Robin Black - Life Drawing

This time, though, we were quiet at the start. As I drove we exchanged only occasional comments on the traffic, the choice of Hudson River crossing. When we approached the George Washington Bridge, Owen said we must be the last people on earth to pay cash at tolls anymore and I said we couldn’t be since the lines in the cash lane were so long, but that I knew what he meant. He wondered if we should get one of those auto-pay devices and I said we barely drove enough to make it worth the effort. We were a bit stiff with each other, as we had been for days, but I didn’t know anything was about to shift until just as we got past the toll, Owen said, “There’s something we need to talk about, Gus.” And then I knew immediately what it would be.

“Right,” I said. “I guess there is.”

“Nora,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, after a moment. “Nora.”

“I’m …” He was looking out the window.

“I know what you are. I’m not blind.”

(Later, just hours later, sitting at dinner with his parents, the phrase We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it would rattle in my head like a loose nail I couldn’t shake free. How long had I been waiting for exactly this exchange? How often had I told myself not to worry in advance? That we would cross that bridge when we came to it. And then there we were, silent across an actual bridge, life laughing at us as we made our way from one shore to the next.)

“Well, I guess it’s good you’re talking about it,” I said, reasonably — though it didn’t feel good. And I didn’t want to be reasonable. But it was what we had sworn after the disaster of Bill. If you ever feel tempted … if you feel yourself falling, fess up. Nip it in the bud. We can deal with these things together. They’re bound to come up in a life. But we can deal with them. If we’re honest. We’ll cross that bridge …

“I know that you’ve wondered,” he said. “And I’m not saying you’re entirely wrong.”

“It’s a little hard to miss.”

“I don’t know what it is,” he said. “I don’t exactly know what’s happening.”

“She’s very lovely.” My voice sounded steady, detached — as though I were commenting on a photograph of somebody’s niece. “It’s easy to see why.”

“It isn’t that. It isn’t that at all, really. She’s …” He turned to me. “Do you want to hear all this, Gus?”

No, I did not. I, Gus Edelman, emphatically did not want to hear this. Nor did I want it to be true. Nor did I want to be stuck behind an enormous truck that moved with the vehicular equivalent of a series of spasmodic coughs. I didn’t want anything that was happening to be happening. But I had also slipped into some other mode. An insensate autopilot mode. As though there were some emergency preparedness crew inside me ready to take over, to behave calmly, to focus on damage control.

“I want us to do whatever is most likely to help,” I said. “If it helps you to talk about her, then I think you should talk about her.”

He didn’t respond. The truck changed lanes. I prayed to a vast imaginary power that he wouldn’t want to talk about her.

“No,” he finally said. “I don’t think it will help.”

We were silent all the way to Greenwich.

“What do you want to happen?” I finally asked. “Are you considering …?”

“Honestly, Gus, I just wish she had never shown up.”

He meant Alison — not Nora. I knew from the harshness of his tone.

“She was supposed to stay only weeks,” I said. “Remember? It’s almost funny, isn’t it?”

“Almost.”

We didn’t speak again until Bridgeport.

“The reason I’m telling you, Gus, is because … because back with that other thing, back before, the part I couldn’t bear was the lying. I don’t want to do that to you.”

Even in disloyalty, he was the better person.

“I appreciate your telling me,” I said. “I would hate the lies too. I will say it again, for the billionth time, I am eternally sorry that I put you through that. But I guess, I’m just not sure what exactly you are telling me. Have you …?”

“No. We haven’t … nothing like that … Though a couple of nights ago …”

I felt immediately ill.

“We were in the barn and she … she told me how she feels.”

I could picture it too clearly. Nora sitting on our old couch, her shoes off, her feet tucked under her. Doubtless, pages of his on her lap. That earnestness of hers in full flower. I’ve fallen in love with you, Owen .

“And you told her what in return?”

“Nothing really. But my guard was down. I couldn’t muster … I didn’t say much.”

“Of course your guard was down. You’ve done nothing but moon over that child … Honestly, what did you think was going to happen?”

He didn’t respond. He wasn’t going to let this become a fight. And he was right. There was no point.

“Never mind,” I said. “I appreciate that nothing happened. And that you’ve told me.”

“I won’t lie to you,” he said again. “She told me how she feels, but she also told me she would never act on it. That she had to tell me, but not because she would ever do anything …”

“And you believed her? Why? Because she wears a cross around her neck? Or is it her beatific smile?”

More silence. More miles.

As New Haven slipped past, I said, “Can’t you just send her away? Tell her the way she feels about you makes it impossible having her next door. Because she must have friends she can stay with. It really can’t be that the property next to ours is the only patch of land on this planet where she can exist and thrive.”

He didn’t respond. Another minute passed by. And then another.

He didn’t want her to go.

“Ah.” I changed lanes for no reason. “I guess it’s more complicated than that.” He really was in love with her — or something like. “Okay. What do you need from me?” It was the question I had sworn I would ask if this day ever came. “What can I do to help make this better? And keep us together? Assuming that’s what you want. Maybe the two of us should stay in Cape Cod. If she can’t leave, maybe we should be the ones to leave. If you can’t bring yourself to send her away, maybe you could bring yourself to stay away. Until …”

But I had lost him, I could tell. His mind was elsewhere.

“Five years ago,” he said. “You told me, afterward, you told me that you had needed … all of it. That it was, I don’t know. It was part of a journey you were on. That it had felt necessary to you.”

“I don’t believe I said ‘journey.’ I don’t say things like ‘part of a journey.’ That doesn’t sound like me.”

“Let me finish, Gus. This is difficult.”

“It’s difficult all around, Owen. Just in case that’s lost on you.”

“I don’t want to sleep with her, Gus.”

“Oh, please.” The image, sudden, vivid, seared. “The hell you don’t.”

“I don’t mean I have no desire. I mean I don’t want it to happen. And it won’t. I wouldn’t. She wouldn’t either. But there’s something I need to see through. I don’t think we can fix this with geography … Not by sending her away or by our running off to Europe. Or the Cape — with my parents, for God’s sake. You’d last ten minutes. And anyway I don’t think that’s going to help here. I suppose what I’m asking you to do …”

“You’re asking an awful lot. If you’re asking what I think you’re asking.”

“When I stuck with you, Gus, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I don’t know if you ever understood. It actually wasn’t possible. That’s how it felt. For longer than you know. I was doing something I wasn’t capable of doing … And you’re the one who told me this. That sometimes life demands things of you, that just the fact of being alive means allowing for possibilities that may be far from what you’d planned or even hoped.”