2
It was hard to find places to meet during the run of a normal day.
We had my little office, of course, and Andrew’s larger one; but both of those felt so public, even with the doors closed.
We couldn’t really do anything.
Better to drive separately during lunch hour to this little dog park nearby that nobody else seemed to know about, and grab a hurried twenty minutes together.
Better yet, of course, to wait for one of Debbie’s gymnastics days or her after-school playdates when I could go to his house again.
But I never took him to my own house, because that would have felt disloyal.
Yes, I know: it was disloyal of me anyplace. But it seemed more so in the house I shared with Max.
Once Andrew said, “Gail? Do you ever think about…making this more permanent? Splitting up with Max, someday?”
“Splitting,” I said.
“I don’t mean this very minute. I know we’d have to wait for the right time, what with your daughter and all.”
As if there could ever be a right time to do such a thing to a child! We’d have to wait till Debbie was forty.
But the answer to his question (an answer I never actually voiced) was yes, I thought about it a lot.
I thought about waking up with him every morning, going to sleep with him every night, weaving my life into that measured, considered routine of his where the potted plants descended the steps in the proper order and everything happened according to a plan.
I ached for it.
He and I were a couple for exactly ninety-six days. Mid-September till shortly before Christmas. Not quite fourteen weeks.
On Tuesday, December 19, Debbie had gymnastics practice. And I was at Andrew’s, with my internal alarm clock set for 4:45 p.m. so I could get to Debbie’s school in time to pick her up at five.
Somewhere around four o’clock, Debbie dislocated her shoulder doing a dismount from the uneven bars.
Her school called me at home and got no answer, so they called Max at St.
Theresa.
(Neither one of us owned a cell phone, back then.) And Max got someone to cover the after-school study hall he monitored so he could collect Debbie and take her to the ER, which was where I found them both when I drove there directly from her school.
They were still in the waiting room, because this was Sinai Hospital, where things always took forever.
Debbie seemed more concerned about her future gymnastics career than about any pain she was feeling, and Max had been through a couple of dislocations himself so he took it all pretty calmly.
I was by far the most upset.
“I’m sorry!”
I told them both as I rushed up to them. “I’m so sorry! I was just—I took a drive in the country, and I had no idea this had happened!”
Stupid, stupid. When had I ever in my life taken a drive alone in the country for no good reason? I should have said I’d been running errands; that would have been more believable. But Max was so unsuspecting; all he said was, “No harm done. They’ve already had a peek at her and they say the doctor can fix her up as good as new.”
I sank down on the chair next to Debbie and gave her a hug, avoiding her shoulder. I was out of breath and shaky. “Are you okay?”
I asked her.
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“I feel awful,”
I told Max.
“Why?”
he asked me. “Sweetheart. This is nothing; believe me.”
“I know, I know…”
Then they called Debbie’s name, and the three of us stood up and followed a nurse into an examining room.
Once we were home again, finally—at almost eight p.m., all three of us starving to death—Debbie had to telephone every friend she could think of and give them the gory details.
Meanwhile I heated up some frozen tacos and Max tossed a salad.
He had put the whole incident behind him by that time.
He was telling me about a protest meeting he was planning with a few other teachers at St. Theresa. And I was saying, “Mm-hmm, yes; well, of course you do…”
But inwardly I was sick at heart. I couldn’t believe I had been cavorting in bed with some near stranger while my husband and my daughter went to the emergency room without me.
Immediately after supper, while Max was loading the dishwasher, I ducked into the den where we kept the computer and sent Andrew an email.
I can’t see you anymore, I wrote.
I’m sorry.
I didn’t even bother explaining; that’s how eager I was to get the whole thing over with.
Then I shut down the computer quick-quick and was back in the kitchen in time to wipe the table and turn off the lights.
I lay awake for hours that night.
We were living in Roland Park at the time, but not in the fancy part, and I could hear the traffic from Cold Spring Lane and the occasional hoots of Loyola students heading home from the bars.
Max, beside me, slept almost without moving.
Maybe he’d found Debbie’s accident more draining than he had let on.
And I didn’t hear a peep from Debbie’s room.
I wondered if Andrew had answered my email yet, or if instead he planned to wait till we could talk about it face-to-face. Or maybe we’d never talk about it. Maybe he would accept my decision in silence and back off gracefully. That was what I hoped for.
