of ancient mattress that seemed to have caved in around the time of the first Kennedy assassination.

At three-thirty in the morning I admitted defeat when it came to surrendering to sleep. Getting up, getting dressed, I left a note on Lucy’s kitchen counter:

Going home. To what? Well, there’s the rub. Thank you for being, as always, the best friend imaginable. And please know that you too are not alone.

Ten minutes later, I pulled up in front of our house. Dan was sitting on the swing bench on our front porch, smoking a cigarette. As soon as I pulled up he tossed the cigarette away, his face all schoolboy guilt.

‘Hey,’ I said, getting out of the car.

‘Hey,’ he said back. ‘Weren’t you supposed to be staying in Boston tonight?’

‘Couldn’t sleep. Decided I should come home and be in time to see you off on your new job.’

He looked at me carefully.

‘You really drove all the way back here in the middle of the night just to do that?’

There wasn’t suspicion in his voice, just the usual quiet, world-weary disdain.

‘How long have you been awake?’ I asked.

‘All night. You weren’t the only person who couldn’t sleep.’

‘Dan, you don’t have to do this job.’

‘Yes, I do. And we both know why. But thank you for coming back in time to see me off to my new role as stockroom clerk.’

I blinked and felt tears.

‘You’re crying,’ he said.

‘Yes. You’ve made me cry.’

‘And now I feel like an asshole.’

‘I don’t want an apology. I want love.’

Silence. He stood up, reaching for his car keys, clearly thrown by what I had just said.

‘See you tonight,’ he said.

Silence.

He headed off. Then, with a quick about-face, he turned back to me and gave me a fast kiss on the lips.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry for so much.’

I searched high and low within me for a retort. But all that came to me was the loneliest of replies:

‘Aren’t we all.’

Dan got into his car and drove off to his new job. I sat rooted to the garden chair, staring up at that big black infinite sky, the limitless possibilities of the cosmos. Thinking one thought:

The death of hope.