Perfection (23 page)

Two weeks later, having adjusted more or less to a steady diet of rice and beans, spiced with generous dollops of hot piri-piri sauce (marked, helpfully, “Friend, Take Care”), Henry and I found
ourselves in the back of a dusty Malawian government Land Rover. We were ascending the Nyika Plateau, a mountainous area that is part of the Great Rift Valley. Sara had sent us off for this week with careful instructions on hitchhiking etiquette, but since so few cars passed by, a scant handful a day, we just took the first ride that would take us.

Three Malawian men who worked at the national park on the plateau squatted quietly with us, barefoot, wearing rain slickers. Henry and I looked at each other in silent speculation. Unlike most Malawians, we had clothes and shoes aplenty, but no rain slickers, because the rainy season had already passed.

About twelve kilometers from the government-run inn at the top of the Nyika Plateau, the Land Rover stopped in the middle of the road. The khaki-uniformed driver told us that we had to get out, right here, in the middle of nowhere. It was illegal for government vehicles to give lifts in the first place, he had done us this favor, now, please get out.

We climbed out with our backpacks, which were loaded up heavily with food for our stay, as there were no stores of any kind on the plateau. The rain-slickered Malawians eyed us—with, was it generosity or pity?—and came forward to help us with our load. I felt guilty but grateful.

We walked silently on the dirt road for several miles. Zebra and eland darted over the bracken-covered hills, as well as black birds with long, ribbonlike tails whose official name I determined to look up later. These were truly rolling hills, which appeared to be made of green cloth, gathered and draped. The sky was clear, a startling blue dome that seemed to press down upon us, until from somewhere, low-hanging clouds approached at great speed, intermittently blocking the sun, marking dark patches on the green hills. Sun darts blasted through the clouds in long laser
beams.

Then came the rain. Henry and I walked on, soaked to the skin in minutes. The Malawians weren’t complaining about their bare feet, so complaining about being wet seemed childish. Miles later we arrived at the inn. The proprietors laughed gently at the sight of the drenched and shivering white travelers and offered us tea and bananas.

Once we were installed in our enormous six-dollar-a-night chalet, Edward, the caretaker, made us more tea and homemade biscuits. We huddled in front of the fire Edward made for us, and later we huddled together in the narrow bed. Henry held me close. So far our marriage had been a great adventure. We were alone together in Africa.

It was this image of Henry,
generous and loving, embracing the unexpected, that I had kept with me during our years together. We’d had plenty of fun together: we loved our friends, our books, and our own private jokes. He was the best loyal soldier during my long childbirth labor, comforting me during my contractions and catching sleep on an unfolded Saturday edition of
The New York Times
when our labor doula relieved him. In those precious times of presence and real connection, I forgot about the fights that increased in frequency and bitterness, the times when we seemed so miserably incompatible that I wondered how we would be able to raise our child amid such daily discord.

Now, I didn’t feel I had many of the good memories left. I had fallen in love with a man who had appeared to be confident and charming. Over time, I had seen some of his weaknesses and
had refused to look at others. The overall picture that Henry presented to the world was undoubtedly a mirage, designed to shelter a sadder self, one that he was afraid to reveal to others, even to me.

I recalled how coldly Henry had dismissed Cathy the previous summer with the comment that she was “the most conventional person I know.” After that, he had moved on to Christine and then Eliana, who represented in his mind a truly liberated person.

I thought about that idea of perfection. Every woman he fantasized about was a new opportunity to imagine perfection, just as every meal he prepared was another opportunity to reach a kind of nirvana. But just as shallots burn in overheated butter, so these relationships disappointed. He must have known that I no longer saw him as any kind of perfect, though I had once felt we were well suited. Perhaps his comment about wanting me to be more like a girlfriend was a wish to return to the time when we both were more innocent, and ignorant of each other’s flaws.

