“No. Right. But it’s confusing, don’t you think? The word cloister means something with walls around it, presumably to keep others out, unless of course, it’s used primarily as a prison, to keep you in. But I don’t think the nuns mean it in that sense, right? They can leave if they want to, no? I’m just saying. Cloister, and then intercession…you can see why a layperson like me might get confused. So!” Larissa continued, in a segue from the nuns to Bo, “Have you heard from her? I hope she’s okay. I fear we may be too late. We were supposed to go talk her down before Christmas, and now look it’s January, and I haven’t heard from her.”
“I talked to her,” said Maggie. “She can still use our help.”
“Almost like we’re interceding.” Larissa chuckled.
“Interceding, really? She told me about your conversation.” Maggie gave Larissa a peculiar cold look. “Maybe it’s best you let me do the talking.”
Larissa didn’t think there was anything wrong with what she had said to Bo. Smiling genially, she made a mental note to study her words more carefully. Had she said something off kilter? She didn’t want to probe too deeply.
“I haven’t been feeling well,” Maggie said suddenly.
“Have you been under the weather too? I’m so sorry. My God, I had Emily and Asher both home last week with sore throats.” Larissa rolled her eyes, adjusting the collar on her jacket. “I thought I was going to go insane, them being home all day every day, and sick too. Michelangelo thankfully didn’t catch it, good boy that he is.”
Maggie turned to stare out the window. Larissa busied herself with the messages on her phone.
“How’s your friend Che?” Maggie asked. “How many months pregnant is she?”
“Oh, she’s good. I think a few. Three? Four?”
“She must be excited.”
“She is, yeah, everything is going swell.” Lorenzo’s troubles would mean nothing to Maggie, so Larissa didn’t share them.
Soon they were under the Hudson.
The Met had a cafe on the fourth floor. It was a Tuesday, yet the place was hopping. They met the impeccably coiffed Bo at the top of the wide staircase, and as they were about to walk into the packed lunch place, she nudged Larissa and motioned to her left. Larissa looked. Up the stairs and out of breath puffed a tall wide sloppy-looking man in an ill-fitting suit.
“That’s Stanley,” Bo whispered.
Larissa widened her eyes. He and Bo didn’t acknowledge each other as he passed barely two feet from the three women. As Bo led the way into the cafe, Larissa tugged at Maggie and mouthed, “Oh my God.” Stanley was astonishingly slovenly. By no measure that measured these things could he be described as attractive, his pants unable to contain his beer-gut stomach, his hair in need of a comb and a cut, and he certainly wasn’t in the least as good-looking at Jonny, who spoke well, wore sharp suits, was smart, appreciated Jim Morrison’s poetry, laughed, was an all-around great guy, albeit one who took a bit of his sweet damn time getting a job. What in the world could Bo possibly see in Stanley? Moreover, he didn’t even glance Bo’s way.
“We’re keeping it cool,” Bo explained. “Everybody at work knows I’m with Jonny.”
It took the women a while to order their soup and sandwiches and find an empty table. “So? What did you think?” Bo asked them while they were standing waiting in line to pay.
Maggie spoke before Larissa could speak. “It’s not up to us, honey.”
“I know, but what did you think?”
“Well, he seemed like an interesting fella,” said Maggie. “Right, Larissa?”
“Yes. So interesting. He seemed like he had a lot on his mind. Like he was very busy. Thinking interesting thoughts. Does he have an important job here? What does he do?”
“He is one of our art collectors. He buys the art. So yes, very important job.”
“Exactly. I saw that,” Larissa said, relieved they managed to get a table, and weren’t going to have their lunch huddling in the corner with their trays in their hands. “He looked like he was thinking about important things.”
At that point, Bo dropped the conversation, Maggie stirred her soup, and Larissa scraped the mayo off the bread. “Why do they always slap on the mayo?” she asked rhetorically. “Don’t they know tuna salad already has mayo in it? Why overload?”
“We’re so busy at work,” Bo said to Maggie.
Maggie turned to face Bo. “Oh, yeah? Tell me about it.”
