Luck (14 page)

It’s a long way from twenty-six to forty-three, although at the moment the passage seems swift. Much can happen to a woman—or a man, look at Philip—in that many years. Lynn was taller than Nora in their youth, and also more narrowly
built. Nora pictures her bulkier now: rather like Philip, heavier in the trunk, more marked elsewhere. She also imagines Lynn, unkindly, with carefully streaked hair, a little too much make-up, bright, manicured nails, and a brisk outlook that comes of having a life and then, however unwillingly, starting over: finding another husband, bearing and raising children while simultaneously devising her own separate pursuits—all that, Nora expects, takes it out of a woman, although no doubt adds it back also.

She has no picture of what Lynn’s second husband would be like. As unlike Philip as possible, probably.

She will call Lynn from the embrace of the living-room sofa, a lumbering legacy from her own childhood. Nora’s mother and long-lost father bought it when they married, that’s how old it is. It’s been reupholstered several times, currently in a worn, heavy maroon that Philip was planning to tackle one day soon when he could grab time from his paid labours. Nora inherited it from her mother, who left all her possessions to her only daughter, her only child, and even Philip judged it a worthy piece, while considering much else Nora inherited junky and ugly and fit only for auction and scrap. Which was true. Nora’s mother took up hairdressing, she scraped by, she raised her daughter with a reasonable minimum of forlornness and martyrdom, she had a few relatively more cheerful years on her own after Nora left home, she got breast cancer, then bone cancer, then died.

Not much room in a life story like that for acquiring furnishings that would meet Philip’s standards.

Nora isn’t dim-witted, she realizes the ways she more resembles her footloose father than her mother; or perhaps most resembles the woman who ran off with her father before Nora was old enough to remember him. It’s a choice,
which part to play, and who wants to be pitiful? Anyway, those were different times. Nora’s mother did not have Lynn’s freedom and possibilities, her many advantages when it came to re-creating a life after loss.

For all Nora knows, her father’s dead, too. When her mother died, Nora did not even consider trying to locate him. She was unforgiving. If he didn’t care they were alive, he had no right to know if they died.

Calling Lynn is different.

“Hello?” says a voice Nora has not heard for years, but which is immediately, surprisingly familiar. Nora’s own voice has grown huskier, while Lynn’s sounds freakishly youthful. There’s that memory of Lynn playing basketball in high school, of watching her loop balls off her fingertips into high-up, distant baskets.

Later memories are of less grace.

“Lynn, it’s Nora. I hope this isn’t a bad time to call, but I have something to tell you. Are you alone?” She only means that if it’s not a bad time for Lynn now, it may be in a moment, and so is there someone around to comfort her, or subdue her, or simply be witness to fresh news from history stepping into her household? Nora intends rectitude, even kindness, she certainly doesn’t mean to sound threatening.

She hears Lynn take a deep breath. “Nora,” she says. Then, flatly, “What do you want?”

“It’s about Philip.”

“Yes, well, it would have to be, wouldn’t it?” Brisk, yes. Cool, only to be expected. Bitter, still? Could Lynn sustain bitterness all these years, even after she must have gotten everything she could have wanted, excluding Philip, and must now, in middle age, surely be in a mood for counting her blessings? “What about him?”

There’s a limited number of ways to put this. “I’m afraid”—and so Nora suddenly is, having finally to say words she has been finding unsayable—“that he’s dead. He died in the night.”

There’s a long pause. “Last night?” as if time might be the point.

“The night before. I found him when I woke up yesterday morning.” Is it tactless to remind Lynn that it’s Nora who has wakened beside Philip for nearly two decades? Surely not.

“I see,” Lynn says finally. Then, “What happened?”

For an instant Nora thinks Lynn is asking what she herself did upon discovering Philip. She almost says,
Well, I screamed, and I jumped out of bed.
That would be stupid. “His heart, I imagine. I’m not sure. They’ve done an autopsy, but I don’t know the results yet, although I’ll maybe hear later today.” Because it occurs to her that that’s probably information Sophie will be bringing back from the funeral home. “Some kind of natural cause, anyway. Otherwise I would have heard. This isn’t a friendly town any more.”

