Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn (9 page)

Now Con was alone again in the same place. She'd gotten over that man—he was not even a comfortable pain. She hadn't made much progress, she considered, in acquiring the sad stories women loved telling and reading. At ten p.m. the phone rang and it had to be Jerry. She could tell from the ring, that “Who, me?” ring.

“I tried to call you,” Jerry began. “The first day she was here. But your line was constantly busy. And I tried a couple of times today.”

He had never wanted Con on his trips, not even when they were young and in love, before Joanna was born. Once, she'd wept. “I'll bring books,” she'd said. “I'll eat alone and make up my own things to do.” She was ashamed to have been so craven. Her old hurts were either gone altogether or still painful; she had no comfortable ones. At the time, Jerry had said, “I have to do it this way.” They had been in bed, and he'd turned over and curled his long body into its oval nighttime shape.

Now—finally on the phone with him—she was more curious than enraged, as if he were a stranger. The sound of his voice, which was light and quick, and had always pleased her, made her sad. She said, “Jerry, what made you do this?”

“You mean, letting Joanna come?” he said lightly. “She's been wanting to for years. And she found out something I wanted to know.”

“What, she got a tourist brochure from Fort Ticonderoga?” Rage came into her voice after all.

“I don't care about the fort,” said Jerry. “It's not even open until summer. I'm interested in where Allen was coming from and how he got across the lake. And she found something at the library. I didn't even remember telling her what I was thinking about.”

Con was sitting at the table in the living room, stretching the cord to talk on the kitchen phone. Over and over, she ran her free index finger down the edge of the orange stripe on the tablecloth. “But you took her out of school. And you didn't tell me. How could you not tell me?”

“You'd have said no.”

“You were never going to tell me? Didn't you think I'd phone her?”

“Sure, but she's always hard to reach. I didn't think you'd think anything. She was going to call you and not say where she was.”

“Jerry, you told her to
lie
?” Her hand flattened on the table.

“Well, it was a game,” he said. “Like a play. Surely you can see that this was good for her. Joanna's a kid with so much anger, so much inborn rebellion, that she could just turn against everything good.” He paused. “Con, I know you're not going to listen. You're not going to agree—and that's why I didn't tell you in the first place. But I'm trying to save this girl for something worthwhile. School does nothing for her. She could turn
against it and go on drugs or get pregnant. She could be twenty-one with four babies.”

She said, “But Jerry, Jerry, wait a second. I'm asking you something simpler.
What did you think would happen?
What did you think I'd think? Do you know the police in Philadelphia were looking for her?”

“The police! Why the hell did you call the police? Half the time you don't know where she is. You were hysterical.”

“Howard called the police,” she said. “I phoned Howard when Joanna wasn't there and wasn't in school. I was afraid—did she tell you my bag was stolen?”

Joanna had not quite understood or had not thought to say. Jerry didn't know about the burglary, Con's stolen purse. It was hard to understand that Jerry had no idea about something so important. This is what it would be like when they were separated. It seemed a waste of time to tell him. They could start the separation more efficiently if he never knew. But the credit card.

“Haven't you tried to use the credit card?”

“I brought a bunch of cash,” he said. “What about it?”

She told the story succinctly. He said, “But this burglar wasn't going to go to Philadelphia and kill Joanna. Surely you didn't think
that
.”

“Nobody I talked to would dismiss the idea.”

“This was a little overdone,” said Jerry.

“But what you did would have been terrible even if nothing had happened.”

“No. It was great. It
is
great. She's excited.”

“She spent the whole day in the motel.”

“You don't appreciate Joanna,” he said. “You have no idea what a great kid she can be.”

Con didn't answer. Now she was pacing from the kitchen to the living room and back, stretching the cord. Peggy had asked, “Were you marching?” Now she was marching. She had to march a long way to get where she had to be.

The cat butted his head against Con's leg. It was the first time she'd seen him in a long time; she'd forgotten him again. He jumped onto the table, then yowled at her. Con was silent, noticing the cat and watching herself get ready to speak. When she heard her own voice again, it sounded tentative, youthful, but that wasn't because she was uncertain about what she wanted to say; she was only uncertain about how to say it. “Jerry, there's something we need to talk about,” she said, and in answer—it was the one moment in the conversation when he reminded her of the young husband who amused and delighted her—he said, tentatively too, sounding finally a little scared, “What?”

“This is not just because I'm upset at what you did,” she said. He was silent. Sandy paced on the table and socked her forearm with his orange head. With the phone tucked against her shoulder, Con washed his dish, took the can of cat food from the refrigerator, and forked some food into the dish, then added dry pellets from the box on the counter. She thought to herself in words, as if she said it to an interviewer,
While my marriage was breaking up, I fed a cat.

As she put the bowl on the counter, she heard herself make a sound—not a sob, not a sigh, something more primitive—a soft, low-pitched wail such as someone might emit before a battle in which people who were dear and well would scream
and die. It was a sound for the last moment before the battle, when everyone was still all right and no skin was broken.

“I can't live with you,” she said.

“I've been thinking—” said Jerry.

“What?”

“I know you've been thinking this way.”

Yet she hadn't known she'd been thinking this way. It wasn't until she found Joanna that she had known what she'd been wanting to do. Somehow he had known before she did. He continued, “I know you want this. I don't. I want us to stay the way we are. I thought maybe we should figure out what you could do that would be like these trips. These trips are why I can live with you—not just you, with anybody. I couldn't live with anybody if I couldn't do this.”

Con hadn't thought about whether she could live with anybody. She couldn't live with Jerry, with his smooth surface that couldn't be blemished or even grasped, with his solipsistic happiness.

“You never let me come on the trips. You let Joanna.”

