I can see how hard it is for her to talk, and that she doesn’t want to; I say, “You don’t have to tell me.”
I think maybe she’s decided not to; she is studying her glass, turning it around, as if to figure out how the factory made it. She keeps her eyes on the glass while she speaks. “We both had a lot to drink one night. Or I did. I went into his room,” she says, “and got into bed with him.”
I can tell that she’s remembering that night, and she is with him in his bed more than she is with me on the porch. Maybe she’s putting her arms through his or kissing him.
Then her face sort of freezes into a smile, and I see the humiliation in it. “He said, ‘No.’ He kicked me out.”
I realize I’ve been holding my breath only when I hear myself exhale, and I hope Dena didn’t hear.
She says, “The next day he told me that he didn’t feel that way about me, and he said he never would. I would have to know that if we were going to be friends.” She looks at me. “We never even kissed.”
I want to put my arm around her, but I can tell she does not want consolation.
She asks if I have any cigarettes, and I get them. I light one, my first since arriving; I haven’t wanted Matthew to know I smoke. I hand the cigarette to her, and she holds on to it, so I light another.
“How many years ago?” I ask.
“Four?” she says. “Five?”
“Isn’t it hard to share a house with him?”
“No,” she says, and her voice is adamant. “We’re friends. We’re great, great friends.”
. . . . .
After she goes to bed, I drink another scotch on the porch. Dena has finally talked to me the way I’ve always wanted her to, but I don’t feel any closer to her. Maybe it’s because her story seemed pointed—not that I know what the point is.
On the stairs, I realize I’m a little drunk. I go into the bathroom and wash my face and brush my teeth until I don’t taste scotch or cigarettes anymore.
Matthew’s door is open a crack; his light is on. I stand here, trying to decide whether to go in. I think of what Dena told me and wonder if it was a warning.
I knock.
After what seems like a long time, Matthew says, “Come in.”
He’s sitting at his desk, marking up a big piece of honey-colored tracing paper. He waits a moment before turning around to me.
“I just wanted to say good night,” I say.
He says, “Good night.”
. . . . .
In bed, I try to think what gave me the idea that Matthew felt as I do. He came to the lake—but maybe he just got enough work done; he stood behind me and moved my arms—but maybe he just wanted to teach me to swim; his fingers lingered on mine when I passed the flask but maybe he was just being careful.
I tell myself I will know in the morning, and in the morning I do know.
The house feels deserted, though both the Saab and the Wagoneer are in the driveway. There’s coffee in the percolator, and I pour myself a cup. The only movement in the house is the cat clock’s shifting eyes and switching tail.
Matthew comes in through the screen door, saying, “Morning. Dena’s taking a bike ride.”
He offers a section of the newspaper to me. Our eyes meet, but his look at mine like I’m anybody, any weekend guest or any friend of Dena’s; he looks at me like I am nobody to him.
I say, “I’ll take whatever you’re not reading,” because I need the paper between us.
There’s no need, however; he goes out to the porch to read.
. . . . .
The pain is sharp at first, and then without easing exactly, it becomes steady and deeper, more ache than pang.
At the lake, I imitate how I’d act if I didn’t care about Matthew. When he asks me what Dena was like at fourteen, I say that she was pretty much the same as now.
He says, “Tell the truth truth.”
She says, “Don’t tell him anything.”
I don’t; I know that they are just talking to each other through me.
Everything this afternoon calls forth my faults and flaws, all the reasons why this man I want doesn’t want me, and those reasons call forth more reasons.
When Matthew and Dena go swimming in the lake, I ask myself why I’ve never learned to swim or skate or draw or sing or play the piano. I’m lazy; I lack discipline; I have no patience. I can’t think of a single skill I’ve mastered or a single talent I have. I barely have a job, let alone a career.
When Dena walks along the shore in her black slippers, seeming not to care how she looks, I think I care too much, and I’m not pretty enough.
When she lies down and picks up her book on Robert Moses and New York, I realize that I don’t know anything about the history of New York or the history of the United States or the history of anywhere, modern or ancient; I have no grasp of geography; I don’t even really know what physics is. All this contributes to my overall lack of substance.
I think of my father then. It occurs to me that in striving to please him I hoped to become the kind of woman a man of his stature would love.
Matthew swims to the other side of the lake. He looks very small now and far away.
Dena stands. “I want to show you the nature trail.”
I can’t think of anything I want to see less than the nature trail, but I go because it means that I won’t have to look at Matthew.
I follow her into the woods. It’s cool and dark; there’s only the occasional flicker of sunlight through the trees. We don’t talk. Every few yards she stoops to examine a leaf or flower, none of which seem worthy of examination.
We walk a long time, and I think, I hate nature.
“Isn’t it amazing here?” she says.
I say, “It’s okay.”
“You want to turn back?”
I say that I do.
She decides we should take a different path back and chooses a less-traveled one; it’s skinny and overgrown. I walk at her musing pace, which makes me feel like I’m in a harness.
She stops to pick some purple flowers that look like weeds you’d see by a trash can at a highway rest stop.