“So I understand.” Of course Lynn will know what’s gone on here. The place, and Nora, were in the newspapers, on TV and cheesy radio talk shows—even a dignified, professorial Lynn would have tuned in for the happy thrill of all that. “You mean they’ve looked into whether you killed him and decided you didn’t?”

That’s blunt. “More or less.”

“So why are you calling?”

Why indeed? “Just because I thought you should know. That you’d want to be told, even though it’s been a long time. But maybe you don’t. Anyway, I decided to. It’s hard to know the right thing to do.” That didn’t come out well; it sounded pathetic, and too much like a plea.

“Yes, isn’t it. At least, I imagine it is. For someone who isn’t used to taking the right thing to do into account, I expect it’s difficult to know how to begin.”

Nora considers hanging up. Honest to God—after seventeen years! “What I meant was, I didn’t know if you’d care or not. I’m a little surprised. It sounds as if you still do.” She remembers more clearly now that Lynn never grew quiet, or acquiescent, and eventually Philip had to just throw up his hands and walk off. “I guess I thought it might matter to you because there was a time you cared about him.” She will not say the word
love.
“Anyway, haven’t you had what you wanted? Children, after all, that must be a good result of what happened.”

“Well, you know, it’s not as if I wouldn’t have had children with him as well, although I suppose not these particular children.” Lynn has persuaded herself, then, that Philip would have changed his mind, or could have been tricked? “Still, you’re right, I have a fine life. In fact, I live just as well as I know how to. But in case you’re wondering”—how swiftly a voice acquires long fingernails—“big betrayals do have their effects. In case you don’t know, they colour everything. Or shadow everything. You never feel safe again. Naturally I blame him for that. You, too, of course.” She sounds as if she’s been mulling and refining those words for the entire seventeen years. If so, how impatiently she must have waited for her chance to say them.

At last, Lynn’s lucky day.

“I’m sorry you feel that way.” Nora would like to be clear, she would like there to be no misunderstanding, it would be too bad to imply what she doesn’t mean or believe. “That
sorry
is a regret, you understand. It wouldn’t be true to apologize.”

“Oh, I know there’d be no apology. If there wasn’t one then, there wouldn’t be one now, would there? Anyway, as you say, I have a good life so who gives a shit?”

Nora and Philip lay, damp and pleased, in her narrow bed over the sandwich and variety store. One of his arms was around her, the other thrown over his eyes. She was curved into his body, where she fit, she thought, nicely, admiring the stretch of his long, satisfied thigh. “Are we serious?” he asked. “I feel serious.”

Nora tensed. “I do, too.”

“Then I’ll have to tell Lynn.” Nora nodded so that he would be able to feel her head moving up and down on his chest: assenting. In this position he could not see, and she did not mention, her flaring up of alarm. There would be repercussions. She was agreeing to something rather larger than pleasure.

“I’m a little scared.”

“It’s my responsibility. I’ll take care of it.”

That wasn’t quite what she’d meant but those words were good, too: that he cared so much; that he would be responsible; that as he said then, as they said often in those days, “I love you.”

“When it’s done, we can start over.” By which she understood him to mean he had taken a wrong turn, a couple of wrong turns, and now intended to right himself. This would include not only Nora instead of Lynn, but striking out on his own instead of working for a furniture maker who, as he said, “has taught me a lot, but cuts corners. I know how to do better myself now.”

She thought of him as a surprising, unlooked-for gift who had presented himself all unwrapped. He admired her, he said, in part because she had courage of a sort he could
recognize, which was not the leaping off cliffs or diving into deep waters sort. “You don’t give in. You do exactly what you see.” He was referring to Nora’s work, and was somewhat wrong. She has never done exactly what she sees. Also, he said, “I love making love with you. We go well together. That means something, don’t you think?” Yes, she did. Going well together had myriad meanings, bodies among them.

Imagine the miracle of life’s sudden perfections! She had a gallery, she was working with concentration towards the particular goal of a show at that gallery, and on top of all that, joy enough on its own, this splendid specimen of a man was willing to change his life utterly, mainly for her. She was entirely triumphant in every respect. She hears now the voice of the woman over whom she once triumphed. What was that for? Something not nice, slightly rancid. “I’m sorry,” Nora says again. “He wasn’t a bad man. It was love.” She shrugs, although realizing Lynn cannot see her. “What do you think people should do about that?” Because that’s the question, isn’t it?

