Дуглас Кеннеди - Five Days

‘What was the book?’

‘I was looking for Pepys’s Diaries — which I could have probably ordered at the time from one of the antiquarian booksellers around the state, but which I really didn’t have the money to afford. The Bath Public Library’s only copy had recently fallen apart. No matter how often I asked the librarian to order it for me, she seemed resistant to the idea of dropping forty dollars of taxpayers’ money — a lot of money back then — on a volume that nobody, except for me, was ever going to borrow. So I asked Sarah if she might be able to loan me a copy. This large smile crossed her face as she said: “You are the first man I’ve ever met who has shown the remotest interest in one of my benchmark writers.” Her exact words. Benchmark writers. I think I was in love with her as soon as she uttered that phrase. And I think she saw that immediately as well.

‘She invited me to lunch. No woman had ever invited me to lunch before. Though she was only seven years older than me — she was thirty when we met — she immediately struck me as so worldly, so cosmopolitan. She brought me to a really nice place in Brunswick and insisted we share a bottle of wine — it was a Saint-Emilion, I always remember that — over lunch. My dad was still very much running the agency — and monitored all my working-hour moves like the Marine drill sergeant he once was. I was also still living at home, as Dad saw no reason for me to be wasting money on an apartment, though he did buy me a secondhand Chevy Impala as a gift when I left college and “joined the firm”, as he called our two-person business. So I was still living at home — albeit in a basement apartment that gave me a certain amount of autonomy in the evenings, though Dad would often chide me if he discovered I was up late reading. Dad was something of an insomniac — and even though he was in bed most nights by nine-thirty, he’d always be up around midnight, stepping outside for a few minutes for a walk, but really checking on whether I had the lights on in my place. Why I didn’t move out, why I was so cowed by him into joining the firm, instead of forging my own life. it remains perhaps the biggest regret of my life to date.

‘Anyway, some of this came out at that first lunch with Sarah. She was quite the polite interrogator. She got out of me the fact that I wanted to be a writer, that I had published a story, and that I had an impossibly dictatorial father. She also had me talking about my literary tastes, and ascertained that, outside of a brief, inconsequential four-month thing with a graduate student named Florence during my U Maine years, I was largely inexperienced when it came to the world of women. Sarah, in turn, volunteered several things about herself.

‘You know I lost a child,’ she told me. ‘I doubt I’ll ever get over that — though to the outside world I will always maintain a certain decorum. And you possibly know that my husband, of whom I am inordinately fond, has fallen in love with a professor at Harvard named Elliot. but for the sake of “decorum” we are maintaining a proper public front for the time being. We live together during the week as he teaches at the college. Calvin goes to see Elliot at the weekends. My husband remains my great friend. We will never have children again — which is my choice, because were I to become a mother again the specter of possible tragedy and appalling loss would always be there, and I know I could never support the fear that would haunt me every day. I am very accepting of that decision, as painful as it is. Just as I am very accepting of Calvin’s new life — as I knew, more or less, all this about him from the moment we met in New York eight years ago. As far as Calvin is concerned I have carte blanche when it comes to my own personal life and how I choose to conduct it. Which is why, when we finish lunch, I suggest we return to my house — Calvin is away today — and go to bed.”

‘She said it just like that. No hemming or hawing. No “Let’s get to know each other”. No apprehension or fear. She chose me. I certainly wanted to be chosen. And in the seven months that I was Sarah’s lover she taught me so much. Both in and out of the bedroom. And God, that must be the second manhattan talking.’

‘You’re telling me this because you want to tell me this,’ I said. ‘Keep going.’

‘Was it love? I certainly think so. We saw each other three times a week. We managed to sneak off for a weekend to Boston, and to Quebec City. ’

Quebec City. The adjacent Paris for entrapped Mainers.

‘. and Sarah told me, around four months into our relationship, that what I needed to do, as a matter of urgency, was walk out of my father’s “firm” and apply for a top MFA program in writing at Iowa or Michigan or Brown. She was sure I would get in somewhere good. And she would come with me — because she could always find interesting work in a college town. And because she knew I had talent.

‘“I may have a talent for life,” she told me. “I may know how to make a wonderful coq au vin —” that was no lie — “and what wine to pair with it, and which new emerging Polish surrealist poet I should be reading —” she was always glued to literary magazines — “but I don’t have any real creative spark in me when it comes to words or music or paints. You, on the other hand, have the possibility of a proper literary career, if you can only shake off your King Lear father. He has been determined to break you of your talent from the moment he read that short story of yours in print.”

‘Of course she had hit the bull’s-eye — as unsettling as it was to hear such truths being articulated. We were sprawled across her bed at the time. And that was the afternoon she told me that she loved me, that we were kindred spirits, that together everything was possible. and Sarah was never the most emotionally effusive of people. I told her that I too loved her, that she had changed my life, that, yes, I would start to apply for MFA programs and quit my job at the end of the summer and.

‘All these amazing plans. All within the realm of possibility. Because love — at its truest — allows all the impediments to fall away. You see a vision of the life you want to lead. A happy life. A fulfilled life. With someone who wants to share everything with you, who so completely gets you, as you get her. A love also based on deep mutual desire. And passion. And a shared curiosity about everything in life. That was my life with Sarah — the whole fairy tale we tell ourselves we so want, and then do everything in our power to subvert.’

He fell silent. I reached out and took his hand.

‘Did your father find out?’ I finally asked.

‘Your interpretative powers are impressive. I applied to about a half-dozen MFA programs. Though I didn’t get into Iowa — which is the most prestigious and competitive — I did get accepted to Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, Berkeley. An amazing choice of schools. Sarah and I agreed that Michigan was the best option. It was ranked second in the country as an MFA writing program, and Ann Arbor is a great college town. Sarah even had a friend who was a senior librarian there, and who told her there was an opening in the cataloging department. It was all so serendipitous. Here was our immediate future. Here was the life ahead together. I’d even started writing again. A new short story about a man who cannot force himself to leave a bad marriage — even though he knows that the marriage is killing him. It was, at heart, the story of my dad and my mother, but also about my father’s anger at me, at the world in general, all fueled by the fact that my mother was such a dry, cold woman. The only good thing I can say about her is that, as she knew my dad was doing the heavy guilt reinforcement on me, she didn’t criticize me the way that Dad did. She was just cold and distant.