“She's a child.”

“So what?” she said.

“There are things you can share with a child and still keep to yourself.”

Again, he sounded firm and confident. This was all he had to offer: the suggestion that Con take trips—or something—of her own. From here on, it would be up to her to end this marriage. Jerry would simply watch.

“Of course I've thought of it, too,” he said now, surprising her.

“Of what?”

“Of breaking up. Of living apart. There are plenty of reasons. But I don't want to. Well, I guess if I had wanted to I'd have said so. But if this is something that will help your life—well, you'll have to do it, Con. I mean, if it's like my trips are for me. If it's the only way you can breathe.”

Could he give it up so easily?

Maybe it was the way she could breathe.

“I think I'll talk to someone I know who does separations and divorces,” she said.

“A lawyer friend.”

“A lawyer friend.”

“We won't fight,” he said.

“We'll talk.”

“Maybe it doesn't have to happen,” he said. “Con, I'm sorry your bag got stolen. I'm sorry I picked the wrong time to have an adventure with Joanna.”

He'd never apologized before. She was slightly awestruck. They hung up and she went to bed and lay rigidly under her mother's blanket, looking down at her still, separated body, nearly an unmarried woman. She was in the middle of leaving her husband, and in the middle (past the middle) of a week looking after her mother's cat. She hadn't told Jerry her mother might be losing her mind, or that Marlene wanted power of attorney.

Lying in bed, she realized her period had started, a week early. This happened lately, and she had a box of Tampax in her suitcase, but it was almost empty. Peggy would lend her tampons, she thought, slightly consoled. Or money.

In the morning she got up and went about her business, not
exactly grieving, almost convalescent: each act—showering, dressing—was noticeable, even startling. She watched the news on television. There was always something about the
Exxon Valdez
. They kept trying to figure out what had caused the ship to run aground. In China, ten thousand people had now taken over the central square in Beijing, demanding increased democracy. And an enormous asteroid had passed within half a million miles of the Earth. Barbara called.

“Are you at work?” Con tried to figure out what time it would be in London.

“I don't have that job anymore. But it's all right. Have you heard from Joanna?”

Con was appalled at herself. She hadn't let her sister know Joanna was all right. She told the story. “I'm leaving Jerry.”

“Just over this?”

“No, of course not.” It was hard to explain. “It's because this was so clearly Jerry. It's his defining act, taking Joanna and not telling me.”

“What's
my
defining act?” said Barbara. “Does everyone have a defining act?”

“I don't know but Jerry does.”

“Quitting that job,” said Barbara, “was my defining act. Anybody wants to know anything about me, they could see a two-minute clip of me walking out of that office.”

“Well, I guess so.” Con couldn't recall when they'd begun discussing Barbara's personality instead of Con's marriage.

“I really called to ask you about Mom,” said Barbara. “I talked to her yesterday. What's this stuff about a doctor? Was this your idea?”

“Of course not.”

“It seemed like your kind of thing.”

“My defining act?”

“Maybe. Worrying.”

“Mom sounded strange on the phone the other day,” said Con. “She didn't remember what I'd told her. She'd forgotten about the burglary. Marlene's worried. She wants power of attorney.”

“Marlene's overreacting,” said Barbara. “Be careful of Marlene.”

“Oh, I'm used to her,” Con said. “She's bossy, but you have to admit she's helpful. I don't let her bother me.”

“You didn't tell her she could have Mom's power of attorney, did you?” Barbara said. She spoke differently—maybe more slowly—as if Con were a child or someone who might not understand.

“No, of course not,” said Con. “I'm a lawyer. But she'd probably handle it all right if she did it.”

“Maybe,” said Barbara, “but don't.”

“What?”

In London, Barbara sighed. “You idealize Marlene,” she said, “but Connie, you
have
to see…well, Marlene's risky.”

Con found a reason to hang up. Too much was going on; she had no time for Barbara's theories.

 

On Monday evening Con left the office with a sheaf of papers stuffed into her tote bag to read at home, because she'd had no time for them during the day. A meeting that should have
lasted an hour had been twice that long, slowed by quarrels between one lawyer so abstract she dismissed practical difficulties and another so practical that the first lawyer drove her wild. Con had said little. She'd intended to stop on the way home for groceries—would she actually have all three visitors at once?—but she left the office late, having accomplished little, and went straight home. The warm November weather was starting to annoy her. At home she e-mailed Peggy, suggesting dinner on Wednesday. The bathroom door was still leaning on the wall. Con looked at it with some nervousness, then went for her tools. Finishing the project was easier than she had expected.

In the evening she read fitfully, feeling herself slide into gloom, trying to remember any single case she'd worked on in her entire career about which she was sure she was right. She was good at what she did—reading and thinking, then persuading others to see things as she did—but at times what she could do felt like no skill at all; anyone could do it. Fixing the bathroom door had pleased, then depressed her. Why couldn't her real work have such clear results? The cases she worked on lingered and lingered. Nothing was obvious. Newspaper stories made justice and injustice more distinct than they were in Con's mind, though she'd been a lawyer for so long. From the first paragraph of a newspaper story she could tell which side she was on. Working on a case, Con was never as sure as she had to sound.

She kept the cell phone on in case Joanna called but it was silent. Finally, to cheer herself, she made a list of tasks for the rest of the week. That night she slept poorly, unable to make the parts of her mind—the parts of her life—make sense to
one another. Instead of thinking about work, she thought of Joanna, of Barbara, even of Jerry. She thought about the war in Iraq, slept, then awoke recalling mistakes she'd made in jobs over the decades. She'd worked most of her life on the problems of those without money and power, and those people seemed to have less money and power now than when Con and others like her had begun. And she'd failed them more than once.