I remembered Henry’s comment to Helen—that the purpose of his life was risk. Henry had wanted adventure, all the time, every day, like those days in Africa. Quotidian tasks bored him. He wanted to feel like he was facing down danger, so that he could emerge a hero. It occurred to me now what an epic amount of risk he had required—more and more throughout our years together—to re-create that heroic feeling. I wondered grimly if this was a guy thing, the famously satirized “midlife crisis.”

Henry needed to create Big Stories: The scar over his eye. The car accident when he broke his leg. The time he went skydiving two weeks before the end of his final term at college to make up a missing gym credit. His rock climbing—a recent interest. He, Cathy, and Steve had taken classes with a guide in the lower
Catskills. After one attempt at a climbing gym in New Paltz, I had backed away—my fear of heights created vertigo at about twenty feet, and I didn’t think hanging off the side of a sheer cliff would do much for me. I was never sure if Henry loved the rock climbing itself or the specialized gear he bought—a velvet chalk bag (I had given that to Cathy after he died), the tight-fitting, pointed shoes designed to nestle into cliff cracks, the sweat-wicking outfits, the all-important pulleys, ropes, carabiners, and safety belts. These props were perhaps all part of the real, vivid, and (for him at least) thrilling risk of injury and even death.

The charismatic, charming man I had met when I was a shy and naïve twenty-seven-year-old was, perhaps, a type that I could now recognize and avoid in the future. The man who can take charge of a room with a kind of invincible glamour, win at poker, make a lot of money, be (or at least seem to be) a “success.” As Cary Grant (born Archibald Leach) famously said, commenting on his debonair persona in films like
The Philadelphia Story,
“Everyone wants to be Cary Grant; even I want to be Cary Grant.”

At the tail end of summer,
Anna and I left our Maine house. I felt the same dread about my return home as I’d felt when leaving Italy earlier in the summer. There wasn’t much to look forward to: the routine of school, more conclusive evidence of the end of my time with Tomas and, with it, the growing anxiety about my solitude.

Now our bags were unpacked, and Liza began second grade at her new private school. She loved her two teachers. One was a gentle man who made up songs for the kids as part of their study
of the Hudson River; the other, a warm and affectionate woman with a comforting lap who magically erased Liza’s math anxiety from the previous year.

With Liza settled, I found myself in my office again, studying the objects on the altar that had once been a comfort to me—the Buddha snow globe, the gold ring, the shells and pebbles. Unwilling to keep Henry’s ashes in my office, I had moved the wooden urn to a high shelf in Liza’s bedroom. One morning, as I began my workday, I picked up the Buddha snow globe, turned it a few times, enjoying the goofiness of the fake snowflakes serenely drifting down over the gold plastic seated figure. I would cherish peace like that. Henry had loved this globe, delighted by the idea of the Buddhist icon encased in Americana kitsch. What had he seen when he looked at the globe? What had Henry been searching for?

Justin, Emily’s husband,
telephoned me. He and Emily were invited to a black-tie dinner and he needed a tuxedo. Would I mind lending him Henry’s?

Justin came over to the house. I took Henry’s vintage midnight blue suit from the closet and lifted up the plastic covering. We admired the suit’s clean lines and narrow lapels. Justin tried it on, and it fit wonderfully, just as it had Henry at our wedding. I felt a pang of sorrow remembering the day and its promise.

When Justin patted the chest pocket, something crinkled inside. He withdrew a small rectangle of lined yellow paper on which Henry had listed in neat print: pick up flowers, wineglass wrapped in napkin, and more items in a hopeful list of prewed
ding tasks. On that day, as well as the days on the Nyika Plateau in Malawi, and the day our Liza was born, Henry had been fully committed and present.

We had shared some real moments. With effort and patience, I might find something I could keep at the end of all this, though I had an overwhelming urge to throw out all my life with Henry and start over with just Liza, the two of us heading off down a long road to somewhere in an old jalopy, one suitcase rattling in the backseat.

