Beautiful Days: Stories Read online

  She hesitated to interrupt him. No—she felt a small thrill of anger, striking her fist on the door to interrupt him.

  Email messages, text messages—these he received in a continuous stream, she could hear the tiny ping! in his cell phone.

  But when they were together, seriously together in their room, in their bed, their cell phones were turned off.

  Shiny little screens blank-black, dead. No life inside.

  Later, when they were separate, and their separate lives had resumed, the little screens were relighted.

  STILL IT WASN’T ADULTERY. He didn’t think so. Though he had to deal with his feelings of resentment, unease, mild panic when she was away from him, when (for instance) she’d been unable to meet him for most of a week, or when (a worse instance) she’d kept him waiting in the rental and hadn’t answered his cell phone calls and called him finally after twenty minutes to say tersely she was sorry, she had to cancel and would explain later.

  He’d said, “Look. That isn’t how we’re doing this. No explanations are needed, and no explanations are wanted.”

  He wasn’t (for instance) going to drive out to Rensselaer Falls, to see where she lived. Wasn’t going to make inquiries (not in even the most casual way) about her with Gerry Fowler whom he’d known in high school, whose family owned the textbook publishing house, and who might plausibly have some connection with . . . But no: God damn he would not.

  For one thing, he couldn’t utter her name aloud to anyone.

  To himself, and to her, he could utter this name. But never to anyone else, for that would be a violation of the deep intimacy between them, that was like no other intimacy in their lives.

  Oh, this strange panic-sensation, that she’d abandoned him! She had left him behind in his own dull bell-jar life, to suffocate.

  Abandoned him for her life with her family about which now she rarely spoke. Driving seven miles home to a place he’d never seen. (Though he knew the address. He’d memorized the address.) The mysterious husband, the mysterious children, many years younger than his children who were, strictly speaking, hardly “children” any longer.

  There is a point when your children are no longer young. Painful to acknowledge, you are no longer a young parent.

  “We could begin again. Our own children.”

  (Had he uttered these ridiculous words aloud? He hoped not!)

  Out of inertia remaining late at the office, leaden-limbed, melancholy, the last person to leave the office but even then—though he knew they were waiting for him at home—he went down to the waterfront, to brood; not the renovated tourist waterfront with the brisk bright flags snapping but the older and shabbier waterfront, that was shrill with the aggrieved cries of gulls. He wanted to breathe the knife-sharp winter air, wanted to feel his senses quiver with life and with yearning. Overhead the night sky pulsed with its own mysterious life. Futile to point out that the stars you see are long extinct—their light was not extinct, dazzling the eye.

  He stared at those rippling lights reflected in the part-frozen Blue River and wondered what would come of him—what would come of her.

  Almost, he thought, it would be better not to see her again. Or maybe, better if they had not met.

  If she were ill. If she—died . . .

  Stray, senseless thoughts. Cruel and stupid thoughts. Yet, he could not help himself. Unless he concentrated fiercely on his work, unless he was with her, he was bombarded with such thoughts.

  Where she lived, where he might’ve driven. Seven miles east of River Street, approximately. Rensselaer Falls was a village adjacent to the small city of Canton. He knew people who lived there, but no one well. No one whom he might’ve visited. Except her, whose address he’d memorized: 44 Eagle Street.

  Yes but he had not, had he? Not yet.

  Instead of going to bed that night. Joining his wife in bed. (It was her custom to go to bed as much as an hour and a half before he did.) Instead, slipping outside and in the SUV driving darkened streets east and north of Fleuve Bleu. And along the moonlit highway Route 17 to Rensselaer Falls. And beside the road, for a mile or two, the Blue River. And in the distance, not visible except to his dreaming mind, the great St. Lawrence. And in the Village of Rensselaer Falls he would seek Eagle Street and on Eagle Street he would seek the numeral 44 and in front of the darkened house at 44 Eagle Street he would park his vehicle . . . At dawn, the house would begin to awaken. Lights upstairs: she’d said she wakened early.

  She would find him there, in the SUV. She would be astonished, she would come quickly to him . . .

  What are you doing here! My God.

  Her eyes wet with tears of surprise and emotion. In the early-hour before the sun had fully risen.

  “But that hasn’t happened. It has not.”

