“Listen,” said Nina, “could I call you back? You caught me at a bad time. I was just headed out.”
“Of course,” said Laura. “You have the number. Call whenever you’re free. I’ll be here.”
“I think I left my sunglasses up there,” said Nina. “Did you find them?”
“I don’t think I’ve seen them,” said Laura. “I’ll look, though. Would they be in your room?”
“Yes,” said Nina. “Or by the pool. I think I might have left them outside. Or in the bathroom, maybe. I’m not sure. Maybe I left them on the train.”
“Well, I’ll look,” said Laura.
“I’ve got to go,” said Nina.
“All right,” said Laura. “Will you call me later?”
“Yes,” said Nina.
“I hope you can come,” said Laura.
“Yes,” said Nina. “I’ll see. I’ll call you back. I’ll probably be out late, so it might not be till tomorrow.”
“That would be fine,” said Laura.
“All right, I’ll talk to you later. Bye.” Nina hung up.
Laura stood for a moment in the kitchen, looking out at the table by the pool, which was still set for breakfast. The napkins had blown off into the bushes. Well, she thought, that’s that. It’s all up to Nina now.
By late Sunday afternoon, when Marian drove Lyle to the station, the light had gone stark and was illuminating the trees with a force and clarity that suggested autumn. Yet it was still midsummer.
Marian parked and Lyle opened the door, but Marian touched his arm and said, “No, we’re early. Stay a minute.”
Lyle pulled the door closed. Marian dusted the steering wheel with her middle finger, round and round, and then looked at it: clean. “I feel so … awful,” she said. “About what’s happened, this weekend.”
“Why?” asked Lyle.
“I feel it was my fault,” said Marian. “What happened with Robert.”
“I told you,” said Lyle. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Actually,” said Marian, “that’s not what I think you told me. Or at least it’s not what I felt you told me.”
“It was something between us,” said Lyle. “It had nothing to do with you.”
“No, I’ve been thinking about it. When you arrived yesterday you were both so happy.”
“Yes,” said Lyle. “We were. But it wasn’t you.”
“I wasn’t nice to him,” said Marian.
Lyle said nothing. He looked down the empty curve of track, but there was no train.
“But you see it wasn’t about him, how I was behaving,” said Marian.
“What was it about?” asked Lyle.
Marian looked at him as if he were simple. “It was about Tony,” she said. “It was about you and Tony.”
“Oh,” said Lyle.
“I couldn’t allow myself to be nice to him, I was awful to him, I drove him away—I know I did—because of Tony.”
“I think the train is coming,” said Lyle.
“You like him, don’t you?” Marian asked.
“Yes,” said Lyle. “I like—liked—him very much. But for reasons that have become obvious we are—we are not well suited.”
“Will you invite him back?”
“No,” said Lyle. “Besides, he’d never come.” He opened the door and stepped out of the car.
“But ask him,” said Marian. “Promise me you will. Or should I call him? Why don’t you give me his number and I’ll call him? I’ll talk to him. I’ll try to explain myself.”
“Let me talk to him first,” said Lyle.
“Call me,” said Marian. “As soon as you have.”
“I will.” He closed the door.
“Wait,” said Marian.
Lyle leaned into the open window. “What?” he asked.
“Are we still friends, Lyle?”
“Of course we’re friends,” said Lyle.
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? About something as important as that?”
“No,” said Lyle. “Look—here’s the train. I’ll call you.” He hurried up the stairs to the platform. There was an overpass above the tracks, and Marian watched him run across it and descend the stairs on the opposite side, where she lost sight of him behind the arriving, and then departing, train.
When she returned from the train station the house seemed very still and empty. It was empty. John and Roland were in the garden. She went upstairs and stripped the bed Lyle had used. She found a small watercolor of an Adirondack chair on the floor. She picked it up and studied it. The chair was alone, floating, a little puddle of deep green shadow beneath it. It was like a chair in heaven. It was beautiful. Of course Robert had done it. It was beautiful and Robert had made it. She put the painting on the bedside table and looked out the window. The shadows were long and dark. They looked spilled across the lawn, eloquent. She took the sheets down to the laundry room. There was nothing to do for dinner. They were going to go out for dinner. She walked about the house for a while, as if she were looking for something, or inspecting for damage. But everything was fine. Then she went out the back door and down the lawn, to the garden.
