Dan Wakefield - Starting Over - A Novel

“It’s pretty mucky,” Potter said.

“Oh, I don’t just mean the weather. You know. The world, I guess. The whole thing that’s out there.”

“Yes,” Potter said.

He found himself, much to his surprise and embarrassment, fighting back tears. He cleared his throat, and managed to look straight at her. “I know just what you mean,” he said.

“I know you do.”

They sat for some time in a comfortable, communicative silence, listening to the radiator gurgle, and then a class bell rang, and Miss Korsky put her coat on. Potter stood up. “I’ll walk you to the subway,” he said.

“Thanks.”

They walked, heads down against the rain, to the Arlington Street station, and Miss Korsky stopped at the entrance, smiled, and said, “Thanks again.”

Potter put his hand on the top of her head, very lightly. “Be Okay,” he said.

“You, too,” Miss Korsky said, and then descended quickly into the dank entry of the trains.

Potter walked swiftly away, as if going somewhere, and then slowed down, allowing the tears to come because they were hardly discernible from the rain, and no one could tell he was quietly crying, nor could he have explained that he felt quite warm, and good, because he had somehow experienced a blessing. That visit. That hour. That day.

“We need to get away,” said Marilyn. “Take a trip somewhere.”

Potter thought how often he had heard that advice, or given it himself, when things were going wrong. It was supposed to be a cure-all for failing relationships, like taking Vitamin C for a cold. He didn’t mention that, however, not wanting to take a defeatist attitude. He simply asked, “Where?”

“Well, I was thinking—how about someplace New Englandy. Vermont, maybe.”

“Vermont?”

“Why not? It’s supposed to be beautiful. We could see the leaves turn.”

Potter glanced out the window, and back at Marilyn. “Honey, they’ve already turned. In fact, they’ve fallen off.”

“Not all of them.”

“It’s almost the first of November, for Christsake.”

“Well, then we ought to go right away, before it snows.”

Potter tried to examine the logic of this for a moment, but saw a maze that would lead nowhere but a fight, and so agreed to drive up to Vermont for the weekend. He tried, genuinely, to sound enthusiastic about it. He even convinced himself that it might really help. Perhaps the change of scene, the novelty of sleeping in a new and different place, strange and remote, might help revive his steadily waning desire for Marilyn. An old familiar syndrome was setting in. The excitement of novelty was gone, and Potter had begun to notice little flaws in Marilyn he hadn’t originally seen: the slight but sure sag of her breasts, the lack of a real curve to her calves, the corns on her toes, like reddish sores. One of her lower back teeth was slightly discolored.

He drank more before taking her to bed. In an effort to recharge desire with variety, they had stopped going to the comfort and familiarity of the bed itself, but fucked on the couch, on the living room rug, on the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor, and once, standing up, in the closet. He had gone down on her, and she had gone down on him, and they had gone down on one another together. They had done it at her place and at his place, and once they did it in the Bertelsens’ upstairs bathroom during a cocktail party.

They were running out of places.

They would try Vermont.

Vermont looked just like Vermont should look. What leaves remained were deep red and gold, and Potter agreed they were beautiful. He agreed that in fact the whole state, leaves or no, was a beautiful area, with its rolling hills and picture-postcard red barns and white clapboard farmhouses, its drowsy little towns and sweeping valleys. It seemed to Potter that in the course of the drive from Boston to the Middlebury Inn he had agreed to Marilyn’s endorsements of the beauties of Vermont at least five hundred times.

They arrived a little after four in the afternoon. Marilyn thought the place was charming and that their room, though rather spare, was appropriately quaint. Potter agreed, pulling a quart of Cutty Sark out of his suitcase and bringing the two water glasses from the bathroom.

“Are you starting already?” Marilyn asked.

“What do you mean, ‘already’?”

“Well, it’s not even five. Is it?”

Potter looked at his watch. “No, it’s not five. It’s eleven minutes and some seconds after four. And I’ve been driving for five hours.”

“You had a martini at lunch.”

“I know I had a martini at lunch. What does that have to do with wanting a drink after driving for five hours?”

Marilyn got out a cigarette. “Never mind,” she said. “Go ahead.”

Potter set the glasses down on the bureau. “Oh, no. Jesus. I don’t want to offend you.”

He took out a cigarette for himself, and jabbed it into his mouth.

“Phil, I’m sorry. I just want us to have a good time. I want it to be nice. Let’s not spoil it.”

“You mean if I have one drink before five that’s going to spoil everything?”

Marilyn sighed. “Please? Phil?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Listen. Let’s take a walk. OK?”

They walked around the town square and found an old-fashioned drugstore with the curling metal-backed chairs. There was a sign behind the soda fountain that advertised phosphates. Marilyn and Phil both had cherry phosphates, marvelling over the fact that you could still get this wonderful concoction that neither of them had had since childhood. The phosphates confirmed the fact that they had escaped the jangling city, the Pepsi Generation present; that they had gotten away from it all.

They returned to the room a few minutes after five, and Potter pretended to have forgotten all about the booze. He said he’d like to change for dinner, and Marilyn said that was a good idea, she wanted to do that herself. Before Marilyn had unpacked her clothes and selected what to wear, Potter had washed his face, doused some Old Spice cologne under his armpits, and put on a new shirt and tie.

“I think I’ll head on down to the lounge,” he said casually, “and meet you there. OK?”

“Oh—sure,” she said, a little surprised to see him ready so soon. “I think I’ll take a bath.”

“Swell. Take your time.”

He was able to bolt down a double dry martini on the rocks and then order a regular-sized one that he was sipping in a casual way by the time Marilyn came down. She was wearing an outfit he hadn’t seen before. It was a blue taffeta dress that came down just a few inches above her ankles and had a big bow at the neck. It struck Potter as just the right thing for a formal tea at the Ladies Aid Society in 1955.

“What’s the matter?” Marilyn asked.

“Huh? Oh, nothing. I just hadn’t seen that before—your, uh, frock.”

“Oh, this,” she said, looking down at the dress as if surprised it was on her. “I thought it would be Vermontish. You know. Conservative.”

“Oh.”

She ordered a dry vermouth, and Potter had another martini.

There was only one other couple in the dining room when they ate. An elderly pair. In the heavy silence of the room, the clink of silverware sounded like gunfire.

Potter had a steak and most of a bottle of wine. Marilyn had the New England Boiled Dinner, and Indian Pudding for dessert. She said it was delicious, and chided Potter for having the same old thing he could have had in any restaurant in Boston. Potter mumbled something about freedom of choice being one of the most sacred principles of the New England heritage. While she finished her Indian Pudding he had a cognac.