I could have gotten up and gone downstairs to check the computer, but I couldn’t bear to deal with one more issue just now.
I did fall asleep, finally, and woke much later than I should have. Max was already up; I could hear Debbie chattering away to him down in the kitchen. So I washed and dressed in a hurry, and I ducked into the kitchen just long enough to ask her how her shoulder felt (sore, she said) and to give her and Max a peck on the cheek before I rushed off, grabbing my jacket from the coat closet on my way.
“Don’t forget I have a meeting this afternoon,”
Max called after me.
“I remember,”
I called back, even though I hadn’t.
For the past few weeks I had chosen my clothes so carefully, always with an eye to how Andrew might judge them, but on that particular morning I wore the outfit I’d worn the day before, knit slacks and a gray sweater, although the sweater was the kind where the neck gets stretchy after one wearing and it really should have gone in the wash.
Andrew’s VW was already parked in the lot, and when I walked past his office door I could hear the rumbling of his voice, either talking on the phone or in conference with somebody’s parents.
It was still homeroom period, the principal’s announcements still crackling over the PA system, but first bell rang even before I reached my classroom.
A few of my students—the loners and the misfits, the ones without a gang of friends to horse around with in the hall—were already at their desks, and more started trickling in by twos and threes, nodding at me as they entered but seldom answering my “Good morning.”
I made a business of draping my jacket over the back of my chair and stowing my purse in a bottom drawer, and by that time second bell had rung and I went out to the hall to round up the last stragglers.
Except that Max was in the hall.
Max stood in front of me, not even wearing his jacket, his face grayish white and stony.
“What,”
I said. I grabbed hold of him with both hands. “What’s happened? Is it Debbie? Where’s Debbie?”
“Debbie’s still home,”
he said. He seemed to speak without moving his lips.
“Is she all right?”
“She’s fine.”
“Then what—?”
“See him how?”
he asked me.
I stared at him.
“See Andrew how? How did you mean that, ‘can’t see you’?”
I dropped my hands.
“What’s going on, Gail?”
he asked me.
I couldn’t find words.
“Are you having a…? Is this some kind of…affair? Is that what you meant?”
“No, I—”
“Just tell me it’s nothing,” he said.
“It’s nothing!”
“Then why did you write that?”
“I just meant—”
“Is this why we don’t have sex anymore?”
That was the question that made me aware, finally, of the roomful of students behind me.
To this day I’m not sure if they heard him.
All I remember is rushing back into the room for my belongings and rushing out again, not even looking in their direction; but I suspect (I hope) they were oblivious, too busy with their own all-absorbing lives to pay any attention to mine.
I don’t think I even closed the door behind me.
I snatched a handful of Max’s sleeve and pulled him along.
It felt like dragging a reluctant dog.
I pulled him toward the stairs, I pulled him down to the first floor. “This is not what it looks like,”
I told him. “You have it all wrong.”
He halted outside on the front stoop and wrested his arm away. “What is it, then, Gail?” he asked.
“He’s just a friend,”
I told him. “You’ve misunderstood.”
“?‘I can’t see you anymore,’ you said. What else could that mean?”
“You had no business whatsoever reading my private mail,”
I told him.
“It was sitting right there on the screen, already open!”
“This is what happens to people who—what?”
“I was going to send out a reminder about this afternoon’s protest meeting and there it was, just sitting on the screen waiting to be sent.”
“It hadn’t been sent?”
“I need you to explain,” he said.
But instead of waiting for my explanation, he turned and walked on down the front steps, out toward the parking lot.
I had to run to keep up with him.
When he reached his car he got in and immediately started the engine, but he neglected to unlock the passenger door, either accidentally or on purpose.
I had to rap on the side window frantically till he leaned over and raised the button.
And I wasn’t even properly settled in my seat before he pulled out of his parking space.
“You know how it is,”
I told him. “You have a friend who talks on and on about his troubles and whatnot; sometimes you just think, Enough! And so you tell him—”
Max drove silently, looking straight ahead of him. It wasn’t any use.
“I’m sorry,”
I said. “I am so, so sorry.”
He said, “Are you going to leave me?”
“No!”
I said. And then, when he didn’t react: “I told him! You saw what I told him; I said I couldn’t see him anymore.”
