I Thought You Were Dead (14 page)

Paul's intention was to make his father laugh. Yet he realized he was using humor to veer away from the very intimacy he was seeking, a bad habit Karen had pointed out to him on several occasions. “See?” he thought. “Was too listening.”

O
n the first truly warm day of spring, a bright, clear Saturday morning, Paul went for his longest run so far, over three miles, out past the community garden on the edge of town on Burts Pit Road, which everybody called Bird Spit Road. He was hoping to dispel his bad mood. He'd invited Tamsen up for the weekend, only to learn she was flying to Nantucket with Stephen to celebrate his divorce's becoming final. Paul wanted to tell her how lousy that made him feel, though being unpleasant would only push her farther away — you don't get love by acting unlovable. She'd apologized and invited him to visit her the following weekend, and he'd said yes, but it was hard not to think of her and Stephen, feeding each other clam chowder by candlelight.

He sat on the steps of his front porch after his run to cool down.

“Be glad you're a virgin,” he told Stella.

“I'm a virgin?” she said.

“You are.”

“I never had sex?”

“I don't think so,” Paul said. “When you were younger, you went into heat once and I tied you up outside a drugstore, and I turned my back for twenty seconds and I came out and there was a little black mutt, like a schipperke, who was … um …”

“Who was what?”

“Striving mightily,” Paul said. “But I think he was too short.”

“Too short for what?”

“Too short to reach.”

“Too short to reach what?”

“His goals,” Paul said.

“What were his goals?”

“He wanted to have puppies,” Paul said.

“With me?”

“Yup.”

“He didn't even know me.”

“He didn't care.”

“Well, that seems rather inappropriate.”

“You've been hanging around humans too long,” Paul said.

“Were you too short to have children with Karen?” Stella asked.

“I wouldn't quite put it that way,” Paul said. “But that was sort of the idea. At first. At the end, we were both glad we didn't.”

“Why?”

“It's complicated,” Paul said. “It's not like we made a conscious decision.”

“Is that why you stopped having sex?” Stella asked. “To avoid having kids?”

“Is that why?” Paul said. “I never thought of that, but maybe. There was so much else that was wrong. And Karen and I stopped talking about what was wrong. If you stop talking about it, you're dead in the water.”

“Too bad,” Stella said.

“Fifty years ago, people put up with a lot more than they do now,” he told her. “If Karen and I had gotten in a time machine and gone back to 1934, we would have been happy. Maybe not happy, but we would have stayed together. People settled for a lot less back then.”

“Such as?”

“Like sex,” Paul said. “Back then, people met, they kissed once or twice, they got married, they had a ton of sex for a year or two, and then they tapered off because they were so tired from milking the cows and plowing the fields. Now people meet, they kiss, they have a ton of sex, and then they get married and the sex tapers off, just like it always did, same exact curve, but now they think, ‘Wow, we're not having sex anymore — it must be because we got married.' And then they get divorced.”

“But there's no such thing as a time machine, right?”

“No such thing,” Paul said.

“If you had a time machine, where would you go? Forward or back?”

“That's an excellent question,” Paul said. Would he go back to the day he met Karen? Six months ago, he might have thought so. Now, no. That was progress. “I don't know. Maybe I'd go back to the night I skinny-dipped with Debbie Benson, but this time I'd bring along some mosquito repellent.”

“You know what I think you'd do if you had a time machine?” Stella said.

“What?”

“I think you'd just leave it in the box because it would be too much trouble to read the manual.”

“You're probably right,” Paul said, lifting her up onto the front porch and setting her down. “They say you're supposed to live in the moment.”

“As opposed to what?” Stella asked.

“As opposed to living in the past or in the future,” he said. She tilted her head. “Don't look at me with that tone of voice. I'm not saying it makes sense. I'm just saying that's what people do.”

“Do you?”

He tried to be Zen and not think about Tamsen on Nantucket. He tried to tell himself it was a good thing — that the
more time she spent with Stephen, the sooner she'd reach a conclusion about him, possibly in Paul's favor.

When he went to visit her in Providence, he'd hoped Tamsen would throw her arms around him upon his arrival and say, “It's so good to see you. Nantucket sucked,” but instead she'd simply kissed him and said, “I missed you.” She'd invited him, the day before, to come meet with her book club, where he read poems by some of the poets he liked, and a few of his own. Afterward he and Tamsen and a few of the others from the book club, including her friend Caitlin, went for drinks at a place called the Wick-enden Street Café, where Sheila Clark's trio was playing. Paul had bought Tamsen a couple of CDs he thought she'd like, a droll singer named Diana Krall and another named Eva Cassidy, who'd died young and was then rediscovered. Tamsen said she'd never heard such a beautiful voice. During a break, Sheila Clark invited Tamsen up to sing a song, but Tamsen adamantly declined despite the encouragement and cajoling of her friends.

In the car, Paul asked her, “So have you come out of the closet now about your singing lessons?”

