Douglas Kennedy - Five Days

And then we came together. And.

I am not very experienced in the wider world of sex. Even Lucy was shocked to learn that Eric and Dan were the only two men I had ever slept with. She herself could count eight lovers ‘before, during and after my bad marriage. and the fact that I can count them all on less than two hands makes me think I really should have been having more sex with more men at that point when it wasn’t so damn hard to meet the sort of men you want to be having sex with, rather than the nightmares who only seem to be on offer to middle-aged women living in small Maine towns’.

I had to laugh when she told me this. Just as it also fueled a larger encroaching despair I’d had for years about the lukewarm physical life I had with Dan. Until he lost his job we made love at least three nights a week. Even if it was, at best, thermal and adequate, at least it was there. But when he lost his job, his libido also went south.

Making love with Richard was nothing less than revelatory. In the three, four times we had fallen into bed since arriving here yesterday evening, the profundity of the act itself — the way it so expressed the overpowering love we had just discovered and now shared — seemed only to augment and grow every time we were entwined together. Feeling him move inside me didn’t just trigger an eruption of sensuality so far beyond anything in my past experience; it was also so palpably intimate. What was even more extraordinary was the fact that this conjoining, this total fusion, was so immediate. From the very moment he first entered me.

‘I never want to leave this bed,’ I whispered as we clung to each other afterwards.

‘Well, we can stay here all day then.’

‘There is the little problem of all our things at our respective rooms back at the God-awful hotel. Sorry to raise this dreary practicality. but won’t they want us checked out of there by midday. which is kind of now? And my car is still there.’

‘Yes, that thought did cross my mind. But I use that place all the time and know all the duty managers there. So I’ll give one of them a call in a few minutes, and see if I can negotiate a late checkout. or even offer to tip one of the maids twenty bucks if she’ll pack up everything for us. Then we can run over there and pick everything up later this afternoon.’

‘A change of clothes and a hairbrush would be welcome. But this suite is a fortune. And we certainly don’t have to stay here tonight. In fact, we could—’

‘We’re staying here tonight,’ Richard said. ‘I’ve spent far too much of my life being cautious about money. And what has such frugality finally given me?’

‘Well, it’s given you the money to buy that apartment — and change your life.’

‘True — but I should have been really living before this weekend. I’ve gone nowhere, seen so very little. Haven’t been to a concert or a play in years.’

‘But you have been reading.’

‘The cheap escape route. It’s like what Voltaire said about marriage — it’s the only adventure available for the coward.’

‘But the fact that you can quote Voltaire—’

‘Big deal.’

‘Tell me another insurance man from Bath, Maine — or anywhere else for that matter — who can do that. Anyway, now that we’ll be here, in Boston, much of the time, there’s a great orchestra here. There are great museums, good theatres. We can do all that. And here’s another thing I was going to mention earlier — all right, I will probably use around two-thirds of my overdue vacation money from the hospital to help top up Ben and Sally’s college tuitions next year. But that will still leave me maybe seven or eight thousand dollars. Why don’t we go to Paris for six weeks on that?’

‘Paris,’ he said, mouthing the word as if it was almost proscribed; the reverie he’d never dared articulate. ‘You serious?’

‘Just last week, before you turned my life upside down in the most amazing way, I spent an evening at home, looking at short-term rentals in Paris. Traveling vicariously, so to speak. We could find a very nice studio in an area like the Marais for around five hundred dollars a week. Airfares — if we book well in advance — are around six hundred each. You can eat well and reasonably in Paris. And the studio will have a kitchen. so, yes, we could do a month and a half on seven thousand. I would negotiate with whatever hospital down here took me on to ensure that I’d either have six weeks’ unpaid leave sometime during the first year — or, better yet, to push back my starting date until after Paris. In fact, if the apartment renovations might not be finished until early February we could go to France right after Christmas. ’

‘Paris,’ he said again. ‘Six weeks in Paris. I never thought that possible.’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Let’s do it then.’

I kissed him, then said:

‘Well, that was quite a difficult negotiation.’

He laughed.

‘Nothing with you is difficult,’ he said.

‘And nothing with us will ever be difficult. I know that sounds maybe like far too much wishful thinking. But the truth is we’ve both done difficult. We’ve both done circumscribed lives. And now. ’

‘The art of the possible.’

‘Exactly. In fact, that must be our credo. Those five words. The art of the possible.’

‘It’s a good modus vivendi.’

‘The best.’

Bing. A text message on my phone. I hesitated reaching for it, but Richard told me to take it. He needed to call the airport hotel and get our late checkout organized. As he disappeared into the other room with his phone, I picked up my cell and saw that Ben had written to me (spread out over four texts):

Hi Mom — still in Boston? Working flat out on new painting, and have run out of a certain azure blue I really need. Can’t be found in Maine, so I get it from an art supply place in Boston. Would cost me mucho to get it here by Tuesday. If you could pick up today and drop at Portland Museum of Art on your way home, Trevor will be there tomorrow at noon and can collect it. Sorry to be a pain. Would be doing me huge favor. You’re the best. Love — Ben

Immediately I called Ben.

‘You’re up early,’ I said when he answered on the third ring.

‘Very funny, Mom,’ he said, his voice all amused irony. ‘You evidently got my text.’

‘I’m thrilled the new painting’s coming together so brilliantly.’

‘Don’t use the word “brilliant”, please. It might jinx it. But Trevor —’ Trevor Lathrop, his visual art professor and all-purpose mentor at Farmington — ‘is rather enthusiastic. For him that’s big. Anyway, if you could get the paint. ’

‘I’m still in Boston, as I’ve decided to stay on and see an old friend tonight.’

‘And miss Dad’s middle-of-the-night send-off tomorrow to L.L.Bean’s?’ he said, his tone light, but clearly pointed.

‘I do feel guilty about that.’

‘Considering how you’ve been carrying the entire financial burden for the past two years. ’

‘It wasn’t your father’s fault that he was let go during a cutback.’

‘But it was his decision to act like an ill-tempered grump all that time. Even now. I called him last night to say hello, make a gesture and all that, and the guy asked me standard-issue questions about school and stuff, “You feelin’ OK?”, that kind of “tick the boxes with your son” conversation. then when I asked him about the new job, he got all mealy-mouthed and sullen. All I could think was: Who’s the adolescent here?’

‘You’re hardly an adolescent, Ben.’

‘I’m only beginning to understand what you’ve been dealing with for years.’

‘That’s a conversation for another time. On which note. say I dropped by to see you sometime next weekend.’