“You couldn’t have saved her.”
“No, but I could have saved my father.”
“I doubt it, Josie. You might have helped the burden, but you wouldn’t have made a bit of difference when it came to what he lost.”
Josie looks at him, surprised.
“How do you know?”
“I’m listening to you. I’m imagining your life.”
“But it’s more than that. How do you know about grief?”
“I don’t know,” Nico says. “My parents are alive. I’ve never lost someone I loved. I just think I know about you.”
“Is that because we’re strangers? I can tell you about Simon and you can tell me about your night in the cellar. We’ll disappear. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s like talking to a stranger on a plane.”
“No. I’m right here. I’m listening to everything you’re saying.”
Josie looks around the restaurant. For a long time, the noise of other people’s conversations had faded, along with the clang of silverware, the soft music of a violin concerto. She had lost the world and found Nico-not a lover, not even a boyfriend for a night or two, but someone to talk to.
“Thank you,” she says.
“Don’t think I do this for all my students,” he tells her, smiling.
“You haven’t even corrected my French.”
“Your French is perfect.”
“Now you’re lying. Let’s not tell any lies today.”
“Then you should make your vowels more precise. They tend to float between consonants.”
“Really?”
“I wouldn’t lie.”
“All these years I’ve been speaking French with floating vowels?”
“You had no one to show you the way.”
Josie looks down, suddenly shy. He is smitten and she will leave him. She’s just promised that she won’t lie. And yet there is a lie in everything they share today. Because she won’t go to Provence with him. It’s another Josie who could catch the next train and curl up in a
But she has finally eaten a meal and had a conversation.
“I won’t ask for my money back from the school,” she tells Nico. “You’ve taught me something after all.”
“We’re not done,” he tells her.
Simon called her at school though she had told him not to. She could no longer focus on her work. She whispered into her cell phone, “I can’t talk. I have class in two minutes.”
“Meet me at the lake,” he whispered back. “At four.”
“I can’t,” she told him. “I have advisory.”
“Cancel it,” he said, and he hung up, so sure he was in the knowledge that she’d risk her job to see him. She canceled her meeting. She had canceled so many meetings, she had cut out of soccer practice even though she was supposed to be the assistant coach, and she had told the senior drama class that they should prepare their one-act plays on their own and that she’d step in to supervise in the final week. After three years as star teacher she was suddenly the slacker, the fuckup. She kept telling herself that she’d make up for it-this affair can’t go on forever-and besides, she needed Simon more than she needed this job. There are other jobs.
She met him at the lake where they first started their affair, an hour’s drive from the school. They’d been back a few times and Simon always asked for the same cabin. It was unseasonably cold and no one was renting these shacks, so the nasty woman who ran the place should have been happy to get their money. Instead, though, she asked Simon the same question every time. “Is that your daughter?”
Josie had never stepped into the office, had never seen the woman face-to-face, but she always felt the woman’s eyes on her back as they rushed into the cabin moments later.
“One of these days I’ll take you for a grown-up haircut,” Simon said. “I’ll buy you high-heeled shoes and we’ll toss those silly red things in the lake. I’ll buy you a cashmere sweater and wool slacks.”
“And then you’d lose interest in me,” Josie said. “I’d look like all the women you know. Your wife and your wife’s friends. Your business associates.”
“My wife-”
“I’m sorry,” Josie said. The unspoken rule. The unspoken wife. Off limits. Keep her out of the bedroom, the cabin, the motel room, off the futon in the middle of the field.
“Come here,” Simon said, and she stepped into his arms, silencing both of them.
Josie began to pull him toward the bed, but he resisted, smiling mischievously at her.
“We’re not going to bed,” he said. “Yet.”
“I can’t wait,” she told him. “I’ve already buried my face in your neck.”
She loved the smell of him, the soapy, musky Simon smell of him, and had told him that she could live off it, that if she could breathe him in every day she’d never need food again. “You’re losing weight,” he had told her. “Then let me breathe in more of you,” she had said.
“You have to wait. I rented a rowboat.”
“It’s freezing!”
“I have blankets. I brought a thermos of hot buttered rum.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“Stop.”
It was the other taboo, the other locked door. She didn’t believe that she was his first lover. He was too good at it. He knew how to have an affair and she was a novice, a child in an adult’s world.
“I’ve never loved like this,” he would insist.
“How have you loved?” she’d ask him. “Tell me.”
“No. Stop. Believe me.”
She never believed him.
Now he took her hand and led her out of the cabin. He retrieved a duffel bag from the trunk of his car and threw it over one shoulder. They walked toward the lake, which was shrouded in fog, a cold, damp fog that chilled her despite the down jacket she wore. The sky was bleached gray and the lake was the color of iron. A rowboat bobbed on the water at the end of the dock, candy-apple red, astonishing against all that muted color.
“The oars are in the boat!” a voice called, and they both turned toward the office. The old lady stood there, arms locked across her heavy chest, squinting at them.
“Thanks!” Simon called back.
The woman kept her eyes on Josie. The look was hateful, as if Josie had stolen all the good men from all the older women in the world.
“She scares me,” Josie whispered to Simon.
“Ignore her,” he said.
“I can’t. I can feel her watching me.”
But the door slammed behind them and the old crone was gone.
Simon held the side of the boat and Josie climbed in. He placed the duffel bag on the floor of the boat. Then he stepped in and took the oars.
“Grab some blankets,” he told her. “Stay warm while I row.”
She pulled out a Hudson Bay blanket, a couple of fur hats, and the thermos. She placed a hat on Simon’s head and leaned over to kiss him.
“Put yours on,” he said.
She pulled the hat low on her head and was immediately warmer. She took a swig from the thermos and the sweet, thick liquid spread through her body.
