Frog

16. Frog Restarts

It all happens so quickly. She wakes up, complains of pains. He says “We all have them now and then and mostly early morning or late evening. Just take a couple of aspirins,” which she does. The pains continue. Then trouble walking. First she almost trips, then she trips. She calls it an accident. Then she almost trips and trips again and the pains get worse and in more places. He tells her it’s the body getting used to its age. “Growing pains when you’re a kid? Growing-old pains when you’re approaching middle age. I had them; I’m sure that’s what they were. You remember my back and shoulder pains and the one that made my right arm, every three months or so, and all the way down to the fingertips, feel as if it were being ripped off. And those lasted two to three weeks sometimes and this went on for years. I didn’t trip or anything like that, or not that I can remember, but I think the pain was equal to even being a little worse than yours. Only thing that helped then was lots of aspirins spaced out during the day. And a visit to the osteopath when the pain really got bad. They know the body like no one else and their prices are fair. I could probably do a little of that manipulation myself,” and he gives her a massage in bed. She says it makes her body feel much better. Then, because he’s still behind her and her rear end’s raised and she’s nude, he starts playing with her down there and they make love. In the morning she says she hasn’t felt so good in weeks. “Maybe the combination of those two in the order we did them is exactly what I needed.” “I will be glad to cooperate,” he says. “Fully, frequently, probably not repeatedly, but to the best of my agility or something — in the future, I’m saying — if all that doesn’t sound too juvenile and silly.”

A few weeks later he’s in the car pulling up to the house. She’s coming down the front steps, has to hold on to the railing, is dragging her leg. Pain on her face, her free hand’s shaking and she grabs the railing with it or else it seems she’ll fall. It hits him. How could I have been so dismissive? What a jerk, what a jerk. He yells “Stay there,” runs to her, walks her back to the house, calls their doctor. On the day of the appointment she says “I’m sure it’s something simple.” “I’m sure too,” he says, “but let’s find out.” Their oldest daughter says “What’s wrong, Mommy?” She says she’s going for a regular checkup, just as they do with Dr. Miriam once a year.

The doctor thinks it might be nothing worse than a pinched nerve as her osteopath says, and tells her to take two very strong aspirins three times a day for two weeks and then see if her condition improves. Also to stop seeing the osteopath. “It might be the workout he gives you plus Howard’s massages that are exacerbating a muscle injury or making some other relatively minor ailment worse.” She does what he says. The pains continue. She trips periodically. Sometimes when she sits or lies down she doesn’t think she can get up by herself. Twice Howard has to help her downstairs and walk her to the car. The doctor thinks she should see a neurologist. The neurologist examines her and suspects a serious neurological disease. He puts her through several tests: brain scan, spinal tap, others. She’s nervous about them. Howard tells her “Listen, better we go on as usual and not worry so much before we hear the results. It might be nothing. The old pinched nerve, even, that Dr. Aman once begrudingly said it could be, since all doctors hate any diagnosis or suggested cure that comes from an osteopath. The neurologist is more likely just ruling out possibilities rather than looking for them. Probably the worse that’ll happen is you’ll have to take prescription painkillers or muscle relaxants for a while and you might feel funny from them and your face puff up a little.”

The neurologist calls. It’s what he thought. “At her age,” he tells them in his office, “drugs and treatments should be able to arrest it. There are variations of the disease and hers isn’t the most serious.” She takes the drugs, goes through the treatments. She gets weaker, starts using a cane to walk, braces on her right arm and leg, then has to walk with a metal walker or Howard’s help, collapses several times, has trouble keeping food down, loses sight in one eye, several other things go wrong or change, is put on an experimental drug, treatments discontinued, she can’t get out of bed and sometimes not even out of a chair by herself, becomes blind, partially paralyzed, is hospitalized, released, gets worse, hospitalized, dies.

He thinks of how they first met. It’s a funny story. He was going to a wedding reception in an apartment building. The bride and he had once been lovers. He thought it odd being invited to the wedding, but she explained it in a note with the invitation. Amy, this woman, was separated from her first husband when Howard started seeing her. He was bartending then and she and a man friend, just back from a week on St. Thomas, came in for banana daiquiris. He talked with them, when the man was in the men’s room he asked her for her phone number. One day her husband came by her apartment for something when Howard was there. His complete set of Conrad, which was still in her bookcase. It was late morning, Amy was making them breakfast. There was a quarrel. She doesn’t remember what it was over or if she was involved in it. She thinks it started because her husband, who’d come without telling her and tried to get in with his old apartment keys, then complained that she’d changed the locks. So she had to have been involved in it. But Howard stood up to him and even stuck his finger into her husband’s chest and made him back off. She thinks her husband said “How do you know I’m not carrying a gun?” which he did sometimes, and that Howard said “What the hell do I care? If you did remember to put bullets in, and the right ones, you’ll probably shoot your bloody balls off pulling the gun out.” Anyway, the incident seemed to do something to her and her husband, because from then on she was never afraid of speaking up to him or thought him intimidating in any way and he never again treated her abusively or not for long, and in fact a few weeks later he very calmly consented to the divorce she’d been asking for a year. She thinks she might have even told him she was thinking of marrying Howard, which was never true and could never have been true, but she used it as part of her argument. She continued with Howard for about a month after that, realized they’d never work out, then met Hank, fell in love as hard as she ever had, now they were getting married, so Howard was invited, to the rather rudimentary small church wedding if he wanted to go but more to the reception after, since if it hadn’t been for him she might still be fighting that psycho sonofabitch ex-husband of hers for a divorce and by now might even have been killed by him.

