The First Warm Evening of the Year (12 page)

“I'm not in the mood to play house. There must be a restaurant somewhere. I'm buying.”

I found a little place far enough from town to assure Simon that he wouldn't see anyone who might remember him; the sort of a place where it seemed wise to stick to basics. We both had pasta.

Simon looked around, as though he might be recognized. Then he said, “What you said before, about playing house, it wasn't very nice.”

“No, it wasn't. And while we're talking on this lovely evening together, would it kill you to stop lying to me?”

“You are one suspicious man. I was telling the truth when I said I missed my sister.”

“And missing her funeral?”

“Does it really matter how? The fact is I did.”

“You could have told me the truth the first time, instead of handing me all that crap.”

“You aren't the easiest person to approach. I told you the story I thought would work. If I'd told you the truth, would it have made a difference?”

“Does my brother know how devious you are?”

“Marian looks good. Like herself. She's aging well.”

“I'm sure she'd be glad to know you think so.”

“Do you have to be so obnoxious?”

“Was that obnoxious?”

“Where was Buddy?”

“He's not in the picture.”

“Divorce?”

I shook my head.

“Buddy Ballantine
died
?” He took a good look at me, the expression on his face went from that tight smugness to a look of retreat.

“Any more questions?”

“You and Marian?”

“Marian and someone, anyway.”

“Someone? As in someone from Shady Grove? Name please?”

“Does it appear to you that I want to talk about this?”

He lifted his fork to his mouth, and after he took a bite and swallowed, “You have a thing for Marian Thayer—I mean, Ballantine—and you want me to
not
to bug you with questions? Are you out of your mind?”

“Are
you
?”

“Don't think I can't find out on my own.”

“Alex won't help you with this.”

“I hadn't even thought of Alex.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “It must be someone I knew, or else you'd tell me.”

“Why do you care so much?”

“Who could she possibly be interested in after Buddy Ballantine?”

“Someone named Eliot.”

“Eliot? Not Eliot Wooten?”

“Why not Eliot Wooten?”

Simon put down his fork and sat back.

“I just lost my appetite. That's like going from Brando to—to some guy in a clown suit coming onstage and doing tricks on a toy tricycle.”

“How so?”

“Buddy Ballantine? Buddy Ballantine, even when
I
knew him, was one of the most exceptional people you'll ever come across. And Eliot— Have you met him? He's the guy all the girls in school used to say was ‘nice.' I bet he's still ‘nice.' Tell me I'm wrong. How could anyone do that to them—”

“What's it to
you
?”

He looked repulsed by my question. “It offends my sensibilities.”

“Don't be such a drama queen,” I told him.

T
he following morning, when I came downstairs Simon was standing on a stepladder, washing the living room windows.

“I had to do something to take my mind off—” He sat on the top rung. “So?”

“So? So what?”

“Look around. The furniture, the colors, the way she placed
objets
. This is what Laura chose to live with every day.”

“Yes?”

“I'm talking about the things Laura lived with,” he said. “And you with a gay brother.”

“Are my homophile creds suddenly coming into question?”

“And
a psychiatrist. Your entire lineage is under question. What does it tell you? I wish I knew what she had on the walls.”

I sat in one of the chairs, and while Simon went back to washing windows, I told him about my first impression of not only this room but the rest of the house: that it was where someone's grandmother would be right at home, tidy, not fussy, but in strict order.

Simon stopped his work, climbed down, and sat across the room from me. The sunlight through the living room window brought a shadow across the floor and into the corner where Simon was sitting, but the rest of the light had turned the pink walls a softer roseate color. The chair where I sat now received the heat of the sun, while moment by moment the room grew warmer. I looked up to see him watching me.

“I would have loved to see what her apartment in Paris looked like,” he said, “wouldn't you? But she made herself a home here that's certainly boring if comfortable. Her way of buffering herself, wouldn't you say?”

“From the things she'd lost or the things she still wanted?”

Simon rested his elbows on his knees, and took another look around. “I don't know why she thought she had to come back here. Just because you're born in a place, doesn't mean you have to die there. She could have, or should have, stayed where she was, given herself time, gotten back to her music. She should never have given it up.”

“Coming from you?”

“I'm a walking life of regret. But teaching music at the high school?”

