Melancholy Baby

13

In the bright morning, with the sun streaming through my skylight, as I drank coffee, with Rosie watching closely, I sat at my kitchen table and started on the phone. By the time I got through, it was late afternoon. I had drunk too much coffee. The sun had moved to the west. And I had talked with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ New York office, its LA office, the media columnists in both Chicago papers, a guy at WGN who had a late-night jazz show and was said by one of the media columnists to know everyone who’d worked in radio in Chicago since Marconi, and a woman I’d known in art school a long time ago, who had since married and moved to Chicago. As far as anyone knew, no one named George Markham had ever worked in radio in Chicago.

Late in the afternoon, eastern daylight saving time, when it was already getting dark in Boston, however, a particularly diligent clerk in the Los Angeles AFTRA office found a George Markham who had worked at a radio station in the Quad Cities in 1982. I called the radio station and got a recorded message. If I wanted to connect with the Dave Dixon show and be part of the Talk of Quad Cities, I could call an 800 number. I was pretty sure Dave wouldn’t be helpful.

Rosie was sitting, staring at the kitchen counter. I got up and fed her and poured myself some wine and went back to the table and looked out the window. Four stories down, some headlights moved slowly toward Fort Point Channel. People going home to supper. There was some neon in a sandwich shop window down the block. I got up and walked down the length of my loft and looked for a time at the painting I was working on, of the South Station facade. I had no idea if it was good or not. Once I started a painting, I lost all ability to judge it. Maybe if I did enough paintings and sold them, I’d be able to trust my instincts and be less uncertain. Now all I could do was plow along.

Except for the noise Rosie made eating her supper, the loft was silent. I drank the rest of my wine and walked back to the kitchen area and filled the glass again. I thought about Dr. Silverman. There was something about her, some sort of unspoken energy. I felt like I might like her. If she had a boyfriend, maybe he wasn’t a Harvard geek.

I drank some wine. Rosie finished her supper and came across the loft and jumped on the bed. I walked over and patted her. She rolled over on her back so I could rub her stomach.

“I can too have a relationship,” I said.

I sat for a while, patting her and drinking my wine. Then I got up again and walked to the window and looked out some more, at nothing much.

Obviously, there was something wrong in the Markham household if George had lied about where he worked. Of course it could be another George Markham... in the same business... in the same state... during the time when Sarah was born.

I went to the counter and poured some more wine.

It was a given that I loved Richie. I had loved him since I met him, and I loved him now. So tell me, Doctor, why did I divorce him? Maybe I should be first asking why I married him? Okay, doctor. I married him because I loved him... or because he loved me... or because he wanted to marry me so much... or if I hadn’t married him, I’d have lost him. So I had to marry him, even though I didn’t want to get married... and I was right: I shouldn’t be married. Why not? What was her first name? Susan. You tell me, Dr. Susan. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? No, I know, you’re supposed to help me answer that.... God, you are in my head already. Asking why I married him brings me right around to asking why I divorced him.

I could see my reflection in the dark window. I made a toasting gesture at me.

Maybe you’re pretty smart, Dr. Susan... Maybe I’m pretty smart, too... Maybe we’ll figure this out... Maybe I’ll be intimate with somebody... Maybe Richie’s new marriage won’t work... Maybe it won’t matter, because I can never be with somebody... Maybe I’m drunk.

I looked at myself in the glass for a little bit longer, and then I went to the sink and threw my wine away and walked to the bed and lay down, still dressed, and went to sleep with Rosie.