Noah's Compass

11

Eunice said that her husband made a hobby of being miserable.

She said he was the kind of man who took bad weather personally.

The kind who asked, “Why me, God?” when his assistant was hit by a car.

And he was always railing against other people’s grammatical errors.

“He has a thing about dangling modifiers,” she told Liam. “You know what a dangling modifier is?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I didn’t. Like ‘At the age of eight, my mother died.’ They drive him crazy.”

“Oh, I agree,” Liam said. “And, ‘Walking on the beach, a shark appeared.’”

“What? Last spring he kept a day-to-day tally of all the dangling modifiers in the Baltimore Sun, and at the end of a month he sent the list to the editor. But it was never published.”

“Such a surprise,” Liam murmured.

“So the next month I kept a tally of my own, in one of those little appointment books that come in the mail for free. Every single day I wrote either ‘Added’ or ‘Subtracted.’ ‘Added’ meant my husband had added something positive to my life that day. ‘Subtracted’ meant he’d been a negative. His Added’ rating was twelve percent. Pretty pathetic! But you know what he did when I showed him? He just pointed out the mistakes in my method of computation.”

Liam massaged his forehead with his fingertips.

“Well, it was a month with thirty-one days in it,” Eunice said. “Anybody would have had trouble.”

Liam made no comment.

“He completely ignored the real issue, which was that I’m not happy with him.”

“Yes, but still,” Liam said, “you are with him.”

“I can leave, though, Liam! I don’t have to stay. Why don’t you ask me to leave him?”

“Why don’t I go out in the street and ask a stranger for his billfold.”

“What?”

“You’re somebody else’s wife, remember? You’re already committed.”

“I can undo the commitment! People undo them all the time. You undid yours.”

“That was just between me and Barbara. There wasn’t any third party stealing one of us away.”

“Look,” Eunice said. “All I have to do is go through a little spell of legal this-and-that and then you and I can be together, aboveboard. Don’t you want to marry me?”

They were traveling in circles, Liam thought. They were like hamsters on an exercise wheel. Day after day they hashed all this out-Eunice showing up puffy-eyed at six a.m., or telephoning in an urgent whisper from Ishmael Cope’s office, or arriving straight from work already talking as Liam opened the door to her. How about if this very minute she went to live on her own? she asked. Then would it be all right for them to marry? And what sort of interval would he require? A month? Six months? A year?

“But still,” he said, “the fact would remain that you were married when I met you.”

“Well, what can I do about that, Liam? I can’t un-ring the bell!”

“My point exactly.”

“You’re impossible!”

“The situation is impossible.”

They argued so long sometimes that the apartment grew dark without their noticing, and they neglected to turn on the lights until Kitty walked in and said, “Oh! I didn’t know anybody was here.” Then they would hasten to greet her, using their most everyday voices.

It was Liam’s own fault that this was dragging on. He knew that. He could have said, “Eunice, enough. We have to stop seeing each other.” But he kept procrastinating. He told himself that first they needed to talk this over. They had to get squared away. They didn’t want to leave any loose threads trailing.

Pathetic.

At the end of their conversations he generally had a headache, and his voice was fogged and elderly-sounding from overuse. But really there was no end to their conversations. The two of them just went on and on until they’d worn themselves out, or till Eunice broke down in tears, or till Kitty interrupted them. Nothing was ever resolved. The week crawled past, the weekend came, another week began. Everything remained the same as the day he’d found out she was married.

What did this remind him of? The final months with Millie, he realized-their repetitive, pointless wrangling during the period just before she died. Now he could see that she must have been severely depressed, but all he knew then was that she seemed dissatisfied with every facet of their life together. She would carp and complain in a monotone, going over and over the same old things, while the baby fussed in the background and, yes, the light in the apartment slowly faded, unnoticed. “You always…” Millie said, and “You never…” and “Why can’t you ever…?” And Liam had defended himself against each charge in turn, like someone hurrying to plug this leak, that leak, with new leaks eternally springing up elsewhere. Then often he would give up and leave-just walk out, feeling bruised and damaged, and not come back until he was sure that she had gone to bed.