“But you didn’t say, ‘I don’t want to see you.’?”
“Well, I don’t,” I said.
We turned onto Cold Spring Lane. There was some kind of roadwork happening, men in bulky jackets conferring around an excavation in the middle of the pavement. We had to come to a stop for a while. The silence in the car was something I could almost touch, like a curtain.
“Debbie’s not in school?”
I asked belatedly.
“I left her at home,” he said.
One of the workers gestured us forward, and Max maneuvered around him and drove on.
I said, “She’s not going in today?”
“I’ll take her later.”
So we were missing in action, all three of us. Debbie late for school, Max and I ditching our classes. My car was abandoned in the Millwood parking lot. My students were unattended, and probably raising a ruckus. But none of that seemed important.
I wanted to say something. There was so much I wanted to say. But I made myself wait till we could have a solid block of time.
When we got home, Debbie was watching TV in the den. “Where were you?”
she asked Max, and then to me, “Why aren’t you at work?”
“Sorry, hon,”
was all Max said. “Grab your backpack and let’s hit the road.”
Her backpack was already waiting beside the front door. Max had to help with her jacket, though, because of her shoulder. He slid her good arm into one sleeve and then zipped the jacket shut around her other arm in its sling. “Have a nice day!”
I said, giving her a hug.
“Bye, Mom.”
The instant they were gone, I walked into the den and turned on the computer.
i cant see you anymore im sorry, the screen told me.
I sent it off without a thought and shut down the computer.
Then I reached for the phone and called Millwood. Told the secretary I’d been struck by a violent stomach bug and apologized for not giving more notice.
I think I half assumed that Max would come back to the house once he’d delivered Debbie, and that was when we’d have our talk.
Hash it all out.
Clear the air.
But he didn’t come back.
He went on with his normal day, evidently, while I sat miserably at home.
When he failed to show up even during his lunch hour, I risked leaving the house just long enough to take a cab to Millwood so I could collect my car.
Needless to say, I was careful not to be seen.
I ducked behind the wheel like a thief; I drove home at record speed.
There was no sign that Max had been there during my absence, thank God.
In fact he stayed away even for his after-school study hall and his after-after-school protest meeting. Debbie and I had to wait supper. Debbie was begging to start without him, but I said, “Just a teeny bit longer, okay?”
Privately, I was frantic. When he finally arrived, though, all he said was, “Well, that was a waste of time. Nobody wants to rock the boat, as it turns out.”
“Oh, what a pity,” I said.
“A bunch of scaredy-cats.”
I’ve never been gladder in my life to chitchat about a protest meeting.
But after supper, after Debbie had gone upstairs to do her homework, I went into the den where Max was watching the news. I sat quietly beside him until a commercial came on, and then I said, “Max.”
“Hmm?”
“Can we talk?”
“Not right now, hon. I’m bushed,” he said.
Should I have insisted? I still don’t know the answer.
Because from that time on, Max behaved as if nothing whatsoever had happened. For the following days and weeks and months it was Everything’s fine! and What could possibly be wrong? He was his usual good-natured self. He was blithely, blandly cheerful.
Except…
Except he didn’t think I hung the moon anymore.
Yes, I know this was what I deserved. But still, I felt crushed, and all the more so because everything was unspoken. Max simply did not speak of it. Our lives proceeded as pleasantly and uneventfully as always.
Andrew, on the other hand…
On Thursday morning, when I returned to work, Andrew knocked at my cubbyhole just before second period. “Gail,”
he said, the instant I opened the door, “what is it? Did Max find out about us?”
I despised that question! So gossipy, so intrusive. And what right did he have to call Max by his first name? They hadn’t even met! It was all I could do to say, “Yes, Andrew, he did. Sorry; I meant what I said in my email.”
Then I shut the door in his face.
After that, we were two strangers. We said, “Good morning,”
in the hallway. And in the spring, when he began to be seen around and about with Mamie Fox from the Spanish department, I felt nothing but relief. It was as if he had been burned out of me. Seared out. There was nothing left of him.
It did occur to me that it might be fear that made me feel this way—fear of losing everything I valued most—and I wondered if maybe much later I would allow myself to mourn him. But in fact, that never happened. I forgot about him, basically, and in the rare moments when he came to mind I wondered what had ever drawn me to him. Why had I, who truly loved my husband—at least in the on-again-off-again, maybe/maybe-not, semi-happy way of just about any married woman—broken apart my whole world for a man I never really knew? But maybe that was just it: I hadn’t known him. There are times when that can be the strongest draw of all.