To her back, I say, “Dena.”
She doesn’t turn around. “Uh-huh?”
I say, “I hate it when you say shut up to me.”
“Okay,” she says, straightening up. “I won’t say it anymore.”
I remember that I asked her not to say shut up once before, in tenth grade, and she answered, “Shut up,” as a joke.
She starts walking faster. I follow a few feet back so I won’t bump into her if she stops to revel in more wonders of nature, but she doesn’t stop. She keeps picking up speed, and it becomes hard to keep up with her. After a while I don’t try. I lose sight of her.
She is waiting for me where our path rejoins the main trail. She’s kneeling in ferns.
When I reach her, she stands up. “I want to ask a favor.”
“Sure,” I say.
She doesn’t answer right away. It occurs to me that she is choosing her words. “Don’t go out with Matthew.”
“What?”
She’s holding the rest-stop flowers at her side like the weeds they are.
I say, “Nothing’s going to happen with Matthew,” and it hurts to say.
She hears that this is not a promise; she raises her head in only half a nod.
I look at her. “You said you were just friends.”
“I hate that expression,” she says. “What’s bigger or deeper or more important than friends?”
I translate this to mean that whatever is between her and Matthew is bigger or deeper or more important than her and me; or him and me; or me.
She says, “I don’t want to lose you, Bob.”
I say, “You’re not going to lose anyone.”
She is waiting for my answer.
It would be easy for me to promise; there doesn’t seem to be any chance that I will ever go out with Matthew. But it seems wrong for her to ask—w
rong to ask me to forgo the possibility of my happiness for hers, which may not even be happiness but less misery.
I say, “No.”
She stares at me. Then she says, “After all I’ve done for you.”
. . . . .
My only consolation as I pack to go back to New York is that I will never have to see Matthew again. I will never have to be in his company and think of all the things I am not and never will be.
He leaves just before we do. He comes to my room and says, “It was nice to finally meet you.”
“Same here.” I think, Please get out of here.
“Well,” he says, “see you Wednesday.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. Then I remember: I invited him to my birthday party.
. . . . .
On the drive back to New York, Dena and I are silent. We listen to the public-radio program Weekend All Things Considered.
When she drops me off at the Hot Plate, she says, “Good-bye,” and I’m surprised to hear in her voice what I myself have been trying to conceal: Whatever affection we have for each other is from a long time ago.
. . . . .
I think of all the reasons Dena was wrong to ask me not to go out with Matthew, and all the reasons I was right to refuse.
I escape feeling sympathy for her by reminding myself that she’s chosen to spend weekend after weekend, summer after summer, with a man who reminds her of all the things she isn’t, a man who doesn’t want her and never will; meanwhile she’s chosen to sleep with a man who’s married. I tell myself that these are choices I would never make.
. . . . .
My brother throws the party at his girlfriend’s loft in TriBeCa. They’ve only been going out for a few months, and it seems like too much to ask. But Jack says Kim wants to do it.
It’s a big, fun party. They’ve invited their friends, too, and everyone I know in New York comes—everyone except Dena.
It isn’t until after Jack’s toast that Matthew shows up. I see him walk in and notice that he’s empty-handed; he is the only guest who hasn’t brought flowers or wine or a card.
I wave to him, but I don’t go over. It’s easy to avoid him, there are so many people here. I see him talking to my brothers, Jack first and then Robert; later, a pretty girl who works for Kim goes up to him, but they don’t talk long.
I’m surprised by how late Matthew stays.
He waits near the door while I say good-bye to a series of departing guests, and then he comes up to me and says, “Happy birthday.”
I say, “Thank you.” I’m not looking at him exactly. I’m waiting for him to go. But he doesn’t.
Finally, when I do look at him, he holds my gaze.
He says, “I want to see you.”
Everything I felt rushes back. I give him my number at the Hot Plate.
He gives me a kiss that barely touches my lips—it means nothing or everything.
After he’s gone, I think, Happy birthday to me.
Jack says, “That was the guy?”
“That was him.”
Jack shakes his head.
“What?”
“He’s not for you,” he says.
I say, “How do you know?” but what I mean is, How do you know?
“He’s like Ashley Wilkes,” he says. “Any one of these guys is Rhettier than he is.”
Again, I ask my benignly inflected, “How do you know?”
“How do I know?” he says, tackling me into a bear hug. “How do I know? I know, that’s how I know.”
. . . . .
When Matthew doesn’t call, I feel bad but don’t drown myself in it. I let Jack’s He’s not for you comfort me. I know I have to watch that, though.
Not that I regret breaking up with Demetri. I see now that everything everyone said about him was true: He was selfish, self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, et al. He was also fun. Fun might not have mattered to my father, but it matters to me. That’s one problem with going by his lights, or anyone’s, instead of mine.
. . . . .
In late September, my brothers and I go home to Surrey. In the car, Jack asks if I ever heard from Ashley, and I say I didn’t.
He says, “I thought he was gay.”
“That’s so funny,” I say. “I think Kim’s a lesbian.”
