Douglas Kennedy - Five Days

‘We feel guilty about vacations in this country. Something to do with our Puritan roots — and our fear that, while we’re away, someone will come along and replace us. Or, in my case, that the business will go elsewhere.’

‘Well, I am determined in the future to actually take proper vacations and go to interesting places with you. Just as I’d like to propose that I use half of that five months’ back pay from the hospital to buy furniture for our apartment. ’

‘Our apartment. I like that. But I can certainly cover the furniture. Anyway, you’ll still have Ben’s college tuition to pay, then Sally will also be starting college next year. ’

He was right, of course — especially since Dan would now be having to get by on his salary alone, which, at $15K per year after taxes, would barely cover his daily living expenses. At least the house was virtually paid off. If I could get around $85K per year in Boston — that’s the usual salary for technologists at big city hospitals — I could cover Ben and Sally’s day-to-day needs, with their tuitions being covered (as Ben’s was now) by financial aid from the U Maine system. Once I found a job at a Boston area hospital I was pretty sure I could negotiate a four/three working week deal — in which I put in four ten-hour days in a row, then took the next three off. I’d move out of the family home and probably ask Lucy if I could take over the apartment she has over her garage — which she usually rents out, but which is conveniently empty right now, and which she would probably let me have for a reasonable sum from now until next August. Then what I’d propose to Dan would be — Sally spends four days per week with him, then three days with me. Lucy’s apartment has two bedrooms. If Sally was insistent about returning to her room at the family home every night I’d still be around Damariscotta half the week for her.

I mentioned all this to Richard — and also noted that, per usual, my head was focussed on practicalities.

‘But a momentous change like this involves vast numbers of practicalities,’ he said. ‘And naturally you are going to have to be back and forth to Maine for Sally and to see Ben. Just as I will need to find an apartment in Bath. I’ll have to be there for business a few days a week. In fact, if Sally decides she doesn’t want to spend half the time at your apartment, you can stay in my new place in Bath.’

‘But then where would I see Sally?’ I said, knowing that Dan would not want me around the house after I moved out to live with another man.

‘You’re right. You’ll still need a place of your own in Damariscotta until she goes to college. My hope is that I can find a buyer in the next year for my insurance company, sell up, and try to write full-time. I also know of a guy who teaches business at Babson College here in Boston, and who told me they’re always on the lookout for adjunct professors. I might throw my rйsumй his way. Maybe they’ll need someone to teach actuarial science. It could bring in a little extra income, though I think I can get a good price for my company. And if I give Muriel the house outright I think she’ll have a hard time demanding a share of the company.’

‘How will she take you leaving her?’ I asked, knowing that I was venturing into complex territory.

‘I think she’ll be shocked, furious. But she knows that the marriage has been moribund for years, that we have been living very separate lives. Still, that’s been the status quo. I am about to change all that. And she will not be happy. But I’ll be happy.’

I reached for his hand.

‘And I’ll be happy,’ I said. ‘Beyond happy.’

‘And your husband will be.?’

‘Shocked, furious, etc. But we too have been adrift for years. He’ll probably tell me that he’ll change. But it’s too late for all that now. My life is, from this point on, with you.’

His fingers tightened around mine.

‘Life can be amazing,’ he said.

‘If you meet the right person at the right moment. Timing is everything. I was only asked to go to this conference ten days ago. Had I not said yes. ’

‘And I was due to see some clients in New Hampshire on Friday afternoon. The fact that they cancelled, the fact that I got to the hotel precisely when you did. ’

‘The fact that you started up a conversation with me while we were in line. ’

‘The fact that we both ended up at that movie house in Cambridge. ’

‘And I only decided to see that film when I saw an ad in the Boston Phoenix, and happened to be around the corner from the movie house at the time. ’

‘The fact that I didn’t show up until a few minutes later, when the lights were already dark. ’

‘Life is so predicated on the convergence of so many small details that land us in a certain place at a certain time. But happenstance doesn’t transform into anything unless choices are made, decisions rendered. Such as the fact that my initial private reaction to your offer of a drink after the movie was: No way. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I simply had never, in all my married years, gone out with a man I’d just met for a drink.’

‘And until last night I’ve always, like you, been faithful.’

‘That’s admirable.’

‘On a certain level, perhaps. But fidelity only works if there’s love. Muriel and I haven’t been in love for. well, knowing what I felt all those years ago with Sarah and, most tellingly, knowing what I feel now with you, I must ask myself if Muriel and I were ever really in love?’

‘It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself since yesterday about me and Dan. The thing is, we’re hardly unique. You scratch most marriages, you discover that people chose their spouse for all sorts of highly compromised reasons, and that they projected onto that other person what they believed they needed — or, worse yet, deserved — at a given moment.’

‘Which is what makes this, us, so singular, so extraordinary. I still find myself asking myself if this really happened. Can I really have met the woman of my life?’

My fingers tightened around his again.

‘The man of my life.’

‘It’s astonishing,’ he said.

‘And just a little crazy.’

‘Nothing wrong with some long-overdue romantic madness.’

‘And so say all of us. But I know that, back in Damariscotta, people will talk. Especially when word gets around, people will accuse me of being irresponsible, immature, having a whopper-sized midlife crisis. And Sally’s classmates — having heard my news from their parents — will, no doubt, say the usual hateful things that teenage girls sling at each other. I will have to talk to Sally about all this — and what she might expect to encounter in school after my news is public.’

‘And what will you tell her?’

‘That life never operates according to plan. That love is the most longed for, yet most mysterious, of emotions. That I met you and, within twenty-four hours, knew that I loved you profoundly. That she knows her father and I have been rudderless for years. That I have a chance here — a real chance at happiness. And I am taking it. But that she will not, in the process, lose me. That I will still always be there for her.’

‘How do you think she’ll react to all that?’

‘Horribly. Especially since her first concern will be that overriding adolescent girl worry — I’m going to be made to look stupid. I am going to be the subject of public ridicule thanks to my love-gooey Mom. I can hear her already telling me how I have ruined her life. Not because I am leaving her father — but because she’s going to be taunted and tormented by her fellow cheerleaders. But Sally will survive this. Dan will survive this.’

‘And Ben?’