  His voice was reproving. Pleading.

  HE FELT HE WOULD LOVE HER less desperately, after this.

  And he would blame her, and resent her, after this.

  “HELLO!”

  “Hello . . .”

  Gently at first he pushed against her on the pedestrian walkway.

  His mouth sought her mouth, fastened upon it, sucking.

  A hungry kiss, a kiss that says Just don’t stop me, don’t interfere with what I am doing.

  It was not late: scarcely 7:00 P.M. But very dark, a November evening, and the bridge deserted.

  Above, a smudged-looking moon. Heavy-lidded lewd eye.

  She felt the railing against her back. Still she lifted her arms to him. His knuckles against her back that couldn’t but hurt, and he knew this, and she felt her mouth forced open, she was laughing too, breathless and laughing, laughing against the force of his sucking kiss that left her weak, dazed.

  Still, the kiss continued. Her jaws felt unhinged, she was exhausted, yet it was a playful sort of kiss (she wanted to think this) meaning how much he wanted her, how powerful his desire for her; and close by on the railroad bridge freight trains were thundering past, even now at this romantic hour, even now.

  IT WOUNDED HIM, the old mill city was gradually shrinking.

  Losing population, since the 1970s.

  When he’d graduated from high school Fleuve Bleu had contained 22,800 people; now, the latest census indicated just 16,300. The mills had closed, the factories along the Blue River, fewer trains came through, fewer barges. He’d lived downstate for several years, and he’d done well enough—but he’d returned for family reasons, and then he’d married a young woman from a prominent family in Canton. Now family held them tight as in a web.

  He told her: for eighteen months after law school, working for a law firm in New York City, he’d lived near the Verrazano Bridge. Crossed and recrossed the Verrazano and he’d never tired of admiring its beauty.

  Strange to hear a man say that word—beauty.

  She loved to hear him speak in this way. That dreamy look in his eyes after they’d made love. What had been combative and edgy between them spent. She could deceive herself, he’d take her with him if ever he returned to live near the Verrazano Bridge again.

  She said, she didn’t think she’d even seen a photo of the bridge. And so he showed her, on his cell phone.

  Of course, you can’t see it, so small. Check it on your computer.

  She asked why he’d returned home, if he’d made the break?

  He said no break is permanent. Like a bone that heals crooked, still it will heal.

  GOOD BREEDING.

  Tall, good bones, fair-skinned and fair-haired, he’d learned to expect the attention of others, and in some, the most subtle gestures of subservience. The name RUTHERFORD was a kind of shield, of which he needn’t be conscious. His own name—“Tom Rutherford”—suggested a kind of modesty, self-effacement. One of those who wants to be liked and is furious when he isn’t, but you aren’t likely to know.

  By the age of eighteen he’d grown to a height of over six feet. Already in grammar school he’d been a tall boy, he’d taken for granted the unspoken authority of the
tall: the deference of others, sometimes even adults. He’d become an individual who has only to step into a room, a space, a dimension in which there are other, less-tall individuals—basking in an unacknowledged royalty. Ridiculous of course. He knows.

  Yet he wonders if women experience something of the same. Half-consciously, even resentfully, acknowledging the presence of the beautiful woman in their midst: the not-beautiful, the girl-with-bad-skin, the too-heavy girl, the too-short girl, the too-tall girl. These assessments are quicksilver, involuntary. That they are unjust and ridiculous doesn’t alleviate their power.

  He’d seen men glance at her when they were together. And women.

  Sexual jealousy. Nothing more lethal.

  He wasn’t jealous, he was sure.

  THAT DAY WALKING TOGETHER on Cartwright Street. Not gripping hands—not in public!—but their hands touching, brushing together like tiny whips.

  He was saying—

  She was saying—

  And near the intersection with Seventh Avenue a woman stepped precipitously out between two parked cars and was struck by a vehicle—fortunately, a minivan that had been slowing to a stop at a red light—not more than a glancing blow along the side of her body, but the woman was thrown to her knees screaming in surprise and pain, and immediately he’d run to her, Tom Rutherford had run to her, and crouched beside her asking if she was all right, should he call an ambulance?

  So quickly this had happened. And so publicly.

  She had followed him, to offer help as well. Then hesitated and held back, staring.