So he went into the building, made a left at the end of foyer when the doorman must have told him to go right, a woman was waiting at the elevator. Pretty, he thought. The door opened, they got in, he waited for her to press a floor button, she didn’t, he pressed seven and kept his finger by the button plate and asked what floor she was going to, she said “I’ll attend to it when the time comes, thank you,” he said “Please, no need to worry. I’m going to a wedding reception on the seventh floor — the doorman let me through — so I only asked because I was closer to the buttons.” “Thank you for your explanation,” and she looked at the door. Hair, face, voice, expression, clothes, words she used, self-possession, that she didn’t smile fakely at him to conceal what she really might feel. He tried not to look at her too much; didn’t want to disconcert or irritate her or make her more nervous if that’s what it was. But he could hardly stop looking at her. She was beautiful, in ways his dream woman: high cheekbones, long light soft hair, bright eyes, large breasts, slim waist, what seemed like solid legs, big full forehead, other things, her height, books in her bag, obvious intelligence, shape of her lips, no trace of makeup, white teeth. At seven he said “Good day,” she nodded, he got off, she immediately pressed her floor or the “close” button, door closed, and he saw that the apartments here were A to D with the service steps directly across the elevator but no door or passageway leading to anything further and he was going to G. “Oh Christ,” he said, when the elevator opened a couple of floors, or maybe one or two more than that, above him. Must be she. He quickly thought of something. “Excuse me, miss, it’s me. Or mrs. or ms., but it’s I, the fellow who got off the elevator on the seventh floor?” “Yes?” “Well, the wedding reception isn’t here. No loud partying, voices, glasses tinkling, music the bride said they were going to have nonstop. Maybe I’ve the wrong floor or apartment number or even the wrong building or street number. The tenant who’s giving the party is Rukovsky.” “Rerkovsky? If it’s that, which I don’t see how it can’t be, since they’re on the seventh floor, then you’ll want to go downstairs and through the lobby to the east wing of the building. 7G.” ‘There’s a second elevator then?” he said, walking upstairs. “Two wings, two elevators, yes.” “Is there another wing other than those two? Just so I don’t end up in it.” He was on the eighth floor, started for the ninth. “Only two.” “So I must have gone left instead of right downstairs. Funny, for the doorman said the wedding reception, when I told him I was going to one, though I never got around to giving the tenant’s name, was to the left, seventh floor. That I’d know which apartment it was by the noise. I doubt there’d be two afternoon wedding receptions going on in this building today.” “Sunday, June, a fairly large building in a very active city — who can say? But somewhat improbable there’d be two receptions like that given on the same day by people with names as close to the ones we mentioned, and both on the same floor even if in different wings. Besides, there is no Rukovsky on the seventh floor in this wing. You must have misunderstood Nicolo’s — the doorman’s — directions. And I know the Rerkovskys. Not well, but at tenant meetings — they’re big in that — and two of those meetings in their apartment. Darlene and Sid. They must be hosting the party for your relative or friend.” “Friend,” he said, reaching the tenth floor where she was. “Listen, excuse me, and again don’t be alarmed, and I didn’t mean to climb up, but I just thought of something. You probably won’t go for it, but I’d love to take someone to this reception. And by now you must know”—she’s already waving her hand in front of her—”… no, please, just hear me out, that there really is a reception and you know the Rerkovskys, even if not well. And maybe even the bride for all I know.” “Believe me I don’t.” “So — wait a minute,” for she’d turned to the door, “abrupt as this must seem — and never never turn your back on a stranger when you’re in a situation like this, woman alone, in front of her door — anyone alone, not that I should be considered one in that respect — dangerous, at all threatening, I mean”—she turned back to him, angry, hand with her keys behind her—“and even loony sounding as my suggestion could also be thought as, though it isn’t so much and I’m not — would you come to it with me? Which you probably knew I was going to say. That hand-waving before. Or just meet me there?” “What are you talking about. Absolutely not.” “Why? I’ve been invited and I’m inviting you. If it’s—” “It is, whatever you’re about to say. Because I don’t know you and don’t want to know you and definitely don’t want to go to a reception of any kind today. It’d seem peculiar too. The Rerkovskys would ask and I’d have to say I just met you in the elevator and then spoke to you for a minute on my floor, and why am I speaking to you hypothetically about this or even speaking to you about anything on my floor? You could be something you’re not saying you are. This could all be a pretense. Look, be smart and take the elevator and go to your party,” and she unlocked the door while staring at him, went in, shut and locked it and threw the bolt hard. They talked through the door for about fifteen minutes. To get her to come to the door he rang the bell several times and said between ringings “Please, don’t call the doorman. I’m nothing like what you might think I am. Truth is I’m incorrigibly harmless, never been in any adult trouble. I only want to speak to you through the door for a few seconds to a minute but no more to explain some things and then I’ll go.” The first time she came to the door she said something like “Get away from here now or I’ll not only call the doorman and the super but the police,” and then went away from the door. He could hear her footsteps on the wood floor. The second time she came she said “I’m not playing around with you, sir. If you continue to ring and don’t get off this floor, I will call the police. I’ve the phone in my hand now. Dot dot dot with the numbers on the buttons and you’re done. If you run away from here I’ll have them look for you at the Rerkovskys. If you’re also not there, then they’ll have my description of you. And if it’s true what you said about the bride being your friend, they’ll speak to her, find out who you are and go to your home. If there is no bride or wedding and you had no plans to go to the Rerkovskys, then I’ll ask them to knock on every door in this building to ask if anyone was expecting you. And if nothing comes of that, then for them to drive around the neighborhood looking for you, and then keep watch over this building in case you plan to return.”

He forgets exactly what he said to make her continue listening and not call the police, if she was really going to. Days later she said she didn’t have the phone in her hand then but was thinking of going to the living room to call. He knows he said he wanted to give her a quick rundown of who he was and what he did and where he lived and so on, just so she’d have some idea of him and know or at least think there was a greater chance of it that he was rational and respectable and no criminal or kook. That way maybe she’d look differently on him. And maybe, though without opening her door if that was the way she wanted it, and preposterous as this outcome probably was, give him her name and phone number so he could call her some later time. And “later time” not meaning tonight but in a few days to a week or as far off as she wanted, but he would hope relatively soon. Or if she preferred to call him, he could give her his name and phone number. Certainly his name. He gave it. Waited for her to give hers. She didn’t. He could even give her the names and phone numbers of people he knew whom she might know and she could call them about him. Would she prefer that? If she did, he’d wait till she got paper and pen or he could even write the names and numbers out for her or slip a paper and pen under the door so she could write them down. She didn’t answer. Really, he said: intelligent, decent people. Educators, writers, a translator, a magazine editor; even a publisher of a small trade house here in New York. He listened. She didn’t ask who they were or if that was what he did: write, possibly teach. He was going too far, wasn’t he? he said. But, quite truthfully, though he also knew he wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know, he was attracted to her and didn’t want this to be a lost opportunity where he’d never see her again. Which was why, of course, he was making such a terrible fool of himself and putting her through all this and risking being grabbed by the super or the police. And don’t worry, he said. None of her neighbors had opened their doors to look, nor had he heard any of them come to their doors or open their peepholes. They must all be out. She didn’t say anything. Or just very circumspect, or apathetic, inattentive, uninquisitive, reclusive to a fault or for any number of reasons didn’t want to involve themselves in possible trouble. Tenants were tenants whatever New York City building you were in. Would she agree with any of that? Then what did she think about anything he’d said so far? Still no response. He asked if she was still there. Yes, she said, from right behind the door. And if she had called the super or the police? No. Then could he also tell her, and then he’d go, how he usually felt at parties when he went alone and essentially didn’t know anyone there: uncomfortable, a party imposter, which was another reason he’d asked her to come with him. That had nothing to do with her, she said. He could go, he didn’t have to go, all that was his business solely. He knew, he knew, he said, but was just saying, maybe for lack of anything else to say. No, that wasn’t so. He also told her what the bride was to him. That they had once been very good friends, mates for a while, and he wasn’t saying this to do anything but state a fact, though why he felt he had to state that fact was perhaps another matter and one he should look into…. But the bride and he didn’t work out, and also why she’d invited him. It was a strange story. He started laughing. He didn’t know if he could tell it through a door or keep it to thirty seconds, for that was how long she said she’d give him before she probably would call the super. He told it in a minute. One minute-ten to be exact, he said, looking at his watch before and after. She thought the story bizarre and funny. The part about the gun especially. Did he think her husband was serious? Just a big windbag, he said, or seemed. If she were he she wouldn’t go to the reception. He really shouldn’t have been invited, for it’ll probably make the groom uncomfortable seeing him there. He believed another ex-lover of hers would be there too, he said; the one who’d come in to the bar with her for the daiquiris. Even worse, she said. Something was slightly off about this woman. But he was right not to have gone to the wedding ceremony, though she didn’t know if he hadn’t gone for what she’d consider the right reason. But now to think about taking someone to the reception whom he’d just met in an elevator in the same building the reception was? It’d seem his motives were questionable now and that he wanted to take her to make it an even better story to tell or to get back at the bride some way. No, positively not, he said. He wanted to take her for the reasons he gave before, which he was sure she didn’t want to hear again: his unease at going alone, but much more so because he was attracted to her, that lost opportunity he mentioned, and thought if she came with him it’d be a pleasant enough place to get to know her a little and perhaps other way around for her too. Festive atmosphere, lots of convivial people, familiar building, two elevator rides and a short lobby walk to her own apartment, if it were cold out he’d say she wouldn’t even have to put on a sweater, etcetera. But if she wanted he could skip the reception and they could go out for coffee or any kind of snack, all on him, not that he didn’t think she could pay for it. But better yet why didn’t she just come to the reception for half an hour? She didn’t say anything. Even less time than that if she wanted. That way he could fulfill his obligation to go to the reception, since he had told the bride he’d be there and that seemed to mean something to her. And he supposed they could get coffee there as well as at any coffee shop and certainly far better snacks, maybe a glass of champagne if she wanted, and they could talk for part or most of that time, and that would be that unless she wanted to stay longer. If she didn’t, then he could stay and she could go home, or they could take a long or short walk after that half an hour to less, and then she could go home and he’d return to the party or just go home himself. Probably that. But what does she say? She didn’t know, she said. He was a most convincing arguer or fabricator. Not so, he said. He was usually inarticulate, garble-mouthed, preternaturally slow to think of the right things to say to win any argument or just thought of them too late. There was an expression for that in Yiddish, another in French, perhaps most languages — what you thought after the door had been slammed on you and you walked downstairs. Steps-in-mouth. Tongue-unfurled-only-on-the-dark-stairs. For arguing, convincing, more than simple conversing, even explaining, just weren’t for him, except now and then, like maybe now. And as for lying? She’d said fabricating and she was sorry she’d said it, she said. No no, he said. He didn’t, why would he? since in addition to other reasons, probably the most flagrant was that he was such a poor speaker he’d be seen through too easily. Though with the door shut it was true he might be more adept at it, since the person being lied to wouldn’t see his giveaway face. No, what he did do well was run on unintelligibly about relatively nothing and make it seem no more than that. But really, what does she say? She still didn’t know, she said. He swore there’d be no problems. Not on his knees, for he had his only good dress pants on and he was going to a party — No, no more bad jokes, for the time being. And ten minutes at the most?