* * *
I hadn’t expected to get back to sleep, but suddenly my eyes were blinking open again and the cat was long gone and the sun was casting bright yellow squares across my bedspread. Why couldn’t we have had this weather for the wedding? I got up and went to raise the window. It was cooler outside than in but still humid, so I lowered the window again.
By the time I was dressed, I could hear Max moving around downstairs. I found him emptying the litter box into the garbage container under the sink while the cat wove in and out around his ankles. “Morning!”
he said, straightening. He gestured toward the garbage container. “Don’t worry; I’ll carry this out right after breakfast.”
“How long have you been up?”
I asked him.
“Not that long.”
“Are you about to take off?”
“Take off?”
“For the Eastern Shore?”
“No, no, it’s Sunday. Not much need for an early start on a Sunday.”
Sunday was exactly when you’d want an early start. Traffic would get heavier hour by hour until evening. But I didn’t point that out. I said, “So, what would you like for breakfast?”
“Why don’t I fix us something. How’d you sleep?”
“Like a rock,”
I said, “At least, till the crack of dawn. How about you?”
He said, “I dreamed about Debbie.”
“Good or bad?” I asked.
“I dreamed she came and told us she wanted to go back to college and would we be willing to pay for it. And we said, ‘What’re you planning to study?’ and she said, ‘Well, I’ve always secretly wished that I were a beautician.’ So we said—”
And there he went, ambling down the rabbit hole of his dream as he carried the litter box back to the powder room.
I could hear him pouring in fresh litter, and it struck me that doing this so shortly before he left was suspicious timing.
Surely he didn’t imagine I might decide to keep the cat after all? But that was Max for you.
Sixty-five years old, and yet he still believed that human beings were capable of change.
Once again, though, I held my tongue.
I started a pot of coffee brewing, and when he came back to the kitchen he took the egg carton from the fridge.
“I was thinking I might go over to the school and collect my things,”
I told him.
“What things?”
“The stuff in my desk and all.”
He turned from the stove. He said, “So you were serious? You really are planning to quit?”
“I might as well,”
I said with a shrug.
“But you don’t have anything else lined up yet.”
“Ha! How many times have you quit a job with nothing else lined up?”
“That’s different,”
he said. “I’m not the worrying type.”
He dropped a pat of butter into the frying pan. “Besides, you can’t just waltz into school on a Sunday and abscond with all your belongings and never be heard from again.”
“Why not? What can they do, fire me?”
He gave a grudging little hiss of a laugh.
I filled two glasses with orange juice and set them on the table. Then I got out the bread and put two slices in the toaster.
“You know what?”
Max said. “Later today, I’m going to phone Levy.”
“Who’s Levy?”
“The head of my school. I’m going to ask if he has a job for you.”
“Max.”
“You’d love it there! It’s got these really nice students, needy students; they’ve just had a bad break, is all. Enough of those rich-kid types you’ve been dealing with.”
“It’s not their fault they’re rich,”
I said mildly. “Besides: I bet there’s a rule of some kind against hiring relatives.”
“You and I are not relatives, though,”
Max pointed out.
“Oh,”
I said. “Right.”
“And once you show Levy your references, he’ll be dying to hire you.”
“Not if Marilee mentions the people-skills thing.”
“People skills, schmeeple skills,”
Max said, and he rapped his spatula sharply against the rim of the frying pan.
I was a little bit disappointed. You would think he could have come up with a better rebuttal than that.
He turned off the burner and brought the frying pan to the table. His eggs looked like a puff of pale yellow clouds. I said, “Is it okay that we’re eating all these scrambled eggs and omelets and such?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked.
“Aren’t they bad for our cholesterol or something?”
“That was last week,”
he told me. “Everything’s changed.”
He dished out a serving for me and then put the other half on his own plate. Meanwhile, I got up to retrieve the toast from the toaster. “Face it, though,” he said. “You’ll have a better chance of being hired if you don’t have a break-and-enter on your record.”
“It wouldn’t literally be breaking and entering,”
I said. “I do own a key, you realize.”
“Even so,” he said.