Although Eunice and Millie were not the least bit similar. Eunice had more energy; she was more… defined, Liam supposed you could say. Yet somehow she gave him that same feeling that he was the person responsible. She had that same way of looking to him to straighten out her life.

As if he were capable of straightening out anybody’s life, even his own!

He said, “Eunice. Sweetheart. I’m trying to do the right thing, here.” But what was the right thing? Was it possible, in fact, that he was being too rigid, too moralistic, too narrow-minded? That the greater good was to make the very most of their time here on earth? Yes! Why not? And he felt a flood of joyous recklessness, which Eunice must have guessed because she sprang up and crossed the room to throw herself in his lap and wrap her arms around his neck. Her skin was warm and fragrant, and her breasts were squashed alluringly against his chest.

Did she sit like this in her husband’s lap?

Her husband’s name was Norman. He drove a Prius, from the first year Priuses were manufactured. He had a twin sister, Eunice said, who was developmentally disabled.

Liam set Eunice gently aside and stood up. “You should go,” he told her.

Louise phoned on Friday morning and asked if he could watch Jonah. “My sitter has up and eloped,” she said, “without a word of notice.”

“Did she marry Chicken Little?” Liam asked.

“How do you know about Chicken Little?”

“Oh, I have my sources.”

“I could strangle her,” Louise told him. “Tomorrow’s Homecoming Day at our church and I promised I’d help decorate. Dougall says just take Jonah along, but that way I’d be more of a hindrance than a help.”

“Sure, bring him here,” Liam said.

“Thanks, Dad.”

In fact, he welcomed the diversion. It would be something to think about besides Eunice. He felt the two of them had spent this past couple of weeks in some cramped and airless basement.

Louise was beginning to look noticeably pregnant. Thin as she was, she had no place to hide a baby, Liam supposed. She wore a short skirt and a skimpy tank top, and her collarbones stuck out so far you could almost wrap your fingers around them. Behind her, Jonah trailed listlessly with an armful of picture books. “Hi there, Jonah,” Liam said.

“Hi.”

“Are we going to be coloring again?”

Jonah just gave him a look.

“Someone got up on the wrong side of bed today,” Louise murmured.

“Well, never mind; we’ll be fine,” Liam said. “Should I give him lunch? How long will you be gone?”

“Just till noon or so, I hope. It depends how many others turn up. We’re in charge of decorating the Communing Room; that’s where they’re feeding the Homecomers.”

Communing Room, Homecomers… It was almost a foreign language. But Liam was determined to avoid any appearance of disapproval. “Is this like Homecoming Day in high school?” he asked in his most courteous tone. “People coming back who’ve graduated or moved?”

“There’s nothing high-schoolish about it, Dad!”

“No, I just meant-”

“This is for sinners who’ve come to see the error of their ways. Which is a far cry from graduating, believe me.”

“Yes, of course,” Liam said.

“I don’t know why you have to try and pick a quarrel about these things.”

“It must be my contrary nature,” Liam said meekly. He followed her to the door. “Did you bring any snacks?” he thought to ask. “I don’t have all that much around that Jonah will eat.”

“He’s got Goldfish in his knapsack.”

“Oh, good.”

He saw her out and then returned to the living room. Jonah was still standing there, holding his armful of books. They studied each other in silence. “Well,” Liam said finally. “Here we are, I guess.”

Jonah heaved a deep sigh. He said, “I don’t think Deirdre’s going to take me to the State Fair now.”

“Why not? She could still do that.”

“She got married.”

“Married people go to the fair.”

“But my mom won’t ever speak to her again.”

“That’s just talk,” Liam said. “You know how your mom talks.”

“I didn’t really like Chicken Little anyway,” Jonah said confidingly.

“You didn’t?”

“He cheats at soccer.”

“How can you cheat at soccer?” Liam asked.

Jonah gave one of his shrugs. “I don’t know; he just does,” he said. “It’s very inappropriate.”