“One of our special exhibits during this quarter is ‘Art and Love in Renaissance Italy’ and I have to write up yet another emergency press release for it by closing today. I can only stay for a little while.” They ate.
“Yeah, me too,” said Larissa. “I’ve got to make sure I catch the train back in time for 2:40.” She couldn’t say that number out loud without wincing, like it burned her tongue to say it. She was glad the girls weren’t looking at her and didn’t notice.
“Lar, did you hear about Dora?” Maggie said, putting on an effort to act normal, to sound normal. All Larissa saw was the effort. Why so much effort to say the simplest things? Maybe because it was awkward that they came to talk about Bo’s beau, such as he was, and Bo wasn’t talking.
“No, what’s going on with her?” Dora had been one of Maggie’s teaching assistants last year and she and her fiance, Ray, really tried to become friends with the DeSwanns and the Starks. Larissa invited them over for dinner a few times. Bo met them. Dora did not fit well into their little group. She was so painfully shy that she had trouble looking even her friends in the eye.
“She’s going to night school at Drew.”
“Well, good for her,” said Larissa. “Nothing wrong with trying to improve yourself.”
“You know what she’s going to night school for? Wait for it…” Maggie smiled. “Marriage counseling.”
“She needs marriage counseling?” said Larissa. “I didn’t think she and Ray were even married.”
“Fool! She is going to be a marriage counselor!”
Larissa’s eyes widened like she’d just envisioned their statuesque, pristine, calm-mannered Bo under the sprawling Stanley. “Get out!”
“I told you.”
A silence washed over the table. Not even a fork clinked in the mouth.
“Well, that’s great,” said Larissa slowly. “How long’s the course?”
“Two years.”
Everybody’s eyes turned inwards, on drinks and napkins and cheap metal spoons. What to say? Dora could not function when Ray was out of the house, constantly imagining him with other women. The fights they had over this issue was the sole reason Ray had not proposed even though they’d been together for fifteen years, having met in school. The worst thing that Dora could imagine in the whole world, in the universe, of all the bad and evil and awful and terrible things out there was infidelity. She couldn’t speak about it without hyperventilating, herself readily admitting that she might be a tiny bit overwrought, but it wasn’t her fault that she perceived the entire perilous relationship as one big jealous paranoiac swampy outrage from which she could only be spared by death—and maybe not even then.
So when she heard that Dora was thinking of going into marriage counseling, Larissa’s first thought was, it must be a form of mental illness. When you looked at things that were and saw them as completely different from how they really were. How you really were. It wasn’t wishing them to be different, it was just delusional. It was like studying to become a surgeon when the sight of blood made you faint.
No one could be more ill-suited to advise couples on the state of their marriage than Dora. Counseling implied you were going to try to work things out. In Dora’s mind, there was nothing to ever work out if the man ever so much as glanced at another woman. She’d be advising the girlfriend/wife to dump the cheater, grab her four small children ranging from three months to five years and run to a shelter for abused women.
But of course, as Larissa, Maggie and Bo sat at the table and digested this, ha
ving come together, after all, to talk about Bo’s imminent infidelity, the first thing out of Larissa’s mouth was, “Well, Mags, I’m sure she’ll do great. It’s really a shame you couldn’t bring her with you today. We could’ve tested out her nascent skills on Bo here.”
Humorlessly, Maggie and Bo stared at Larissa, who dug into her tuna sandwich, took a sip of her ice tea, regretting all the things she wasn’t doing at the moment, the rooms she wasn’t in, the body she wasn’t touching, the voice she wasn’t hearing. Here, away from the heart of her heart, she became upset at Bo for being silent and at Maggie for implying that had Larissa been more empathetic two months ago, they wouldn’t be sitting here today.
“So tell me Bo, has there been any progress?” Larissa was done with dilly-dallying.
“Progress with what?”
“With the situation with Stanley.”
Bo looked into her ice tea. “Well,” she said. “I guess you can call it progress. Last week I finally slept with Stanley.”
Maggie gasped. Way to go, Mags, way to be non-judgmental. I’ll just leave it in your capable hands to deal with it. Larissa remained quiet. “What else? I sense a pause.”