“The closet's exactly where I should be singing,” she said. “After I told you, I figured I had to tell Stephen, and after I told him, the cat was pretty much out of the bag.”

Paul didn't say anything.

“I probably shouldn't be saying this,” Tamsen said, “but do you know what Stephen did?”

“What?”

“He took me to a Céline Dion concert.”

“Oh, no,” Paul said, feeling more optimistic. “I'm so sorry.”

“It gets worse. For her encore, she brought up Michael Bolton for a special guest duet. They don't have that much cheese in all of Wisconsin.”

“Well, he didn't know,” Paul said.

“I know,” Tamsen said. “He meant well.”

“You should give him some CDs by people you like so he can learn to tell the difference,” Paul suggested.

“That's the problem. I already had,” she said. “It's all right. My heart will go on.”

He was feeling more comfortable by the time they got back to her place. He told her he had a friend in Boston named Murph who'd offered him tickets for a Red Sox–Yankees game, two weeks hence. “The guy knows everybody,” Paul said. “He used to be the mayor's chauffeur. Now he drives a tour bus. You'd like him. I'll bet they're box seats. We could have sausage grinders on Lansdowne Street before the game.”

Tamsen didn't answer at first.

“What's wrong?” Paul said. “We don't have to go if you don't want to.”

“I'd love to go to Fenway Park with you,” she said. “Could we go some other time? I've got something that weekend.”

“Sure,” he said. “Why? What have you got?”

“I wasn't sure how I was going to tell you this,” Tamsen said. “Maybe we should talk later.”

“About what?” he asked. “You can't just say, ‘I wasn't going to tell you this,' and then leave it at that. I'm just going to fill in the blanks with something worse than whatever the reality is.”

“I suppose not,” she said. “I love you. You know that, right?”

“Why am I getting this gigantic uh-oh feeling?” he asked her.

“Stephen wants to take me to Paris,” she said. “His wife is taking the kids to California and he hasn't had a real vacation for a long time …”

Paul felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach, though he tried not to let on. He actually wasn't sure he could have filled in the blanks with anything worse.

“I thought you just went to Nantucket with him.”

“That was only a weekend. I've never been to Paris.”

He didn't know what to say.

“I knew I shouldn't have … ,” she began. “I'm not going to keep secrets from you.”

He tried going back to the part where she said she loved him, but it was hard to stay with that thought.

“When are you going?”

“The next day,” she said. “I mean, I could go to the game with you, but that's the night I need to pack. Unless I packed before …”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Two weeks,” she said. “I didn't even use my vacation days last year.”

“I'm sure you'll have a great time. Maybe Céline Dion will be performing at the Moulin Rouge,” Paul said.

“Paul …”

“This isn't easy for me, you know,” he said. He was caving in, collapsing inside. How much was someone supposed to take? “I've tried really hard to pretend I don't care. For all I know, maybe you should be with him. He's probably better for you in all kinds of ways — ”

“Stop saying that,” she said. “I can decide what's best for me. This whole situation isn't easy for any of us.”

“I mean, where've we ever been?” Paul said. “Worcester.”

“That's right,” Tamsen said. “And as I recall, we had a rather fine time in Worcester.”

Paul wanted to change the subject but couldn't.

“Just tell me something,” he asked her. “Do you love me?”

“Yes, Paul. I love you. I just told you that.”

“Do you love Stephen?”

“Paul,” she said. “I don't think we should be talking about this. You're both — ”

“Different,” he said. “I know.”

She paused.

“Now that his divorce is final,” she said, “he thinks maybe we should start thinking about taking it to the next level.”

“Is that how he put it?” Paul asked. “It sounds like a video game.”

She didn't respond.

“So how do you feel about that?” he asked her. “Taking it to the next level.”

“I think we need to talk about it. That's what we're going to Paris to figure out. I'm trying really hard to be honest about this. With both of you. I think it'll be good for us to get away from all the distractions. I'm not telling you this to hurt you.”

“Why can't you figure it out in Cranston?” Paul said. “Or Rehoboth? People figure stuff out in Rehoboth all the time. Rehoboth is a very good place to figure things out. I've been there. There's absolutely nothing distracting in Rehoboth.”

Part of him didn't want her to “figure it out.” As long as she didn't, nothing would change. The status quo was hardly ideal, but it was better than change, if change was for the worse.

“Don't worry about it,” she told him, but she seemed aware of how feeble her reassurance was. “You're my Paul. You're always going to be my Paul.”

She reached into her purse and dropped a small metallic blue and silver object on the coffee table, a cell phone.

“I had to get one for work,” she explained. “I'll leave you the number if you need to call me, but I'm sure it won't work in Europe. It only works here in large cities if I'm outdoors — the reception is terrible, but I might be able to check my voice mail.”

He'd resisted getting a cell phone, mostly because it was another expense he didn't need, but he also thought of all the cool places he'd been and the people he'd met, looking for a pay phone. Sometimes he liked being out of reach. A cell phone was probably in his future, though, he knew.