She invited him in for coffee. Maybe that’d be the best idea, she’d said, though she wasn’t sure why. They talked, drank tea and ate toast. Her expression when she’d opened the door was reserved, observing. He’d said then honestly, he had no gun and then that that was a stupid remark. After awhile she said there didn’t seem to be anything menacing about him but she still felt he’d acted very strangely, pursuing her when everything she’d said and did was against it and he could have been locked up. He said maybe once, twice in his life had he acted that way but never so inexorably. She said he was either lying to her, again or for the first time, or had forgot. Their respective families, educations, what each did professionally, where he lived and they’d been brought up, how’d she got the apartment, something about a print on her wall above the piano: naked woman riding a big furious bull, and not about what each thought it meant. Was that, he thinks he said, what playing the piano was to her? She laughed — not then, and he forgets what it was over or even if it was something he’d said that did it. Soon after she said maybe going to the party for half an hour — he’d asked again when she was still smiling — would be all right. Even if she wouldn’t know anyone there but the Rerkovskys, she liked champagne almost more than anything and at wedding receptions you usually got the best. She was kidding of course, and maybe it wasn’t such a good idea — it’d seem she’d come only for the party. Those questions she spoke about before would probably be asked: how’d they know each other, and so on. So they’d lie, he said. Oh, what should she do? — give her five minutes to dress. She shut the bedroom door. He sat on the couch not believing his luck and hoping she wouldn’t change her mind. They went. She said once that she was having a good time, smiled warmly at him several times, spoke at length with Sid Rerkovsky about a neighborhood park problem and that she thought she could be of some help, told Howard after about an hour that she was leaving and he needn’t walk her to her door. He stayed another hour, went home, couldn’t stop thinking of her, wanted to call her, told himself not to for a couple of days, drank himself to sleep while reading several days of papers. They saw each other a few afternoons later. For almost every other night for months. Had an argument: she said he’d been repeatedly rude and hostile to her mother and to a lesser extent to other people and that was something she couldn’t take in the man she was seeing. He said her mother had been hostile to him from day one, which would make him rude to her he supposed but didn’t know, and as for the other people, he didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about. They broke up, got back together a month later: he’d phoned, asked if he’d left a very important book to him at her apartment, knew she’d see through the pretext but thought he had to use something like it than saying straight off how much he missed her, dreamt of her, could hardly work because of her, that he’d been writing one a night these idiotic gushy poems about her, did she think they could meet to talk over some of their differences and so on? She said she didn’t remember seeing the book but would look, but before she hung up, was that really why he’d called? He said it was a pretext, knew she’d see through it and was glad she had, and how much he missed her… They met, talked, started seeing each other again, he moved in with her, they had dinner at the Rerkovskys a number of times and had them over once, got married, the Rerkovskys wanted to give the reception in their apartment but she wanted to have a small wedding in her apartment and didn’t want the Rerkovskys to be at the even smaller ceremony there. Had their first child less than a year later, moved to where a good job was for him, another child, she resumed teaching but evenings, lots else, then what happened to her happened.

Now he’s back with the woman whose wedding reception it was. Gail. She’s divorced, has a child. He got a Christmas card from her nine years after her wedding reception and wrote back saying what had happened to him since then. “You might remember the woman I came with, but I doubt you’d remember much on such an exciting day. Much that wasn’t connected to you, I mean.” She’d sent him a Christmas card the two Christmases after she got married. He sent her a card back for the first one but doesn’t think he got around to answering the second. Must have been just after Olivia was born, so too busy to, or just didn’t see the point. Then he stopped hearing from her. From the Rerkovskys he’d learned she moved to Rome with her husband, and soon after that he and Denise left New York and lost touch with the Rerkovskys. It was the Rerkovskys, she said, who told her what school he got a job at years ago, which is where she sent the card, hoping he was still there or it’d be forwarded. She called him a few months later saying she’d be attending a conference in his city and would he care to come by her hotel for a drink. Did. They met downstairs, drank in the bar. He called the sitter to see if she’d stay another two hours, they had a quick dinner in the hotel cafe, went to her room for beers, made love. They corresponded and called after that, visited each other, she wondered why she hadn’t found him this attractive back then. “I think I would have asked you to marry if I had. Maybe fatherhood and having been married and holding a responsible job and security and all you went through with your wife’s illness have toned you down a ways. You were often a lot too argumentative and unsociable and crazy to me then. Even your sex was a bit too flaky, picking me up with you stuck in me and pinning me against the wall and sometimes banging me against it till you came. That hurt. Who cared if you got lost in it — I used to get bruises on my ass and back. It used to piss me off, if you remember, since you continued trying to do it even after I told you how I felt.” “I’d probably still be doing it if I wasn’t ten years older and no doubt somewhat weaker. Last time I tried it with Denise was a couple of years ago — she was a little heftier than you, and she never complained when I did it — and I could barely pick her up. I think I even fell. Anyway, something for you to thank the aging process for.” “Even your foreplay action has changed. You used to rub my cunt too softly and kiss it too hard and I could never get you to switch those two.” “That was your and Denise’s doing. I figured that after the two of you had said it, and also some vague remembrances of other women saying something like it in the past, I had to be doing something wrong. Didn’t make me feel that good either, realizing my technique there had been off some thirty years, even if some women might not have been aware it was, but I’m probably wrong there too.”

