Lydia rolled herself closer to her bed. “I’m tired.”
“Would you like me to call someone to help you?”
She flung the tin of cookies onto her bed. “Do you think I’m incapable of calling for a nurse? I’ll call for a nurse when I’m ready. But for now I’ve . . . got a little time.” She looked away, then back at me. “Now. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. What do you propose we talk about?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s just play a round of gin rummy.”
“I can’t do that.”
She sat back in her chair. “Why not?”
“I never learned how to play it.”
“Well, what can you play?”
“Just crazy eights.” It was true. But for that, I had never learned any card games. John had once tried to teach me bridge, but it felt too much like math. And I’d kept looking out the window.
“Well, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And I hear stupid things all the livelong day, believe me.”
“Why don’t you teach me the game?” I asked.
She frowned, then reached up to rub one eye. “Get the cards. They’re in my top drawer. There’s some candy bars in there, too. If you’d like.”
“Not right now, thanks.” I opened her drawer and pulled out a deck of cards. Beneath a pile of Hershey bars, I saw one of the letters I’d brought—she’d kept one. I closed the drawer without comment.
“I’ll deal,” Lydia said, looking fiercely at me.
I handed her the cards. “Okay.”
“Thank you,” she said, and quickly cleared her throat.
I sat back in my chair and watched her deal the cards, and inside I felt the spread of a great satisfaction. I knew I would be hard-pressed to explain it to anyone but John. Others might call this futile, a waste of time, masochistic, even. John would call it acknowledging the fact that people truly are all connected, and that we are, at least in some sense, meant to care for one another—all the time, not just in times of catastrophe. He would call visiting a bitter old woman a risk worth taking. I felt as though we were doing it together.
“Hire me, too,” Lorraine said. We were driving back from the airport, and I’d told her I was going to hire Jovani if I could ever find a store to rent. He had suggested putting in a wine-and-dessert bar—a sort of female equivalent to a cigar bar. He would manage it. Also, he would sell his artwork there.
“I mean it,” Lorraine said. “I’m ready for a radical change.”
“Really, you’d come here and help me?”
“I would.”
For a moment, I allowed myself the luxury of thinking of Lorraine perhaps even moving here, becoming my roommate once again, going on buying trips with me to Italy, to Greece, to France. But I didn’t want to set myself up for disappointment—what were the chances of her doing that, really? It was one thing to help a friend; another to move permanently.
“You should wear that tomorrow night,” I said. She looked stunning: a white sweater, elegantly cut tweed pants, soft brown Italian leather shoes.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I brought a dress. And some killer heels—they’d better have the sidewalks clear. Should I wear my hair up or down?”
“Up,” I said, at the same time as she said, “Down.”
“Do both,” I said. “Start out with it up.”
“Good.” She looked at her watch. “I really can’t wait to meet him.”
“Matthew?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s adorable.”
“You said.”
Saturday night Lorraine waited impatiently in the living room for Tom to pick her up. Her black dress was cut low both in the front and in the back but otherwise was quite simple. She wore large diamond studs and a beautiful gold-and-diamond bangle bracelet. (Real? I asked, and she said, That guy was a good one.)
When the doorbell finally rang, I opened it to a nervous Tom, who became even more nervous when he saw Lorraine. For her part, she gave me a tight smile on the way out. I knew what it meant: When I get back, I’m going to kill you for making me spend time with such a schmuck. As I shut the door after them, I was already preparing his modest defense.
I made a simple supper of soup and salad, then settled down to read. But I couldn’t concentrate; I kept having visions of what I hoped would happen. Finally, at eight-thirty, I called Delores and asked if she’d like to go to a movie. No answer.
I bathed, changed into pajamas, lay in bed and looked at magazines, listened to a couple of CDs, fell asleep, woke up, fell asleep, woke up. At one-fifteen the front door opened, and I heard a car drive away. I turned on my light.
