Second Chances (28 page)

“The sexual relation in my opinion is not a sufficient or perhaps one should say an appropriate cause for two people to live together. Is that not also your opinion?” Polly, in her somewhat stilted Spanish, her pure Castilian, has just made this remark to Victor as, on a Sunday morning, the last of this rare and glorious July, they lie naked and languorous across her bed.

“Indeed, it would seem to be not practical,” says Victor as with one thick brown finger he traces a line down Polly’s rib cage. “But what would be your solution, in an ideal situation?” he asks her.

“Oh, I don’t know! I just know that the way things are now is ludicrous. People signing up for a lifetime of monogamy, not to mention all that housekeeping. All the terrible drain of dailiness. So destructive. So non-sexual.”

“Not to mention the problem of children,” Victor reminds her.

“Oh, I know. The kibbutz model seems the best I have heard about.” She turns toward him, smiling, her pale eyes brilliant as she lightly kisses his nearest shoulder. “But shouldn’t I make a picnic? Eat outside? This glorious weather can’t last, you know that.”

“Ah, you must allow me to produce for you my famous
tapas
.” Victor grins, displaying admirable large strong white teeth. And he continues, still in their former vein, “And may I also say, my dear Polly, that it appears to me that in your own most private life you have succeeded in resolving most of the difficulties of which you speak.”

“Oh, I suppose by now I have. But it took me so long to figure anything out. For all those years, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I thought maybe women were supposed to get married and have children, and that I was probably wrong not to.”

“You had no dialectic.”

“Exactly. Just instincts, and whoever knows enough to trust their instincts much before middle life. Or long after.”

“You are correct.”

“In a way,” Polly muses, “I have two friends, both older gay men, and they seem to have things worked out rather well. No sex anymore, all passion spent, as it were, but they’re still extremely fond of each other. They rub along in what looks like an amiable way.”

“How, I must ask you,” Victor asks, “are you privy to such remarkably personal information?”

“Oh, the younger one talks to me all the time. He likes to telephone, he thinks it’s fun to gossip in Spanish.”

The almost pedantic formality with which Victor speaks to her in Spanish has been for Polly an interesting contrast to his very vernacular, most imperfect English. In Spanish he is another man. Or perhaps he simply becomes his essential self: a self-taught intellectual—a classic, if somewhat anachronistic anarchist. A Spaniard.

At first, with no explanations, he began to appear more and more often at Polly’s door. She never asked why he could suddenly spend both Saturday nights and Sunday mornings with her, and why he would often return to her on Tuesday, say. All so unlike the rigidity of his former schedule, the Thursday nights. She was always very glad to see him—and glad too when it was time for him to go. She asked no questions; whatever was happening between Victor and his family, specifically his wife, was absolutely no business of hers, Polly felt—and was sure that he would feel the same: Victor, she thought, is a passionately private person.

But then one day very casually Victor remarked, “My wife seems very happy in Los Angeles.”

“Oh?” was all that Polly permitted herself to ask.

“Yes, she has found work there, she is very happy. She has two sisters in Burbank. I am glad, I imagine that she will stay. And my
mother is more happy to have the sole care of the children. Of course with my help.”

And that was that, a household to which Polly does not give a great deal of thought, beyond a distant, mild benevolence.

They do, though, always talk a great deal to each other. In fact, Victor talks to Polly like a man famished for conversation, ideas. Polly understands that this possibility, with her, is one of the things that draws him. And she in turn talks to him; he is the only person in San Sebastian to whom she has recounted the true story of her time in Spain, those years of panic, occasional minor triumph. Her sense of the landscape of Spain.

So it should not have been too surprising, as it now quite violently is, when Victor says, “It has been coming to my mind that we two could make a trip to Spain. Could we not? It would not be too expensive. Is it not time?”

“Oh—” Polly, so jolted, finds it suddenly hard to breathe: closing her eyes for one instant, she sees a long straight white road lined with pine trees, round and full, and with poplars, their leaves a deep rich yellow, almost amber, glowing. On either side of this road there are broad stretching red-earthed plains.

“Well, why not?” she asks Victor.

