“People usually think I’m very cynical,” said Robert.
“Well, I don’t think you can be alive today without being cynical. Unless you’re an idiot. Cynicism is our second nature. But it’s just an armor; it only covers our true nature. And it is not, I think, very thick on you. What
do
you do? You may be tired of the question, but I’m curious. Now that I’ve taken an interest in you.”
“I’m working in a restaurant,” said Robert. “And trying to be a painter.”
“Do you know how to restore paintings?”
“No,” said Robert.
“I do,” said Marian. “Why?”
“Do you?” asked Laura. “I didn’t know that. How interesting.”
“I used to work for the Met,” said Marian.
“Have you ever restored frescoes?”
“No,” said Marian. “Just canvases.”
John stood up. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I just remembered I left the sprinkler on in the garden. I’ll be right back.”
“I don’t hear it,” said Marian.
They were all quiet for a second, listening for the sprinkler.
“It’s on very softly,” said John. He walked down the lawn, into the darkness.
“Pretty soon he’s going to start sleeping in the garden,” said Marian.
“Then let him,” said Laura. “One thing I’ve learned is that you’ve got to let men sleep wherever they want.”
No one—not even Robert—seemed prepared to respond to this comment. “What were you saying before, about frescoes?” asked Lyle.
“Oh,” said Laura. “Well, I’m having a lot of restoration done in my villa, and I was having some walls replastered. These awful Brits owned the house before me and did it all up with Laura Ashley. Can you imagine: Laura Ashley in a villa?”
“No,” said Lyle, who thought even rhetorical questions about aesthetics should be answered.
“Of course not,” continued Laura. “Anyway, underneath the wallpaper in the music room we discovered frescoes. Of course they’re badly damaged, but I’d like to have them restored.”
“I could get some names for you, I’m sure,” said Marian.
“Could you? They’re probably second-rate and not worth the effort—or expense—but I’d feel awful if I didn’t at least have someone look at them. Plus the government, these days, is impossible. You can hardly clean out a closet without their permission.”
John heard the rasp of the pine trees and footsteps. Lyle appeared through the hedge, looking toward the garden.
“There you are,” said Lyle. “Marian sent me to retrieve you. Are you all right? Is anything wrong?”
John walked toward the garden fence, near Lyle. “No,” he said.
“Good,” said Lyle. “It’s a lovely night. I like your guest. She’s very entertaining.”
“She’s a little crazy, I think.”
“The most entertaining people always are,” said Lyle.
“She talks too much.”
“And you talk too little,” said Lyle. “So it all evens out. What are you doing here? Was the sprinkler on?”
“No,” said John.
“We should go back,” said Lyle. “I think Marian’s concerned.”
“About what?”
“About what Marian is always concerned with: that things go well.”
“Aren’t things going well?” asked John.
“As far as I’m concerned, they are,” said Lyle. “I’m having a wonderful weekend. I’m happy to be here.”
“Is Robert?”
“Yes,” said Lyle.
“Maybe we can go swimming later, in the dark.”
“I think it’s too cold.”
“Perhaps Robert will. He likes to swim.”
“Ask him. Let’s go back.” Lyle wanted to get back. It made him nervous to stand alone with John in the dark. They had never really talked about—or acknowledged—Tony’s death, and Lyle had the feeling that John, at any moment, might. It took such a long time for things to bubble up through John; one never knew when—if—they might surface. “Let’s go back,” Lyle repeated.
He pushed himself through the hedge. He stood on the other side and looked up the lawn. He could see the candles, and the faces around them. “Are you coming?” he called back to John.
“Yes,” said John.
When the meal was finished, Marian stood up and began stacking plates.
“Let me help you,” said Robert, standing up as well.
“No, no,” said Marian. “Sit down.”
John and Lyle and Laura were seated. Laura was smoking a thin brown cigarette, exhaling drifts of smoke over her shoulder into the darkness. “No,” said Robert. “I’ll help.” He wanted to hurt Marian in some way, and helping her when she did not want help was the best way he knew. They carried the dishes up the terraced steps to the house. They paused at the kitchen door, both of their hands full. “Here,” said Robert, shifting his load, reaching out for the door. He dropped a plate on the bricks. The sound of it smashing seemed very loud.
“Oh no,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Just get the door,” said Marian. “It’s nothing. No—don’t try to pick it up. I’ll get the broom.”