October 2003

The last Saturday afternoon
in October arrived bright and chilly, with late autumnal sun breaking through fast-moving clouds. At least it wasn’t as cold and blustery as it had been some years. Liza and I made our final preparations before the 5:00
P.M
. start of the local Halloween Day parade. In other years, this had been an event to look forward to, but now I was dreading this brief hour in public view.

The first two months back from Maine were already a blur. At least I did not have to see Cathy at the school playground every day. In fact, our schedules were now so divergent that if I took Liza to her van at 7:20 and drove straight to the grocery store (nearly empty at this hour), I could do my food shopping and get
home without seeing anyone at all, which was just how I wanted it.

I even avoided Tomas. I had visited him once at his house. We sat at the picnic table in the meadow. He complimented me on my tan and summer freckles as well as the landscape paintings I had made on the island. He seemed uncomfortable just talking and eating a sandwich until I pried from him what I already suspected—that there was indeed a new woman in his life, and that this woman was uneasy with the idea of me. I had no interest in getting in the middle of his new relationship, and I left after we agreed to keep in touch but maybe not too much. I determined to make myself as scarce as possible without actually disappearing.

I could not, however, avoid the Halloween parade, which was a town tradition. Townspeople and their eager children gathered at the intersection of Main Street and the northbound state road and strolled in a friendly mass down the quaint street, while those not up for costumes and marching cheered from the sidelines.

I doubted that Cathy and Steve would miss this opportunity to present themselves as a family. True to his word, Steve had stuck by her, and they had been seen walking hand in hand in town.

In other years I had not bothered with a costume, but this year I felt a strong urge for disguise. While browsing in a local antiques store with Liza a few weeks earlier, I’d found a long red satin evening gown, which I seized upon with evil glee. A red devil. I hoped that at least my friends would enjoy the irony. The rest of my costume was easily purchased on my next city trip at a party store in Greenwich Village. I smirked as I boarded the train home with plastic devil horns and pitchfork.

So now, with me in red dress and horns but without the red face paint I planned to put on for the actual trick-or-treating
night, Liza and I walked to Main Street to assemble for the parade. Liza, dressed in a white angel costume (which I had strongly encouraged), could not have known the panic I experienced as I reached the corner of Main Street and saw Cathy standing on the opposite corner, looking around anxiously for Steve and Amy. It did not help to know that she was possibly more uncomfortable than I was.

Gripping Liza’s hand firmly, and praying that she would not see Amy, I guided her toward a group of other friends, to whom I did not need to explain anything, as the crowd shuffled down the street. Just a bit onward, where the roadway curved over the railroad tracks, I found Anna and Leo. The return home had been hard for Anna as well—she and John were fighting over their house, though I hoped the end was in sight for her divorce. Anna and I plodded on in our sullen way, plastering on smiles for our children when they looked our way. She grimaced when I told her that I had already seen Cathy at the top of the street.

“Bitch,” she muttered, out of earshot of our children.

At the bottom of the street, everyone milled around the water-front, chatting. In previous years this had been a time to hang out with friends or reconnect with infrequently seen neighbors, but now I couldn’t bear the ordeal of one more acquaintance tipping her or his head sympathetically while asking, “Julie, how are you doing?”

Anna and I surveyed the crowd and, without exchanging words, reached the same conclusion, that it would be best to avoid conversation with those who were not real intimates. We guided our children toward an empty bench away from the crush. They soon found entertainment attempting to climb a grouping of three ornamental cherry trees, now mostly bare. A light wind loosened a few of the remaining leaves and swirled them across the brick
path. Anna and I sat close, feeling relaxed for the first time that afternoon.

Until Cathy slipped out of the crowd, her daughter trailing after her. Cathy caught sight of us on the bench. Anna and I looked at each other curiously, assuming that Cathy would immediately take Amy away, but instead she lingered on the edge of the crowd, as if contemplating her next move.

“Take your kid and fucking leave,” I mouthed through gritted teeth. “Anna, what’s she doing?”

“Bitch. She better not come over here.”