Edward is later to remember the August of that year, during which he turns seventy, as one of the entirely worst times of his entire life, the achieving of that venerable age being almost the least of it, he believes.

For one thing, the weather, that year in northern California, is spectacularly bad, especially near the coast. A thick fog envelops most of the days and weeks of that endless month, invading the coastal hills, while out at sea most unseasonable winter storms gather force, arriving at last to attack the land ferociously: lashing gales, and furious sheets of rain, as heavy as glass, as dangerous, destructive. Fishing boats, three that month, are dashed against rocks, their occupants lost. Seaside houses are severely damaged, or wrecked. (“The damage is estimated at upwards of $3 million, in this week alone.”)

However, far worse than old age and frightful weather for Edward is the slowly emerging, cruel, at last recognized fact that Freddy is moving back to Mexico in January, if not earlier. For good.

First, Freddy announces that he does not have AIDS. In the course of his summer cold, the month before, when he suggested that unthinkable possibility to Edward, he went at last (he was persuaded to go, by Edward) to be tested, and the test was negative.

Freddy then went into a sort of euphoric relief, during which Edward understood that Freddy had been considerably more worried than he said. But it was nothing serious, after all, just a bad cold—while Edward still was reeling from the bare mention of that possibility: Freddy, AIDS. But you might have had it, he barely restrained himself from saying. You admitted exposure, how could you? And
how could you let me know? But Freddy had already begun to say that he felt like celebrating with a trip to Mexico.

And, just as Edward was considering the taking of that trip, it became slowly, gradually, painfully apparent that Freddy meant a trip alone. At what moment actually apparent? Later Edward could not remember. It was simply, he believes, what is called a “growing realization.” Growing like a hideous weed, or a tumor, Edward has thought.

However, at first it was only a trip that Freddy had in mind, albeit a long one. He had a sabbatical coming up, which he could arrange to begin in January.

With a certain irony Edward has observed that never has Freddy sounded so Latin as during this infinitely prolonged statement of his intentions. Such a profusion of alternatives, such elaboration, such
politesse
.

“On the other hand, it is entirely possible that I might instead go to Italy,” Edward overhears Freddy saying to Dudley one night before a supper
à trois
that Edward is preparing in the kitchen: sweet-and-sour salmon, a favorite of Freddy’s. Grinding gingersnaps, the silly secret ingredient, Edward strains to listen.

“But I very much doubt that I will,” he hears Freddy continue, above the now familiar sounds of rising wind, creaking boards, rattling panes. “After all, I am so very Mexican. At the significant age of fifty, I feel myself more and more so. A spic, it is myself.”

Was that the moment at which Edward first consciously thought, or
knew
, that Freddy meant to go away for good? Quite possibly so. As quickly as he can, but repressing that eagerness, that appearance of haste, Edward re-enters the room, but in time to hear, instead of Freddy’s plans, Dudley’s: she is off to Carmel the following week, of all the very dull ideas, in Edward’s view.

“Friends of mine will be there,” Dudley says, with quite unnecessary vagueness (Edward’s opinion).

“Well, you two are certainly full of travel plans” is what he hears himself saying—ridiculously.

Dudley and Freddy accord him only a momentary look and then seem to take up an earlier conversation, having to do with some fancied connection between of all people Sara and David. Celeste’s idea.

“But I thought they didn’t even like each other,” Edward puts in.

This attempt to join their conversation earns from Dudley and Freddy, almost in unison, “Oh, you are behind.”

They all laugh, but then Edward is unable not to say, “You must admit it’s unlikely?”

Dudley answers him much more seriously than he would have chosen. “Not at all, when you consider that Sara’s a very sexual young woman. And who else is around? This Alex of hers seems to keep his distance in New York.”

What on earth can she mean by that, and how can she know? What do women talk about these days? Unpleasantly pondering all this, Edward next thinks (most unpleasant of all) that Dudley is just possibly speaking of herself. Can she be? Does she think of herself as a “very sexual woman”? Oh dear,
can
she?

“Celeste, though, is not exactly reliable these days,” Dudley tells them. “She’s so very preoccupied.” And, in answer to the question on the faces of both Edward and Freddy, “I’m not at all sure with what.”