“Don't be so quick to judge. She may have taught her students to love music the way she used to. Or still did. We can't know. Maybe it's how she wanted it.”

“Then God damn her.” Simon got up, walked over to the opposite corner, where the sun was brightest, and stood with his face turned to the light. “The reason I started cleaning the house, beside the fact that it was floating on a cloud of dust balls, was the hope that I'd get to know Laura, the person who lived here. Moving around the place, and all. I mean, you can't clean someone's house without getting to know them at least a little bit, right?” He laughed a dry laugh, as though the dust of Laura's life was stuck in his throat. “Maybe what I was really trying to do, scrubbing and everything, was to get it all clean and I'd find some clue to my sister, but all I found was—I feel like I'm inside a shell.” He shook his head. “All it is is seeing how someone I didn't know made a bland little nest for herself. This could be anyone's home.” He walked over to the stepladder, folded it, and leaned it against the wall. “I think I was looking for an agreement between what I expected to see when I came here, what I hoped I'd see, and what I'd actually discover.” He looked as though he were about to cry, but he pulled himself back and said, “I didn't expect that my sister just shriveled up inside.”

“You said you were looking for closure.”

“I said I was looking for closure
and
to say good-bye. But who would I be saying good-bye to when Laura already said good-bye to Laura? And now I'm standing here pissed off at Laura, pissed off at myself, and a little pissed at you, too, Geoffrey. This is not what I expected.” Simon looked around the room, as though he were trying to find something else that needed cleaning, or maybe he was giving Laura another chance.

All I did was think about why
I'd
come here, and that my own expectations and Simon's were as insubstantial as the dust swept from this house. I found that an intolerable concession to make.

I stood up, and started for the front door.

“It's about time we got out of here. Didn't you want to buy food and cook supper for us?”

Eleven

W
e attended to our errand and came back to unload the groceries. It was just after noon, and Simon and I ate lunch in Laura's kitchen. He was surprised that all the plates and cutlery were still in the cupboard. He got very quiet after this, went over to the back door, looked outside, and just stood there. The sun was shining through the glass, giving his silhouette a violet tint, then the sunlight brightened and for a moment he was all but invisible.

“I used to tell myself that it didn't matter if Laura and I never saw each other again. That I hadn't been very good at being her brother, anyway.” He kept his face to the sun. “You have to tell yourself things like that, right?” He turned around, pulled a chair away from the table, and sat down. “You have to tell yourself a lot of things that aren't close to what the truth is. But right now, I look at you and think, what the hell did you do to stay inside my sister's head and heart that she would ask you to take care of her after she died?”

I told him about Laura not wanting her friends to bury her twice. I said, “And I could speculate about a few more things, but I wouldn't come any closer to knowing than you. Maybe it was just an act of desperation.”

Simon told me that was not the answer.

He said, “I think you're missing something.” There was no tone of anger when he said this, or the sullenness I expected. “Not desperate. She had to believe you wouldn't let her down. And wouldn't you think that she'd have felt that everything else in her life had done nothing but that. The way it was ending. It could have been that you were one of the last things she could think of that didn't make her feel bad. That could still make her feel good.” Simon got up and started to walk out. “I'd like to think that, and I'd like it if you thought it, too.” Just as he was leaving the room, he said, “If you wouldn't mind, would you take me to the cemetery where Laura's buried?”

I told him I didn't mind at all.

The cemetery was on the other side of town. We stopped a few times, looking for a place to buy flowers, but it was too early in the season, none of the stores had any to sell, so Simon had to stand empty-handed by Laura's headstone. I waited in the car. When he came back, he told me, “They're buried side by side. Laura and Steve.” He seemed bothered by this. “Why is that? Why didn't she bury him in Paris? She could have been buried with him there.” He sat on the front seat, keeping the car door open and stretching his legs out onto the narrow sidewalk.

“This is all very disturbing. This business of coming back here. I can't help thinking that she was waiting for time to run out. Haven't you gotten a sense of that?”

“I'm sorry if what I told you about—”

“There's the stench of self-denial around all of this.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches from his coat pocket. “My sister was living like a loser, as far as I'm concerned. After all the shit that she went through and then to just come here to die. It makes me sick to—” He lighted the cigarette and took a deep drag. “I don't know why you don't see it.”

