Part 16 (2/2)

”Don't tire yourself,” she said, embarra.s.sed that Mr. Nelson could see them.

”We've just got to wait for Morton, the head quack they call him, to sign off on me. They think it will be half an hour.”

”Let me just run down the street and get some goodbye presents.”

”Sweetie, you've done enough. And I want to be ready to fly out of here the first second we can.”

She knew she couldn't go against his wishes. His impatience was a sign of health and his health must be the thing that she most prized.

”I'll just say goodbye to everyone,” she said.

”The farewell concert... leaving the fans crying for more,” he said.

She began with Mr. Castanopoulos. He had wrapped two apples in paper towels and presented them to her, with a bow of the head.

”Gif my reG.o.ds to Brodway,” he said.

”We shall miss you terribly, terribly, my dear,” said Mr. c.o.x-Ralston.

”I'll write,” she said, trying to control what sounded like wildness in her voice.

”I'm afraid I'm not much up to writing,” Mr. Nelson said. ”I'd be glad to hear from you, but you mustn't be disappointed if I don't respond. It's not that I wouldn't be thinking of you. But the old eyes aren't what they were and my arthritis has made my handwriting impossible.”

”Perhaps Mr. Khan could keep me up-to-date,” she said, knowing they both understood that what she meant was ”perhaps he'll let me know when you die.”

”Ah, Mr. Khan, a very fine chap. He's my very close friend. A great man. It would be wonderful if you could meet him sometime. He's a chemist, lives in Stockholm. I haven't seen him in many, many years.”

”I did meet him,” Andrea said, and then regretted having embarra.s.sed him.

”Oh, yes, of course, I've forgotten. I forget a terrible number of things, you know.”

”Mr. c.o.x-Ralston, you must tell me some of the movies you were in so I can look for them,” she said.

”Oh, my dear, I'm afraid you misunderstood. I wasn't in movies. I worked as a film projectionist. But, you see, that was heavenly, that was magical in its own way. You flipped a switch and there was light in darkness, you brought magic into people's lives and they couldn't even see where you were.”

She saw Paul pretending to blow his nose to hide his laughter. He'd always thought c.o.x-Ralston was an old fool, and he was right, of course he was right, he was an old fool and an old fraud, but Andrea didn't want Paul laughing at him.

The nurse was going over the details of Paul's medications. She made herself pay attention. It was terribly important that they got this right. The doctor arrived, listened to Paul's chest with a stethoscope, and p.r.o.nounced him right as rain.

”Goodbye, everyone,” she said. She turned her back on them. What she wanted to do was walk down the hall backward, waving at them, blowing kisses, saying very loudly, so that everyone could hear, ”I'll miss you, I'll miss you. You don't know how happy you've made me. I think I will never be happier. Yes, I know it: I will never be this happy again.”

”G.o.d, what a relief to get out of that loony bin,” Paul said when they were waiting for the taxi. ”One compulsive liar, one fruit fetis.h.i.+st, one who's only on our planet two-thirds of the time. lesus, what a nightmare.”

Yes, Paul, she wanted to say, you might be right, what you say is quite probably right. Only there is another way of thinking of it, of thinking of all of them. Not as nightmare, but as triumph. They had triumphed, all of them, in their ways. Simply by living, simply by getting to their age. Mr. Nelson had triumphed over tragedy, and Mr. Castanopoulos had triumphed over disgrace, and Mr. c.o.x-Ralston had triumphed over mediocrity. And that was something, wasn't it? You couldn't say that it was nothing. Or that it was bad. And certainly not a nightmare. She knew that nightmare was the wrong word for what the two of them had seen. You are wrong, Paul, she wanted to say. I know that you are wrong. But she said nothing. She took his arm. He was her husband; he was young and well.

”I can't wait to get home,” he said.

”It will be wonderful,” she said to him.

She knew their life was just beginning.

Conversations in Prosperity.

It is the last day in September, cool and dry. My friend and I are sitting in the park, a few feet from the gardens, admiring the cosmos and the columbines, which we know we are incapable of growing for ourselves. We are quite different, physically: she's tall and thin and blonde, and I am short and dark and fleshy. She's wearing khaki shorts, a sleeveless blue s.h.i.+rt, and a denim jacket. I'm wearing purple leggings and a red cotton sweater. I have my dog with me, a seven-year-old black Labrador.

An older woman, alone, a very nice woman in a gauzy flowered skirt, a silk jacket that zips in front, tan Rockport sneakers, stops to pet the dog. She talks about her own dog, long dead. A c.o.c.ker spaniel. How she used to come to the park with her dog and her son in a stroller. How one time a man gave her dog the rest of his ice-cream cone. But grudgingly. ”Take it if you want it so much,” the man said to the dog.

”I wanted to say to the man, 'Well, at least be gracious about it,' but of course I didn't,” the woman says to us. She wants to talk. I focus upon the hem of her skirt, hoping it will move, indicating she's ready to leave us. We don't want to talk to her, we want to talk to each other. We love each other and have too little time to sit and talk. So much, too much, in our lives. We position our bodies so the woman will understand that we don't want to talk, but in a way that, we hope, will indicate that it has to do with our affection for each other, not our rejection of her. She does go away. We feel a little bad, but not for long.