But Cathy did not leave, despite my efforts to look fearsome when our eyes met. I was regretting what now seemed like a ridiculous costume. I would not feel very assertive confronting her dressed in a red satin dress and plastic devil horns. I felt silly and petty, and remembered the ugly thing Steve had said to me during one of our brief conversations in July, “You are a vengeful woman.”

Amy looked over at Liza; then Liza looked up and saw Amy. They smiled at each other with sweet delight. Liza looked at me, for permission. Amy began walking toward Liza, then looked at me for permission and saw my glowering expression. She began to back away from Liza, with downturned lips and widened eyes.

I had frightened this child, one who had spent countless afternoons playing at my house, a girl I had fed, lifeguarded, hugged, disciplined, whose pale tush I had wiped with tenderness if not love. I really felt like shit.

But I’d had enough. I leapt off my seat and walked toward Cathy, right up close to her, so that I would not have to shout. “Get your kid away from my kid. Do it right now.”

“You need to start behaving more like a mother,” she replied
calmly, like a kind but firm teacher. I could hear in her response someone else’s speechwriting, perhaps that of her husband, perhaps that of a well-meaning friend from her church, who had been offered a sanitized version of the doings of the last few years. I had thought nothing about this woman could still shock me, but I was wrong.

“Don’t you ever tell me how to behave,” I said with barely controlled fury, “you who have the moral center of a worm.” She flinched. I was happy to see that. I was feeling mean and ornery. “Do not speak to me,” I continued. “Do not send your daughter over to speak to my child. I will not allow you to manipulate this situation using our children. I have separated them with great difficulty, and I want it to stay that way.” My right hand twitched as it had during that first confrontation in the parking lot near her house, longing independently to smack her, restrained only by a more desperate urge not to make a scene. “If I ever see you again in any public place, I will not acknowledge you. As far as I am concerned you do not exist.”

I returned, shaking, to my seat on the bench. I called over to a now distraught Liza. Anna hugged me. “Like I said, it’s time to bring back the Scarlet Letter.” I was grateful for her solidarity but overwhelmed, tears blurring my vision.

Liza was in tears as well. I comforted her on my lap for the next half hour, while she sobbed on. Why couldn’t she just say hello to Amy? She just wanted to say hello. Why wouldn’t I let her say hello?

There was no doubt now. This town was too small for the both of us—Henry’s wife and mistress. One of us was going to have to move. I had a feeling that Cathy and Steve were digging their heels in, and that this episode was just the beginning of a full-scale attempt at social rehabilitation. Too bad this wasn’t Jane Austen’s day, when adulteresses like Maria Bertram in
Mansfield
Park
were sent away to live in forced isolation with crotchety old-maid aunts for the rest of their days.

Liza cried for days after the Halloween parade. I was relieved that we did not see Cathy or Amy on the actual trick-or-treating night. Recalling Amy’s early bedtime, we began late, kept to our friends’ houses, and headed home as soon as Liza had achieved a reasonable quota of candy.

“Oh, Julie, how are you? And how does Liza like her new school?” one of Cathy’s churchgoing friends inquired kindly as we passed her family on our way home.

“We’re fine, thanks.” I squeezed Liza’s hand and kept walking at the same pace, to discourage even a minute more of polite social chatter.

I continued to time my movements in town to avoid Cathy and people in general. Some weekends I escaped with Liza to my brother’s house in Brooklyn, where I felt gloriously anonymous. I walked around my old neighborhood curiously, wondering with fragile but growing enthusiasm if it might be possible to resettle here.

“The first year is almost up,” David said while monitoring barbecued chicken on his backyard grill. “You shouldn’t be the one who has to run away. Just try to hang in there till January and we’ll see what we’ll see.”

I had wondered if I could stay in the house if I made some big changes. While away in Maine, I had conceived a scheme to renovate the third floor, a large, unfinished attic space, to create a painting studio. My brother liked the idea. Even if I sold the house later, he said, it would be a profitable investment.