Lorraine came up the stairs, then into my bedroom, holding her shoes in her hand. Her hair was down, her cheeks flushed. “You’re awake,” she said. “Good.”
“So?” I asked.
“I think I’m in looooove.”
I sat up higher in bed. “I told you he was adorable!”
“He is such a sweetheart! And believe me, Little Miss Melanie is going to go home and do some serious thinking. I was so proud of Matthew; she invited him in after we took them home and he said no, he wanted to go home and study. But then he looked over at me and I put my hand on his thigh. It was great.”
“Tell me everything!”
“I will. But first . . . I didn’t mean I was in love with Matthew.”
Here came the inevitable sarcastic attack on Tom. “All right, fine, Lorraine, I know he’s not your type.”
“No. I’m serious. I really like this guy!” She laughed. “I do! I’m going to see him tomorrow night.”
“You . . . what do you mean? You can’t do that.”
She’d been taking off her earrings, and she stopped. “Why not? You don’t care about him, do you? That’s what you said.”
“I said . . . I just said that it was awkward!”
She moved to the bed to sit beside me. “That’s not what you said. You have feelings for him? If you do, tell me.”
“I don’t know yet, Lorraine!”
“Well, don’t get all pissed off.”
“I’m not!”
She leaned in closer to me. I could smell scotch on her breath. Her eyes were bloodshot. “You are. You are pissed off.”
I looked down, picked at the bedspread. “Where are you going with him?”
“We were going to hear some jazz.”
I nodded. I had had no such invitation from him.
“The kind you don’t like, Betta, very contemporary stuff in some little club in the city. Did you know he used to play saxophone?”
“Yeah, I remember something like that.” I did not. “How do you know I don’t like that kind of jazz?”
“Well, because you never did. And also, Tom told me about when he wanted to play Coltrane, and . . .” She looked away from me, and I saw that Tom had told her everything else as well. “Do you want to come with us?” she asked. Still, she would not look at me.
Us. The word was huge.
“Oh, yeah, that would be great.” I had a sudden image of the three of us at a nightclub, Lorraine and Tom looking terrific, he in his leather coat, she in her tight sweater, me in my bathrobe and curlers.
She smiled hesitantly, not sure of how I was feeling. I heard my voice growing louder. “You don’t know everything about me. You don’t know what kind of jazz I like! Things change! You don’t even know me anymore!”
“That’s not true! I—”
“No, you don’t!”
She sighed, reached over to touch my hand, which I immediately pulled away. “Betta. Calm down. I do know you, just as you still know me. Just as we all still know each other—Maddy, Susanna, you, and I. If you want me not to pursue a relationship with Tom, just . . . I mean, Jesus, is that what you want?”
I got out of bed and went into Lorraine’s room. I took her suitcase out of the closet and put it on the bed, opened it. Then I began throwing things into it—her robe, a pair of pants, a couple of
blouses, her white sweater. She leaned against the doorjamb, watching me. From the corner of my eye, I could see that she had gotten a stain on the left breast of her fancy black dress. Good. “What are you doing, Betta?”
I opened the dresser drawer and threw her flannel pajama bottoms into the suitcase, her T-shirt. I threw in her lacy underwear. Maybe Tom would find hers worth looking at. “I am so sick of you,” I said.
“You can’t be sick of me. You haven’t seen me enough to be sick of me.”
“I am sick of you! I’m sick of you from before! Always lording it over everyone—”
“Lording what over everyone!”
I stopped packing, looked over at her.
“What?”
I threw in her hairbrush. “You know exactly what I mean, Lorraine. You think you have rights that . . . well, you don’t think! You just take! You do whatever you want without regard for anyone else’s feelings. I had a relationship with Tom, but now you’ve ruined it!”
“Betta, this isn’t fair.”
