Part 2 (1/2)
”For the love of Jesus,” David says. ”He's limping, he's not dying. Who are you, Dr. Kevorkian?”
Clare looks at William and smiles. David sees. He could sit here all night, is how David feels, keeping an eye on this big fat smoothie who's just as crazy about Clare as he ever was. Clare's feelings he can't read. She looks old and tired, and in David's experience old and tired is not a breeding ground for illicit love. Not in women. In men, sometimes it makes them try a little harder, to get the woman to chase the old and tired away.
”So, what a pair,” David says. ”Pair of lame ducks.” They shrug, like a pair.
”Since my ankle,” Clare says, ”I'm only reading about the ambulatory. Cowgirls, lady mountain climbers. Strong-minded women paddling down the Amazon, with their bare hands. Shrunken heads in their lace reticules. Banana leaves on their feet.”
”Really,” William says.
”Your mother was a great walker,” David says. Evoking Clare's mother seems like a good idea. His sister was h.e.l.l on hanky-panky, and everybody knew it. She threw David out of her house on four different occasions because of hanky-panky. He was sitting on the curb after one Thanksgiving, up to his a.s.s in dead leaves, in front of that house they had in, where, Lake Success, and it was little Clare who came out with his coat, his hat on her head, carrying a beer and a handful of pigs-in-blankets. Life is short, David thinks, and walks out.
”Why don't you just sit by me?” Clare says. ”You can provide the elevation.” She would ask for more ice, she could actually use some more ice, but if William goes to get it, Isabel will intercept him and want it done properly and bring it herself, knowing that William will bring back three ice cubes in a dripping dish towel. If ice were what Clare wanted most, she would ask Isabel.
William hoists himself up, which he would rather Clare didn't see, and limps over to the couch. She's already seen him limping so there's no help for that, and he holds her feet up and puts himself under them and sinks back onto the sofa, pain gnawing at his hip.
”A lot of activity here,” Clare says.
”Oh, yes, quite a ruckus,” William says. ”I am not going back to that chair anytime soon. David can come back in with Hera and her peac.o.c.ks, I'm staying on this couch, under these b.u.mpy black-and-blue little feet.”
”And the peac.o.c.ks are for?”
”Peac.o.c.ks pulled her royal wagon. I have no idea why. She drove everybody crazy. A vigilante about adultery. Most of the myths are about her driving someone insane with her suspicions.”
”Gosh, I wonder who wrote those stories. She wasn't wrong, right? Zeus f.u.c.ked everything. s.h.i.+p to sh.o.r.e. Ox to goose. Whatever.”
”Oh, yes.”
Isabel comes into the room and looks at them. There are things she could say, there are plenty of things she could say about her husband, who doesn't like her coat to brush against him when he's driving, who so prefers some s.p.a.ce between him and everyone else that he makes reservations for four even when it's the two of them, and who is now making himself into a footrest for their friend Clare. But Clare looks terrible, crumpled and waxy, and her hair, and the two of them are not likely to run off for some brisk lovemaking-how could they and what has it ever been between them but the rubbing up of two broken wings? And Isabel believes that life is what you make it. She adjusts Clare's pillow.
”Do you need anything? David wants to take a little walk, and it's just so gorgeous today-”
Clare and William look out the living room's bay window at the beautiful autumn day, and sigh, as if they have given up all hope of ever walking unaided on beautiful days.
”It's really beautiful,” Clare says. I am the worst person in the world, she thinks.
”It is,” William says. Go, in Christ's name, he thinks, and take that awful little man with you.
”We've got an hour to ourselves,” William says. ”Where should we start?”
”How's Emily?”
”Oh. Fine. She's liking law school-what can I say? You want to talk about our kids?”
”No. What's the matter with your leg?”
”Oh, for f.u.c.k's sake. I'd rather talk about the kids. I have bad arthritis, that's all. It acts up. I'm doing what I'm supposed to. Glucosamine chondroitin. Physical therapy. Whole grains. What do you want from me?”
”That's good,” Clare says. ”I'm glad.” She doesn't look glad. She looks chastened and sulky, and she pulls at the corner of her quilt until a wisp of cotton batting appears.