“Did Lyle get off all right?” John asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Are you getting hungry?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Would you hold up these tomatoes while I stake them?”
“Yes.” Marian opened the gate and entered the garden. Roland sat in the dirt, playing with a few cherry tomatoes and a blue-jay feather.
“He’s fine,” said John. “I’ve kept my eye on him.” He indicated
the plant to be staked. Marian held it up while John cut a length of twine from a ball and began to secure it.
“John,” Marian said.
“What?” asked John.
“Do you think I’m a good person?”
He looked up at her. “Of course, I do,” he said. “You are. Why do you ask that?”
“Because,” she said. “Suddenly, I don’t feel sure.”
“Do you mean because of this weekend?”
“Yes,” said Marian. “Although not only. I just feel, suddenly, not like a good person. I feel”—she paused—“bad.”
“This weekend was difficult,” said John. “For everyone. But that’s ridiculous. You’re a fine person. You mustn’t feel like that.”
“But I do,” said Marian. “Here.” She removed her hand from the plant and touched her breast. The plant collapsed beneath its burdens of fruit. “Inside. I feel mean and selfish. And foolish. Unkind.”
John sat back on his haunches. “What did Lyle say to you?”
“Nothing,” said Marian. “This isn’t about Lyle. It’s about me.”
“No—” John began.
“Yes,” Marian said. “To some extent, I know it’s true. I know it. I can feel it so clearly. I don’t”—and she shook her head, vehemently—“I don’t like myself.” She began to cry.
So did Roland. He sat on the ground with the tomatoes in his hands and wailed. Marian picked him up. “Oh, I’m sorry, my sweetness,” she said. “Did I upset you? I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, patting his tiny back.
John watched this all, a little stunned. When Roland stopped crying, he said, “Here. Give him to me.”
Marian handed Roland to John. They stood there for a moment.
“I know if you feel bad I can’t tell you not to feel bad,” said John. “But—it’s perfectly natural. Your relationship with Lyle is complicated. I know you love him very much. He knows that, too, I’m sure. And sometimes that’s difficult. Love makes things difficult sometimes. You know that.”
“I don’t know,” said Marian. “Suddenly I don’t know what I know. I feel very unsure of what I know.”
“Everyone feels that way sometimes,” said John. “I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.”
“Maybe not,” said Marian. “But it’s frightening.”
Roland began to squirm in John’s arms. “Should we go eat?” John asked.
“Yes,” said Marian.
“What do you feel like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t we stay here? I’ll make dinner,” said John.
“What will you make?” asked Marian.
“What about pancakes? Do you want pancakes?”
“That would be fine,” said Marian.
“Do we have syrup?”
“Of course,” said Marian.
“I haven’t made pancakes in ages,” said John. “I hope I remember all my secrets.”
They walked up the lawn toward the house. It stood there solid and empty, waiting, ready to hold them.
Lyle fell asleep on the train. He awoke just as it was slipping beneath the Tappan Zee Bridge. A woman across the aisle from him nodded and smiled. She looked vaguely familiar, so he smiled back.
“What happened to your eye?” she asked.
Lyle touched the tender flesh along his cheekbone. “I walked into a tree,” he said. “It was very stupid.”
He turned away and looked out the window at the river flowing beside them. It looked a little blurred, like a painting of itself. The water was choppy, blown by the wind into quick translucent crests. The sun was low in the sky and refracted in the window. He could see his own reflection, and through that, flickering in the glass, the reflection of what was ahead. Lyle thought, coming back to the city is always nicer, in a way, because you travel in the same direction as the river.
As they entered the tunnel the woman across from him stood up and pulled a bag down from the rack. She was the delft woman, Lyle realized. It had only been yesterday he sat next to her, yet it seemed ages ago. He stood, and walked behind her down the aisle.
As they waited in the vestibule for the doors to open, she turned around and looked at him. “Did you have a nice weekend?” she asked.
What could he say? He could not say no. “Yes,” he said. “How about you?”