An Available Man (33 page)

“Well, good,” she said. She put the magnifying glass down but didn’t take her gaze from his face. “What’s the matter?” she said, and he was startled by her insight—or did he just look as miserable as he felt?

“The thing of it is,” he began—a phrase his father had used when he’d been stalled, trying to explain something difficult or complicated to his children. “Gladys,” he said, “I’ve met a woman.”

There
. The gun had gone off in his hand, but she didn’t fall over. She just sat upright in her chair, breathing, looking at him, waiting. The dishes were still clattering in the background. Were they left over from a banquet? Was Mildred throwing them at the walls?

“You’re only human,” Gladys said, at last.

“But it isn’t just a fling, it’s serious.” When she didn’t say anything, he said, “I didn’t expect this to happen.”

“Whyever not?” she asked.

“Because … because I loved Bee so much.”

“I know you did.”

“But I became very lonely,” Edward said, his chest filling alarmingly with the very sensation he was describing. He was terrified that he was going to cry. He didn’t, though, and neither did Gladys.

“So, this woman,” she said. “Does she have a name?”

Edward thought about the way Julie had said
“Olga!”
as if she were spitting out something that tasted terrible, a foreign, alien food.

“Olga Nemerov,” he said. “Ollie.”

“Ollie,” Gladys repeated, closing her eyes. She might have been trying to remember if she knew this person. Or maybe she simply couldn’t bear looking at him.

“Forgive me,” he said.

“For what?”

“For loving someone else. For hurting you like this.”

“Oh, my honey boy,” she said. “Dear Edward.” Her eyes were shimmering now. “My hurt has nothing to do with you. And you made Beattie so happy; you
deserve
to be happy again yourself.”

He wanted to lay his head in her lap in gratitude and exhaustion. Instead he took both of her hands in his, surprised by how much warmer hers were. “You loved Jake, too,” he said, “but you didn’t have anyone after he died, did you?”

She shrugged. “I was an old lady already. Past eighty. You’re still a young man.”

“That’s relative, I suppose. Though sometimes I think of myself that way.”

“Since Ollie,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Well, she’s Jewish. My weakness, it seems.” She smiled at him. “She works at the Metropolitan Museum, restoring old tapestries. And she’s Sybil Morganstern’s cousin.”

“My,” Gladys said.

“Listen,” Edward said, “I’ve told the children about all this. Nick and Amanda were fine with it, wonderful, really. But Julie is very unhappy, very angry with me.”

“Oh, Julie,” Gladys said dismissively. “It’s her father she’s really angry with. Don’t worry, I’ll talk to her. She’ll come around.”

Edward stared at her, this amazing, enduring woman. He had planned on enlisting Julie’s aid in soothing her, and now she was the one who would soothe Julie, and him, as well. He knew that she was keeping much of what she was feeling to herself, for his sake, what mothers did.

The noises from the kitchen had stopped, and Mildred appeared in the doorway. “I’m finished now, Glad,” she said, “so if you’re ready, I’ll help you to bed and then I’ll get going.”

“Wait, Mildred,” Gladys said. “Edward needs to have his fortune told.”

“Oh, you know he’s not into that,” Mildred said, and the two women exchanged a conspiratorial glance.

The connection between them had seemed so unlikely until that moment, when Edward understood that they were simply friends, with, at least, widowhood and an impulse for caretaking in common. “Well, maybe this once,” he said. He would have done anything for either of them right then.

“Really?” Mildred gave him a skeptical glance. “What’ll it
be, then? Tarot? Numerology? Psychometry? Name your poison.”

She might have been reciting the specials at an exotic ethnic restaurant. “You choose,” he said.

She moved closer to where he and Gladys were sitting. “Let me feel the energy around your hands,” she said. “Put them on the table, palms up.”

He did as he was told, suddenly submissive and vulnerable, as if he were begging for alms, or for his future.

Mildred pulled up another chair so that she was facing him, only a foot or so away.

“Shall I close my eyes?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I want you here, fully present.” Then she raised her own hands, palms down, a few inches above his, moving them around a little before letting them just hover. Gladys leaned forward, watching, listening, while Mildred stared off into the distance above Edward’s head, as if at someone else across the room.

Edward felt amused, a little giddy, and strangely hopeful and moved.

Hours seemed to pass, but surely it was only a matter of minutes before Mildred looked directly at him and said, “The universe is offering you a gift. Claim it.”