“Let me remind you of something, okay? My husband died. He was the center of my life. He was the one I told everything to, he understood everything, I didn’t even have to say it! For so many years, I . . .” I began to cry and Lorraine moved toward me. I held up my hand, traffic-cop style. “No! You have no idea, Lorraine. You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone like that. It’s like being eviscerated! Do you know how hard it is to try to have another relationship after that? Do you know how hard it is to just go on, when you’ve lost someone like that?”
She spoke softly. “No. I don’t. You know why? Because I never had that. I never even came close. Now let’s play the What’s Worse game, you want to play that?” She tossed one earring into the suitcase, then the other. “I think I know something about what you had, Betta. And I think you’re lucky. You had someone who protected you from every hard knock and who told you every single day that you were loved. You were so loved! I have never had that kind of relationship in my life. And I am scared to death I never will. I’m getting older, okay? And I’m tired. I’m tired of working and I’m tired of being alone. Now I meet someone who . . . he’s different, and I think I might finally have a chance to be with someone who can do for me what I’ve needed most all along. You said you knew right away when you met John that he was the one for you. I felt that way tonight. It was easy being with him! For once, we met in the middle. He’s not afraid of me—I’m so tired of men being afraid of me! I just . . . I have a chance, here. You want to take it from me? Fine. I’ll call Tom and tell him I had to go back to Providence. Or maybe you’d like to do that.” She pulled off her dress and lay it in the suitcase. She stepped into the pants she’d worn on the plane, then pulled on the white sweater and black boots.
“Lorraine,” I said.
She looked at me, her hands on her hips. “What.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll find a hotel in Chicago.”
“Don’t do that.” I sank down onto the bed, and she sat beside me.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked. “Tell me.”
“It’s not Tom I want,” I said. “I know that. And he doesn’t want me. We don’t work that way together. I know that.”
“Maybe you just need more time,” Lorraine said. “Maybe if I weren’t here . . .”
“How about we go to the airport tomorrow morning,” I said, and she stiffened, then nodded.
“No,” I said. “Because I want to go back to Boston. You can stay here.”
She embraced me and I stared at the wall, my hands at my side.
As a child, I used to dream of flying off to another city on a whim. And now I’d done it. Of course, it didn’t feel as glamorous as I used to imagine it, especially since I was using Lorraine’s frequent-flyer miles. In those fantasies, I saw myself wrapped in white furs, drinking champagne while lounging in a large white leather seat. Now I was crammed into a middle seat in the next-to-last row, the child next to me drawing on the window with his crayon, the woman on the other side of me complaining over and over about the noise of the engine. But the flight would last only two hours. I closed my eyes.
When I landed, I called my old neighbor Sheila from the airport, asking her to have dinner with me that night. “You’re moving back, right?” she said, and I said I didn’t know. We agreed to meet at Legal Seafood at seven. When I hung up, I went outside and got into a cab, asking the driver to take me to the Copley Plaza to drop off my bag, then to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
I stared at the scenery we passed, beloved to me. The ocean, the North End, Faneuil Hall, the fancy shops and outdoor cafés on Newbury Street, the huge red bow put up annually on the office building next to the Pike. I watched a couple walking hand in hand along the Charles, their dog straining at his leash, and I remembered that awful day when I rode home from the hospital with John’s suitcase beside me.
When I arrived at the museum, I headed for the courtyard, where I sat on a wall and did not move for what felt like a very long time. I watched different people admiring the flowers there, some obviously tourists, and I felt proud of what was still my city. I remembered attending chamber concerts in the hall upstairs, sitting beside John and closing my eyes, listening hard. Often, we would go afterward to the nearby Museum of Fine Arts and eat dinner in the elegant dining room. I loved how reflective John became after a day of looking at art, how he was so eager to talk about what he had seen that had moved him in one way or another. Going to museums always brought him great comfort; even after he was quite ill, he still loved to go. Art lasted, was the thing. He loved that it lasted.
