An Available Man (22 page)

One day he could arrive as arranged at her apartment—he had keys to both the outer and inner doors now (a mere convenience, as she’d said)—and find strangers living there. Was that uncertainty part of the thrill for him? If so, it was definitely out of character. He was famously steadfast, a man of habit who took satisfaction from the quotidian, from people he could count on and who could count on him. Or at least he used to be. Maybe he would pull the disappearing act this time.

He’d intended to call Ellen, playing it cool to match her detachment by waiting a few days after he was home. But when he looked for the receipt with her Darien, Connecticut, number on it, he couldn’t find it. Lost in the laundry, maybe, or left in the Vineyard rental along with his blue swim trunks and an unopened bottle of Pinot Noir. He remembered the second letter from Laurel, when she’d signed herself “Ann” and asked if the dog had eaten her first letter. That’s what he might have told Ellen about the receipt, after he got her number from information. But he found out that she was unlisted. He couldn’t remember the name of the real estate firm she worked for, and the minimal detective work required to figure that out seemed
formidable. Of course he could have simply asked the Martins for her number, but he thought that Peggy had sensed his rift with Ellen, and didn’t want to arouse her curiosity. So he let it go for the time being.

On the few occasions he told Laurel he couldn’t see her because of a family commitment or other plans, she didn’t question him or sulk or even ask to be included. She seemed to understand the unwritten rules of their new relationship. So he saw the kids and Gladys whenever he felt like it, and went to Sybil and Henry’s for dinner, unaccompanied and unafraid. There were inquiries about his social life. Julie asked if that “old friend” had gotten in touch with him again, and he blithely lied about it. Sybil wondered aloud if he’d met anyone while he was on vacation, and when he said, “No one special,” she looked at him sharply, but he withstood her scrutiny for once and simply enjoyed his dinner.

But when he ran into Bernie one evening on the way to Laurel’s, he felt compelled to talk about her, without being directly asked. How did the conversation start? Bernie said something crude and intrusive, like “Getting any?” and Edward had an unexpected, adolescent urge to share his newfound excitement.

No details, of course—they were light-years from adolescence—only the fact that he and Laurel were involved again. He was suddenly bursting with that revelation, the way Julie needed to betray Amanda’s confidence about trying to become pregnant. Did Edward want approval or envy? Not exactly, although he remembered the dreamy look on Bernie’s face when he’d mentioned the silver halo of hair Laurel once had. This time, though, Bernie just seemed incredulous. “You’re kidding,” he said. “How did
that
happen?”

“It happened,” Edward said. “How doesn’t really matter.”

“Well, good luck,” Bernie said, clapping him on the shoulder, a little too hard. He was about to say something else, but then he seemed to change his mind. “Good luck,” he said again before going off down the street.

Separate Lives

O
ne afternoon, at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, Laurel leaned toward him just as the main feature was starting and said, “Is there someone else, Edward?”

They were holding hands, but he was settling deeply into his seat, ready to give himself over to the life and landscape of the movie, an Australian crime drama, and the question, her voice in the plush darkness, startled him. “What do you mean?” he whispered. A woman sitting behind them said, “Shhh!” and Laurel turned to glower at her before putting her free hand up to Edward’s lips. “Later,” she whispered back.

Going to the movies in the afternoon had always seemed like a guilty pleasure to Edward, an instant escape from the glare of daylight and the business of the outside world. Laurel had suggested this particular movie, and she was good at conjuring up other means of entertainment. Since Edward’s return from
the Vineyard, they’d taken the Staten Island Ferry, followed by a picnic in Clove Lake Park; gone to Chinatown, where they ate at a communal table with a large Chinese family, none of whom spoke English, isolating the two of them in a silly, yet romantic way; read the first pages of several books sitting on the floor in the aisles of the Chelsea Barnes & Noble; and lay, gently vibrating, in side-by-side massage chairs at Hammacher Schlemmer.

They’d done many similar things together when they were younger, and even if some of them seemed a bit juvenile to Edward now, he was moved by Laurel’s delight in revisiting old habits and haunts. Then there was the lovely lovemaking, the culmination of most of their outings. It was like having two separate lives, both satisfying, that never had to merge or even collide. That, he found out soon after they’d left the theater, was what was bothering her and had provoked her question at the start of the movie.

“I dated a married man for a while in Arizona,” she said, “and it was something like this.”

He felt a small charge, as if he’d touched a frayed wire. In his head, he heard:
I almost got married once before
,
you know
. “You’ve never mentioned that, have you?”

“Don’t change the subject,” she said.

“Laurel,” he said. “You know that I’m not married. And I don’t have the energy or the impulse to be seeing another woman. You still wear me out, I’m happy to say.” They were walking down Broadway and he reached for her hand again, but she pulled it away.

“But you’re not always available,” she said.

It was true; he wasn’t always free to be with her. Her uncommon patience, her easy acceptance of this arrangement was always going to expire; he just hadn’t thought it would happen this soon. And he’d seldom lapsed into talking about Bee to her,
but Laurel had what appeared to be uncanny intuition about such matters, and a history of unfounded jealousy. Of course, she’d been the unfaithful one, but he didn’t point that out, and he didn’t say he’d assumed it was his turn to be selfish. If he wasn’t able to let go of the past, they couldn’t move on, even as a loosely attached couple. “Sometimes,” he said, “I need to see old friends.”