Coda

W
as there a happy ending? Edward wouldn’t call it that, because it wasn’t over yet. Not just his own story, but the story of the evolving, persistent world. And that was a continuum, with or without him. Richard Dawkins said that nature isn’t cruel, only indifferent, and Edward agreed. He believed that people invented and then acted out their extravagant emotional dramas to give their lives shape and meaning. But he had experienced episodes of such uncommon bliss, they seemed ordained rather than random, and periods of darkness and sorrow that held their own mysteries. Bee was truly gone, having moved farther and farther from the center, and then the periphery, of Edward’s life into pure memory, just as Amy Weitz had predicted she would.

Ollie was the one he would spend the rest of his days and nights with. They continued to desire and cherish each other,
which didn’t cease to astound them. “Let’s never tell Sybil,” she said one day. “I can’t stand to give her the satisfaction.” But love wants a witness, and their own satisfaction was even greater than Sybil’s.

Soon they began spending the working week in the city and weekends in Englewood. Josie the pug preferred suburban New Jersey, with all that delightful greenery to kill. But Edward and Ollie were pleased to be anywhere together. He found himself wishing, with a lover’s generosity, that Sylvia Smith and Ellen, and even Laurel—if that were possible—would know similar contentment and joy.

The first time he brought Ollie to his house, she paused in the doorway for several moments. She seemed to be waiting for permission to enter. Finally, he grabbed her hand and pulled her inside. “So this is where you’ve been all this time,” she said, as if he’d been hiding out there, which in a sense he had been.

He showed her the kitchen, where they would have breakfast the next morning, and the bedroom, where they would lie down together, and even his makeshift basement lab—feeling a little like a real estate agent, pushing to make a sale. But she was already sold on the entire package.

They made defiant short- and long-term plans. They would build a gazebo in the garden, they would travel. Olga was eager to show him the tapestries in museums in Belgium and northern France. Edward wanted to visit a bird sanctuary in Cesena and Monet’s garden in Giverny. They’d both put in for retirement at the end of the school year, and the Met had offered to retain Ollie’s services as a consultant. Edward would miss teaching, but he was suddenly greedy for leisure, for the luxury of all those additional domestic hours. He wouldn’t ever take them for granted again.

Although he kept expecting a phone call or a letter from
Laurel, Edward didn’t hear from her, not even indirectly. Bernie asked about her a couple of times, and then she seemed to have slipped his mind as easily as she’d eluded Edward’s grasp. Once in a while, in the beginning, he would see a slender woman with dark or silvery hair walk by him in the city, and feel a glancing rush of apprehension, but it was never Laurel, in any of her incarnations.

As Gladys had promised, she’d spoken to Julie, and Julie had come around, grudgingly at first, and out of her own need as much as his, but that didn’t matter; Edward could still look after her, the only thing left that he could do for Bee. His influence was limited, though, as Mildred could have told him. She was one of those psychics, like the omnipotent, omniscient biblical God, who still allowed for free will. The universe had been holding out a gift to Edward, but he was required to accept it. Happiness was in store for Julie, but it was also up to her.

And she broke things off with Mr. Right, as Edward and Ollie and the rest of the family considered Andrew; there would be no Silver and Gold wedding, no baby Sterling. Instead she chose Todd, the archetypical Mr. Wrong, who dumped her the following week. Amanda was considering posting a personal ad for Julie on some new dating website called doyoucomehereoften.com.

Two days before she was officially due to be born, Annabelle Beatrice Silver repositioned herself, feetfirst—as if she were late for an appointment, as if she intended to hit the world running—and had to be delivered by Caesarian section. She was bald and mottled and appeared to need ironing. Nick reported her Apgar score with the kind of pride usually reserved for college boards. Everyone insisted that she looked like Edward.

About a year later, Gladys died shortly after Mildred had
settled her into bed for the night. Her final words were, “What a long day this was.” The jigsaw puzzle on the bridge table in her living room, a reproduction of the tapestry
The Unicorn Leaps Out of the Stream
—a gift from Ollie—was still a work in progress.

N
OVELS
Summer Reading
The Doctor’s Daughter
Tunnel of Love
Silver
In the Palomar Arms
Hearts
In the Flesh
Ending

N
ONFICTION
The Company of Writers

N
OVELS FOR
Y
OUNG
R
EADERS
Wish You Were Here
Toby Lived Here
Out of Love
Introducing Shirley Braverman