John appeared behind them. He opened the door and took some dishes from them both.
They piled the dishes in the sink. The light in the kitchen seemed unusually bright and artificial after the candlelit gloom of the backyard. Robert began to rinse the plates under the tap, but Marian said, “Leave them, please. Join the others.”
“Are you sure I can’t help?”
“I’ll give you a shout when I’m ready with the dessert,” said Marian. She actually pushed him a little.
Back at the table, Laura was drawing the floor plan of her villa on a blank page of her Filofax. Then she drew another of how it would be when the renovation was complete. The bathroom floors, she announced, were to be sheathed in anodized aluminum.
Marian came down the steps sideways, balancing a large platter to one side of her. Everyone stopped talking and watched her descend, as if she were a Ziegfeld girl. She waited for Laura to remove her sketch, and then laid the platter in the middle of the table. A pyramid of lacy, nearly transparent cookies was surrounded by grapes. The grapes were red, their underbellies flushed lime green.
Robert could feel Lyle’s bare foot caressing the muscle of his calf beneath the table, but Lyle was not looking at him. He was smoking one of Laura’s cigarettes, and in the way he held and inhaled the cigarette Robert could tell he had once been a smoker. Lyle’s arm was extended along the back of Laura’s chair, inches from her bare neck. He was not flirting, Robert knew, but simply being charming.
Robert reached out and tugged at a bunch of grapes, plucking one from its thin stem, so that just a touch of its moist insides remained behind on the stalk.
“Oh, Robert, here,” said Marian. She picked up a pair of heavy, ornate scissors and held them toward Robert. They glowed in the candlelight.
Robert put the grape into his mouth, and held it there, intact. He was confused.
“They’re grape scissors,” Marian said. “You use these to cut a small bunch of grapes, instead of pulling them off one by one.” She demonstrated this phenomenon, and then held the scissors toward Robert.
Robert did not take the scissors.
The moment seemed very long: Marian’s extended hand, offering the scissors; the grape, round and cool in Robert’s mouth; all of their dumb faces touched with candlelight.
“Oh, don’t tame him!” Laura suddenly cried. “Let him eat grapes with his fingers if he wants! Let us all be free of these stupid affectations!” She grabbed the scissors from Marian and flung them over her shoulder.
No one moved. It was quiet except for the drone of the insects and the chafe of the leaves in the trees, which hovered above them in great dark clouds. Finally Laura laughed a little, but to herself. She pushed back her chair, got up, and retrieved the scissors from where they lay on the lawn. She placed them on the table. Everyone looked at them. They were lovely: chased silver, each loop a trellis of engraved vines.
Marian touched them. “They were my grandmother’s,” she said.
AFTER DINNER, LYLE AND Robert went for a walk along the river. Once the lights from the house had faded behind them, it was quite dark. “What river is this?” asked Robert.
“I don’t know,” said Lyle. “I don’t think I’ve heard it referred to by name.”
“Where does it flow?”
“It flows—well, I assume into the Hudson. Let’s see.” Lyle paused to consider directions, but had trouble orienting himself in the darkness. And the river twisted so. “I’m sure it flows into the Hudson. All rivers around here must. It’s a tributary.”
“Which do you like better,” asked Robert, “rivers or lakes? Or ponds?”
“Rivers, I think. I like the idea of the water constantly moving. There’s something stagnant—in comparison—about lakes and ponds.”
The path narrowed and they had to continue in single file. Robert went ahead. They walked for a moment without talking, and then Lyle asked, “What did you think of our dinner guest? Signora Ponti?”
“I liked her,” said Robert. “I thought she was funny.”
“Yes,” said Lyle, “she was. In a self-dramatizing fashion.”
“Didn’t you like her?”
“Oh, yes, she was good company for a dinner. I just think she was trying a bit too hard. It’s a little tragic: glamorous women at that age. They get desperate. Flinging the grape scissors. That kind of thing.”
“I liked her,” said Robert.
“That’s because she came to your defense,” said Lyle. Robert didn’t respond.
“Are you upset about the scissors?” asked Lyle.
“No,” said Robert.
“Oh. I thought perhaps you were.”
“No,” said Robert. “I’m upset, but that’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Of course I do. Tell me.”
“They think I’m all wrong for you,” Robert said.
“What?” asked Lyle. “Who?”
“John and Marian. They think I’m wrong for you.”