”What's wrong? Comparing yourself to Isabel? Thinking how I'd be curled into a fetal position by now if I were in your hands?”
It is a terrible thing to think and a terrible thing to be seen thinking-Isabel is a better wife than I am-and still Clare's glad that William knows her.
”Jesus, be nice. Nicer.”
”I don't have to be nice. Leave the quilt alone. I miss you every day, and we're not even friends anymore.”
”We are.”
”We are not, and do not dishonor the memory of that beautiful thing by saying otherwise. You know we're not.”
Clare wipes her eyes with a corner of the quilt. ”Fine. Jesus.”
”Less than an hour. If your uncle doesn't come scuttling back to check on us.” William picks up Clare's hand and kisses it. He takes a nectarine out of the bag and wraps her hands around it.
”Look at the size of this,” Clare says.
Clare twists the nectarine sharply, and it falls into halves, each one a brilliant, glazed yellow with a p.r.i.c.kled hot-pink center. The pit falls onto her lap. They eat their halves and watch each other eat, and they drip, just a little, on the quilt. Clare wipes her chin with her wet hands, and then she wipes her face again, on the quilt.
”Napkins would have been good,” Clare says.
William shrugs. ”I like this,” he says. He lifts up the quilt and wipes his hands on Clare's jeans.
”Oh, what is this,” she says. If they're going to start acting like the senior-citizen version of Tom Jones, smearing their faces with nectarine juice and carrying on, the next thing you know, they'll be hobbling off to motels and looking up positions for the disabled in the s.e.x books. William does not look at all embarra.s.sed; he looks as he always looks: imperturbable, and mildly intrigued, inclined to be benevolent, if no discomfort is involved. Privately, Isabel and Clare call William The Last Emperor and there have been times when Isabel has called Clare to say, ”L.E. is driving me mad. Why don't you and Charles come up before I put gla.s.s in his cereal?”
”I love a nice nectarine,” William says. ”My mother made a nectarine tart, I remember. Sliced nectarines and a little brown sugar on top of a brick, just a giant slab of really good pie crust.”
William kisses Clare's right hand, then her left, lightly, absent-mindedly, as if in pa.s.sing.
”What's this?”
”Nothing,” William says. ”Tell me something else. Tell me a secret.”
”Oh, a secret. What a baby. You mean something Charles doesn't know?”
William bites his tongue. He doesn't think Charles knows much, but he could be wrong. He thinks that Charles has been so lucky and so handsome for so long that he's come to think that the world is actually filled with honest men making fair deals and bad people being thwarted by good ones. This is what William prefers to think. Before he slept with her, William thought that Clare had gotten the better half of the bargain. He even said so to Isabel, a few times. Clare is good, spiky company, and she is the very best companion to have in a bad situation. Trouble brings out the cheer beneath her darkness, unlike everyday life, which tends to have the opposite effect, and she holds her liquor like an old Swede, but Charles has to put up with that squinty, unyielding nature, and he does it with real grace, William thinks. In private conversation, the men call Clare The Cactus.
A small boy sticks his head around the doorway and stares at William, rather coolly, from under his long lashes. It is the same look David gives him, now pasted onto a round brown face. William knows he knows the boy, who he is and his place in the world (third grade, grandson of the cleaning lady; Clare likes him; Charles wouldn't know him if he fell over him), but nothing else, like his name or why he is wandering around Clare's house, comes to mind.
”You have company,” he says. Small boys are not his department. Small girls are delightful; he would entertain a roomful of little girls, if it were necessary.
”Hey, Nelson.” Clare waves to the boy. The boy doesn't say anything.
”Nelson Slater, come on. You've met Mr. Langford before. Last summer.”
Nelson nods. Clare sighs. It's not the short, vicious hiss that signals her annoyance. It's not the mild, watery sound she makes when her children call while she's working. It's the sigh of some one settling in for a short, satisfying tussle. If she were upright, Clare would roll up her sleeves.
The boy sits down across from them on the floor. Clare and William smile helplessly. He slides to the floor so easily, he glides right down, and later, he will spring right up. It is a lovely thing to watch, the way gravity barely holds him.