He told her he found her much more attractive now too. He’d always found her attractive, face and body, with legs and a rear end that gave him a hard-on almost every time he looked at them, but he could never love her. As he did Denise. And other women before Denise. Certain things about her. She annoyed him at times, though he didn’t say so. Things she did and said. She was educated but not in areas he found interesting. She read stupid books, wanted to see what he knew would be banal movies and plays. She too frequently watched moronic TV. She was too showy in appearance. She barely tolerated the music he liked and hated it when he had it on in the car. “It’s depressing, funereal, old.” Her voice was often fake. There was something unnatural about her in lots of ways. Too much time in front of the mirror, inspecting herself, clothes, trying out faces, poses. Sometimes he caught her. And that it didn’t embarrass her when he did. Hair, which she seemed to change the style of every other month, and nose, which she was seriously thinking of getting bobbed and pugged. He’d never touch it, he told her, if she did get it fixed. But he was lonely for close adult company and inherently horny it seemed and depressed when he did it to himself. There’d been two women for short periods before her and both he showed minimal interest in and they dropped him abruptly. Their sex was good. She got him started even when he thought he wouldn’t feel like it, and let him do it whichever way and whenever he wanted to, even when she was sleeping, except for picking her up. She was smart and well respected in her field, perceptive about other people, had a few bright congenial friends. She was a good mother and daughter and warm and attentive to his girls. And generous with money — and made lots of it and stood to inherit a bundle, which didn’t influence him and he’d in fact always got along better with much poorer women. Thought of interesting things to do with the girls and them, got him away from his work, was lively, sometimes funny, energetic. Great cook, kept a clean house, did his taxes better than he, went out of her way to aid disabled people across the street, and other things. So one day he says “Hey listen, what’re we fooling around for — why don’t we get married?” She says “Only if you’re absolutely sure you want to. Occasionally I don’t feel you really love me.” “I do. I want to marry you. Both very much. Only, promise not to get a nose job. We’ll write it into our marriage contract. I don’t know what I can agree to to meet it. Certainly nothing about money, since whatever I save has to go to my girls first, and it’ll be chicken feed compared to what you’ll be able to put away. That I’ll keep my sperm count high in case you want another child.” “I won’t. And I can’t promise. I’ve an awful nose. It’s long, droops, and has bumps. Some women look sweet with a drop dripping out of a nostril or hanging off it, but I look gargoylish. What I think of myself is important, so I probably will go through with it in addition to surgery with the chin and around the eyes if I think I need it later on.” “At least, before you let them break your nose and hack away at the cartilage, give me a day to try to talk you out of it.” He wonders if he’ll ever end up loving her, be glad he’s married to her, be able to continue to make love with her, can keep up the pretense for years? He thinks with the sex he can, since he’s able to separate it when he wants to, but doubts he can with the others. So what then? They’ll stay married for a number of years, with luck till around the time his girls might not need her as much or need him, to restrain him sometimes and for his self-control and composure, to have a companion anymore, and also when he might be too indifferent or lost something somehow to care about having a woman around for just company and sex.

They get married. No honeymoon. He doesn’t want to leave his girls so soon after the marriage. Desertion. Gail and her daughter move into his little semi-detached house, she gets a high-paying job in his city, in a few months has the roof reshingled, basement finished, most of the furniture replaced, kitchen recabineted, tiny backyard and front and side grass areas sodded and planted with bulbs and fruit trees, and knows more places to buy things and go to and has made more friends than he and Denise had in years. He tells her he loves her whenever he feels she needs to hear it, but he never means it. Wishes he did though. That he could think about her wistfully during the day, late afternoons long for her to come home, want to jump her before they get into bed, cuddle with her through sleep, dream of making love to her, kiss her lips when he gets out of bed early morning to exercise and run. He still thinks about Denise a lot, as much as he did before he met Gail. Doing day-to-day things. Typing, driving, fluffing a pillow. But also, if he can’t get an erection with Gail and wants to, he’ll think about making love with Denise, especially with him on his knees behind her and one time in particular when the lights were on or it was daylight and she had her rear raised and vulva opened, and usually gets one. Also, if he’s about to come with Gail and she’s close to it or he feels if she does he’ll sleep better because she will or else he wants her to come before he does so he can then, once she’s done, enter her from behind, he’ll think of Denise just after she died or when he opened the coffin the night before the funeral to have a last private look at her and kissed her forehead and wedding band or when she was bedridden and unable to move even a finger or toe. Then his penis will shrink, ejaculation be stalled, and he’ll press their pelvises together and go through the motions and rub her where she likes if he can get his hand there and she’ll usually come and then he’ll urge or turn her over on her hands and knees if she isn’t on them and maybe think of making love with Denise or just Denise nude or just of her vulva if he has to to get an erection and do it in the position, if she moves back and forth at the right time, he likes best.

He also continues to read letters Denise sent him before they were married, look at her photos. Two especially. Nude Polaroids of her seven to eight months pregnant with Olivia. Maine, secluded rented cabin, tips of trees and ideal summer sky behind her, standing on the top porch step, he must have been sitting or lying on the porch when he took them, looking down at him skeptically and saying to herself, she later told him when he asked, “Why am I doing this for you and what if someone gets ahold of it? I’m so bloated and deformed, it’ll come out pornographic.” He promised to only take one but then lied and said his finger was over the slot when the photo came out and took a second with her consent before the first was developed. She wanted to destroy both but he swore he’d never let anyone see them or leave them in a place where they could be found accidentally. They were the only nude shots he had of her. Huge belly, enormous breasts, it seemed twice as much pubic and armpit hair but that was probably just the shadows, ankles swollen, thighs wider, face chubbier, big dark aureoles, and so on. Same position and look in both, so he doesn’t know which one he had to lie to get. He cut the borders off them and then some of the porch and sky till they fit into one of the plastic sleeves of his wallet’s photo section under another photo. Doesn’t remember what photo they were under then — maybe the same one as now, which is of his mother, standing between his uncle and aunt, their arms interlocked, posing merrily at Denise’s and his wedding reception. Meantime he’s gone through three or four almost identical wallets. He wishes he’d taken nude photos of her when she wasn’t pregnant. Soon after he met her, for instance, when he said if Playboy had a pictorial essay planned on nude assistant profs, she’d be a great choice (she wasn’t flattered, said his remark was dumb and young), or about six months after she had Eva, when she’d slimmed down to her lowest adult weight, done lots of muscle-toning exercises and swimming and jumping rope. Even her buttocks were getting hard. Taken pornographic photos, even. Front, back, lying down, legs spread apart, fingering herself, shots of them making love taken with the aid of a timer, from behind with her rear raised, vulva opened, head turned around to him. He once asked her to pose nude when she wasn’t pregnant — a simple shot, standing and smiling — when she was stepping out of the shower and he held up the unopened Polaroid camera. But she said the only reason she let him keep the nude ones he had of her was because they didn’t resemble her except for the skeptical expression somewhat when she’s doing something she doesn’t really want to but oh what the fuck, and her hair when it had been dried by the sun after a shampoo, brushed hard and pinned up.