“Well, tell you what: let’s read some of those books you’ve brought. What did you bring?”

Jonah held the pile out. Dr. Seuss, Liam saw, and another Dr. Seuss, and a Little Bear book… He said, “Good! You choose which one we’ll start with.”

Before they could sit down, he had to help Jonah out of his knapsack. Then they settled in an armchair, Jonah squinched tightly into the few remaining inches on Liam’s right side. Jonah was wearing gym shoes today, incongruously large red high-tops. They stuck straight out in front of him, and the left one kept knocking into Liam’s right knee. He really should buy a sofa, Liam thought for the hundredth time. The image of Eunice came to mind, and he had a sudden hollow feeling.

He was going to be one of those men who die alone among stacks of yellowed newspapers and the dried-out rinds of sandwiches moldering on plates.

He opened the first book on Jonah’s pile and started reading aloud. The Cat in the Hat, it was. He knew it well. His daughters used to complain that he read too fast and so he made a point of taking his time, enunciating each word and adding plenty of expression. Jonah listened without reacting. His small head gave off a heated smell, like fresh-baked bread or warm honey.

Hop on Pop. Green Eggs and Ham. Father Bear Comes Home, which Jonah interrupted halfway through to announce that he had to pee. “Go ahead; I’ll wait,” Liam said. He was glad of the respite. Reading with expression was making his throat ache.

When Jonah came out of the bathroom he didn’t return to the armchair but went instead to his knapsack, which was lying on the floor. He pulled out a plastic bag of Goldfish crackers and sat down on the carpet to eat them, selecting each cracker one by one as if some were better than others. It wasn’t clear whether he’d tired of Little Bear or was merely taking a break. Liam marked their page, just in case. He said, “Would you like to work on your coloring a while?”

“I’m done with coloring,” Jonah said.

“You finished the book?”

“I stopped liking it.”

“Oh.”

Jonah turned the bag upside down, emptying the rest of the Goldfish onto the carpet along with a shower of orange dust. “You know Noah?” he asked Liam.

“Noah in the Bible?”

Jonah nodded.

“I know Noah.”

“He made about a hundred animals die,” Jonah said.

“He did?”

“He left them to drown. He only took two of things.”

“Oh. Right.”

“He took two giraffes and let all the rest drown.”

“Well, he didn’t have a whole lot of room, bear in mind.”

“Where’d he buy gas?” Noah asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Where’d he buy gas for his boat if he was the only guy in the world?”

“He didn’t need gas,” Liam said. “It wasn’t that kind of boat.”

“Was it a sailboat, then?”

“Why, yes, I guess it was,” Liam said. Although he had never noticed sails in the pictures, come to think of it. “Actually,” he said, “I guess he didn’t need sails either, because he wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Not going anywhere!”

“There was nowhere to go. He was just trying to stay afloat. He was just bobbing up and down, so he didn’t need a compass, or a rudder, or a sextant…”

“What’s a sextant?”

“I believe it’s something that figures out directions by the stars. But Noah didn’t need to figure out directions, because the whole world was underwater and so it made no difference.”

“Huh,” Jonah said. He seemed to have lost interest. He licked the tip of one finger and started picking up the crumbs from the carpet.

Liam thought of pointing out that this was only a sort of fairy tale, but he didn’t want Louise any madder at him than she already was.

Eunice said that sometimes, she wondered if Mr. C.’s memory trouble could be contagious.

“For instance,” she said. “We’ve just now been to a retirement party for the receptionist. Their receptionist’s retiring. Mr. C. takes a handful of nuts from a bowl and starts to eat them, but then he stops. ‘These nuts are ransomed,’ he says. I say, ‘What?’ ‘They’re ransomed. Take them away.’ ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You mean-’ But then I couldn’t think of the word. I could not think of the word. I knew it wasn’t ‘ransomed,’ but I couldn’t think what it should be.”

They were standing in the kitchen alcove, where Liam had gone to fetch the ice water she’d requested the instant she arrived. (Outside it was hot and humid, a typical August afternoon as heavy as mud.) He held a glass beneath the dispenser in the refrigerator door, and Eunice stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek against his back.