“No they don’t,” said Lyle. He held his hand out a ways in front of him, for he was having trouble seeing in the darkness. Robert, judging by how quickly he was walking, was not.
“Yes they do,” said Robert.
“Do you mean about the scissors? That was just Marian being Marian. You’ll get used to it. Slow down a little. This isn’t a race.”
“I don’t mean about the scissors. The scissors were stupid.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“I heard them talking and saying they didn’t like me and they don’t think I’m right for you and that we won’t last.”
Lyle took this opportunity to stop walking and said, rather stupidly, “What? Were you eavesdropping?”
“Yes,” said Robert.
“Where? When?”
“At the top of the stairs. Before dinner.”
“You shouldn’t have been.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s wrong. It’s impolite.”
“Like eating grapes without scissors?”
“No,” said Lyle. “That’s different.”
“How’s it different?”
“That’s culturally impolite, it’s simply a question of manners, while eavesdropping is—well, it’s intrinsically impolite.”
“How can something be intrinsically impolite?”
“Some things can,” said Lyle. He paused. “Murder, for instance.”
“I didn’t murder anyone,” said Robert. “I just opened a door and overheard a conversation.”
“I know,” said Lyle. “I just wish you hadn’t listened.”
Robert shrugged. “I did.”
“Well, you shouldn’t take to heart what you weren’t meant to hear. That’s a good rule.”
“I think just the opposite,” said Robert. “I think things you weren’t meant to hear are often the most important. Nobody tells you things directly.”
“That’s not true,” said Lyle.
“I’m beginning to think it is,” said Robert.
“Well, you’re wrong. You shouldn’t make such a big deal out of this.”
“I didn’t think mentioning it to you was making a big deal.”
Lyle considered this for a moment. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s not. So can’t we just forget it?”
“You can forget it, if you want.” Robert turned and began to walk along the path.
“Wait,” said Lyle. “And what about you?”
Robert stopped, but remained facing away. “What about me?” he asked.
“Can you forget it?” asked Lyle. “At least until we leave?”
Robert turned around. “No,” he said. “I can’t. It makes me feel very awkward. In fact, I don’t think I really want to stay here.”
“Well, it’s the middle of the night. Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know,” said Robert. “Nowhere. I just want you to know how I felt. How I feel.”
“Well, I’m glad you told me. I’m sorry, but I’m sure you misheard them. I know John and Marian. They wouldn’t say something like that about you. In fact, I happen to know that they both like you. They told me so themselves, this afternoon.”
“Well, I know what I heard,” said Robert.
“What did you hear? What did they say?”
“What I told you. They said—Marian said she didn’t like me. And then they agreed I was all wrong for you and that we wouldn’t last very long because your seeing me was just a phase you were going through. Part of your … .”
“Part of my what?”
“Your mourning, I think. Your healing.”
Lyle was finding it difficult to concentrate. He irrationally wished it was less dark; he felt he could think more clearly if he could just see more of what surrounded them. He also wished he had not drunk as much wine as he had with dinner. “That’s nonsense,” he managed to say. “People often conjecture about other people’s relationships, privately, but that doesn’t mean that they’re right.”
“So you think they’re wrong?”
“About what?”
“About what Marian said.” Robert sounded exasperated. “Do you think I’m right for you?”
“Right and wrong—I think it’s premature to think in those terms. I think it’s immature. I think,” Lyle said, “that at this point in my life no one is right for me.”
“Was Tony right for you?”
Lyle looked out at the river.
“Was he?” Robert insisted.
Right? thought Lyle. What a stupid, romantic notion. Yet at moments Tony had been right. At moments it had hurt, and it hurt more now, when Tony was dead, for it had been an odd, unnoticeable rightness that had quietly staked its territories in Lyle’s heart, had followed his rivers to their sources, and left flags there, high in the uncharted parts of him. “Yes,” he said. “In some ways—many ways—Tony was right.”
“And I’m not.”
“I didn’t say that, Robert. I don’t really know you yet. What I know of you I like very much, but I know so little. I think this whole conversation is foolish.”
“But if you had to guess.”
“I would never want to guess about something as important as that.”
“But do you know what you’re doing?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you know what you’re doing with me? Or are you just fucking around?”
“What am I doing with you? I’m trying to have a relationship. That’s what I’m
trying
to do. I’m not fucking around. But I think your forcing me to answer these stupid questions is a ridiculous thing. That’s fucking around with me.”