It’s the first time the four of us have been together in a while, and my mother makes a good dinner. As ever, Shalom is on the mail table, and I tell my brothers about my job interview, and they laugh, and my mother can laugh now, too. Then I remember aloud how distraught I was that afternoon and how Mrs. Blumenthal came to my aid.
My mother says, “I wish I could’ve helped you.”
I say, “I think the important thing is that somebody did.”
I imitate Mrs. Blumenthal’s throaty, “You need a drink.” I tell them I asked what she’d have if Dr. Blumenthal left her and do her deadpan, “Champagne.”
I don’t feel I’m betraying her; I don’t say what she told me about not having the energy to move on.
My mother sighs.
I say, “What?”
She hesitates, and once she speaks, I realize that she’s been going over in her mind whether the story is appropriate. “One night when Dena was here for dinner, in high school, she mentioned that her father spent the night at the hospital a lot. Whenever he had an emergency.”
I don’t get it.
“He’s a plastic surgeon,” my mother says.
I still don’t get it.
Robert says, “There aren’t a lot of emergencies in plastic surgery.”
. . . . .
Later, lying in bed, I wonder if Dena knows about her father. I decide that she probably does, and I imagine how I would feel if I knew that my father was unfaithful to my mother.
Then I remember Richard, and I think that marriage might not mean much to Dena. I can’t really blame her: She learned about marriage from her parents, just as I did from mine. For all I know, sleeping with Richard is just Dena’s way of trying not to be her mother.
. . . . .
Sunday afternoon, when I get back to the Hot Plate, the phone is ringing. I think it may be Dena, and am relieved when I hear a man’s voice.
He says, “This is Matthew Stevens,” to identify himself, even though I never learned his last name.
I say, “Hello, Matthew Stevens.”
He says, “I wondered if you’d meet me for a drink.”
. . . . .
We meet at a restaurant in the West Village.
It’s not quite warm enough to sit outside, but we do. Maybe we’re both trying to pretend that it’s warmer so we can act like less time has passed than has.
We both order scotch.
Matthew isn’t wearing his glasses. He’s probably more handsome without them—you can see his blue eyes and long eyelashes better—but he looks to me like he’s missing something. I remember how blind he said he was, and I wonder if my face is just a flesh-colored oval to him; he does seem to be looking at me indistinctly.
When our drinks come, he says he’s sorry he didn’t call me sooner.
I wait for him to explain.
Instead, he tells me he took a trip to Paris, and how pretty it is in September, prettier even than in April. He describes the light on the Seine. It was golden, he says; it had the effect of making you feel nostalgic for a moment you were still in.
I described that exact feeling to Dena once about the light in Venice and say so.
He asks if I’ve heard from her and doesn’t seem surprised when I tell him that I haven’t.
I say, “Have you?”
“Oh, yes.” He hesitates before going on; I think he’s aware of betraying her, but he does anyway. He says that Dena still calls him, asking him not to go out with me.
Suddenly I know that she talked to him about me after the gospel concert. When I say, “She said you two were just friends,” I remember her saying how much she disliked the expression just friends.
He
nods.
“I don’t really understand,” I say.
“What part?”
“ ‘What part?’ ” I say. “Um, if you’re just friends, why would she care if you went out with somebody else?”
“Not somebody else,” he says. “You.”
It seems obvious now, though it didn’t occur to me before. The way I phrased it in my own mind was that she didn’t want anyone to be with Matthew, not even me.
I realize I will never hear from Dena again, and I will never call her. It gives me a chill. It is a strange thing to end a friendship, even if you know it’s what you want. It’s like a death; all of a sudden your experience of a person becomes finite.
I take a long sip of scotch. I say, “And you give your friends the right to decide who you go out with?”
When he says, “She was upset,” I hear that he’s defending himself. I see Matthew now as my brother did. I think of how little help Ashley was to Scarlett after the war.
He puts his glasses on. He tells me that Dena has gotten even worse lately—he mentions crying—and though there is concern in his voice, my impression is that he’s talking less about her than himself; he is trying to convince me that it isn’t strange for him to obey her wishes.
He says that he’s always been clear with Dena. “I told her I didn’t feel that way about her, and I never would.” I remember the look on her face as she told me the story.
“It doesn’t matter what you say. The way you act with Dena gives her hope.” I look right at him. “The way you acted with me gave me hope.”
He nods, and I see that he’s admitting something—guilt? weakness? failure? At the very least, he is admitting that he’s gone through this before, and more than once.
I want him to tell me why, but he doesn’t say anything. It seems possible that Matthew is gay and possible that he isn’t; possible that he is just a little more afraid than the rest of us and possible that he is much more; it even seems possible that what he has with Dena is bigger or deeper or more important than anything else to him.
I don’t know. But I no longer believe, as I did that last afternoon at the lake, that my many, many flaws are what prevented Matthew from wanting a life with me. It seems more likely that it is his flaw that he can’t or won’t love anyone—and that he is indiscriminate in his unlove.
When the waiter comes to the table and asks if we want another drink, I say, “That’s it for me.”