“It’s like I slipped into Mr. C.’s world for a minute,” she said. Her breath was warm and moist against Liam’s left shoulder.

He filled the glass with water and turned to face her. Instead of taking the glass from him, she unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He said, “Your water.”

“It’s like I saw what it must feel like to be him,” she said. “How… evaporating and blurry and scary.”

“Let’s go to the living room,” he told her.

He was trying to back away from her, but he was trapped against the refrigerator. Eunice unbuttoned the rest of his buttons, focusing on them intently and not looking up at his face. “Let’s not,” she said. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

“We can’t do that,” he told her.

“There’s no place to sit in the living room.”

“There are two very comfortable armchairs.”

“Let’s go to bed,” she said.

Her fingertips were delicate points of warmth against his skin. She dropped her hands to his belt and undid his buckle.

“We should sit down,” Liam said. He moved to one side of her.

“We should lie down,” Eunice told him.

He started toward the living room, still holding the glass of water, but when she followed him he slowed to a stop and let her press herself to his back and hug him once again. He felt confused by the combination of her tight embrace and his loosened waistband. His shirttails had worked themselves free of their own accord, and he thought how good it would feel to be free of all his clothes. He wanted to put the water glass someplace but he didn’t want to separate from her long enough to do that.

Then the front door burst open and someone caroled, “Knock knock!”

In walked Barbara, lugging a blue vinyl suitcase.

Liam jerked away from Eunice and clutched his shirtfront together with his free hand.

Barbara said, “Oh, excuse me,” but not in a particularly apologetic tone. She seemed amused, more than anything. She set down the suitcase to push back a lock of hair that had fallen over her forehead.

Liam said, “What are you doing here?”

“You did leave your door unlocked,” Barbara pointed out.

“That doesn’t mean you should walk on in!”

“Well, I said, ‘Knock knock.’ Didn’t I?” Barbara asked Eunice. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Liam said, “This is… a friend of mine, Eunice Dunstead. She was just helping me with my résumé.”

“I’m Barbara,” Barbara told Eunice.

Eunice said, “I have to go.” Her cheeks were splotched with patches of red. She snatched up her purse from the rocking chair and rushed toward the door. Barbara moved aside to let her pass, gazing after her thoughtfully. Liam seized her moment of inattention to put down the water glass and buckle his belt.

“Sorry,” Barbara told him once the door had slammed shut.

“Honestly, Barbara.”

“I’m sorry!”

“What are you here for?” he asked.

“I brought Kitty’s beach things.”

“Beach?”

Casually, as if his mind were on something else, he let a hand drift to his shirtfront again and he felt for each button and buttoned it. Barbara tilted her head to watch.

“She’s spending a few days in Ocean City with Damian’s aunt and uncle,” she said. “Didn’t she clear this with you?”

“Um…”

“Liam, are you not keeping track of Kitty’s comings and goings? Because if that’s the case, she shouldn’t be in your care.”

“I’m keeping track! I just forgot,” he said.

“Really.”

Eunice would be traveling farther away every second, in tears and no doubt despairing of him, reflecting on how cowardly he was and how unchivalrous and disloyal. But Barbara, for once, seemed in no hurry to leave. She went over to the rocking chair and sat down, plucking at her T-shirt where it was clinging to her stomach. Her outfit today was singularly unattractive. The T-shirt was stretched and smudged with grass stains, and her loose khaki shorts revealed her wide white thighs, pressed even wider against the chair seat.

As if she guessed what he was thinking, she said, “I look a mess. I’ve been cleaning.”

He said nothing. He sat in the armchair furthest from her, perching on the very edge of it to suggest that he had things to do.

“So,” she said. “Tell me about this Eunice person. How long have you known her?”

“What’s it to you?” Liam demanded.

It felt so good to speak this way-to say what he wanted, for once, without worrying about Barbara’s opinion of him-that he did it again. “What’s it to you, Barbara? What business is it of yours?”

