thinks that it does, and endures it.)
Once Corinne said that if we all lived to be fifty (she works for a state environmental-protection agency, and her expectations are modest), we should have an honesty session the way the girls did in college. Lenny asked why we had to wait until we were fifty. “Okay—what do you really think of me?” Corinne asked him. “Why, I love you. You’re my wife,” he said. She backed down; the game wasn’t going to be much fun.
Lenny’s first wife, Lucy, has twice taken the train to visit me. We sat on the grass and talked about the old days: teasing each other’s hair to new heights; photo-album pictures of the two of us, each trying to look more grotesque than the other; the first time we puffed a cigarette on a double date. I like her less as time goes by, because things she remembers about that time are true but the tone of wonder in her voice makes the past seem like a lie. And then she works the conversation around to Corinne and Lenny’s marriage. Is it unhappy? Both times she visited, she said she was going back to New York on the last train, and both times she got too drunk to go until the next day. She borrowed my nightgowns and drank my gin and played sad music on my piano. In our high school yearbook, Lucy was named best dancer.
I have a lover. He comes on Thursdays. He would come more frequently, but I won’t allow it. Jonathan is twenty-one and I am thirty-three, and I know that eventually he will go away. He is a musician too. He comes in the morning and we sit side by side at the piano, humming and playing Bach’s B-Flat-Minor Prelude, prolonging the time before we go to bed as long as possible. He drinks diet cola while I drink gin-and-tonic. He tells me about the young girls who are chasing him. He says he only wants me. He asks me each Thursday to marry him, and calls me on Friday to beg me to let him come again before the week is up. He sends me pears out of season and other things that he can’t afford. He shows me letters from his parents that bother him; I am usually in sympathy with his parents. I urge him to spend more time sight-reading and playing scales and arpeggios. He allowed a rich woman who had been chasing him since Christmas to buy him a tape deck for his car, and he plays nothing but rock-’n’-roll. Sometimes I cry, but not in his presence. He is disturbed enough. He isn’t sure what to do with his life, he can’t communicate with his parents, too many people want things from him. One night he called and asked if he could come over to my house if he disguised himself. “No,” I said. “How would you disguise yourself ?” “Cut off my hair. Buy a suit. Put on an animal mask.” I make few demands on him, but obviously the relationship is a strain.
After Corinne and Lenny leave, I write a second letter to my husband, pretending that there is a chance that he did not get the other one. In this letter I give him a detailed account of the weekend, and agree with what he said long ago about Corinne’s talking too much and Lenny’s being too humble. I tell my husband that the handle on the barbecue no longer makes the grill go up and down. I tell him that the neighbors’ dog is in heat and that dogs howl all night, so I can’t sleep. I reread the letter and tear it up because these things are all jumbled together in one paragraph. It looks as if a crazy person had written the letter. I try again. In one paragraph I describe Corinne and Lenny’s visit. In another I tell him that his mother called to tell me that his sister has decided to major in anthropology. In the last paragraph I ask for advice about the car—whether it may not need a new carburetor. I read the letter and it still seems crazy. A letter like this will never make him come back. I throw it away and write him a short, funny postcard. I go outside to put the postcard in the mailbox. A large white dog whines and runs in front of me. I recognize the dog. It is the same one I saw last night, from my bedroom window; the dog was staring at my neighbors’ house. The dog runs past me again, but won’t come when I call it. I believe the neighbors once told me that the dog’s name is Pierre, and that the dog does not live in Woodbridge.
When I was a child I was punished for brushing Raleigh with the dog’s brush. He had asked me to do it. It was Easter, and he had on a blue suit, and he came into my bedroom with the dog’s brush and got down on all fours and asked for a brushing. I brushed his back. My father saw us and banged his fist against the door. “Jesus Christ, are you
I play Scriabin’s Etude in C Sharp Minor. I play it badly and stop to stare at the keys. As though on cue, a car comes into the driveway. The sound of a bad muffler—my lover’s car, unmistakably. He has come a day early. I wince, and wish I had washed my hair. My husband used to wince also when that car pulled into the driveway. My lover (he was not at that time my lover) was nineteen when he first started coming, to take piano lessons. He was obviously more talented than I. For a long while I resented him. Now I resent him for his impetuousness, for showing up unexpectedly, breaking my routine, catching me when I look ugly.
“This is foolish,” I say to him. “I’m going into the city to have lunch.”
“My car is leaking oil,” he says, looking over his shoulder.
“Why have you come?” I say.
“This once-a-week stuff is ridiculous. Once you have me around a little more often you’ll get used to it.”
“I won’t have you around more often.”
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he says. “Two, actually.”
“What are they?”
“For later. I’ll tell you when you get back. Can I stay here and wait for you?”
A maroon sweater that I gave him for his birthday is tied around his waist. He sits in front of the hearth and strikes a match on the bricks. He lights a cigarette.
“Well,” he says, “one of the surprises is that I’m going to be gone for three months. Starting in November.”
“Where are you going?”
“Europe. You know that band I’ve been playing with sometimes? One of the guys has hepatitis, and I’m going to fill in for him on synthesizer. Their agent got us a gig in Denmark.”
“What about school?”
“Enough school,” he says, sighing.
He pitches the cigarette into the fireplace and stands up and takes off his sweater.
I no longer want to go to lunch. I am no longer sorry he came unannounced. But he hasn’t jumped up to embrace me.
“I’m going to investigate that oil leak,” he says.
Later, driving into New York, trying to think of what the second surprise might be (taking a woman with him?), I think about the time when my husband surprised me with a six-layer cake he had baked for my birthday. It was