  She saw the stricken woman, helped now to her feet by the tall fair-haired Tom Rutherford. She saw the woman’s tear-smitten face, and how Tom Rutherford spoke to her, and supported her. She saw how Tom Rutherford went to gather the woman’s handbag and packages, that had been scattered on the street. And by this time others had gathered. And the minivan driver, dark-skinned, agitated, had joined them. He had forgotten her, or nearly.

  The street was slushy with part-melted snow. Dirty snow, and the stricken woman’s clothes were wet, the palms of her hands had been scraped. Tom Rutherford was saying maybe he’d better call an ambulance, just to make sure.

  The woman who’d stepped blindly into the street was talking loudly. She did not want to be taken to the ER. She insisted that she was all right. A woman of youthful middle age, with an excitable voice. Had she hurt her knees? Had she sprained a wrist? Pedestrians were gathering. Tom Rutherford stood among them, tall and responsible. How long this continued, might’ve been ten minutes, there on the sidewalk at the intersection of Cartwright and Seventh Avenue where traffic was moving normally again, moving around the minivan parked haltingly in the street. There was a look of haphazard, something gone askew. Very soon, a Fleuve Bleu police officer would arrive.

  By this time, when Tom Rutherford glanced around, he saw that he was alone.

  Of course. We can’t be seen together. In an emergency, we can’t be together.

  IT WAS A REVELATION: in an emergency, each would have to flee the other.

  She thought—If I’d been the one hit by a car. Would he have stayed with me? Would I have sent him away?

  NEXT TIME THEY MET, they’d decided to forget how swiftly she’d departed from him.

  And how readily he’d understood, and had not judged her.

  THE BLUE RIVER HAD FROZEN SOLID in January. And now the Blue River was thawing, in late March.

  A river thaws from the middle outward. Dark-churning-rushing water bracketed by ice.

  There’s a look to a late-winter river of something prehistoric: jagged ice-boulders piled up on the banks, like an avalanche.

  With his camera he went outside in the fierce March wind. Left his desk at mid-morning, heaped with work. Contracts, documents. He was a tax lawyer, basically! He hated it, his life had come to this subservience in the maintenance and increase of others’ estates.

  His professional life. In which he was very successful.

  Well—moderately successful. In Fleuve Bleu terms, he’d done well.

  Earnestly he was telling her, trying to explain—If I’d failed at law, it would’ve been better. Just walk away. Tell my father. Tell the family. But things have gone differently. I’ve always been God-damned good at what I do—that has been my curse.

  WITH THE THAW BARGES HAD RETURNED to the river. Upstream, downstream. Sometimes you could see their cargo—mounds of coal, gypsum, potash, sand. His law firm worked with river- and lake-freighter companies, drew up contracts, dealt with tax problems. The Great Lakes freighters had been steadily losing business for decades—once several hundred freighters, now scarcely more than one hundred. The Blue River had once been a prosperous waterway, now no longer. Yet Tom Rutherford would prevail, the family law firm would prevail, even as the waters diminished. Corks float: corks of privilege, opportunity.

  He wanted to tell her. Explain to her.

  This isn’t my life. What people see. My life is only what you see—what you touch. That is my life, my soul.

  That, and his photography. Hundreds of pictures he’d taken in the past several years in his computer he hadn’t examined, hadn’t sorted out, edited. The work of photography isn’t the picture-taking but afterward. Art is a solitary matter.

  SHUDDERING OF THE OLD RAILROAD BRIDGE. Locomotive and freight cars thundering above the river. Something sexual in the pounding of the rails, a deep-blooded beat, he felt the gathering tension in her body. Where she gripped him most intimately, where he thrust into her, the stiffening of her body like a delicate watch that is being wound ever tighter, tighter . . . Her body bucked, heaved; a cry was strangled in her throat; she clutched at him as a drowning swimmer would clutch at a rescuer, a hoped-for rescuer; clawed and moaned in delirium, such genuine anguish she seemed drawn out of herself, terribly exposed, vulnerable and violable; like nothing he could experience himself, or would risk.

  IF SHE LOVES ME SO MUCH, how will we end it.

  THE FLOATING SENSATION OF LIGHT in a room. Light in a room, where you are sleeping. Light penetrating your (shut) eyelids.

  My dear one, my darling you have made me so happy.