Then a young woman, with well-cut hair that falls like a black slash across her cheek, flowered Lycra running shorts, a bottle of water, steps up to pet the dog. She says, ”You have the perfect dog. You're so lucky to have the perfect dog.” If she looked different, if her hair were less well cut, if her shoes were dirty, we might interpret these words as madness, but we know they aren't mad. Only, perhaps, a sign of melancholy. It's easier not to talk to her than the older woman, since it seems more likely that the future for her will be bright.

She moves away from us, not happier for having seen us.

Although we are quite different physically, my friend and I share a concern for virtue. My friend, who is a midwestern Protestant, carries in her heart a sentence a philosophy professor said to her once: ”What have you done today to justify your existence?” And I, raised by Catholics who mixed a love of pleasure with a sense of endless duty, carry in my heart the words of Jesus: ”Greater love than this no man hath, than that he lay down his life for his friends.” We have talked about this to each other, and we understand that both these sentences take for granted that just living is not enough. Something great, something continually great must be done because this thing ”life” is not to be taken for granted, consumed, like a marvelous meal or a day at the ocean. My friend has in fact devoted her life to serving the poor. She's a social worker; now she's working with children in Was.h.i.+ngton Heights. I have not put my lot with the poor, and my friend's saying that I am heroically committed to an ideal of language isn't, I know, enough for me. I have not laid down my life. But my friend, too, feels she hasn't done enough. Some days we are so sickened by the events of the world that we can't read the newspaper. Then we force ourselves to read it, on the phone, together. We hate our political opponents with a vengeance that there is no place for in the ideals of the liberal minded. It is always on our minds: we haven't done enough.

And so we can't quite brush away the two women who wanted to talk to us, to whom we refused to talk. We wish we could be other than we are. Or we wish we could be seen clearly for what we are really. Not, as everyone imagines, people who are endlessly sympathetic, endlessly dependable, but people who deeply resent invasions on our pleasure and our privacy. No one understands our hunger for solitude, or that we could quite easily and totally give ourselves over and became voluptuaries. When my friend had a short s.p.a.ce between jobs she spent a day naked, eating the box of chocolates her co-workers had given her by way of farewell. She finished the whole box sitting on her couch watching the Simpson trial. She said no one would believe her if she told them. As no one understands when I describe the days spent with the phone off the hook eating Milano cookies and reading People magazine. They say my friend and I only do these things occasionally, that we need to do them because normally we are so productive and responsible. What they don't understand is that we would like to be doing those other things quite often. Maybe all the time. That we would if only we could believe that we could get away with it. If these were things of which it would be impossible for us to stand accused.

I may be speaking only about myself. I think that, much sooner than I, my friend would give up luxury and put her shoulder, as she always does, to the wheel.

I might not.

Both of us have things to do the next day that we don't want to do. A visit to the country. A friend who has lived in a foreign city for years and is back in town. Both of us say yes too much, because we do like people, we really do, but usually not as much as we first thought we would. Or when they're not around, we don't like them as much as when we were with them, and certainly, we don't look forward to seeing them again. And there are always too many people with whom it would be moderately pleasant to spend time. We are not the kind of people who have to speak to women in the park who seem approachable because of the kind eyes of their dog.

My friend says that when she saw the movie II Postino, she knew she would do exactly what Pablo Neruda did. Have an intense, deeply felt friends.h.i.+p with the postman. Then, leaving the island, fail to write. Then come back for a visit to the island, but too late, after the postman was already dead.

We talk about the sickening sense that you have betrayed someone simpler, finer than yourself.

The truth that for a certain time, it was right to say you loved them.

Realizing too that while you never thought of them, your face was always in their heart, behind their eyes.

My friend says, ”I've never been left.”

I say, ”I haven't been left since I was twenty.”

As we say this, we are not proud. We understand that what is missing in us is the impulse to surrender. We speak of another friend of ours who has been left, again and again. Dramatically. Midnight scenes involving things thrown out of windows. Furniture removed when she's gone to work. She has been left, and left greatly. I think of her when she dances with a man. She puts her head back, exposing her throat, as if she were ready for the knife. When I see her do it, I envy her the beauty of the gesture. And I envy the man who is her partner. If I were a man I would fall at her knees. Or put a knife to her throat. Perhaps both. Perhaps both, simultaneously.

My friend and I agree that we are both too old now to be left dramatically. Or at all. We've chosen good men, accomplished men with a secret streak of pa.s.sivity which we may be the only ones to see. These men make a still center around which we move, purposefully, anxiously, believing we are doing good.

I ask my friend if she thinks it's a good thing for a man to love someone like us.

Or for a son to have us as a mother.

She tells me her son once said, ”The thing about you, Ma, is that emotionally, you're very low maintenance.”

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