“Maybe I should just give up on teaching and sell asparagus instead.”
“You jest,”
he told me, “but it’s true the pay might be better.”
He started spreading butter on his toast, about a quarter-inch thick. (Talk about cholesterol!) “However, I’d hate to deprive our students of such a talented teacher,” he said.
“Why, thank you,” I said.
The phone rang.
“Who is it?”
Max asked me.
I rose to check the caller ID. I said, “Oh!”
and snatched up the receiver. “Debbie?” I said.
“Hi, Mom.”
Max set his toast down.
“Is—?”
I said. I was about to ask if everything was all right, but I changed it to “Isn’t it awfully early for you to be up and about?”
“Yes, but neither one of us is packed yet, if you can believe it. There was just so much else to—but I wanted to call you and Dad and say thanks for all you did. I thought it went really well, didn’t you?”
“It went perfectly,”
I said. “It was a beautiful wedding.”
“Is Dad still with you?”
“Yes, we’re just eating breakfast.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“No, no…Let me put him on,” I said.
I held the receiver out to Max, and he stood up to take it. “Hey there,”
he said. And then, “Couldn’t have gone better, I thought. What did Kenneth make of it?”
Darn, I should have asked that myself. I should have said something that showed that I’d moved on, that I’d forgotten there had ever been any issue with Kenneth.
“Good!”
Max was saying. “He’s exactly right. His folks supplied the glitz and then your folks dialed it down to a more reasonable level. Perfect teamwork.”
I whispered, “Don’t hang up when you’re done.”
“What?”
Max asked me.
“I need to tell her one more thing.”
“Okay,”
he said. “Deb? Hold on; your mom has something to add. So, have a good trip, hon. Bye.”
He handed me the receiver.
I said, “Sweetie, I just wanted to suggest that maybe you should call Sophie and Rupert and thank them too.”
“I already did,”
Debbie said.
“Oh.”
“They both agreed it was a big success, except Sophie thought the flowers weren’t so great.”
“What does she know?”
I asked. And then, “Okay, sweetheart, I hope you have a wonderful honeymoon.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I hung up. I told Max, “She phoned Sophie and Rupert before she phoned us.”
“Well, sure,”
Max said. “They were the duty call. She wanted to get that over with.”
“And she said Sophie thought the flowers weren’t so great.”
“And you said, ‘What does she know?’?”
Max said. “As you should have.”
We smiled at each other.
“So,”
Max said. “Do you still take a Sunday walk these days?”
“A…? I don’t necessarily have to,”
I said, because I didn’t want to seem to be hustling him out the door. “I mean, it’s not written in stone.”
“I was just thinking I might come with you,” he said.
“That would be very nice,”
I told him.
“Unless you’d prefer solitude.”
“No, you’re welcome to come along,” I said.
Then I started eating my scrambled eggs. Before that, I’d been sort of dawdling.
My Sunday walk always followed a fixed course, passing the Ashton School at one point and including a fairly steep hill both coming and going, because I figured downhill worked a whole different set of leg muscles from uphill. The entire walk took exactly forty-five minutes. “Is forty-five minutes too long for you?”
I asked Max.
“Not in the least,” he said.
“Do you mind climbing a hill?”
“Who do you take me for?”
he said. “I already told you, my doctor has me walking two miles daily.”
“I just wanted to make sure.”
He rolled his eyes. You couldn’t blame me for asking, though. He was such a tub of a man, and he was wearing his usual crepe-soled shoes, whereas I always walked in Adidases the size of two watermelons.
I went upstairs to put them on as soon as we finished breakfast, and meanwhile Max cleaned up in the kitchen. It wasn’t like him to be so conscientious. I started worrying that he felt sorry for me, first because I’d just said good-bye to my only daughter and then because I was about to be jobless. So when I came back downstairs, I made a point of acting brisk and unconcerned. “All set?”
I asked. “You didn’t bring any shorts, I don’t suppose,”
because I myself had switched to clamdigger pants that hit just below my knees.
“No, all I have is these,”
he said, meaning the khakis that he’d arrived in.
“Well, luckily it’s not so hot today.”
Our exit from the house was complicated by the cat’s suddenly taking it into her head to come with us. I was turning to shut the front door behind me when I felt something soft tickling my shins, and I said, “Whoa!”
and nudged her back inside with the toe of one shoe. “What—is she accustomed to going outside?”