Barbara rocked back in her chair and said, “My, my!”

“I don’t ask you about Howie, do I?”

“Who?”

“Howie the Hound Dog. Howie the Food Phobe.”

“Are you referring to Howard Neal?”

“Right,” Liam said, risking it.

“Goodness, Liam, where’d you dig him up from?”

He scowled at her.

“Gosh, I haven’t thought of Howard in…” She shook her head, looking amused again. “Well. So Miss Eunice is off-limits. Fine. Forget I asked.”

Liam said, “You and I are divorced, after all. I do have a private life.”

“You’re always going on about your private life,” Barbara said, “but have you ever considered this, Liam: You’re the only Baltimorean I know who leaves his front door unlocked. Even though you’ve had a burglary! You leave it completely unlocked, but then any time someone walks in you complain that they’re intruding. ‘Tut-tut!’ you say. ‘I’m veddy, veddy private and special. I vant to be alone!’”-this last uttered in a bad Greta Garbo accent. “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Here’s solitary sad old Liam, only God help anybody who tries to step in and get close.”

“Well, maybe if they knocked first-”

“And I suppose this poor Eunice person is just like all the rest of us,” Barbara said. “All those benighted females who broke their hearts over you. She imagines she’ll be the one who finally warms you up.”

“Barbara! She is not poor! She is not ‘this poor Eunice person’! Jesus, Barbara! What gives you the right?”

Barbara looked startled. She said, “Well, pardon me.”

“Isn’t it time for you to leave?”

“Fine,” she said. “Okay.” She rose to her feet. “I only meant-”

“I don’t care what you meant. Just leave.”

“All right, Liam, I’m leaving. Have Kitty call me, please, will you?”

“Okay,” he said.

Already he was feeling sheepish about his outburst, but he refused to apologize. He stood up and followed Barbara to the door. “Goodbye,” he told her.

“Bye, Liam.”

He didn’t see her out to the parking lot.

He thought of Eunice: how staunch she had been and how forthright. She had not said, “Pleased to meet you,” when she and Barbara were introduced. She had not stuck around and made small talk. “I have to go,” she had said, and she had gone. While he himself, longing though he was to run after her, had cravenly sat down with Barbara and held a meaningless conversation. He was so concerned about appearances, about what Barbara thought of him, that he had failed to show the most basic human kindness.

The fact was that Eunice was a much better person than he was.

Everyone knew the St. Paul Arms. It was a shabby gray apartment building a couple of blocks from the Hopkins campus, home to graduate students and instructors and lower-level university staff. From his old place, Liam could have walked there in a matter of minutes. Even from his new place it was not that much of a drive, but this afternoon it seemed to take forever. Every stoplight changed to red just before he reached it; every car ahead of him was trying to make a left turn in the face of oncoming traffic. Liam chafed all over with frustration. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for an elderly pedestrian to inch, inch through a crosswalk.

It had not been all that long, really, since Eunice had rushed out his door. He had hopes originally of waylaying her in front of her building, intercepting her before she got inside. As the minutes passed, though, he saw that this was unrealistic. All right: he would just stride on into her apartment and state his case. If the husband happened to be there, fine. It wouldn’t change a thing.

The car radio was playing a Chopin étude that tinkled on endlessly, going nowhere. He switched it off.

There weren’t any parking spots in front of her building and so he turned into a side street and parked there. Then he walked back up St. Paul and pulled open the heavy wooden door of the St. Paul Arms.

Drat, an intercom. A locked glass inner door blocking his way and one of those damn fool intercom arrangements where you had to locate a resident’s special code and punch it in. He searched for Dunstead, realizing to his dismay that he’d forgotten what the husband’s last name was; but he was in luck: Dunstead/Simmons, he found. Oh, yes: the hiss between the two s sounds. He stabbed in the code.

First he heard a dial tone and then Eunice’s overloud “Yes?”

“It’s me,” he said.

No response.

“It’s Liam,” he tried again.

“What do you want?”

“I want to come up.”

