Jonathan Dee - Palladio

They were in the front car, and as they rocketed through the darkness John could see each station, grimy white, floodlit, bracketed by thin pillars, turning into view a few seconds before the brakes’ drawn-out screech.

“I think it’s time,” John said. Rebecca kept staring straight ahead. “I’ve been feeling sad, too, since you mention it. Sad about being stuck, you know? That’s the sense I have, when I get a chance to look up from what I’m doing. Being stuck.”

“Well, we shouldn’t get married just to cheer ourselves up.”

“Of course not. But I think our moods are trying to tell us something. It’s time for … it’s time for Act Two. Do you know what I mean?”

The train stopped at Chambers Street, and when it did she kissed him lightly.

“But when I think about it,” he said, trying to keep his tone light, “I think about other things, too. Other changes I want to make.”

“Like?”

“Like I don’t think I want to raise a family in New York. I know that’s one of the reasons we moved out to Brooklyn, but I’ve just changed my mind about it, what can I say. It doesn’t seem sufficiently different, to me. Brooklyn, I mean.”

“Well then where would you want to go?” she said softly. “Out to the suburbs, or what?”

“Oh there’s no way—”

“Thank God, me neither.”

“I was thinking of something more radically different. I mean it has to be a city, or near a city, because otherwise you and I couldn’t keep doing what we do. Not a lot of ad agencies in small towns. But I wouldn’t mind, to be totally honest with you, moving back down South.”

His heart had begun racing.

“Back down South?” Rebecca said. “You mean like nearer your family?”

“That’s not what I was thinking of, though there wouldn’t be anything wrong with being a little closer to them than we are now, particularly if we have children.”

“What are you thinking of, then?”

Suddenly they were there, and John hesitated, trying not to lose his nerve. “Actually,” he said, “and I know you’ll laugh, or have some reaction, but I’ve been thinking pretty seriously about—”

“Oh God,” Rebecca said. “Not Virginia? Not the Mal Osbourne thing?”

His fear of crossing that threshold went beyond the fear of disagreement. Rebecca had a strong temper and a sharp style and thus won most of their arguments, arguments which John had little stomach for anyway: but the timidity he felt in those few seconds was more like a fear of sincerity, a reluctance to show himself even to the person closest to him in the world, and it infuriated him. “Yes,” he said, feeling himself blush, “all right, god damn it, I’m thinking about the Mal Osbourne thing. I want to do it. I don’t know why I should be embarrassed about what I want.”

He had raised his voice to the point where others on the subway car turned to look, which was extraordinary for him; and Rebecca, seeing that he was upset, responded more gently. “You’d really just pick up and move to Virginia, just like that? Sell the apartment? I didn’t realize you were that unhappy here.”

“Well, first of all, it depends what you want to do. I mean I’m not just telling you what I want like what I want is the only important thing. I know you have a chance to make partner, you’ve put in a lot of work toward that, and it would be hard to leave all that behind and start over.”

They pulled into the Wall Street station. The doors opened on to the pale, water-stained mosaics and the dark vaulted ceilings. No one got on or off. When the train was moving noisily again, John resumed, his mouth close to her ear.

“But what I’m asking myself, the last few weeks, is why are we here? Why did we come here? It’s the most expensive place to live in the country; we had to scrimp to buy a place we couldn’t even raise children in, really. And would we want to raise kids here? Most of the children I meet here, teenagers, sons and daughters of my bosses or clients — they scare me. They’re perfect and they know too much. Why did we come to this place? I think it’s only because we were led here when we were too young to question it. If you want to work in advertising, this is where most of the famous agencies are. If you want to be a lawyer, this is where most of the famous law firms are. Well, now we know we’re good enough to get those jobs. So is this still what we want?”

Rebecca was looking at him so intently she almost gave the impression of not listening to what he was saying. She was curious but not frightened. “Every couple over the age of twenty-five in New York has this same conversation,” she said, “about why are we living here. I’m not so much interested in that. I’m more worried that you’re not happy doing what you’re doing. I was under a different impression all this time.”

“Lately. Lately I’m not so happy with it. I’m asking myself questions about it. Not about selling out or serving big corporations or anything like that. More … aesthetic questions. About content.”

“There are other businesses you could get into.”

John shook his head. “It’s not a bad business. It doesn’t have to be. The stuff that Osbourne says about getting rid of the smirk, about saying something instead of finding new ways to say nothing — it touches some chord in me. I’m sorry if that seems silly. Trying to break that conspiracy between us and the audience, where everyone’s scared to death to get caught taking anything seriously.”

“Well,” Rebecca said, still cautiously, “if you want to talk about having children: a certain desire for security goes along with that, you know? A certain anti-whimsy. Osbourne has no clients, no staff, no partners. You’ve only met the guy two or three times in your life. God knows how much money he has or what sort of facilities he’s found down there.”

John nodded. “Maybe it’ll fail,” he said. “Probably it will fail. But I’d like to be part of it. I’d hate to get to the end of my life and have to say that I did what I did because I never found out if there was any other way of doing it.”

Rebecca nodded and sat back; she gazed at nothing, at their warped reflection in the window, for the rest of the trip. She was stricken by this conversation, as John had hoped she would be, yet he still felt guilty for unsettling her. “Just tell me you’ll think about it,” he said as they waited for the light to cross Atlantic. “If you don’t want to do it, we won’t, and everything will be fine. I’m really not unhappy with the life we have now.”

Saturday another postcard arrived from Charlottesville, this one picturing the quadrangle at the University of Virginia. “What is a movie?” it said. “A work of art which owes its existence to men and women who are only interested in increasing the amount of money they make. And yet movies sometimes achieve true greatness, artistic greatness; and when they do, no one is shocked and amazed, no one declares that greatness and movies are incompatible. Why can’t advertising, which comes into being via the same principle, occupy the same position in American culture?”

Weeks went by and John kept an eye on his girlfriend, who seemed to be keeping an eye on him as well. She was less talkative than usual — not angry or depressed, just preoccupied. He felt the same way. He didn’t bring up Charlottesville again because he knew it was on her mind anyway. The fact that they weren’t married, a fact which had seemed negligible to both of them for so long (when the time came for children, they had agreed long ago, they’d make it all official then), seemed suddenly to be gathering real weight. But John did his best not to think too much about contingencies. Instead he daydreamed a lot, though for some reason he caught himself reimagining his past much more often than his future. Other paths his life might have taken, other areas of study, other places he had lived. His old girlfriend in Berkeley, who had left their apartment one day and never returned. His thoughts about what might lie ahead were often short-circuited by the fear that Osbourne had forgotten about him or changed his mind about the whole project or was disappointed that he had heard no expression of support from John, even though he had left no way to get in touch. They were well into the spring by now, and there was no telling what, if anything, Osbourne might want from him.