I asked Max as I turned the key in the lock.
“I have no idea,” he said.
“Because a lot of the neighbors have bird feeders,”
I told him, “and they would not be happy.”
“I think it’s more that she’s gotten fond of you,”
he said. “She just wanted to come with you.”
The man would not give up.
But I didn’t bother debating the issue. “Right here is where we should cross,”
I told him, “because I see Fred Parrott pruning his hedge up ahead and he always has to stop everybody and talk and talk and talk. Then once we hit Tribal Lane, we’ll hook a left and—”
“Or we could just wander any old which way,”
Max suggested.
I said, “I don’t think so.”
We passed the Nicholsons’ house, and the place with the plaster Madonna in the yard. By then we were directly across from Fred Parrott. I said to Max, barely moving my lips, “Keep your head turned away or he’ll flag us down.”
We walked by with our faces averted.
“So, the people around here are friendly?”
Max asked.
“More or less.”
“Were any of them at the wedding?”
“At Debbie’s wedding? No.”
“How long have you been living here?”
“Twenty-one years,”
I said. “Twenty-one years in March.”
Although he should know that as well as I did.
My father died in 001, the fall of 001.
It wasn’t unexpected—he’d had a lung condition for years—but when it finally happened, one Sunday afternoon as he was watching TV with my mother, I felt it came out of the blue.
My mother took it much more in stride than I did.
She dealt efficiently with the funeral arrangements and the paperwork, while I just basically sat there in a stunned heap.
And it was she who informed me of the money he’d willed me, not a huge amount but a nice little chunk.
I knew right away what I’d do with it.
I don’t even remember going through a decision process.
I told Max before I went to bed that night that I wanted to buy someplace small where Debbie and I could live on our own.
He himself, I said, could do whatever he chose—go on renting our current house, find himself an apartment, move to a whole other town, if he liked.
It was entirely up to him.
“Are you saying…divorce?”
Max asked me.
I said, “Right. Yes. I am.”
“But why?” he said.
“Just because,”
I told him.
“Is it that guy?”
Even then, he didn’t mention Andrew’s name. Nor did I. “No,”
I said, “it’s me.”
“Great, Gail. The old ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ line.”
“No,”
I told him. “This is more like ‘It’s not you; it’s the me that I am when I’m with you.’?”
“What?”
“I used to be…” I began.
I used to be the girl who stood in a vast golden field of wheat or oats or barley while Max Baines took my face between his palms as if it were something precious. He cupped my cheeks; he traced the scar on my chin with the tip of one thumb; he blinked as if he had trouble believing anyone could be so…well, perfect.
I used to be perfect.
But of course I couldn’t say this aloud. What I said was, “I know I can’t expect you to feel the same about me as you used to.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Now, as for Debbie,”
I went on, “we’re going to have to make this as stress-free for her as we can. We don’t want her to feel torn between us. I’ll let you see her whenever you like, of course; no quarrels about custody or anything like—”
“You’ll let me see her?”
“I mean…you know what I mean,”
I said. “And she should never hear us arguing about it; she shouldn’t see any sign of disagreement between us. We have to make it clear that we’re on the same—”
“I get it,”
he said. Then he said, “You know what the operative word here is, Gail.”
“The what?”
“The operative word is ‘waste,’?”
he told me. “Sheer, pointless, empty waste.”
And he walked out of the room.
This came as a relief, to be honest. It was high time he got angry! Let him go ahead and fume, let him clamp his lips and slam the door and pretend not to hear when I spoke to him. We could talk things over later, I thought.
We never did, though. Just a few days after that, he moved out. Rented an apartment down on St.
Paul and packed all his belongings and vanished. No further discussion. That was harder than I had expected, I have to say.
I had thought things would get simpler once we’d disentangled our two lives, but for a while they seemed more complicated.
More subject to misunderstanding. I asked him on the phone once where he planned to take Debbie to supper and he said I had no right to cross-examine him. “I didn’t meant to imply—”
I said, but he’d already hung up. I invited him to her school play, and he said that of course he’d be there, because opening night happened to be one of her nights at his house; and that I should wait till the second performance before I came myself.
But after he took the job on the Eastern Shore, things got easier. The only times I saw him were when he came to Baltimore to pick Debbie up or drop her off, and gradually even those occasions grew less frequent, first because of the distance involved and then because Debbie developed a busy social life of her own as she grew older.