In the silence that followed, he frowned down at the collection of footprinted takeout menus that paved the vestibule floor. Finally, a buzzer sounded. He seized the handle of the glass door as if it were about to vanish.

She lived in 4B, the list in the vestibule had said. The elevator looked unreliable and he decided to take the stairs. Evidently a lot of other people had made the same choice; the marble treads were worn down in the middle like old soap bars. Above the second floor, the marble gave way to threadbare plum-colored carpet. Now he regretted spurning the elevator, because he was growing short of breath. He didn’t want to arrive puffing and panting.

Probably the husband was a jogger or something. For sure he was younger and fitter.

On the fourth floor, one door was open and Eunice stood there waiting-a good sign, he thought. But when he reached her, he found her expression set in stone, and she didn’t step back to let him in. “What do you want?” she said again.

“Are you by yourself?”

An infinitesimal adjustment to the angle of her head meant yes, he surmised.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“Don’t bother; I already know I’m only a ‘friend.’”

“I apologize for that,” he said. He glanced around. The hall was empty, but people could be listening from behind their doors, and she was making no effort to keep her voice down. “Could I come in?” he asked.

She hesitated and then stepped back, just a grudging few inches. He sidled past her to find himself in a long, narrow corridor with dark floorboards, a braided oval rug, and a claw-footed drop-leaf table littered with junk mail.

“I am extremely sorry,” he told her.

She lifted her chin. From the spiked and separated look of her lashes, he could tell she must have been crying, but her face was composed.

He said, “Please say you forgive me. I hated to let you walk out like that.”

“Well, get used to it,” she said. “You can’t have things both ways, Liam. You can’t ask me to stay with my husband and then not let me walk out on you.”

“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “Please, do you think we could sit somewhere?”

She released an exasperated puff of a breath, but then she turned to lead him down the corridor.

If he hadn’t known better, he would have said that her living room belonged to an old lady. It was over-furnished with piecrust tables, satin-striped love seats, bowlegged needlepoint chairs, and faded little rugs. Her mother’s doing, he supposed. Or both mothers’ doing-the two women rendezvousing here with their truckloads of family detritus, arranging everything just so for their helpless offspring. Even the pictures on the wall looked like hand-me-downs: crackled seascapes and mountainscapes and a full-length portrait of a woman in a bell-skirted dress from the 1950s, not long enough ago to be of interest.

He settled on one of the love seats, which was as hard as a park bench and so slippery that he had to brace his feet to keep from sliding off. He was hoping for Eunice to sit beside him, but she chose a chair instead. So much for all her complaints about his lack of couches.

“She’s moving in with you, isn’t she,” she said.

“What?”

“Barbara. She’s moving in.”

“Good grief! What a thought. No, she’s not moving in. For Lord’s sake, Eunice!”

“I saw that suitcase! That powder-blue suitcase.”

“That was Kitty’s suitcase,” Liam said.

“It was an old person’s suitcase; you can’t fool me. Only an old person would have a powder-blue suitcase. It was Barbara’s. I bet she’s got a whole matching set stashed away in her attic.”

The notion of Barbara as an “old person” brought Liam up short.

“She’s moving in with you and picking up where she left off,” Eunice said. “Because that’s how married people are; they go on being involved for all time even if they’re divorced.”

“Eunice, you’re not listening. Barbara was bringing Kitty her beach things; Kitty’s going to Ocean City. I can’t help what kind of suitcase she put them in! And anyhow,” he said, stopped by a thought. “What do you mean, that’s how married people are? You’re the one who’s married, might I point out.”

Eunice sat back slightly in her chair. “Well, you’re right,” she said after a pause. “But, I don’t know. Somehow I don’t feel married. I feel like everyone’s married but me.”

Both of them were quiet for a moment.

“I feel like I’m always the outsider,” she said. “The ‘friend’ who’s ‘helping with the résumé.’”

She indicated the quotation marks with two pairs of curled fingers.

“I already told you I was sorry about that,” Liam said. “It was very wrong of me. Barbara just caught me by surprise, is what happened. I was afraid of what she might think.”

