The Widow's Season (22 page)

When Nate put on a jazz CD, Sarah closed her eyes. “Sleep if you’d like,” he said. “We’ll be there in two hours.”

 

 

 

At six P.M. Sarah stood in the Mayflower lobby, admiring a fountain with copper lights, where the water resembled a shower of newly minted pennies. Nate had checked them in and was now walking toward her, holding up the plastic room keys like a pair of aces. He thinks he’s going to get lucky, she told herself, and she resolved to disappoint him.

Together they rode the brass elevators to the seventh floor, and walked down a carpet covered in fleur-de-lis. Sarah’s room was a junior suite with a king-size bed, a whirlpool bath, and a sitting area with a sofa and two Queen Anne chairs. A note on the mini-bar said that everything was free, compliments of Judith.

“Look.” Nate walked to the desk, where a crystal vase held a dozen red roses. “The card’s from Judith. She says that dinner tonight is on her. We should keep the receipt.”

Sarah came over and lowered her face to the petals. They reminded her of the roses from the night of the Jackson opening; once again Judith was setting the mood.

Nate spread the curtains and looked at the view. “There’s a restaurant three blocks from here called the Desert Inn. They have an excellent menu. Kind of a gourmet Tex-Mex. I’ve made reservations for seven o’clock. Of course we don’t have to eat there. We can go anywhere you like.”

“That sounds fine,” Sarah replied. It felt good to let someone else make the reservations, drive the car, pay the bills.

“We have half an hour before we’ll need to leave for dinner.” He crossed the threshold between their adjoining rooms. “I’ll let you change.”

When he was gone, she stretched out on her bed, picked up the remote, and turned to the weather. A winter storm was blanketing Chicago, burying abandoned cars in four-foot drifts. Across the nation’s map, the white strip covering the Midwest was an ominous void, but for now the Eastern states shone fluorescent green, and she watched New Yorkers ice-skating sleeveless at Rockefeller Center.

Ten minutes later she rose and removed the ironing board from the closet. From the top of her suitcase she lifted a black spaghetti-strap cocktail dress. It was the only thing she owned that seemed right for a Georgetown gallery, but she didn’t want to look too pretty, as if she were trying to impress Nate. It would be best to leave her hair down and color her face with only the slightest hint of makeup. She would wear small earrings and a simple necklace, nothing dramatic or expensive. One spray of perfume—no more—and her lips would have no gloss.

She was pulling the heated dress over her skin when Nate knocked. He, too, seemed deliberately casual, unshaven and underdressed, in a dark sport jacket with a light blue shirt.

“I forgot to bring a purse,” she said as she folded the ironing board and switched off the television. “Do you mind if I put a few things in your pocket?”

Into the silk lining of his jacket she dropped a comb, her room key, a credit card, and sixty dollars. It was a married woman’s gesture, this proprietary attitude toward a man’s pockets, but Sarah thought that it made Nate less intimidating, to treat him with familiarity.

She opened the door to the hallway. “Let us go then, you and I.”

The restaurant was a blaze of color and conversation, its walls striped with Navajo rugs, the floor a loud mosaic of burnt orange and cranberry tile. They sat at a window table sipping margaritas while Nate watched the passersby, coatless in December.

“Winter hasn’t arrived yet,” he said.

“Winter is a state of mind,” Sarah replied.

“Not if you live in Vermont.”

“Do you miss New England?”

Nate shrugged. “I miss the life I had in Vermont, but not the state itself. It was too cold and too liberal for me, a lot of spoiled bohemians building their log cabins in the woods.”

Sarah smiled. She and David had often thought of joining those bohemians, escaping the conservative tide of southwest Virginia. But her Southern blood had balked at the thought of those long winters.

“Do you think you’ll stay in Charlottesville?”

“I don’t know. New York has a certain attraction. I still have a lot of friends up there. But I’d be paying a fortune for a one-bedroom apartment with a closet for a kitchen. What about you? Have you ever thought of moving to the city?”

“People move to Jackson to escape the city.”

“But is it a mistake?”

“Not if you have a family.” She stopped short, feeling the old acid of misery rise in her stomach.
A woman without a child is an empty shell, a woman alone lives a broken life
.

“You could go anywhere in the world,” Nate continued. “Paris, London, Rome. They always need English teachers in China, if you’re feeling virtuous.”

“Traveling isn’t half as much fun when you’re alone,” Sarah said.

“You wouldn’t have to be alone.”

She looked up, wondering if Nate was referring to himself. Would Nate abandon his clients to be her traveling companion for a year? Of course not. He probably envisioned her as a Peace Corps volunteer.

“I’ll have to see what happens.” She licked the salt from the rim of her glass. “Right now I have no concrete plans.”

 

 

 

After dinner they drove to Georgetown in search of “Studio Four.” The cab deposited them at a three-story brownstone that resembled a private residence, except for the small brass plaque to the right of the door. Inside, the living room, dining room, and study had been converted into a gallery with white walls, refinished floors, and a collection of Afghan rugs. Two swinging doors in the back led into a small kitchen, which wafted occasional scents of pastry and focaccia.

Judith met them with kisses and a jingling of bracelets. “David’s paintings are in the dining room. Two have already sold . . . Let me introduce you to William Reed. He’s a sculptor from North Carolina who works with red clay.” A tall, bearded man extended a rouge-tinted hand. Beside him stood a female painter who specialized in transforming Tennessee barns into geometric marvels—triangles and trapezoids, red and green and purple. Her body was as angular as her art.

“I like your husband’s work,” the woman said in a low drawl. “There’s something dreamy about it.”

