Part 3 (1/2)

Maybe, Clare thinks, when Isabel and David return, William will have migrated back to the armchair, reading something high-toned, and I will be resting, attractively, or reading, attractively. And when Charles comes back, he'll find the four of us talking over drinks and eating the goat cheese and crackers that Isabel brought. He'll join us. He'll put his hand on my horrible hair, as if it is nice hair, and he'll sit where William is sitting now.

It is such a golden picture, the five of them. The six of them-Clare pictures Nelson, too, sitting on the other side of her, in a clean s.h.i.+rt, holding a couple of the cookies she'd forgotten to put out for him before. The light s.h.i.+nes on Charles's lovely Nordic hair, a mix of blond and gray, as if the boy and the man will coexist forever, and Isabel is bringing out the best in everyone in her kindest, most encouraging way, as if all she has ever wanted is to help Clare make a nice party, and David tells his stories of Second Avenue, and there is nothing in them, not Great-Aunt Frieda, not the death of little cousin Renee, to make Clare cry, and William tells her that he will love her forever, that nothing has been lost, after all, and he mouths the words so that no one can hear him, but her, of course, and it is so beautiful, so drenched in the lush, streaming light of what is not, she closes her eyes to see it better and falls asleep.

William relaxes. There really is nothing more to do. He can just close his eyes, too. Clare's hair fans out across his lap. Her hands press his to her chest. The objects in the room darken, until it is a black reef from couch to table to chair, and no one turns on the light. William and Clare sleep, as if it is a quiet night in their own home, as if they are lying naked and familiar in their own bed.

COMPa.s.sION AND MERCY.

For JOB

No power.

The roads were thick with pine branches and whole birch trees, the heavy boughs breaking off and landing on top of houses and cars and in front of driveways. The low, looping power lines coiled onto the road, and even from their bedroom window, Clare could see silver branches dangling in the icy wires. Highways were closed. Cla.s.ses were canceled. The phone didn't work. The front steps were slippery as h.e.l.l.

William kept a fire going in the living room and Clare toasted rye bread on the end of fondue forks for breakfast, and in the early afternoon, they wrapped cheese sandwiches in tin foil and threw them into the embers for fifteen minutes. William was in charge of dinner and making hot water for Thai ginger soup-in-a-bowl. They used the snow bank at the kitchen door to chill the Chardonnay.

They read and played Scrabble and at four o'clock, when daylight dropped to a deep indigo, Clare lit two dozen candles and they got into their pile of quilts and pillows.

”All right,” William said. ”Let's have it. You're s.h.i.+pwrecked on a desert island. Who do you want to be with-me or Nelson Slater?”

”Oh my G.o.d,” Clare says. ”Nelson. Of course.”

”Good choice. He did a great job with the firewood.”

William kept the fire going all night. Every hour, he had to roll sideways and crouch and then steady himself and then pull himself up with his cane and then balance himself, and because Clare was watching and worried, he had to do it all with the appearance of ease. Clare lay in the dark and tried to move the blankets far to one side so they wouldn't tangle William's feet.

”You're not actually helping,” he said. ”I know where the blankets are, so I can easily step over them. And then, of course, you move them.”

”I feel bad,” Clare said.

”I'm going to break something if you keep this up.”

”Let me help,” Clare said.

When the cold woke them, Clare handed William the logs. They talked about whether or not it was worth it to use the turkey carca.s.s for soup and if they could really make a decent soup in the fireplace. William said that people had cooked primarily in hearths until the late eighteenth century. William told Clare about his visit to his cardiologist and the possible levels of fitness William could achieve. (”A lot of men your age walk five miles a day,” the doctor said. ”My father-in-law got himself a personal trainer, and he's eighty.”) Clare said maybe they could walk to the diner on weekends. They talked about Clare's sons, Adam and Danny, and their wives and the two grandchildren and they talked about William's daughter, Emily, and her pregnancy and the awful man she'd married (”I'd rather she'd taken the veil,” William said. ”Little Sisters of Gehenna”). When the subject came up, William and Clare said nice things about the people they used to be married to.

It had taken William and Clare five years to end their marriages. William's divorce lawyer was the sister of one of William's old friends. She was William's age, in a sharp black suit and improbably black hair and bloodred nails. Her only concession to age was black patent flats, and William was sure that most of her life, this woman had been stalking and killing wild game in stiletto heels.

”So,” she said. ”You've been married thirty-five years. Well, look, Dr. Langford-”

”'Mister' is fine,” William said. ”'William' is fine.”

”'Bill'?” the woman said and William shook his head no and she smiled and made a note.