By late September, I had joined many of my neighbors in welcoming a contractor into my attic. By late November, renovation was completed. On the last workday I walked through the new studio, inspecting the insulated, pine-paneled walls, plentiful electrical outlets, new windows and skylights, and the wide, old floorboards, now patched and painted an olive green not unlike the color of Anna’s kitchen, where I had enjoyed the glass of wine and the glowing sunset.

From my basement, the contractor’s assistant moved a large drafting table upstairs. Sitting on the high stool in front of the table, I admired the late afternoon light in the studio and the view of the mountains across the river. I paced the room and tried out the new dimmer switches and the variable-speed ceiling fans. Then, abruptly, I flipped off the lights and the fan, and walked downstairs. I was done with this project and maybe with this house.

Emily came over one morning to see the results. But even as she walked through, admiring the now open, loftlike space, I had a piercingly strong and sad sense that no paintings of mine would ever get made here.

“You could buy yourself some canvas in those long rolls and just tack it up on the walls. You could get some big brushes and go really wild!” Emily urged with an enthusiasm I had so often envied.

“Yes, I’ll do that.” I knew as I was speaking that even this big effort would never be enough. I couldn’t continue living here. But I still wanted to please Emily, to acknowledge her suggestion and pretend for a moment that everything might return to the time before Henry died. We’d make paintings here together and do yoga and maybe set up an informal artists’ salon.

“That’s a great idea, Emily. I’ll order canvas right away,” I said.

After she left, I walked straight into my office, where I ordered canvas, brushes, bottles of gesso, and tubes of paint online. It felt strange to go through these motions with the certain knowledge that I would carry the roll of canvas and the rest of the supplies, still sealed in their original corrugated boxes, right to the moving van, whenever moving day came. I could visualize the scene in my mind like a vividly recalled dream.

I had heard that another marriage had collapsed in this house, two owners ago. During an argument, one party had apparently taken a sledgehammer to the toilet in the half bath off the kitchen, the one I had lovingly painted in the earth tones of houses in Tuscany. With some amusement, I wondered if the house was doomed. The sooner I got out of it the better.

Henry himself was still very much in the house,
both as an occasional visitation and in physical form in the ashes in the wooden urn. Liza, when asked, said she wanted to keep her father’s ashes in our house. Emily thought I should scatter them. A part of me liked the idea of having them out of the house, but Liza’s wishes were paramount.

I suggested the compromise of a partial scattering. Emily seemed to wish very much for this ceremony, so I arranged an afternoon while Liza was at school. Emily came over, I scooped some ashes into a plastic bag, and we drove to a rocky ledge overlooking the river, where a stiff autumn breeze blew our hair to and fro. It didn’t feel like much of a good-bye, just a ritual I was performing to try to please my friend.

Still, Emily did not seem happy around me. I tried desperately to summon up loyal-friend interest in her concerns, but I felt too
overwhelmed with the mess of my life to deal with the logistics of hers. With regret, I acknowledged that none of it meant much to me. Getting through the next day intact meant everything. As she spoke, my mind felt utterly blank and spaced out.

“Is it always going to be about this?” Emily lamented as we walked back to the car, perhaps sensing my lack of real presence. “Is it always going to be about Henry?”

I would have loved to talk about something else, like my desperate need to get laid, but I didn’t think she wanted to hear about that either. These days, I thought sullenly, it was faraway Eliana who was the most receptive audience. How twisted my life had become: I was now finding comfort from one of my dead husband’s mistresses. I’d sent her several e-mails a week since returning from Maine, and she always took time to answer me with warmth and encouragement. I continued to be surprised at the ways our unlikely friendship was evolving. Mostly I felt paralyzed and exhausted, knowing I needed to step forward but unsure what to do next.

Now I understood why the single mothers I’d been hanging around with couldn’t get through school, find satisfying jobs, or carve out time for their private pursuits. We were all just trying to get through the day.