Kate Christensen - The Great Man

“Even though you had Ellen,” said Teddy slyly.

“Teddy, you are evil. I have never felt less lonely in my life. Let’s go to Tuscany and rent a big house with no stuff in it and live there in sexual bliss for a while. Will you? Or anywhere else you want.”

“Oh, yes, why not, a villa in Tuscany will do,” said Teddy, feeling joy rising in her gorge like a bubble of helium gas. “Although Tuscany is such a cliché. Let’s leave all these piles of old magazines behind and just…run off together.”

“I can hardly believe it,” said Lewis. “I can hardly grasp my luck. I never thought this would happen.”

“Yes you did,” said Teddy. “You never gave up for a second, and that’s why we’re here. I owe you one.”

“You can never repay me,” he said, “but I look forward to seeing you try.”

Lila and Abigail met for lunch at an old bistro in the West Village where Lila had often eaten with her first husband. They settled into their booth under the high ceiling in the cool air.

“I hate summer,” said Lila. “The older I get, the more I hate it. It just gets so hot. ”

“What about winter? Winter is no better.”

“Winter is brutal,” said Lila.

“I never thought I’d get old in New York. I always planned to move south somewhere.”

“But then you don’t,” said Lila. “I know. Because everyone you know is here.”

“Seeing you and Teddy in the same room the other day,” said Abigail, “I was surprised it wasn’t more dramatic.”

“Of course,” said Lila, “we hadn’t known you’d be there, so we weren’t prepared. Maybe that was why it wasn’t as horrible as it might have been.”

“Maxine insisted. She’s very bossy, and I can’t say no to her.”

“Maxine strikes me as lonely,” said Lila.

Abigail rolled her eyes. “By choice,” she said. “Anyway, I have to confess that I didn’t expect to admire Teddy, but I did. I admire her.”

“I’ve admired her for about a thousand years,” said Lila. “It’s impossible not to.”

“On another note,” said Abigail as two bubbling glasses of prosecco arrived, “how’s your love affair going?”

Lila ducked her head and looked at Abigail through her eyelashes with a coy little smile. Abigail found this expression slightly irritating and wished Lila wouldn’t make it. It was what the Victorian novelists used to call a “moue.” She had never liked it in fictional characters, and she didn’t like it in real people. More than anything else, she felt disappointment. She had dressed as carefully for this lunch as if she were meeting a lover. The prospect of this new friendship had caused her so much hopeful excitement, she had hardly been able to sleep the night before.

Lila said through demurely pursed lips, “Very well.”

Something in Lila’s face alerted Abigail then to a deeper possibility. She said, “Really?” with as much polite skepticism as she could muster.

Lila hesitated. Then she said, “Well, I like him a lot.”

“But you’re not excited about him?”

“I don’t know,” said Lila in a different tone, natural and plaintive. “I feel as if I ought to be. He’s very nice, and attentive, and, you know, good at sex and all that. And at my age, to find a man like Rex…”

“But?” said Abigail.

“It’s just that…” Lila paused to consider what she was about to say. “For some reason, I seem to be reluctant to go through this whole rigmarole again. After my second husband died, I found myself alone, kids grown, and I was afraid I would go nuts, but it turned out that I loved being alone after two husbands, three kids, all needing my constant attention.”

Abigail thought of her long-ago affair with Edward. It had felt so separate from her domestic life, even though he had visited her at her apartment. He had needed nothing from her except what she most wanted to give him. When he had visited her, they had been sealed off in a bubble of sensual pleasures: a bowl of ripe fruit or briny olives, a bottle of good wine, music playing, usually Schubert or Bach, and, of course, poetry — they had read aloud to each other. The sex had been almost, but of course not really, secondary.

“But isn’t this different?” she said. “He’s not living in your house. You only see him for dates. You don’t have to take care of him.”

“I know, but I change when there’s a man around,” said Lila. “I diminish myself. I can feel it happening even now at this late date with Rex. I get all kittenish and seductive and stupid.”

“I think I know what you mean,” said Abigail. “I had an extramarital affair with Ethan’s doctor. With him, I felt not myself at all, or rather, I felt I was a different person, a different part of myself, than I’d ever been before. But he made me feel better than anyone ever had before, or has since. Once, he actually told me I looked like Botticelli’s Venus. I felt purely sexual with him, and I saw that as a good thing. I felt like a red-haired seductress. Such luxury, I had never known, the freedom to be that way and no other way with someone. Can you imagine, me?”

Lila looked closely at her. Abigail quailed a little under the direct scrutiny, imagining what she must have seen. “Well yes,” Lila said after a moment, “why not? But with Rex, I don’t know, it’s not secretive or illicit. I feel a familiar pressure to please him, to put him above me somehow, as if he would shatter if he knew how smart and powerful I really was, not that I am; it’s just that whatever powers I have, I squelch. At my age, it’s ridiculous, but maybe some things never change.”

“Well, you should just stop doing that and see what would happen if you didn’t play dumb.”

Lila considered this with a mildly defensive expression. “Maybe so,” she said. “I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble. I think I’ve had enough romance for one lifetime. I think I’d like to live out the rest of my life in peace and quiet. My grandchildren give me all the passion I require. It would be fine with me if no one ever had to look at my old naked self again.”

“Gosh,” said Abigail, thinking she wouldn’t mind one more tryst with Edward. She wondered briefly where he was now. “How did you manage to diminish yourself all those years with two different husbands and not just…explode?”

“I think, in fact, looking back now, that I was quite strong as a wife. Both my husbands were passive men who looked to me for direction and impetus. But I never did become a novelist. What I think in retrospect is that I held myself back in order to push them to succeed.”

“Like me with Oscar,” said Abigail.

“But Oscar was a great man. My husbands were both mediocre.”

The oysters arrived. Abigail looked at them in polite consternation.

“Oh hell,” said Lila, “they’re not kosher, are they? You should have said something!”

“I’m conflicted,” said Abigail. “I love oysters.”

“I won’t tell,” said Lila, squeezing lemon over all twelve.

“Remember the old days?” said Abigail. “I’m not even sure what I mean by that. Which days and what I remember about them.”

“There were a lot of old days. I find that the older I get, the more sharply and clearly I remember being very young. Twenty, mostly. I remember college so well, better than any other time in my life. I went to Vassar with Teddy…until she had to drop out when her father lost all his money. The fifties…we had such adventures. We’d take the train down to the city and get into as much trouble as we could. Teddy was the ringleader, and I went along with anything whatsoever. We went to hear a lot of jazz.”