One time he phoned at the very last minute to cancel some arrangement they’d made, and I said, “She’ll be sorry to miss you,”
and he said, “She won’t miss me.”
“Of course she will!”
I said, but he said, “Last week when I went to her school to pick her up she was out on the track field cheering.”
“Cheering?”
“She was practicing one of those cheerleading chants that girls do at sports events. Jumping up in the air and waving these pompoms and then coming back down to earth and hugging the girl next to her and laughing her head off.”
“Okay…”
I said. Because of course she was laughing. She was fourteen years old at the time and she was with friends her own age. Only I knew how distressed she still was with both of us for what we had done to her life. (Go ahead, call me a coward; I never admitted to her that I alone was the one who had done it.)
But Max said, “She won’t even notice I canceled.”
“That’s just not true,”
I told him.
But then only a month or so later, she came home from a weekend with him and said she was never going back. She said she didn’t like his girlfriend. “His what?” I asked.
“She’s fat,”
Debbie said.
“He has a girlfriend?”
“He has a girlfriend whose name is Roxanna and she’s big as a house,”
Debbie said.
“Well…good for him,”
I said faintly.
Debbie made a snorting sound. “Grandma says men are just easily hoodwinked,”
she told me.
“Grandma! When did you talk to Grandma?”
“I, like, called her from Dad’s place,” she said.
“You…?”
“I was upset, okay? And Grandma said men are just naturally weaker than women, so they can’t admit they’re getting old and that’s why they leave their wives for young hussies.”
“But that’s not— Wait, Grandma said hussies?”
“Hussies who take advantage of married men in their moment of weakness.”
“Debbie, please do not use the word ‘hussies.’?”
“I didn’t use it! Grandma did.”
“I can’t believe that,” I said.
“You think I’m lying?”
“No, I—but your grandma hasn’t the slightest notion what she’s talking about, trust me.”
“Anyhow,”
Debbie said. “You don’t have to worry about me. I already know I’m going to be a nun.”
“Oh, stop; you’re not even Catholic,” I said.
“So will you call Dad and tell him I’m not ever coming back?”
“You call him,”
I said. “I’m staying out of it.”
Because I do know how to do some things right.
Although I admit that I had a few bad weeks there, after I heard about Roxanna. I had to give myself a stern talking-to. (“Face up, Gail,”
I said. “This is exactly what you deserve,” I said.)
As for Debbie, maybe she called Max and maybe she didn’t; I never inquired.
And after a brief interval, she did resume her visits to him.
For one thing, in January of the following year she got her driver’s license, which meant she could borrow my car—a huge inducement, at least during that early stage when driving is a novelty.
She never lost her dismissive tone when she referred to Roxanna, but eventually I noticed, tucked in her bedroom mirror frame, a snapshot of her and a woman who had to be Roxanna standing in some kind of farmer’s market, and they had their arms slung around each other and Debbie was smiling and relaxed looking.
What’s more, Roxanna was beautiful.
Till then I’d felt sort of smug about her much-vaunted obesity, but some overweight women are so lush and creamy-skinned and sublimely confident that you have to wonder why thinness is considered an asset.
There were dimples in both her cheeks, and she had lovely, pillowy mounds of breasts and a gentle curve of a belly.
I can’t recall when it was that Debbie stopped mentioning her.
It just dawned on me, after a couple of years or so, that Roxanna’s photo was no longer in Debbie’s mirror frame.
And something Max said later, when a divorced friend of ours remarried (“Getting married would be so much work, after a certain age,” he said), made me wonder if he and Roxanna were simply at two different stages in their lives.
At any rate: time passed, and whatever dealings Max and I had became more matter-of-fact.
He and I attended Debbie’s high school graduation together, and then her college graduation.
We sat side by side for the awarding of her law degree, and on a couple of occasions he and Debbie came to my house for dinner when he happened to be spending the night with her.
A while back, when the nurse at my school was going through a divorce, she told me, “What I’m aiming for is that Steve and I should have a civilized friendship with each other, the way you and your ex do.”
“We do?”
I said. And then, “Oh. We do.”
I didn’t tell her how many years of ups and downs and icy silences and hurt feelings we’d had to go through to get there.