Richard Russo - That Old CapeMagic

It took a while, but they finally found where they’d honeymooned. It was smaller than Griffin remembered but otherwise unchanged, except that it was no longer an inn. An elderly woman in a straw hat was weeding the mulch around some new plantings on the front lawn. She looked up when she heard the car door shut and struggled to her feet as he approached. “It’s hell getting old,” she said, shading her eyes with one hand, scout fashion. “I’d like to ride in a car like that once more before I die.”

“You just might be the woman of my dreams,” Griffin said.

“Who’s that, then?” she wondered, indicating Joy.

“My wife. She hates it.”

“Her hair, right?”

He nodded.

“Attractive woman. What can an old lady do for you?”

“This used to be an inn,” he told her, aware that this might not be news to her. “My wife and I stayed here on our honeymoon. Thirty-four years ago.”

“I’ve owned it almost that long,” she said, turning to regard it. “Bought it with my husband. Then the rat-bastard up and died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”

She turned back to look him over. She had the palest, most piercing blue eyes he’d ever seen, full of kindness but even more full of intelligence. He’d hate to have to lie to her for a living. She looked in Joy’s direction. “So what’s wrong?”

“We’ve been arguing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” he said. “Can you recommend an inn here in Truro?”

She shook her head. “Between here and Provincetown there isn’t much but motels. Borderline sleazy, most of them. You want something nice, you’d best head back toward Wellfleet. Couple of good inns there.”

“Thanks. We’ll take your advice.”

“Do that.”

“If you don’t mind my saying, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman of your generation use the term rat-bastard before.”

“I used to be a writer. Still love words, the sound of them. Fart-hammer is my new favorite, though I can’t seem to find a sentence to put it in.”

“What did you write?”

“Biography, mostly. A poem or two, when the fit was on me. ‘Strange fits of passion I have known…’”

“‘And I will dare to tell, / But in the Lover’s ear alone, / What once to me befell,’” he continued. But if his ability to finish the stanza impressed the old woman, she gave no sign. “My parents were both English professors,” he explained, stifling the urge to tell her that one of them happened to be in the trunk of the car. “I’m another, actually. And a writer, too.”

“Hah!” she said. “No wonder your wife’s in tears.”

It was true. Joy was crying. She hadn’t been when he got out of the car, but now she was. Silently, but not trying to hide the fact, either.

“Go to her,” the woman suggested.

“I can’t stay here?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

Back in the car he took a deep breath. “Are you going to tell me about it, Joy? I know you called him back when I was in the shower.” He’d seen it listed on the phone’s recent calls list.

She didn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about, and he was grateful for that. She wiped her tears on the back of her wrist, and for a moment they just sat there. The old woman had gone back to her weeding, though Griffin had the distinct impression she hadn’t forgotten about them.

Finally, Joy said, “We can talk about it if you want. But first call your mother back.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s your mother. Because you yelled at her. Because she’s old. Because you’ve only got one.”

That night Griffin ’s insomnia returned with a vengeance, payback, apparently, for the previous night’s blissful sleep. Joy, to her credit, had tried to head the argument off. “We don’t have to do this,” she said after he called his mother back, leaving a brief apology on her machine for barking at her and promising to call again later in the week to discuss a visit. “There’s no need. Nothing happened.”

But she seemed to know they’d quarrel, and that the argument would be the most intense and bitter and wounding of their marriage. They’d finally quit out of exhaustion sometime after midnight, and since then he’d lain awake listening for the clock on the nightstand, which buzzed faintly every time the minute hand changed over. Amazing, really, how many bad thoughts you could cram into the sixty seconds between buzzes.

The day he found Joy sobbing in the shower, some part of him had known Tommy had to be involved. Even back when he and Elaine were still married and they were a foursome traipsing off to Mexico, Griffin knew about his friend’s crush on Joy. Out on the balcony of their resort hotel, working through some crucial scene, he would look up from the typewriter and see Tommy staring down at the pool below, and he could tell it was Joy he was looking at, not his own wife. Nor was his partner much interested in disguising the fact. “Lucky fellow,” he’d say before they went back to work. It had been part of the narrative of their long friendship that Griffin was born fortunate. Raised by two college professors, he’d gone to good schools that without exception identified him as gifted. Tommy, who was several years older, had grown up in a series of foster homes, knocked around rough urban public schools, his dyslexia undiagnosed, and was thought by everybody, including himself, to be dumb and lazy. First the army, then the community college where he’d met Elaine, after that some studio gofer work. “We’re both lucky,” Griffin would respond with a sweeping gesture that included their lovely young wives, the pool deck below with its palm trees and swim-up bar, the ocean just beyond the pink patio walls, the portable typewriter that provided them with all of this. “Yeah, sure,” Tommy always replied, “but there’s luck and then there’s luck.”

At what point had his feelings for her been reciprocated? This Joy had refused to tell him, asking what difference could it possibly make, so he’d spent the long night scrolling back through their marriage, especially the times he’d behaved badly. There’d been a fair number, he had to admit. Had his wife already fallen for Tommy the day she told Griffin she hated jazz? Probably not, but the seed might well have been sown that early. It was also around this time, he recalled, that Tommy had been desperately trying to locate his birth mother. “Why, for Christ sake?” he’d asked him one drunken night, hoping to diminish his friend’s need for something that was bound to disappoint him. “Don’t you realize how fortunate you are?”

“Jack,” Joy said, cautioning him.

“No, look at the man.” Griffin appealed directly to her here. “He has no baggage. He moves about the world a free man. He possesses large, untapped reserves of the very ignorance that bliss was invented to reward.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said, “but the thing is, she’s out there somewhere. And she’s older now. Things change. What if she’s wishing she never gave me up? What if she wants to tell me how sorry she is?”

“That’s what you don’t understand about parents,” Griffin explained. “They don’t apologize. We apologize. Take this last weekend.” Again he turned to Joy, who, knowing what was coming, looked away. “We’re summoned to Sacramento, right? It’s the twins’ birthday. The rest of the family’s going to be there so of course we have to be there, too. It’s Momma Jill making the pitch. On and on. When she finally lets her voice fall, we explain that we can’t-”

“Who explained?” Joy interrupted.

“They’re your parents,” Griffin pointed out.

Tommy and Joy exchanged a suffering look.