Sarah wasn’t quite sure what the woman meant until she stepped into the dining room, and there, above the fireplace, was the charcoal drawing of herself, rising from tousled sheets, gray shadows gathering under her breasts. She had forgotten about that one. How ironic. Just when she was resolved to keep her clothes on around Nate, here she was, on display, nipples puckered like a pair of Hershey’s Kisses.

“It’s a nice piece,” Nate said.

“You’re
not
going to buy it.”

“Not if it would make you uncomfortable.”

A thin man in silver spectacles seemed to connect the drawing with Sarah. He stared at her face, her breasts, her face. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, and retreated to the study.

“How long do you want to stay?” Nate spoke across the head of a small clay child, who reached out to Sarah with a tiny soccer ball.

“Twenty minutes. Do you like this crowd?”

Nate looked around at the sea of black clothing. “They seem to be poised between pretension and desperation.”

Sarah smiled. “Aren’t we all?”

Another fifteen minutes and they said good-bye to Judith, apologizing for their haste. “Of
course
.” Judith kissed them twice, Parisian style. “It’s
stifling
in here. You two go and have some fun.”

Outside, a current of college students was flowing along the sidewalks, wearing chinos and flip-flops. Nate glanced down the street. “Would you like to go into one of these bars?”

“With all that free liquor at our hotel?” Sarah shook her head. “What I’d really enjoy is a walk around the monuments.”

Nate hailed a cab and bowed as he opened the door. “Your wish is my command.”

Together they rode past the lights and music of Georgetown, winding through the poured concrete of the Foggy Bottom district and emerging at the Potomac’s edge, beside the Lincoln Memorial. Handfuls of tourists were out walking, their voices muted by the vast proportions of the glowing columns, while inside the memorial an unseen flautist played something slow and mournful. “Erik Satie,” Sarah murmured as they ascended the white stone stairs.

They stopped at the foot of the statue, where the toe of Lincoln’s boot jutted over their heads. Sarah examined the shadows carved into the sculpture’s eyes, and considered the surrounding words: . . .
that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.
She turned her back and looked to the other side of the reflecting pool, where the Washington Monument stood circled with unmoving flags. It seemed so small, a spotlit pin piercing the sky, with red serpent eyes that blinked as she watched them. Behind her, the flautist’s last breath faded into a few seconds of quiet, shattered by the crescendo of a jet, descending over the Potomac.

“The World War Two memorial is straight ahead.” Nate pointed. “Korea’s to the right and Vietnam’s to the left. What would you like to see?”

Sarah hesitated, trying to choose a war. “None of them,” she said, because it had suddenly occurred to her that this was the wrong place to be. Tranquil as the setting was, she didn’t need to stand in this quadrangle of memorials. Memory of the dead was the one human compulsion that she had mastered. The last thing she needed was to walk downhill past a wall of dead men’s names, thousands upon thousands, the list growing deeper until it was over her head, and all the flowers at the base, and the children with their rubbings, and the veterans with their black-and-white POW flags. Washington was little more than a giant mausoleum—the Holocaust Museum with its depressing shoes; the Pentagon hatching its shameless plans; the National Museum of the American Indian, a government’s weak apology for genocide. Even the teary-eyed mammals in the Natural History Museum, which she had enjoyed so much as a child, now struck her as an exercise in morbid illusion. Every corner of the city was saturated in death, and for the first time in four months she felt ready to scream, scream at all the lives thrown away.

“Are you all right?” Nate wrapped his jacket around her shoulders.

“Let’s go back to the room,” she said. “I want to raid the mini-bar.”

 

 

 

Back at the hotel they drank vodka and watched TV long past midnight. Nate kept her laughing with a running commentary on the idiocy of reality shows, and when she saw his face lit by the flashing screen, she remembered David years ago, watching
Tales from the Crypt
.

She was grateful for Nate’s company, grateful for his willingness to take her to art exhibits and trendy restaurants. He was the perfect companion for this juncture in her life. But she didn’t love him; so she kept reminding herself. How could she love the quintessential capitalist, a man whose happiness was tied to the Standard & Poor 500, who went through cars and women as if they were glasses of water? Nate’s appeal was the appeal of all vices, a momentary pleasure followed by weeks of guilt. And yet, when she tried to classify him along with chocolate truffles, as just another sweet to be given up for Lent, she could not dismiss him so easily. He had been kind to her, more than generous with his time, and she liked him for it.

“Shall we have breakfast in the morning?” he asked when they turned off the TV.

“Not early.”

“No, not early. I’ll probably go down to the fitness center when I first wake up. I’ll take a shower and maybe we could have brunch after that?”

She nodded and Nate leaned forward briefly, as if he were inclined to kiss her cheek. But he thought better of it.

“Well, good night, Sarah.”

“Good night.”

 

 

 

The next morning, after an elaborate breakfast buffet, they went for a walk around the hotel. The neighborhood was full of clothing stores and restaurants in the ground floors of dull, rectangular office buildings. Sarah followed Nate into Burberry, where an older gentleman in a gray suit offered his assistance. While she admired the Christmas ties, Nate and his attendant strolled the labyrinth of racks, speaking a language of cuffs and collars and thread counts. What was it that gave her brother-in-law the unmistakable aura of a spender? Was it only the cut of his hair, or the leather in his shoes? She glanced at the other women in the store, with their skirts and boots and expensive jackets, then looked down at her own meager blue jeans and sneakers.

When Nate was finished they continued down the street.

“I can’t believe that you spent one hundred and eighty dollars on a shirt.”

“Do you think it’s immoral?” Nate smiled.

“I think you could have gotten something just as nice for half the price.”