Remembering this, my eyes filled and I held my gloves up as a makeshift handkerchief. My sounds were small and muffled but obvious. No one paid any attention. It was the way we had become. In a world full of sorrows, this was only one more.
Later in the afternoon, I stood outside the house I used to live in. It had grown very cold. Birds sat puffed up on tree branches; puddles were iced over; even the sky seemed frozen. The people who’d bought the house were home; I could see them moving about inside. I took in a breath, then went up to the door and knocked.
A man with a dramatic receding hairline who appeared to be in his early thirties answered, then looked questioningly at me. “Hello,” I said. “My name is Betta Nolan. I used to live here.”
“Oh, yes,” the man said. “I remember your name. You didn’t come to the closing.”
“Right. I was wondering . . .”
He stood there, mildly impatient. From behind him came the sounds of someone working in the kitchen, the clangs and bangs of pots and pans, and the rich scent of curry.
“I hope you’ll forgive my barging in like this. But I . . .” I stared past him down the hall. To the left was the kitchen with the large window overlooking the backyard. To the right was John’s study, where once I came in, lowered the blinds, and made love to him on the floor. I wanted to see the family room again, where John spent so many of his last hours. And hard as it would be, I also wanted to see our bedroom.
“I wonder,” I said. “Would you mind terribly if I looked inside?”
The man hesitated, then said, “For . . . ?”
“Well . . .” I became suddenly furious that I had to ask permission to come into a place where I had lived for so long. “I would actually like to buy it back from you. I made a mistake. I would like to buy it back from you, and I will pay a great deal for it.”
“Honey?” A woman’s voice, and now a thin, dark-haired woman was standing beside him. “Hello,” she said.
“She’s the previous owner,” the man said.
“Well, for heaven’s sake, come in,” the woman said, and sent her spouse a dark look, for which I was grateful. “You must be wanting to see what we’ve done.”
“She wants to buy it back,” the man said, chuckling, and the woman said, “Charles? Why don’t you go and take care of Billy. I’ll stay here.”
He
stared at us, one hand on his hip.
“Go,” the woman said. Charles walked off, and the woman said, “I’m Naomi Appel. Come in. Look around all you want to. It’s okay.”
I came in, unbuttoned my coat, took a few nervous steps down the hall. “Maybe I could start with the study.” Even absent, he would steady me. His papers, neatly arranged on his desk, his favorite photo of us together beside his phone, the leather chair, which, when I’d gotten it for him, had been a major extravagance. Of course they wouldn’t be there now. But their ghosts would be.
“Oh, that’s not there anymore. We tore down a wall to make the family room bigger. Come, I’ll show you. It’s wonderful! We changed the wall color to a dark green, and put up—”
“You know,” I spoke around a lump in my throat. “Never mind. I guess I . . .” I laughed, embarrassed.
Her eyes softened. “Oh, I thought . . . I just thought you might like to see the improvements. But of course that would be hard for you.”
“I’m sorry for disturbing you. I guess this wasn’t such a good idea.”
She walked me to the door and shivered after she opened it. “If you ever change your mind, you just come on over. Don’t pay any attention to Charles.”
“All right,” I said. “Thank you.” I stood still, looking at the wall where we’d hung an oil we bought at the Brickbottom Annual Open Studio sale in Somerville. You could see the faint outline.
“I’m going to close this door right up, okay?” the woman said. “Chilly!”
I stepped outside, then turned to say, “Thank you for letting me look.”
“You’re very welcome.” The door closed on her words.
I moved out to the center of the street so that I could take in the whole house. This is exactly what John and I had done when we bought it, stood in the middle of the street, and a car had narrowly missed hitting John. In our happiness at having found a place we loved so much, we hadn’t cared. Now, like a pale echo, a boy raced close by me on a bicycle. Soon he would be a man, then an old man, then gone. I looked up at the sky, darkening and indifferent. Then I went to the corner to look for a cab. I would go and buy a book to read on the plane when I went home. For this was home no longer.