Bill Clegg - Did You Ever Have A Family

I met Lydia the day Robert was moved to the rehab unit and his doctor asked that I come back at the end of the day. For the first time since I’d checked in, I’d returned to the motel before nightfall. I could hear the vacuum cleaner going as I put the key in the door, and for a second I hesitated before opening. I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to see who performed the daily magic of tidying the room and arranging my things so carefully. I enjoyed and imagined into the mystery, so before I turned the key in the lock, I stopped and listened to the hum of the vacuum, the sound of its being pushed along the floor and bumping gently into furniture. I must not have noticed it turn off because without warning the door opened, and suddenly there she was. In jeans and clinging white T-shirt, a pile of brown hair knotted loosely on her head, at least ten years younger than I was. Young. Beautiful. Lydia.

She rushed off that first day, and neither of us said more than awkward hellos. I came back the following morning after an early breakfast with Robert and she had not yet arrived. For some reason, I felt nervous. I began cleaning up the room and folding my clothes, which is what I ought to have done from the beginning. Her job was to clean the rooms, not pick up after the guests. I stopped short of making the bed and instead made sure the toilet was flushed, and I tidied a pile of hospital paperwork scattered on the desk. She turned up before noon and didn’t bother with knocking. I suppose it hadn’t occurred to her I’d be there, so she just used her key and came right on in. I was sitting in the chair by the bed and remained silent as she set her large plastic bucket with cleaning supplies down on the carpet inside the door. She was wearing the same jeans as the day before and again a T-shirt, but this time light blue instead of white. I said good morning and she screamed.

What happened over the next three weeks is not something I’m proud of, but it is not a regret. Not like so much else is. Lydia Morey was a sad young woman trapped in a bad marriage, and I was a frightened man who knew his wife would soon be dead. There was more — she was sexy. Young, healthy, and underneath those tight jeans and T-shirts, she had the curvy figure of a pinup. And though she was troubled, she was also tough in ways that let me know she’d be okay. That she’d figure her life out somehow and survive. I hope she did.

Mostly, we just talked. She told me about the father she did not know, her mother’s sharp tongue and how she bullied her to stay with her husband despite his teasing and his violence. She talked about wanting to run away. Driving to some town in the Middle West somewhere where no one knew her and where she could begin again. It was surprising and sad to see someone so young feel so hopeless. I listened but I offered no solutions, no advice. How could I? My life was in tatters and I hadn’t a clue what to do. She listened to me tell my tale of woe, and we were able to laugh at it all, even the overdose, even the cancer. Our lives felt unreal and far away while we were in that motel room. As if we were telling stories of other people’s lives to each other, not our own. Maybe it’s what we both needed then. I don’t know. What I do know is that it didn’t feel bad or wrong. I’d never been unfaithful to Kay in the eighteen years of our marriage. Never been seriously tempted, either. But before I left the Betsy, two days before I returned to Atlanta, I went to bed with Lydia. It started when she kissed me. First on my forehead and then on my lips. We had been sitting on the bed and there had been a long silence. I had just told her I was taking Robert back to Atlanta to a hospital where he could continue his therapy. There was nothing to say. We both knew I would never come back to Wells, Connecticut, and to the Betsy. Our days together were about to be over. So she kissed me. And I kissed her back.

To this day I remember those hours with Lydia Morey as some of the sweetest and most desperate of my life. I wonder if she remembers them at all.

There are barely any clothes in Lolly’s bag: one bathing suit, one sundress, panties, flip-flops, flats, two T-shirts, and a pair of men’s pajamas stolen from Adam years ago. There are more vitamin bottles and notebooks than garments.

The man who reintroduced himself as Brody had walked her back to the car and drove her to a Super 8 motel less than a mile down the road. When she said she had no ID, he checked her in with his credit card and driver’s license. He carried Lolly’s duffel bag into the room, scribbled his number down, and told June he’d take the Subaru to his friend’s garage nearby to put on a real tire and check the rest. He’d return it in the morning.

Right away, she collapsed. Curled under the sheets, the first she’d felt for more than a week, and slept until morning. She was awake when Brody came by to give her the car keys. She’d already been to the ATM in the lobby to get him money for the tire and the motel room. It was only two hundred dollars, the maximum she could withdraw. When he pushed it away, she folded the bills and slipped them into his jeans pocket. You got more than you expected when I asked you for help, she said, more words than she’d spoken in weeks.

I’m glad I was the one you asked, he replied, the first wrinkle of flirtation in his voice.

Once he has gone, she sits on the bed next to Lolly’s duffel, which she has filled again, but not before folding and arranging each item carefully. She keeps the notebooks on the bed and sits next to them before pulling one to her lap. There are three, each with the same orange cover Lolly preferred since high school. And just as they had been then, the notebooks are bursting with folded papers, poems ripped from the pages of the New Yorker , illegible memos from the photo editor she’d been assisting at the fashion magazine where she’d started as an intern, crushed receipts, a MetroCard, take-out menus from the city, bills, pages torn from gallery catalogs. Lolly had always used these beat-up old notebooks as a kind of portable file cabinet for her life, but there was no order, no system. The one June holds was nearest the top of the duffel, beneath the light blue towel exploding with vitamin bottles. The cover is unmarked. She opens it, lightly brushes the pages with her fingertips. She remembers cataloging unfinished canvases by a painter she once represented who committed suicide. His family asked her to go through his apartment and studio and organize whatever she felt was important. She remembers finding an old Boy Scout manual filled with precise pencil drawings of animals — bears mostly, some gentle koalas and black-bear cubs, others angry, with teeth exposed and claws out. Very likely no one had ever seen these drawings, and she remembers having the fleeting instinct to steal the book and keep it herself. Something about it was so private and beautiful, so hopeful, even given the situation that would cause her to find it. She did not steal it but instead included it in a show at the gallery in New York and sold it to one of the artist’s long-time collectors. It was one of the last shows she’d organized in New York before leaving for London.

On the first three pages of Lolly’s notebook are floor plans of imaginary houses, each with one bedroom, several large public spaces, and two rooms labeled LOLLY’S STUDIO and WILL’S STUDY. Studio for what? June wonders. Lolly had dabbled in pastel drawings and watercolor painting early in high school, but June hadn’t heard her mention any of that since. The pages that follow are filled with half-written poems, incomplete to-do lists, seating plans for the wedding reception. There are pages of sample menus from Feast of Reason that Lolly kept asking Rick to revise and reimagine. There are pictures of wedding cakes and flowers pulled from magazines; and there are late-bill notices from Con Ed for Lolly and Will’s apartment in the city.