“Oh. Also, I told Jonny.”
“You what?” exclaimed Maggie.
“I did. I know. It was eating me up. I just couldn’t hide it any longer.”
“But, Bo,” Larissa said slowly, “how could you have consummated the act and become so ridden with guilt all in a span of seven days?”
“See, but I don’t think it was guilt. You know why I think I told him?” Bo sighed. “Because I wanted him to propel me toward the next thing. I couldn’t do it myself. I was torn, unsure. I just didn’t know what to do and couldn’t make a decision. So I told him.”
Larissa stopped eating, stopped drinking.
“What did you want the next thing to be?” she asked, leaning forward, wanting to hear, wanting to know, not wanting to know.
“Well, I wasn’t quite sure myself. But I wanted us to have it out! We’re so placid, honey this and honey that. Everything was so ordinary. I wanted drama.”
Maggie sounded aghast when she said, “Oh, poor Jonny, what did he do when you told him?”
“Poor Jonny? Why are you siding with him?”
“No one is siding with anyone,” Maggie said hastily. “But I imagine he must’ve been upset when you told him.”
“He was. But what about me? You don’t think this is hard for me, too?”
“Bo, it is hard,” said Larissa. “Of course it is. The conflict is overwhelming.”
“Yes!” Bo exclaimed. For some reason she sounded thrilled with the overwhelming nature of the conflict.
“So what did you want from him?”
“I wanted him to, I don’t know, tell me to leave. Kick me out. Throw me out. Liquidate me. To tell me what he really thought of me.” She paused. “And then after a huge screaming meltdown, I could go and tell Stanley that Jonny found out about us and threw me out.”
“Good use of the passive voice, Bo,” said Larissa. “Found out about us. Good. As if Jonny was doing all the investigating.”
“Oh my, you already told Stanley, too?” Maggie paled in confusion.
“No, I haven’t told him yet,” Bo replied. “I’m going to tell him tonight. I’m going to go over his place after work and tell him.”
“Does he know this yet?” Larissa asked.
Bo frowned. “Know what?”
“That you’re going over there tonight?”
“No. But what difference does that make?”
“How many times have you slept with him, Bo?” asked Larissa. She resumed eating heartily. Maggie and Bo had stopped.
“Just once,” Bo replied. “But how many times do you need before you know that it’s right? When I told Jonny, in the back of my mind I think I was secretly hoping it might bring back the spark that used to be between us, bring back my other self.”
But Larissa knew: nothing could bring back that other life.
Pat and insipid confessions couldn’t do it. She was surprised at Bo. Confessions were so tawdry. How could you? I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to. How could you? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. How could you…I didn’t mean to. Ad nauseam. She wanted to vomit just imagining it.
“Jonny is just where you left him, Bo,” said Larissa. “But nothing can mend what’s not there anymore. The piece that’s missing is you. Not him. No. He is right there on the couch. The house, the boyfriend, the toys on the floor, the books, the packages that arrive at the door. They are all where you left them. But not you.”
Maggie and Bo raised their eyes to stare at Larissa. “Toys on the floor? What are you talking about?” said Maggie.
“What are you talking about?” said Bo. “I’m still here. I’m exactly the same as I always was. I just want a little excitement.”
Larissa looked into her empty glass. There were things that were real, and there were things that weren’t. There was imagined conflict, manufactured conflict, and there was real conflict. There was imagined love, manufactured love, and real love. There was imagined trouble, manufactured trouble, and then there was real trouble. Sometimes it was hard to know the difference, especially when you were talking about yourself. Ezra was right. Walker Percy was right We spend all our days with ourselves, and yet we are the person we know and understand least of all. We know all about the paths of the planets around the sun, but ask us where we’re headed in the next five minutes and why, and we have no answers.
“Your problem, Bo,” said Larissa, “is not going to be easily resolved by deus ex machina exits. No grand gestures of destiny will save you.”
“Destiny, what destiny? I don’t want destiny to save me,” Bo said. “I want to be with Stanley. Do you think that’s wrong?”