“You were afraid because you still love her.”

“No, no-”

“Well, why aren’t you sweeping me off my feet, then, and carrying me away? Why aren’t you saying, ‘Barbara be damned! You’re the woman I love, and life is too short to go through it without you!”

“Barbara be damned,” Liam said. “You’re the woman I love, and life is too short to go through it without you.”

She stared at him.

A key rattled in the front door, and someone called out, “Euny?”

The man who appeared in the entranceway was lanky and fair-skinned, wearing jeans and a short-sleeved plaid shirt and carrying a plastic grocery bag. His blond hair was very fine and too long, overlapping his ears in an orphanish way, and his pale, thin mustache was too long too, so that you couldn’t help picturing how the individual wisps would grow unpleasantly moist whenever he ate.

Eunice jumped up but then just stood there, awkwardly. “Norman, this is Liam,” she said. “We’re just… working on Liam’s résumé.”

“Oh, hi,” Norman told Liam.

Liam rose and shook Norman’s hand, which seemed to be all bones.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” Norman said. “I’m going to go ahead and start dinner. Will you be eating with us, Liam?”

Liam said, “No, I-” at the same time that Eunice said, “No, he’s-”

“I should be getting along. Thanks anyway,” Liam said.

“Too bad,” Norman said. “It’s tagine tonight!” and he held up his grocery bag.

“Norman’s going through a Middle East phase right now,” Eunice told Liam. Her cheeks were flushed, and she didn’t quite meet either man’s eyes.

“You do the cooking?” Liam asked Norman.

“Yes, well, Eunice is not much of a hand in the kitchen. How about you, Liam? Do you cook?”

“Not really,” Liam said. The way Norman kept using his first name made him feel he was being interviewed. He said, “I take more of a canned-soup approach.”

“Well, I can understand that. I used to be the same way. Progresso lentil; that was our major food group, once! Just ask Eunice. But some of the people in my lab, they’re from these different countries and they’re always bringing in their native dishes. I started asking for their recipes. I do like Middle Eastern the best. It’s not just a phase,” he said with an oddly boyish glance of defiance in Eunice’s direction. “Middle Eastern really is a very sophisticated cuisine.”

Demonstrating, he opened the grocery bag and stuck his head inside and drew a deep breath. “Saffron!” he said, reemerging. “Sumac! I tried to find pomegranates, but it must not be the season. I’m thinking I might use dried cranberries instead.”

“That’s an idea,” Liam said.

He was edging toward the front hall now. This meant getting past Norman, who stood obliviously in his path and asked, “Do you know when pomegranate season is, Liam?”

“Um, not offhand…”

“Pomegranates fascinate me,” Norman said. (Eunice raised her eyes to the ceiling.) “When you think about it, they’re kind of an odd choice for people to eat. They’re really nothing but seeds! Some of the Middle Easterners I know, they chew the seeds right up. You can hear the crunch. But me, I like to bite down on them just partway so I can get the juicy part off without breaking into the hulls. I don’t like that bitter taste, you know? And those rough little bitter bits that stick in your teeth. Then I spit the seeds out when no one is looking.”

“Norman, for heaven’s sake, let him get home to his supper,” Eunice said.

“Oh,” Norman said. “Sorry.” He switched the grocery bag to his left hand so he could shake hands again with Liam. “It was good to meet you, Liam,” he said.

“Good to meet you,” Liam told him.

He was conscious, as he started toward the hall, of Eunice following close behind, but he didn’t look in her direction even when they were out of Norman’s sight. At the door he said, in a loud, carrying voice, “Well, thanks for your help!”

“Liam,” she whispered.

He reached for the doorknob.

“Liam, did you mean what you said?”

“We’ll have to talk!” he told her enthusiastically.

From the rear of the apartment he could hear the clanging of pots now, and Norman’s tuneless whistling.

“See you soon!” he said.

And he stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him.