“No,” said Robert. “You don’t understand. Maybe I’m not saying it right. All I’m asking is if you can imagine our relationship developing. Can you imagine our loving one another? Because I can imagine that. Can you?”
“As you know, I have trouble imagining anything about my future,” said Lyle. “Besides, why is that so important: if I can imagine something or not? Just because I can imagine something doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”
“No,” said Robert. “But it helps. It’s encouraging.”
“Well, I don’t want to encourage you unreasonably.”
“Oh,” said Robert.
“Is that what you want? Do you want me to lie to you, and tell you things that aren’t true?”
“No,” said Robert. “I want you to tell me the truth. Am I just a part of your healing? What are we doing here? What am I doing here?”
Lyle looked around them, as if Robert meant this specific place. There was very little he could see except for Robert, whose white shirt—it was one of his waiter’s shirts, Lyle supposed—and eyes stood apart from the general darkness of trees and river and sky. Lyle stared at him for a moment, long enough so that the parts of Robert obscured by darkness became visible. “What are we doing here?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I think we’re doing
here. We’re two people who met one another. Who, I thought, found one another attractive. Who like one another’s company. And so we came away together for a weekend, to spend some time together. That is what I thought we were doing here. I didn’t think it was so very complicated.”
“Maybe not for you,” said Robert.
“Well, of course it’s complicated,” said Lyle. “I told you it would be, I told you what the situation is.”
“On the train,” said Robert.
“Yes,” said Lyle, “on the train. I’m sorry about that. I should have told you sooner. I thought about it, I tried to, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”
He paused. Robert was looking down at the ground. “Let’s go back now, and go to bed and forget about this for a while. Today was a difficult day, for everybody. Tomorrow will be different.”
“You sound like what’s her name,” said Robert. “Scarlett O’Hara.”
“It pains me to speak in clichés, but this conversation forces me to. There’s no way to discuss something as inane as this rationally.”
“Inane? Whether we love one other or not is inane?”
“Oh, please,” said Lyle. “Love is something that—this is not about love. I’m very fond of you, Robert, you know that. I like you very much. But this is not about love.”
“It is for me,” said Robert.
“You don’t love me,” said Lyle. “I know you may think you do, but you don’t.”
“How do you know what I feel?” asked Robert.
“I know it sounds presumptuous, but I know you don’t love me. If you loved me—if what you feel is love—love would be a very cheap and common thing.”
“What I feel for you isn’t cheap or common.”
“I know that,” said Lyle. “That’s not what I meant. I meant love doesn’t happen like this, real love, it doesn’t occur in a few days, or weeks, or months, even. Real love is something that evolves very slowly over time.”
Robert looked down at the ground for a moment, and then looked up. “I think you’re just scared,” he said.
“Scared?” asked Lyle. “Scared of what?”
“Scared of—if you don’t love me, then why, when we made love before, did you say that you did?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Lyle.
“Yes,” said Robert, “you did. Don’t lie.”
Lyle remembered: their lying together on the bed in the yellow room, their bodies merged in the golden light, how it had escaped from him, an exhalation. “Well,” he said, “I believe there are some instances when one is usually forgiven for not speaking the literal truth. When one is—”
“Forget this ‘one’ business.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lyle. “When I—when we made love, I may have said I loved you—”
“You did,” said Robert.
“All right, I did. But, Robert, this isn’t a question of semantics. I could have said anything then.”
“And you could say anything now.”
“I could. Of course I could. But I’m not. Now I’m telling you the truth. Now we are standing here, we aren’t making love, and I can speak more truthfully.”
“What? You can’t make love and speak truthfully at the same time?”
“I don’t know,” said Lyle. “Apparently not. But I’m speaking the truth now.”
“How do I know that?”
“Because I’m telling you I am.”
They stood there for a moment.
“And what are you telling me? What is the truth?”
“I’m telling you that I don’t love you. Now. And, Robert, darling, that’s not a terrible thing. I feel, and will come to feel, other things, other very worthwhile and wonderful things, about you. Maybe even love. I hope love. But love is—” Lyle shook his head. “You can’t be so obsessed with love, Robert. It will just make you miserable.”
“I am miserable,” said Robert. “I feel like I’m bleeding. Like I’m losing myself.”
“You’re just being melodramatic,” said Lyle. “You’re not losing yourself. In fact, I doubt very much that you’ve even found yourself.”