If Gail knew about the photos and letters and little tricks he used to get or lose an erection and how he felt about her, she never let on. Years. Then she tells him their marriage is a sham and she wants a separation. Springs it on him. First she asks him to sit. He’d come back from work, hung up his jacket, put his briefcase and books on the living room chair he always puts them on, the three girls were playing somewhere, he went over to kiss her, she put her hands up to back him off, asked him to sit, get a drink if he wanted — a hard one preferably, even if that seemed, she said, like something someone might say in a bad movie or lousy book, but it might be useful to have, though she hoped not to throw at her. “What do you mean? What is it? You’re making me nervous. Are you ill? Can’t be if you’re talking about throwing drinks at someone.” That’s when she says their marriage is a sham, she’s known it for a year, she doesn’t believe a kind or polite word he says to her except when it’s about what she cooks or when she in any way makes life easier for him, and she’s been faking for months, as she suspects he has, her sex and most of her orgasms with him, what there were of them. “I’m surprised about the sex part,” he says. “Your orgasms particularly seemed every bit authentic. I for sure have been involved in it almost every second. As for the other stuff, I’m surprised but not as much, since I’m not very convincing when I say just about anything I want very much to get across and especially affectionate and complimentary things, and I also have a way of saying things that come out sounding opposite of what they mean.” “Horsecrap. Anyway, what I’m getting to is we should separate. For half a year, let’s say, so the girls will begin getting used to it while still holding some hope we’ll get together again, which I guarantee you there’s no hope of since my ultimate aim is to get an unacrimonious divorce.” “Absolutely not. I mean, sure, unacrimoniously, if it ever came to that, which I don’t want it to, for one reason because it’ll hurt the kids too much — my two and Susan. And why the hell a divorce? I love you and feel very strongly we can work out whatever it is you think’s fouling up things and also that I can convince you, despite my speaking problems, that you’re dead wrong about what you think I feel and don’t feel about you. First off, let’s talk about what brought all this up. You think, for instance, I’ve had a lover or two? One-shot flings even?” “No, though maybe you have. When you bring it up like that, it’s usually true. Not that I’d care, now, unless she was carrying something communicable. Because I now have one, you know. But why would you know? You mainly think of yourself and would probably be glad he was taking some of the sexual pressure off you. He’s clean though. If you’ll permit me: bags first till I had him medically checked out. I’m smart enough not to get temporary or terminal anything because I suddenly got the hots for someone. An untemperamental mature man whom I’ve little emotional feeling for but I adore sleeping with and being with sometimes too. He can be a gas. Are you upset?” “Sure, yes, very, what do you think? Screw it. You want to take lovers and don’t believe we can work things out—” “Never, even if I wanted to.” “Then better you do leave. Though I’m sorry about Susan. In my own way I love her, so I’ll miss her. I can continue — we all can — to see her, can’t we?” “Certainly your girls. And you too, if she wants. She probably will, for a while, when we move to a new neighborhood and her social life sags, but then she’ll consider having to see you a stiff pain in the ass. She’s practical and unsentimental and you pretend to be the reverse. Can you ever stop being a fake?”

He says some words to her, she to him, then: “Fuck you,” “Eat shit,” “Same here,” “Stick it up your skinny hole,” “Oh, very fine words,” he says, “You miserable shriveled-up prig should talk?” he pushes her, she takes a swing at him and he twists her arm till it hurts, all three girls have come downstairs and been watching, she leaves the next week, the two never saying a word to each other and trying to be in different rooms till then, his girls see Susan regularly but she won’t see him no matter how many times he apologizes on the phone for having hurt her mother. They divorce, she moves in with her lover, meets someone on a business trip and settles in the city he works in. His daughters thought of Susan as their sister, they tell Howard. “We’ll take a trip West this summer,” he says, “drive through where she lives and you can spend a day or two with her. More if she has time and you want. I’ll stay in the motel and read and do some work.” “Marrying someone with a child can be a disaster for us,” Olivia says. “Next time fall for someone without one. Then if you want to have another, do it with her so the baby will have to stay or later on be shared.” “I’m too old for another child and I don’t want another wife. I’ve never loved any woman since your mother and I seriously doubt I could. I didn’t even tell Gail that. That was mean of me. From now on I only want to be with you kids till you’re all grown up. After that you can visit or stay but it’ll be best if things go bad for you with someone else that you try to hack it out on your own. Do you understand?” “No.” “‘Hack.’ It’s too dated a word. Work it out with him, or if you’re without him, then by yourself, in other words. Clearer?” “It’s not that. Just most times you seem a lot healthier and not so strange when you’re with someone. That last thing with Gail we won’t count. Eva and I are going to try and find a nice lady for you.”

Years. He doesn’t go out with any women. Wrong. One he took to a movie, shook hands good-bye at her door and didn’t call again. She did and he said he was sorry. Another for dinner at her apartment. He thought maybe he should try something, just to take the big plunge again and she seemed responsive, and he made a move and she said she had nothing like that in mind when she invited him over, and showed him the door. It’s not that he’s lost his sex drive, he thinks. Sex drive; funny term. Or not that much, but how can he tell? He does it to himself much less often than he did after Denise died and before he met Gail; that should be an indicator. Even those are mostly motivated by health reasons to avoid something with the prostate. Doctor’s suggestion. But then he still stares after women’s behinds and legs as much, fantasizes having sex with women he sees and meets, gets plenty of spontaneous erections and they seem to be as hard most of the times and stay up as long. He’s sure it’s mainly because his kids are older now and he’s afraid of getting caught by them or leaving some sign of it around. When he does do it it’s usually afternoon when they’re in school though he’d prefer it late at night when he’s in bed. It’s also not as exciting anymore, no matter what drugstore and picture aids he might use, which could be another indicator. And though it doesn’t take any longer than it used to he often thinks while doing it that he should be doing the whole thing with someone, not just this by himself, and that takes away something.

A couple of friends want to hook him up with this woman or that but he never wants to. He usually says he likes the way things are, not so hot as they might be at times, and also doesn’t want to hurt his daughters again, and other excuses: couldn’t for the life of himself call up a woman for a blind date, wouldn’t want a woman calling up him for one, would never go to a dinner arranged just so the host could make a match. Uncomfortable. A large party partly for that or just to go to has been OK but so far all the available women he’s met at them didn’t interest him. Only other way would be to meet a woman accidentally. In an elevator even. Times he has and was interested he didn’t know what to say quickly enough before they got away, and then wouldn’t call them, when he knew who they were or how to reach them, because he didn’t feel he knew them well enough to call to arrange something. Then Olivia talks about her Russian teacher in high school. “She’s divorced, no children, very intellectual, unstrange and nice. She carries these enormous nontextbooks with her everywhere and you can always see her reading them when she’s not teaching, and scribbling down notes about what’s inside them I suppose, even when she walks to the parking lot. And she’s pretty as anything, with this big athletic body, and she used to be a beauty contest winner too.” “I never liked the type. Not the athletics. That can be all right if it’s not where she gets carried away. Goes pro or runs three times as much as she needs to keep her weight down or build up her lungs. Or is afraid, missed one run, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ll decay in a day’ or I’ll become a balloon.’ But the kind of mind, I mean, that would enter such a contest, much less to win. ‘Tuck in your turn, Hon, and grin for the pubic’—excuse me, but that sort of thing.” “She knows, but that was around ten years ago and she pooh-poohs it too.” “Ten? Then she’s much too young for me. It wasn’t a thirty-and-over contest? No? Then the age gap could never be jumped.” “I heard she goes for older guys and you’re still relatively good-looking, youthfullike and crazy-excessive sometimes and so on.” “For your sake then or just to prove something, I’ll have a look at her next time I visit the school. More. I’ll do what I’ve done since you started kindergarten and that’s to check out your teacher while checking up on how you’re doing from her point of view.”