Heading up North Charles, he drove so badly that it was a wonder he didn’t have an accident. Cars seemed to come out of nowhere; he failed to start moving again whole moments after lights turned green; his acceleration was jerky and erratic. But it wasn’t because he had anything particular on his mind. He had nothing on his mind. He was trying to keep his mind empty.

His plan was to get to his apartment and just, oh, collapse. Stare into space a long while. He envisioned his apartment as a haven of solitude. But when he walked into his living room, he found Kitty kneeling on the carpet. She was unpacking the blue vinyl suitcase, setting stacks of clothing in a half circle around her. “I know I had more swimsuits than these,” she said, not looking up.

He crossed the room without answering.

“Hello?” she said.

“How many could you possibly need?” he asked. The question was automatic, like a line assigned to him in a play-the uncomprehending-male question he knew she expected of him.

“Well,” she said. She sat back on her heels and started ticking off her fingers. “There’s my sunbathing suit, for starters. That’s a minimum-coverage bikini with no straps to leave a tan line. And then my backup sunbathing suit, the exact same cut, to wear if the first one gets wet. Then my old-lady suit; ha! For when Damian’s aunt and uncle are with us…”

He sank into an armchair and let her babble on until she said, again, “Hello?”

He looked at her.

“Did you hear what I just told you? I won’t be staying for supper.”

“Okay.”

He wasn’t hungry for supper himself, but when he checked his watch he found it was after six. He rose heavily and went to the kitchen alcove to fix himself whatever was easiest. In the refrigerator he found half an onion, a nearly empty carton of milk, and a saucepan containing the dregs of the tomato soup he’d heated for lunch. (“Progresso lentil; that was our major food group once,” he heard Norman say.) He definitely didn’t want soup. In the cupboard he found a box of Cheerios, already opened. He shook a cupful or so into a bowl. Then he added milk, got himself a spoon, and sat down at the table.

Kitty was trying on a beach robe striped in hot pink and lime green. “Does this make me look like a watermelon?” she asked him.

He forgot to answer.

“Poppy?”

“Not at all,” he said.

He took a spoonful of Cheerios and chewed dutifully. If Kitty said anything further, he couldn’t hear it over the crunching sound.

He’d forgotten how he disliked cold cereal. It had something to do with the disjunction between the crispy dry bits and the cold wet milk. They didn’t meld, or something. They stayed too separate in his mouth. He took another spoonful, and he started considering pomegranates. He knew what Norman had meant about trying to eat the juicy part without biting into the seeds. The few times he’d eaten pomegranates himself, he had done the same thing, and Norman’s description brought back vividly the tart taste behind the sweetness, and the sensation of little hard pieces of seed lodging in his molars. Yes, exactly; he knew exactly.

He could almost be Norman; he knew so exactly how Norman felt.

Kitty said, “Is this one better?”

She was modeling another beach robe, a short blue terrycloth affair that wouldn’t protect her nearly as well from the sun. Before he could tell her so, though, there was a knock on the door.

Kitty called, “Come in?”

Instead of coming in, whoever it was knocked again.

Kitty heaved a put-upon sigh and went over to open the door. Liam took another spoonful of cereal. “Oh,” he heard her say. “Hi.” He twisted in his chair to see Eunice walk in, hugging a gray nylon duffel bag. It was a large bag but it couldn’t have been very full, because it flopped loosely over her arms, empty in the middle and bulging only slightly at either end.

He set his spoon down and stood up. He said, “Eunice?”

“Barbara be damned,” she told him in a hard bright voice. “Norman be damned. Everyone be damned.”

“Eunice, no.”

“What?”

“No,” he said. “We can’t do it. Go away.”

“What?”

Kitty was staring from one of them to the other.

“I’m sorry, but I mean it,” he told Eunice.

He could see her start to believe him. The animation drained gradually from her face until all her features sagged. She stood motionless, flat-footed, her clunky sandals turned outward in a ducklike fashion, her arms full of withered gray nylon.

Then she turned and left.

Liam sat back down on his chair.

Kitty seemed about to say something, but in the end she just gave a little shake of her shoulders, like a shiver, and tightened the sash of her beach robe.