I sat back and stared out the windshield. Simon smoked his cigarette. Once or twice he started to say something, did nothing more than make grumbling noises, and when he finished his cigarette, flicked the butt across the sidewalk onto the grass and slammed the door.

“Could you drop me off at my old house?” he said. “And please, don't wait for me.”

I let Simon out a few blocks from Main Street, in front of a large gray house set back from the sidewalk, a bigger version of the house Laura had moved into. He was standing at the edge of the front lawn when I drove away.

Maybe there were other reasons for Laura burying Steve in Shady Grove, but I liked believing that she couldn't stand to be an ocean away from him, even after death. I wanted that to be the reason.

When I drove back through town, I decided to sit on a bench in Buddy's town square. There was nowhere I wanted to go and nothing that needed to be done. I didn't know how long I'd been sitting out there, when I heard someone call my name. It was Eliot, and he was smiling at me.

“I thought it was you.” He reached out and shook my hand. “What are you doing here? Did they sell Laura's house?”

When I explained that I was there with Simon, he said, “Just like that? The two of you coming up here? Come on, let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

I said I'd never had much luck with restaurant coffee.

He laughed. “Then I'll buy you a beer. The sun must be over the yardarm
somewhere
.”

We walked across the street to the Bradford House and sat at a table in the pub room, where Marian had touched my wrist and made my heart stand still. I was thinking about that, and about how it felt when I drove up to see her last month, and what she'd told me just the day before, and what Eliot would think about that. What would he say if I'd told him I was in Shady Grove because I couldn't stop thinking about his girlfriend, while he signaled the bartender, whom he knew by name, for two beers, and told me that Laura had never talked about Simon. Even after she got sick.

“That was wrong,” he said. “But then I always thought she and her folks were way too hard on him from the beginning.”

“I've come to agree with that.”

“It's quite something, though, Simon coming to New York like that. Looking for you.”

“He wasn't looking for me,” I told him. “He was looking for an epiphany.”

“In New York City?”

“You have your epiphanies where you can find them.”

“What made him think you could help him?”

“I'm just the go-between.”

“Well, it must be nice, being able to get away whenever you want.”

“Simon makes his own schedule.”

“I meant you.”

“It wasn't like I had to turn down work.”

“But still . . .” Eliot was leaning forward, his heavy shoulders hunched, his big hands clasped on the tabletop; and he was smiling again. “I bet you never thought that getting a letter in the mail would lead to you practically taking up residence in Shady Grove. I imagine you'll be glad to go back to the city.” He laughed when he said this, but he didn't sound amused. It was the same tone, the same inflection I'd heard when he talked to Marian; what I saw in his face now looked so much like what I'd seen in his face then—a man afraid of losing his balance—and I realized that he hadn't made a statement at all. He was asking, looking for something. For a moment I felt as though Eliot were trying to take a peek at my phone bill, but I figured he was less insidious than that—he wanted something from me. He wanted reassurance.

Sitting there felt oppressive now, because of what I could have told him and what I decided not to say.

“Hardly residence,” I said. “I'll be leaving in another day or two. And then I'll be gone.”

Eliot leaned back, and unclasped his hands.

“You know, after you left,” he said, “all Marian wanted to talk about was Laura. More than she had even before Laura died. But the things she said, you know, stories and some of the stuff she remembered about Laura, weren't sad at all. Marian just talked about all the
good
times they had and how much she missed her, and how glad she was to have reconnected with her when Laura moved back. Of course, not the circumstances why, but still . . . Marian seemed, I guess she seemed happier than I'd seen her in a while. At least she was smiling again.”

I thought of Marian's smile, and wished I was responsible in some way for her change in mood, but it didn't matter why, I just wanted Marian to remember Laura without tears.

All I said to Eliot was, “There are a lot of things to remember about Laura that would make her happy.”

We'd finished our beers by now. I got up, paid the bartender, and told Eliot I had to be going. After we walked outside and shook hands, I watched him cross the street, and go into his hardware store.

W
hen I got back to Laura's house, Simon was in the kitchen cooking a supper that turned out to be quite delicious.

When I complimented him he said, “When you're a perennial houseguest, it helps if you can cook.”

He didn't say much about what he'd done that day, only that everything felt far different from what he was hoping he'd feel.