Olivia points her out at the next parent-teacher meeting. Already admired her at the last one without knowing who she was. Attractive, intelligent face, nice body from what he can remember and now see of it in a seated position from about twenty rows back, neat, nicely simply dressed, hair becomingly done, smiles when something’s bonafidally funny, frowns same time he does at several of the speakers’ shortsighted or long-winded or just simpleminded remarks. After the auditorium meeting he goes to her classroom. Large library of great Russian books for the students. Travel posters of Russian cathedrals and long Leningrad buildings. Poster-sized blowups of modern Russian novelists and poets. Corner table with a samovar on it where Olivia’s said the teacher and students occasionally have pechenie and Georgian tea. Listens to her conversations with parents before him. Soft voice, clear speech, common sense, good choice of words, a few he doesn’t know or has forgot and jots them down. Exomorph, vertiginous, chimerical, philippic, quid pro quo. Olivia’s doing exceptional work; he says she always has. He’s done a heck of a job with her alone; her mother laid it down year by year for him in a notebook, even how to braid the girls’ hair. Then what else can she tell him about Olivia except more praise? Pasternak, Chekhov, Babel, Leskov, Mandelstam, Ahkmatova, Nabokov, “Tsvettava… I can never pronounce it, less ever spell it.” She does both, says he came close, quotes some lines in English from poems he’s never read. “Beautiful. Naturally I didn’t altogether get them. Oops, there are daddies behind me, so I’ll go. Maybe another time we can go on with our non-Olivia talk if she continues to do as well.” “I’d be delighted; you know where I am.” She’ll never be interested in him, and tells Olivia that on the way home. “I’ll speak to her and find out.” “No, please, forget it. I don’t want to start again and I certainly don’t want to get you involved. She might lower your mark to an A-plus.” “Grade. And she’s way above that.” “Mark, grade. I don’t know why I always make that mistake. It’s from before I taught. you make the mark, you mark the grade. But ‘Oakujava’ I think is how you pronounce his name. As for the spelling — as with Tsvetaeva before Ms. Munder told me — I could only guess. I should’ve mentioned him, is what I’m saying, rather than just poets and fiction writers. Wouldn’t have narrowed me.” “She’s played him for us. Also for his perfect diction. O-k-u-d-shav-a.” “Really, you got to swear you won’t. If I later think differently about myself in relation to her, I’ll call her or just arrange to bump into her by chance as she leaves school. Like ‘Oh, I was on my way to pick up Olivia. She’s not expecting me, and just between the two of us I’d rather talk lit and troubadours with you.’ But she needs someone younger, stronger, smarter, singler, handsomer, head hairier, clothes clothier, in every way still shiny and on the way up, and not some seemingly semicontentedly cloistered dumpy grump who prizes just good wine, a few soups, a number of records and books, that hard-crusted bread we get delivered from Canada, and you girls.”

Olivia comes home next day and says “Amby wouldn’t mind your calling her. She said ’Your dad seemed intelligent, cultured, obviously serious at what he does, and we have some of the same interests, including you,’ meaning me, which was the one part of what she said I didn’t like. Too trying-to-please-me and maybe through me, you, something I never saw in her before. ‘So,’ she continued to say, which you can tell from my voice change, ‘I don’t see why we couldn’t spend half an hour over coffee, unless it would disturb you,’ meaning me again, which was OK this time, since she was showing she was aware of the possible conflict, she being my teacher and me so often still talking of my mother, and things.” “You do? Me too, my sweetheart.” He calls her. They have coffee after her school lets out. Olivia waves to them and then points them out to her friends as they walk down the hill to the coffee shop. Start seeing each other, marry. She wants a child. He says he doesn’t think he has the energy to help bring up another one but if she wants it, fine, all right, “Three was what we originally planned… Denise and I. Excuse me. Nothing there meant that wasn’t there, but you know what I mean.” They have a girl. He’s never really in love with Amby. She’s nice, all that, but something keeps interfering. He just doesn’t feel what he’d love to for her. It’d so simplify things. This way’s unrealistic, bordering on the crazy, can only make him unhappy, also Amby and the girls. She’s still very pretty, good figure, nothing she does or says puts him off, but he hardly even ever wants to put his arms around her or kiss her. No long deep ones when he does as he sometimes even did with… he can’t believe it, forgot her name, Susan was her daughter; Gail. Rarely gets erections. When he does they’re rarely full. A few times she’s said “What’s wrong? Something I’ve done? Anything I can do?” and he said “It’s nothing, maybe my bloodless age, I’ll see a doctor if it doesn’t get better.” They usually have to work hard before anything happens with him. He looks at Denise’s photos when she’s not around. Especially the pregnant ones, nude and clothed. Remembers how he felt then. Sex just about every day till she went to the hospital three weeks overdue. They were warned not to. Hates looking at the photos he’s in with her. Not because he looks so much younger. Hell, he was much younger, so no problem there. It’s that he was much happier then and in them. He can’t think of life without Denise. Exaggeration. Sometimes he thinks he can’t live without her. Another way. The three girls, they’re wonderful, he loves them, always wants to be with them, if something happened to one of them he doesn’t know what he’d do. Forget it. What he said about life and living without Denise expresses a lot about how he feels. He prays she’ll come back. “Dear God,” he says in his head, Amby asleep beside him, “I don’t believe in you but will in every possible way if you bring her back and in the condition she was in before she got sick plus whatever natural aging and minor-illness effects that would have taken place. I’ll make everything good for this hurt. Which will probably only have to be to Amby, but whatever you want, I will.” This is silly, he right away thinks, praying and this prayer. If there’s a God, He can see straight through it; if there isn’t, then what’s the sense? He writes poems to her, most going something like this: “My love, my dove, it’s what I feel, awfully unpoetical as these lines must be to your trained ears, but it’s tearing at my entrails and is that any better than gripping my gizzards or quickening my doom? Come back, I’m on a rack, the birds have stopped singing for me and now I don’t even see them when they pass close overhead on a clement day or beg for attention or crumbs at my feet. What do I mean? I’m a bird. I’m going cuckoo for you. Cuckoo, cuckoo, I miss and worship you, my fellow indivisible cuckoo.”