  HE WAS READING TOLSTOY. The late, embittered Tolstoy: Resurrection, The Kreutzer Sonata. Twilight of sex-desire. Bleak stoicism of a life without erotic love. An elderly man raging against the young, with a pretense of Christian morality. The rage of old men, hoping to legislate the desire of the young. Abstinence! After Tolstoy had rutted and groveled in the female body for decades, impregnating the much younger woman who was his wife at least thirteen times—belatedly then, in his old age, Tolstoy came to feel a hypocritical revulsion for what he called the carnal life.

  Yet in a fascination of his own, he read Tolstoy. Wanting to protest No—no! It is nothing like this. Love is nothing like this.

  SINCE CHILDHOOD HE’D HAD a recurring magical dream. Bright cloudless winter morning and he was gliding along a roadway, beside a river, sensing that if he turned to look that’s all he would see—a blur.

  “This is the strange thing: the place is so open and light-filled and yet so secret. It’s the place I long for where something wonderful is waiting on the other side of the river.”

  “But it was the bridge, where we met.”

  “The bridge! Yes of course—it was the bridge.”

  ABOVE THE LOOSE-JOINTED BED, a rectangle of floating light. Filmy curtains stirring in the breeze. She never wanted the window shut and locked but always open at least a quarter inch, otherwise the (steam-heated) room became too hot and stale-smelling. While they were gone, sometimes away for days over a weekend, rain was likely to be blown into the room, the mattress was likely to be damp, pillows and coverlet damp, curious little leaves and parts of dried leaves blown about the room . . . He was mesmerized by light falling not onto but into her hair, light shining out of the coils of her dark-red hair. He licked her body with his tongue, her nipples, the shallow of her belly, the birthmark that reminded him too of a leaf, the tig
ht little belly button, that made him laugh.

  She protested, Oh!—so sharply, it was a kind of sexual pain.

  He gripped her wrists, he turned her wrists. An unexpected cruelty in him, the woman seemed to provoke. His wife was so kind, so sweetly placid, so readily dispirited, discouraged—a nice woman, and not brash and tough like this woman—he could never have touched her in such a way.

  Just the thought of touching the other wife with such raw impatient desire—not possible.

  Thinking—You can’t live with this. Must back off, soon. You need distance.

  You both need distance.

  IT WAS NOT OFTEN, in fact it had been very rare, she’d fallen asleep in that bed.

  Stealthily then taking her picture. Three times, quickly.

  SHE SAID, “Y’KNOW? I want you to love me.”

  He said, “But I already love you!”

  She said, “I mean in a way to last. In a way to take home with you. A way that enters your dreams.”

  He said, faltering, “You are already in my dreams.”

  THEY WERE AUDACIOUS, DARING. They went together to a place that, if they were seen together, there could be no explanation except the obvious.

  A late-afternoon film at the art museum. A film she’d intended to see by herself. She’d told her husband she wouldn’t be home until at least 8:00 P.M. so he should feed himself and the children, she’d left a meal for them in the refrigerator. (Telling him this for what reason? he wondered. Did she think it gave him pleasure to be forced to envision the husband, the children, the meal she’d prepared to be served in her absence; to be forced to envision such domesticity, such intimacy that excluded him as surely as if he’d been standing at the door to that house and the door had been shut in his face. And did she not know?)

  The film was in fact several short films made in the 1940s, of dances by Martha Graham. He’d never seen Graham dance, and was struck by her strange defiant beauty, the angularity of her face and body, the forcefulness of her movements. In “Lamentation” she wore a purple gown, a kind of cloak over her head. Sitting beside the woman who was his lover, whom he had no right to be seeing in this public place except he’d forced her, he’d insisted. And she’d resisted at first, then gave in. And clasped his hand now, thrilled to be seeing Martha Graham dancing, thrilled to be seeing Martha Graham dancing in his company, sharing. “It’s so beautiful. I’m crying—don’t know why.” She touched her fingertips to her eyes. It was strange, it was exciting to him, she was crying, though he tried to laugh at her—“Why are you sad?” She said, “Well, I’d wanted to be a dancer, see. I’ve danced, I’ve taken lessons, years ago. It’s over for me now, I’m a spectator now. But that’s not why I’m sad, I think.”