After we cleaned up, I left him alone, went outside, and sat on the front steps. I was out there for only a little while when the phone rang and Simon opened the front door and said it was for me.

It was Marian.

She didn't bother saying hello: “What did you mean when you said that you get it?”

“Get it?”

“When I saw you yesterday.” She sounded out of breath. “You told me that you ‘got it.' Got what? Tell me what you meant.”

“Not on the phone.”

A
bout ten miles north of Shady Grove, there's a county road that makes a wide arc around a low stone wall. If you like, you can sit on that wall and look at the expanse of the Hudson Valley rising to the Berkshire Mountains like an outstretched hand and see the trail of that same county road and roads like it that cut internecine paths, enclosing pastures and farms, where the large estates and smaller plots of land spread toward you unobstructed, alert to your privilege of seeing the small sample of the landscaping talents of Buddy Ballantine, when the season is right. We were at least a month away from that season, but Marian and I stood outside her car looking at that view, seeing all there was to see.

We were there because I'd come to Marian's nursery and told her about my being with Eliot and most of our conversation. And because I wanted to see her face.

She was sitting behind her desk in the nursery office with a framed photograph of her and Buddy wearing their Wellies, leaning against the side of a backhoe, both of them looking trim and vital, Buddy's eyes looking up at the sky, Marian turned halfway toward him, her hand wrapped around his bicep, the two of them laughing. When Marian looked at me, I thought, if they ever take a picture of the two of us, that's the expression I'd want to see.

I'd pulled up the only chair available, which was old and uncomfortable. She lowered her eyes and turned her head to look out of the large window next to her, where I counted three greenhouses, as many potting sheds, and half a dozen people pushing wagons and pulling carts loaded with all kinds of plants.

“Was there really something you couldn't tell me over the phone?”

“Any excuse to see you,” I answered, “but yes, there is. I've been thinking about what you said, about you and Buddy, and Laura and Steve. And I understand it now. How deeply you two loved each other, Laura loved Steve. I mean, I understand how that's possible. And why.”

“Why would you give anything I say to you that much thought?”

“Don't you think you're worth thinking about?”

“You're making me blush.”

“Well, that's a start, anyway.”

“We've spoken to each other, what, four times? What am I supposed to think?”

“What do you
want
to think? That I'd drive over a hundred miles just to alleviate the tedium?”

“What I think is, you've made up someone you call Marian Ballantine and I'm not her, and when you find that out, you're going to be deeply disappointed.”

I answered by telling her, “I broke up with Rita. The woman I was going out with.”

“You shouldn't have done that.” There was nothing of a reprimand in her tone, just more of the caution that seemed to rise up in all of our conversations. “Look, Geoffrey, it's sweet of you to find me attractive, but how can I not wonder why you're being so persistent? Is it a male thing?”

“And you're just someone I want to charm?”

“And get tired of. How long do you think being charming and flirtatious will last before you get bored with that and me? And even if you don't, or not right away, in a few years, I'll be older, I'll look older—and you never know how you're going to age, how it will change what you want, who you want. Then what? You'll lose interest, and where will I be?”

“I've never looked too far back and I don't look too far ahead.”

“I can't be that careless.”

“How can you do
any
thing if you worry about something that hasn't happened yet, that you aren't even sure will
ever
happen?”

“Aging happens.”

“Differently for everyone. You don't know that I'll lose interest in you just because we're older, any more than I know that you will with me.”

“We?
” She raised the palm of her hand at me.

“Come on, Marian. You know you're curious.”

“Curious.”

“About this. Where it will lead. And what it will feel like.”

“That wasn't a question.”

“If you say so. But you are curious. Or else you wouldn't have called me yesterday. I know you are and so does Eliot. That's why he's concerned about my being in Shady Grove and the length of my stay. Which makes me think he has a better idea of what's going on than you and I do.”

“Okay, so I thought about—what it would be like to see you. I didn't do anything about it. That's all it was. Wondering what if. And please leave Eliot out of this. You can't know what he knows or what he thinks he knows.”

“Show me some of the places Buddy designed.”

She sat forward.

“I'd like to see them.”

“Haven't you heard what I said?”

“Show me some of the places.”

“First of all, I have a business to run.”

“Your people seem to have things under control.”

“Anyway, it's too early in the year to see much of anything. You won't know what anything looks like.”

“But
you
will.”