“It’s just not working,” he says to Amby one morning, she’s feeding the baby by spoon, he’s in the next room putting in toast. “What isn’t? The toaster?” “Listen, hell with this goddamn toast and eating,” and he pushes the toast up and throws it into the sink. “What’s wrong with you?” “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” he says, coming into the living room. “Listen, I still — hours every day. No that’s a little too farfetched, but I know it’s a short to moderately long time and just about every day. Please, stop feeding her for a second. This is very important. You have to have my complete attention. I have to have yours, I of course mean, for I might not be able to say this again. I was saying ‘long’ for something like this — a long time, almost every other day, and year after year, even when you wouldn’t think I would … the general you and maybe you-Amby too — think of Denise. There we are. Denise, that’s who.” “You’re a liar or a bastard. You just want to get out,” and she drops the spoon and runs upstairs. The baby cries in her highchair. Food runs out of her mouth. He sits, wipes her, says “There, there,” finishes feeding her, takes her out for a stroll. He speaks to Amby again later. I’m sorry. Listen, just sit. I’ll try to stop thinking of her. I know we should stay together — you and I. I want to. Olivia and Eva also shouldn’t lose you as they did their mother and then Gail. And lose their baby sister too, whom I’m sure you’d want to have total custody of if we separated or divorced, weekends this and that, which wouldn’t be enough for them — would be a great loss.” “You speak of her as if she isn’t yours.” “I do? Where? Because I’m sure she is. Who else’s could she be? Meaning: sure she is. I know you haven’t had lovers. Neither have I. I’d never do that to you. Meaning, that’s not what I’d do to you. The other thing — it’s all in my head — I’m guilty. Listen, I’m a confused man; very. Denise’s death must have turned off some important lights in me. And they just don’t make, or they’re too tough to find anymore, the same kind of bulbs — but enough of that crap. I should get a new lamp though, right? Or see a lamp fixer, even if he charges ninety-five an hour per. So what? What’s money in something like this, and I’m covered. We are, and I want us to continue to be. Listen, don’t pay any attention to what I’m saying. But I loved her deeply. I told you that when we met. But I also told you it was all over, except sad moments that come back now and then. That was natural. We agreed. But she got sick. She deteriorated badly and too quickly. Bam, I looked around, she was gone. The girls and I were heartbroken for a year. They could have got out of it sooner if I hadn’t been such a mess. Well, natural, natural, guilty as I still am about that too. Though they turned out all right, are turning out all right, and what else could I have done about it much as I wanted to and tried? Most of the time tried — I milked a little of it too. But it takes a year — it took a year — I thought, but some of it obviously stayed. Obviously. I still can’t quite get her out of my clunky head. Not ‘quite’—more. I’m a schmuck, a fool, something’s still got to be wrong with me and maybe I’ve gotten progressively worse. It’s ruined all my relationships with women since. The ones I wanted to be close. We’ve talked about that. Till you came. You were supposed to be different. Your patience with me, my feelings for you. Mutual, the other way around, though not my patience. And you were. You are. There isn’t anyone like you. But that woman keeps coming back. I can’t get hard-ons? Most of the time. Fine, now you know why. I’m almost sure that’s it. And I’ve pictures. I look at them of her. Nude ones even. I used to jerk off to them, now I don’t, maybe because I no longer can. Physiological, psychological — something, or the two combined. And her old letters. Me, with my bad memory, I’ve memorized whole passages. I sit and sit and stare at them, as if I expect the script to disappear and then her hand to write the same letter again or a new message to me. One time I actually thought I saw her hand doing this. I was ecstatic, though I couldn’t read it. First the hand, then the arm, then the whole body, I said to myself then — I won’t be able to sit still when it gets to the breasts and face — when the image of the hand faded. It’s crazy, I know. The entire thing. Or very bizarre, terrible, out of kilter, but it’s something and probably much worse than I’ve said. In those adjectives. But I don’t know what to say about it to you anymore. Thanks for continuing to listen to me. I shouldn’t have married you. Neither Gail — no one but my first wife. Denise. Meaning — but you can see what I mean. I’ll see a doctor. A head one. For the head. It was unfair to marry you, was what I meant, if I had any idea I was going to act like this — and I did — or even to have started with you. Well, we got a nice baby out of it. And I still love you — that’s no lie — that’s the truth — and need and want you — all that — and certainly for you and Gwynne to stay. I think it’ll get better. Don’t ask me why I do-something just tells me all of a sudden. Maybe all I needed was this — to let it out. I almost know it will, in fact — get better — so trust me, please. I’ll get down on my knees. A Bible. Anything. Swear on my beloved mother’s head. Actually not that, since it’s too much name-in-vain business and also too much like part of an act. But whatever, if you want, to convince you I truly believe all of it will get better to the point of being vastly to completely improved. I mean by that: you and I and also my body and mind. OK, I’m done, thanks again, listening and so on, and now you.” “I don’t see it, really. Let’s say I’m skeptical, based on what you’ve said. If it’s gone on for so long and with so many women and has only gotten worse, why should I think it will get better because of one voluminous and somewhat confusing airing-out? That said, we can still try. There are the children. I don’t love you anymore, but we’ll see about that too. But enough. The baby’s waking up.”

They try. He tears up the pregnant photos. Doesn’t want to throw away all the pieces — sees himself tucking away two or three in some corner pocket of his wallet — but feels he has to. Also the poems and most of the letters. Two, and innocent ones, he puts in a file folder marked “keepsakes for the kids”—she’s talking about taking her summer vacation in one of them, her grandmother’s illness in the other and what it was like visiting her in a nursing home the first time. Goes to a therapist with Amby and to the same one alone and at each session says he’s thinking less and less of Denise, more of her, feels their recent efforts at saving the marriage are working, but not much of that’s true. Though it will be, he thinks, and for now she feels a lot better toward him. They have sex more often than they’ve had in a year, but it mostly doesn’t work for him. When it does he’s usually only hard for a short time and only twice did it end up for him in even a little thrill. She says a couple of times “Don’t worry, you’ll be the same bellowing bear as always, down on me, under me, in me, all around me, if just a bit less of that perhaps, modifications for age factors and all, but certainly this more than anything takes time. The essential thing is we both feel infinitely better about each other, true?” “Without question.” He still has a tough time holding her hand or putting his arms around her or pressing up close to her, except in bed, and there mostly to keep warm. He kisses her without feeling but seems to do a good job not showing it, the way she kisses back. Maybe she’s thinking of someone else or is kissing him like that to goad him on. If so, hasn’t worked. Sometimes she whispers in his ear, something she never did before like this, “Go, bear, go, bear, do it, any way you like.” He usually apologizes after, says he wishes it was better for her no matter what it is for him, and she says once “No real problem; I’m getting a few kicks out of it.” He starts sneaking looks at Denise’s photos in the kids’ keepsake folder. Some with the girls, others of just her, one of her in a bathing suit when they were on a beach building a sand whale with Olivia. It’s the only one where even a little of her bare legs and a lot of her bare arms show and more of the top of one breast than in any other photo, but she’s mostly hidden behind their beach equipment. He stares at the photo sometimes, trying to imagine from the way the breast’s shaped in the suit and on top what it would look like uncovered. In a book of hers — the variorum edition of Yeats’s poems that had been her first husband’s — a photo drops out when he’s reading it of Denise and Eva in a bath. Eva’s first bath in a real tub, he remembers. Denise yelled from the bathroom “Howard, come quick with the camera — we have to catch this; she’s an absolute scream. She wants to swim first time in and I think she’s almost doing it.” The print’s not a good one and he can just about make out, because she’s helping Eva stand in the tub, which body’s which. He gets out the two letters and reads them almost every day, trying to find something in them he might have missed. A sexual or amorous reference or suggestion to him or anything hidden or not initially obvious of any kind. He also starts praying again for her return, things like “Please, if it can be done, let it be done, for me, for our girls, I’ll give a finger, a hand, an arm if You want, anything to get her back in one healthy piece and if the cutting off of it doesn’t give me too much pain,” and finally in another confessional burst tells Amby all this. She says “Perhaps you should go to the therapist twice a week in addition to the once-a-week with me,” and he does for a couple of months, no change, maybe even gets worse, searches the house frantically a few times for something of Denise’s he doesn’t know is there, curses out loud to himself when he can’t find anything, tears up an entire room’s carpet because he thinks he remembers she for some reason hid something under it, digs up a plant she planted thinking maybe when she dug the hole she intentionally or inadvertently dropped something of hers in it, and then says to Amby “Look, to avoid any discomfort or whatever you want to call it — call it ‘hell’ for all I can do about it now: hell, hell, I’ve become a freako wacked-out maniaco the last few months — I think I should start sleeping in the bed in the basement and maybe even start cooking and ka-kaing and living my whole fucking horrible life there.”