Edward asks what seems to him the obvious question. “Do you think she’s well?”

Dudley answers, “I’m not sure, really. The thing is, she wouldn’t tell us if she weren’t.”

“Would she tell Sara?” asks Freddy. “Or Polly?”

Edward chooses this moment to say, “Since we’re all gossiping in this way—” But then he wonders: Are we? Or is this a serious conversation? But he continues, frivolously or not. “I was walking past Polly’s house last Sunday, and there she was very
tête-à-tête
with that nice bald Spanish mechanic. You know, the one who fixes things.”

“Well, maybe he was fixing something. Things do break on Sundays,” Freddy reminds Edward. Ridiculously. And his voice is just slightly hostile, Edward feels.

So that Edward retracts, although his impression of Polly and Victor was very clear: two people having an intimate picnic out in the sun. But, “Of course,” he says to Freddy. “I was just making up stories.”

If I behave wonderfully, make wonderful meals and manage to be both amusing and serious, always, and, at the same time, if everything I say is politically correct, in your new terms, will you stay with me and not move to Mexico? Will you not abandon me? Edward feels a
sort of interior weeping as silently, secretly, he pleads with Freddy. And knows it to be hopeless.

In a pleased and interested way Dudley is saying, “I don’t think such a connection for Polly is all that implausible, Freddy. I’ve always thought Polly was very sexy.”

At this Edward and Freddy exchange a mild, ironic look that says: You seem to think all women are sexy. And at this intimate, familiar communication Edward’s hopes rise again, as he thinks that maybe, after all—

However, he interrupts himself to get up and go back to his salmon. It is very dangerous to hope, is Edward’s belief.

Nothing more is said that night about Mexico, or Freddy’s travels. Conversation at dinner is focused on the weather, the strange winter storms of August. They also discuss Dudley’s new thoughts about a possible job; she would like to teach, she thinks. Is getting in touch with Santa Clara, San Jose. They also speculate about Celeste: her health—she looks marvelous, but is she really okay? And whatever happened to Bill? (None of them has been told that Celeste heard from Bill.)

“She must be a little embarrassed, to say the least, all that schoolgirl behavior, and then the big announcement, even if she only whispered it,” Dudley contributes.

“It all had to do with mourning for Charles, I think,” Edward tells them as privately he wonders: If Freddy leaves, will I be crazed in that way? Will I go into permanent mourning?

“Oh, yes, oh absolutely. It was all about Charles,” says Dudley.

A few days later, Freddy remarks, “It surely might be possible that I teach in American studies at the university.”

He has sounded like a man talking to himself, but still Edward asks, “What university?”

“In Mexico City.” Freddy does not add, “of course.” But he might as well have.

And now Edward knows. He knows that by January, at the latest, Freddy will be gone for good. And that he, Edward, will have to get through the rest of his life by himself.

He finds it extremely hard, almost impossible, to concentrate on
anything but this, this departure from his life by Freddy. And he finds himself prey to the most dreadful imaginings, and impulses.

For example, suppose that instead of the “clean bill of health,” of which Freddy still boasts, in a silly, inflated way—suppose Freddy did have AIDS? Edward imagines Freddy horribly weakened, maybe with those ghastly lesions, Kaposi’s sarcoma. And himself: dedicated, devoted, nursing Freddy here at home until the end. But dear God, does he really, possibly, even for one instant find that preferable?
God
, does he really want Freddy to die in that unspeakable way, rather than to leave?

No, the truth is that he does not—had he a choice.

He thinks at other times of the fact of their house, although paid for mostly by Edward (at the time that they bought it, Edward had some money; he made the down payment), but the house is in both their names. They are Joint Tenants. And so, if Freddy plans to leave for good, will this stop him, even for a while? Will he wait around while they try—while Edward tries to sell the house? (It would have to be sold; Edward does not believe he could live there alone, nor does he have enough money to buy Freddy out, as it were.) Will that stop Freddy, real estate?

Very likely it will not. About money, property and possessions in general Freddy is quite insouciant. He likes to walk off and leave things, to throw things away. He would most likely say, “Oh well, dear Edward, do sell it when you can. But do not trouble yourself overmuch. I am surely in no hurry.”