“You never invite me along, though, do you?”

“You’re right, I don’t,” he said. “Maybe I just want to keep you all to myself.”
On our protracted faux honeymoon
. He almost believed his own glib answer for a moment.

She rolled her eyes. Then she said, “Or maybe you’re, I don’t know, ashamed of me or something.”

Was he? No, it was more complicated than that. He was still ashamed—even after all this time—of having been dumped at the altar, and of hiding that whole episode of his life as if it had never happened. What he didn’t have the impulse or energy for was explaining Laurel to anyone, of revealing himself, in his youth, as an innocent dupe, or of trying to justify their reunion.

“Of course I’m not,” he said. “You’re wonderful.” And she was, in her own innovative way.

“I’ve never been to your house,” she said. “That rental in the Vineyard doesn’t count, and I had to practically force my way in there. Even my married lover took me home once, when his wife and kids were out of town.”

While Edward was trying to envision that scene, it was supplanted by an image of Laurel entering the house in Englewood, of her shadow crossing the threshold of his marriage. Now he really wanted to change the subject. “Listen,” he said, “do you remember Bernie Roth?”

She looked at him blankly.

“Short guy? In the English Department at Fenton.”

“Oh, yeah, the little bantam rooster,” she said.

Accurate, he supposed. Bernie did strut and crow a lot back then. He still did, at times. “Well, there’s a place on Columbus Avenue, Bruno’s, that we go to sometimes after school, Bernie and Frances Hartman and me. She’s in math, hired way after your time.”

“Are they together?” she asked.

“No. They may have been once, but not now.”

“How old is she?”

“I’m not sure—you know how bad I am about people’s ages. Fifties?”

“I see,” Laurel said. What did she see? “Do they know about me?” she asked.

“Yes. Bernie was there when we were together, remember?”
He was at the church. His wedding gift was one of a trio of chafing dishes I had to return
. “He still talks about your amazing hair. And I’ve told them both about running into you again.”

She didn’t question him about the content of that conversation. Instead she said, “How long have you been at Fenton, Edward? It must be a million years by now. Haven’t you ever thought about retiring?”

Yes, he had thought about it, and so had Bee. They were going to retire together when she turned sixty, and he sixty-five. What did Gladys say?
Man plans
,
God laughs
. It sounded better, or worse—more dire, somehow—in Yiddish. Yet he and Bee had made elaborate plans to travel, especially to the Far East, where neither of them had ever been. For his sixtieth birthday, she had bought him a field guide to the birds of East Asia. Do some of them sing in Mandarin? she wondered. For her part, she’d already started to research the open markets and bazaars in New
Delhi and Katmandu. They were not going to turn into the Wexlers, who’d stayed in New Jersey, squabbling, and squandering their remaining days.

“Sure, I’ve considered it,” he said, “and the school board has offered incentives to get us old-timers out. But I guess I’m just not ready yet.” He didn’t say that work had been his salvation after Bee died, or that he still got a kick out of teaching. Laurel had taken her pension in Phoenix several years before, bored to death by generations of children and their lousy accents. She’d worked at a few odd jobs for a while afterward—mostly to help pay for refresher visits to her therapist—as a freelance translator, selling art objects in a gallery, and as a receptionist in a doctor’s office. Was that her married lover? Edward didn’t ask, just as she’d never mentioned Ellen again. Quid pro quo.

“I’ll be going back to the salt mines soon,” he said. “Bernie and Frances and I will probably all meet up at Bruno’s to commiserate beforehand and review the summer. Why don’t you come, too?”

“Maybe,” she said. But she let him take her hand.

Late

W
hen Laurel was twenty minutes late, Edward tried not to look at his watch again too soon. Instead, he glanced across the table at Bernie’s oversized Fossil chronograph, which seemed to be running about ten minutes fast. He wished he knew which one was accurate; half an hour seemed significantly later than twenty minutes. Frances’s watch was one of those tiny things with little jeweled dots instead of numbers and such delicate hands they were hard to discern from even a foot or so away. And she kept moving her own hands around, fiddling with her purse and realigning the salt and pepper shakers. When had she become an obsessive-compulsive? Edward wanted to clamp his hands over hers to make her stop and then, when she was still, take a quick, close look at the face of her minuscule watch.

They’d ordered a pitcher about fifteen minutes into their
wait and, despite a dry mouth and throat, Edward was nursing his beer. Bernie seemed to be guzzling his, and he’d already reduced the bowl of pretzels to a pile of salt and dust. “Traffic,” Edward said, as if it were merely an idle observation, and although Columbus Avenue appeared almost deserted on this Friday before Labor Day. Even Bruno’s was pretty empty. He didn’t check his watch again for what felt like ages, but only ten more minutes had gone by. Laurel was officially half an hour, or perhaps forty minutes, late by then.

Edward hadn’t been this fixated on the passage of time since what he now thought of with irony as his first wedding. The church had been filled, yet he hardly knew anyone there, including the minister, who’d met with the bridal couple only once a couple of weeks earlier, to discuss the ceremony and give them some perfunctory marital counseling. His language was archaic, Edward remembered. He said things like “Cleave unto each other,” and went on about the “sacrament of commitment.” Edward and Laurel had trouble containing themselves. And what a sad joke that proved to be.