She leaves with Gwynne. He sees Gwynne every Sunday, a month every summer, promises himself no more women ever. For what’s the use? He might get excited by one a few times, for weeks, a month, then it would happen again: Denise, letters, searches, praying and ranting like a madman, screwing up another woman’s life and maybe even another kid’s, confusing his other children’s lives even further. Or maybe he wouldn’t get excited by any woman but he’d try doing it with them from time to time to prove something — that he could still attract them, was still attracted by them — and how could he fake it now if he can hardly even get it up to do it to himself anymore? Olivia and Eva go to college, Gwynne to kindergarten. He likes living alone and getting older and gradually weaker; fewer chances; he can go crazy when he wants, so long as his daughters are away; drink till he passes out if he feels like it. He puts up photos of Denise all over the house. On walls, up against things: every photo he can find of her. Then has negatives made of his favorites and gets these made into positives and lots of them enlarged and puts them around too. He writes poems about her again, stories, one-act plays but they’re all terrible, bring back nothing to him, don’t make him cry or laugh or excited or anything and the writing stinks too, and throws them away. Does drawings and then portraits and whole-body paintings of her from memory. Several of them nude, but the only resemblance he thinks he gets is the shape and color of her vulva pubic hair. He puts one of the nudes on the floor, jerks off to it, when he’s about to come he falls flat on the canvas but miscalculates where he is on it and does it on her belly. Then he thinks this is disgusting, he’s gone from bad to almost hopeless, not only seeming nuts and becoming a dumb drunk and slob but doing something sickening and sick to her memory, and jumps on the painting, kicks a hole in it, rips it and all the other canvases off their stretchers, dumps the drawings and canvases and burns the brushes and stretchers. What now? No art form left to express himself about her. Music, but he can’t read a note and his extemporaneous piano playing is just banging. Singing, but his voice is flat. Dance, and he takes off his shoes and runs across the room in a dancing motion, eyes closed, arms out as if he’s going to embrace someone, and slams into a chair.

He throws away most of the photos. Leaves up a few of her with their daughters. Cleans the house, fixes up the yard, paints the girls’ rooms, gets some new furniture. Olivia goes to medical school, Eva joins a theater company, Gwynne enters the third grade. He retires, tries to drink moderately, exercises every day, wants to make himself look presentable and the house comfortable for his daughters when they visit him. He resumes reading a lot, mostly religion and philosophy now. He tries to find writers who can explain some things about his life. Who might have gone through what he did or some of it or just be better able to express it. His depressions and obsessions and other things: past mistakes and repeating them, Denise dying and his almost twenty-year reaction to it, how to lead the right life with his particular personality, whether the right life is a realistic or suitable goal for anyone, sex and love, sexuality and creativity, his heavy drinking sometimes. Who will make him want to turn to them when he needs to or thinks something terrible in him might be coming on. He can’t find any. A line here, there, a passage, a paragraph, sometimes the words click for pages or a chapter and he thinks this is the writer for him or the book he’s been looking for, he just knows, and goes through the whole book and gets increasingly disappointed, and maybe then through some of the other books of this writer, or at least one or part of one more.

He starts going to art museums and galleries, trying to find in the work there something that might apply to his life or be deep or hidden inside him or just give him pleasure in some way, maybe stimulate him to do creative work of his own again or what? Just to be at a big safe cultural place with other people he doesn’t know ambling by. One nude in a museum painting looks very much like Denise: body, face, hair when it hung loose. This isn’t what he came here for, he thinks, to find a figure in an artwork that looks like her, but he forgot that occasionally what gives him pleasure or makes him think about his life or sets off an action or idea leading to some kind of work comes unexpectedly like this. It isn’t the painting’s subject that interests him much, which is of a woman sitting on the edge of an unmade bed, drinking from a simple cup, holding a matching saucer in her other hand, seems to have slept nude and just woken up, clothes hanging out of a drawer and on the floor all seem to be hers, memo pad and uncapped pen by her leg, book, radio, eyeglasses, nailclippers and lamp on the night table, semiabstract seascape in a broken frame above the dresser, walls and furniture quite shabby, rowhouses through the completely opened window rundown and some of them torched, sun coming up over the tall building at the end of her block, clock between her feet says ten to twelve so it must be winter and some very northern country she’s in or the clock’s stopped. Painting’s called “Mourning Woman Rising,” though her face doesn’t show it — she just seems to be enjoying her day’s first coffee or tea — and if a double meaning’s meant, and it isn’t that she’s mourning for her poor circumstances or the stopped clock or neighborhood in some way, it gets by him. The painting was finished last year and bought for the museum by an anonymous donor. He goes back to this “New Acquisitions” room for weeks, stays in it for an hour or two daily, usually leaning against a wall, finally asks the guard, one of a few who float around this wing of the museum and he’s come to greet or say good-bye to, if a couch, as the museum used to have in almost every room years ago, couldn’t be put in this one so he and other people could look at the paintings and such without getting tired. The guard says something about crowd control, new museum rules, also the insurance company wouldn’t permit it, can’t. He wants to cut the woman out of the painting, take it home, hang it up but not to masturbate to it. He rarely tries that anymore to even a nude magazine photograph he might come upon or what to him is a provocative lingerie or swimsuit ad. Few days later he goes to the museum with a single edge razor blade to cut the figure or the whole painting out, whichever he can do fastest, but walking up the museum’s great interior stairway he says to himself “No, trouble again, and big trouble this time too if you’re caught, which you’ll be, of course, so go back, don’t look at it today, maybe even stay away from it from now on.”

He goes straight home, has a thought which he quickly writes on a piece of paper as he walks into the house: “Sometimes things you can never understand destroy you.” Not a bad thought, he thinks, complete and pungent, or one to come out of nowhere like that, if that’s what it did — at least the apparent nowhere — and tries to write another line but nothing follows it. Tries again several times that day, takes a pen and pad to bed with him in case something comes, tries to write a follow-up line the next morning, hoping it’ll lead to many lines, pages, even a book-length manuscript one day, then types the original line, scissors it out of the paper and tapes it on the wall above his typewriter. Then he writes it in inch-high letters and tapes it over the typewritten line. Then writes it in even larger letters using Gwynne’s crayons and tapes it on the refrigerator door. Then writes it in various sizes using different writing implements and tapes them around the house. Then buys poster boards and a poster paint set and starts painting the thought in two-feet-high letters, which he plans to nail to a living room wall, but stops a couple of words through and says “What am I doing now, that’s enough, don’t let it get the better of you as so much of the same thing did before and before and before.” He throws out the poster boards and paints, tears up all the papers around the house he had the thought on except the original handwritten one which he puts in his night table drawer, and goes back to reading novels, poetry, going to concerts, museums and plays, listens to a lot of recorded music while he cooks and eats and reads and rests or just contemplates, most of it for solo voice or all-male or all-female chorus but with no musical instruments and several centuries old, visits his oldest daughters in the cities they’re in, takes long walks, goes for a swim each day, has a coffee and torte now and then at a neighborhood coffeehouse, men and women become companions again, lots of interesting things to do and discuss and go to with them, but he always falls asleep holding his own penis.