Not to Lynn. “I think people should dig deeper. They ought to try harder. It’s not supposed to be easy. We’re not supposed to give up. That’s what I think.”

How stern, and inhuman, and unnecessary.

“He knew that. He didn’t give up. We had years, and it wasn’t all easy.” Not everything is a matter of pledging love in a narrow bed over a sandwich and variety store. People have to stand up. They must traverse their days. They have to remake their affections over and over. They make large decisions—to move here; to choose Philip to have a vasectomy rather than have Nora undergo actual surgery; to do their work in roughly the same space but apart, so that they would always be together but not. There’s the world, too: bankers,
for instance—the huge deep breaths it took, buying this place, sleepless nights, frozen days. And buyers and, more irritatingly, critics of art, and questions of who does the shopping, issues of cash flow and the merits and demerits of art, artistry, craft, as well as discussions of limits. In Philip’s work, was it still remotely all right to help destroy distant forests by working with teak, for example, or was that more or less as wrong as importing ivory? Or recently, how much, in Nora’s work, might be excessive, or negative, or overwhelming, or defensible in content and impact? More generally, how about famine, how about war and human brutality (as seen on TV and in newspapers as well as, in the past few years, from Sophie), and other sorts of current affairs—these were interesting, sometimes crucial, passionate conversations.

Others could be less interesting, although also passionate: did Philip have to play poker
every
Thursday night and go out drinking two or three other evenings, did Nora
need
to have Beth living here to accomplish her purpose—all the business of what Lynn seems to call
digging deeper, trying harder.

All that, plus neglecting to go fuck often enough in the woods.

“He’s dead, you know,” Nora says, wondering still at these impossible words. “Nobody’s safe. Nothing’s secure. It isn’t just you.” She is suddenly angry again. What is this girlish notion that if not for Philip and Nora, Lynn would have peacefully and uninterruptedly marched and drifted through all these years, safe and secure?
Grow up
, she would like to say.
Life is full of surprises, and often enough they’re not safe ones.
“There’s all kinds of loyalty after all. And betrayal.”

Anger, not really with Lynn, can be the only reason she bothers to say this. At best, she and Lynn were only acquaintances. When they encountered each other in that coffee
shop down the street from Max and Lily’s gallery, Lynn did not begin to understand Nora’s pride and excitement; just as Nora, to be fair, found Lynn’s recitation of her satisfactions banal. If Lynn doesn’t know for herself that betrayal may take a number of forms, as does loyalty, Nora’s words will tell her nothing, even though over time these matters surely become delicate and apparent. Say Philip has been disloyal in some ways—maybe with Sophie if that niggle of doubt amounts to anything, or with any number of women, all unknown, over any number of years—yes, that would hurt badly, that would count big. That could push Nora a considerable distance towards resentment, aggrievement, some tone of voice not unlike Lynn’s. But it counts also that at the worst moments of public tumult he said, “Fuck ’em, you do what you want,” as if it could be no other way. He insisted on staying in this awful town, but he also stood beside her, sat beside her, lay beside her, held her up, held her close. He not only told reporters, when asked for his views on events, that his wife had a perfectly legitimate outlook that she was perfectly free to express in her work, but also bought them drinks, a jollying influence. He scrubbed and painted meticulously over scrawled words on the front fence.

There is very little point in relating these excellent qualities of Philip’s to Lynn. Nora recalls, belatedly, that this woman took scissors to Philip’s clothes before tossing them onto the sidewalk in front of that recently purchased stuccoed little rowhouse; that she ruined a pair of tables he was working on by carving his initials deep into them and then carving deeper Xs through them; that she made a number of menacing, hissing, middle-of-the-night phone calls to Nora’s apartment; that once she stood on the street below screaming upwards, “Die, bitch, die,” at the top of her lungs.

Pride or love? At any rate, so much drama.

So much grief.

This is probably not a good time to ask Lynn if she, too, found some satisfaction in those outbursts of hers. Because, to tell the truth, Nora did. At the time they seemed to round out and confirm the amazing, true, real emotions floating around her and Philip, adding a spicy ingredient that not every romantic relationship gets to savour or for that matter endure.