”Just kidding. It's like this. Unless your wife is doing crack cocaine or having s.e.x with young girls and barnyard animals, what little you have will be split fifty-fifty.”

”That's fine, Mrs. Merrill,” William said.

”Not really,” the woman said. ”Call me Louise. Your wife obviously got a lawyer long before you did. I got a fax today, a list of personal property your wife believes she's ent.i.tled to. Oil paintings, a little jewelry, silverware.”

”That's fine. Whatever it is.”

”It's not fine. But let's say you have no personal attachment to any of these items. And let's say it's all worth about twenty thousand dollars. Let's have her give you twenty thousand dollars, and you give her the stuff. There's no reason for us to just roll over and put our paws up in the air.”

”Whatever she wants,” William said. ”You should know, I'm not having s.e.x with a graduate student. Or with p.o.r.n stars.”

”I believe you,” Mrs. Merrill said. ”You may as well tell me-it'll all come out in the wash. Who are you having s.e.x with?”

”Her name is Clare Wexler. She teaches. She's a very fine teacher. She makes me laugh. She can be a difficult person,” he said, beaming, as if he were detailing her beauty. ”You'd like her.” William wiped his eyes.

”All right,” said Louise Merrill. ”Let's get you hitched before we're all too old to enjoy it.”

When they could finally marry, Clare called her sons.

Danny said, ”You might want a prenup. I'm just saying.”

Adam said, ”Jeez, I thought Isabel was your friend.”

William called Emily and she said, ”How can you do this to me? I'm trying to get pregnant,” and her husband, Kurt, had to take the phone because she was crying so hard. He said, ”We're trying not to take sides, you know.”

Three days after the storm had pa.s.sed, cla.s.ses resumed, grimy cars filled slushy roads, and Clare called both of her sons to say they were essentially unharmed.

”What do you mean, 'essentially'?” Danny said, and Clare said, ”I mean my hair's a mess and I lost at Scrabble seventeen times and William's back hurts from sleeping near the fireplace. I mean, I'm absolutely and completely fine. I shouldn't have said 'essentially.'

William laughed and shook his head when she hung up.

”They must know me by now,” Clare said.

”I'm sure they do,” William said, ”but knowing and understanding are two different things. Vershtehen und eiklaren.”

”Fancy talk,” Clare said, and she kissed his neck and the bald top of his head and the little red dents behind his ears, which came from sixty-five years of wearing gla.s.ses. ”I have to go to Baltimore tomorrow. Remember?”

”Of course,” William said.

Clare knew he'd call her the next day to ask about dinner, about Thai food or Cuban or would she prefer scrambled eggs and salami and then when she said she was on her way to Baltimore, William would be, for just a quick minute, crushed and then crisp and English.

They spoke while Clare was on the train. William had unpacked his low-salt, low-fat lunch. (”Disgusting,” he'd said. ”Punitive.”) Clare had gone over her notes for her talk on Jane Eyre (”In which I will reveal my awful, retrograde underpinnings”) and they made their nighttime phone date for ten P.M., when William would be still at his desk at home and Clare would be in her bed at the University Club.

Clare called William every half hour from ten until midnight and then she told herself that he must have fallen asleep early. She called him at his university office, on his cell phone, and at home. She called him every fifteen minutes from seven A.M. until her talk and she began calling him again, at eleven, as soon as her talk was over. She begged off the faculty lunch and said that her husband wasn't well and that she was needed at home; her voice shook and no one doubted her.

On the train, Clare wondered who to call. She couldn't ask Emily, even though she lived six blocks away; she couldn't ask a pregnant woman to go see if her father was all right. By the time she'd gotten Emily to understand what was required, and where the house key was hidden, and that there was no real cause for alarm, Emily would be sobbing and Clare would be trying not to scream at Emily to calm the f.u.c.k down. Isabel was the person to call, and Clare couldn't call her. She could imagine Isabel saying, ”Of course, Clare, leave it to me,” and driving down from Boston to sort things out; she'd make the beds, she'd straighten the pictures, she'd gather all the overdue library books into a pile and stack them near the front door. She'd scold William for making them all worry and then she would call Clare back, to say that all broken things had been put right.

Clare couldn't picture what might have happened to William. His face floated before her, his large, lovely face, his face when he was reading the paper, his face when he'd said to her, ”I am sorry,” and she'd thought, Oh, Christ, we're breaking up again; I thought we'd go until April at least, and he'd said, ”You are everything to me-I'm afraid we have to marry,” and they cried so hard, they had to sit down on the bench outside the diner and wipe each other's faces with napkins.