“Do you?” asked Larissa. “Do you really want to be with Stanley?”
“Yes! I’m completely enamored of him. I’m fascinated by him.”
“But Jonny loves you so much,” said Maggie.
“I think Stanley does, too,” Bo countered.
“The issue isn’t whether Jonny loves you,” said Larissa. “The issue is how you feel about Jonny.”
“Well, I love him, but I’m not in love with him. But my problem is…” and here Bo nearly banged the table in her frustration, her disbelief at the mystery of the workings of man, “is that Jonny didn’t do any of the things I wanted him to do, or the things I thought he would do. I thought I knew him. I wanted him to go nuts so I could go and tell Stanley, hey, my boyfriend found out about us and flipped out…”
“Good plan,” said Larissa.
“…And threw me out, which would allow Stanley to react with a ‘Thank God!’ or a ‘Now you’re free!’ or even a ‘How do you feel?’ Except Jonny didn’t do any of these things. He didn’t throw me out. He didn’t tell me I was trash. He didn’t even get mad,” Bo said with incredulity. “Jonny sat on the couch and started to cry.”
“Jonny started to cry?” said Maggie, incredulous and ready to cry herself.
“I know, Mags!” Bo made a gesture with her hands that made the wet straw from her Diet Coke glass fly out and hit a woman passing by. After apologizing she turned back to Maggie and Larissa.
“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t expect him to…God!” She shuddered. “Anyway, I became ridiculously upset with him, and after half an hour, it was Jonny who was apologizing to me for his inappropriate reaction toward my appalling affair.” Bo was breathing heavy. “I told him, I don’t want to be in a relationship with you anymore. I want out.”
“You said this to Jonny?”
“Sure did.”
“Where was your mother during all this?”
“Making my life a living hell,” Bo replied. “We put her in the bedroom, and she kept coming out every five minutes. Do you want tea? Do you need some water? Should I open the window? I’m like, Ma, basta! But she wouldn’t. She said, I think I’m getting a migraine, Bo, can you get me my pills, I
can’t see so good. It could be the glaucoma. My blood pressure must be through the roof. My pills, Bo! Honest to God, I don’t know if I dreamed it or lived it, it was so surreal. It was like a Dali infidelity scene. Nothing in it made any sense.”
“And yet somehow remarkable sense. Bo,” Larissa said calmly, “let me ask you a question. You know how you just said that Jonny didn’t react or behave in the way you either wanted him to or expected him to…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, is it possible, just possible, that Stanley might also not react or behave in the way you want or expect when you tell him that you want to break up with your boyfriend and go out with him instead?”
“No.” Bo frowned. “Stanley and I have talked and talked about it and about us. We have a very strong connection.”
“I’m sure you do.” Larissa stood up, and placed her plates and bowls on the tray. “Nothing you can do now. You’ve embarked on a course you’ve got to see through. Talk to Stanley. You’ve left yourself few other options. Now, Mags, are you coming? Because I’ve got to start back.”
“I’m going to finish eating,” Maggie said, looking into her uneaten soup. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not.” Larissa gladly left them, but instead of heading to the train, she went downstairs to the third floor and explored the “Art and Love in Renaissance Italy” exhibit, showing a passing interest in the Childbirth Bowls and Trays by Castel Durante and an intense fascination in Gustave Dore’s black and white drawings of Paolo and Francesca, Dante’s Fifth Circle desperate lovers, both married to other people, murdered by the cuckolded Giovanni before they were able to repent, clinging to each other for dear life while the hurricane of souls swirled around them.
Would Jared render her blameless, accept her Epicurean arguments? Could Larissa persuade him with her airtight logic? But Jared, she could say. I came home. I cooked you dinner. I spent the weekends with you. I still picked up your starched white shirts from the cleaners, on the way home from being soundly assaulted with love, someone else’s, not yours.
She knew: in no way would anything be made easier for Larissa by having her free will compromised by acts of fate. There had only been one act of fate—her going to Stop&Shop because King’s parking lot was full—and one act of free will: when she went back. After that, just like now, it all remained in Larissa’s clenched and sperm-drenched hands.