Angry at him for ignoring her knock—but maybe he hadn’t heard it—she ran to the window and peered up over the sill.
Into the kitchen. She cupped her hand against the window and saw Tom with his back to her. His shirt was untucked and he was wearing a ragged pair of jeans. He bent down toward something on the floor; she saw it dash away—a cat, perhaps? But that was odd: Tom had never liked pets.
People change, she told herself.
She knocked at the door again, as hard as she could.
Moments later, Tom answered.
His smile faded when he saw her. He said, “My God.”
“I’ve been here a little while,” she said. “I knocked—”
“I must have been downstairs. My God. Come in.”
She entered the house almost apologetically—cowed by his astonishment. I should have phoned. “I didn’t mean to surprise you like this, but—”
He waved his hand. “It’s all right. I’ve been out of the house—I don’t always pick up the phone.”
She allowed this excuse, disturbing as it was. He gestured at the sofa. She sat down.
The room was neutrally furnished, almost impersonal. Barbara recognized a few items from the old Seattle apartment—a rack of jazz LPs, the stereo amplifier Tom had put together during his electronics-hobbyist phase. But the furniture was old-fashioned, styleless, and spotlessly clean; she guessed it came with the house.
“I ought to tell you why I came.”
Tom shook his head. “I can guess. Tony called you, right?” She nodded; he said, “I should have expected it. I’m sorry, Barbara. Not sorry to see you again. Sorry you dragged yourself all the way out here for nothing.”
“Tony’s worried. He has a decent impulse now and then. Loreen’s worried, too, he says.”
“They shouldn’t be.”
She didn’t want to press the subject. She said, “It’s a nice house.”
“I guess I ought to show you around.”
He showed her the kitchen, the bedroom, the spare room, the bath—all immaculate, old-fashioned, and a little bit sterile. She hovered at the stairs but Tom hung back. “That’s just the basement. Nothing of interest.”
She sat at the kitchen table while he brewed a pot of coffee. “This doesn’t look like bachelor housekeeping.”
His smile was secretive. “Guess I’ve learned a few things since the college dorm.”
“Tony said you’re working down at his lot.”
“Yup.”
“How’s it going?”
He brought two cups of coffee to the table and passed one to her. “Lousy. Maybe Tony mentioned that, too. I don’t have a knack for taking people’s money.”
“You were always a rotten card player, too. Are you going to quit?”
He said, “I’m thinking of leaving.”
This distinction—not “quitting” but “leaving”—struck an odd chord. “So you don’t answer the phone, the job’s no good … Are you moving?”
“I don’t have any firm plans.”
“You mean you don’t want to talk about it.”
He shrugged.
She said, “Well, I can’t blame Tony and Loreen for worrying. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.”
His mood, she meant, but it was the way he looked, too. All his flabbiness had been stripped away. He moved as if he’d tapped some secret well of energy. She considered checking his medicine cabinet for stimulants—but this wasn’t a chemical nerviness. Something deeper, she thought: a purposeful energy.
“I’m not sick,” he said. “And I’m not crazy.”
“Can you tell me what’s going on?”
He hesitated a long time. Finally he said, “I chose not to talk about this with Tony or Loreen or anyone else. I think I have that right.”
“And you don’t want to talk about it with me.”
A longer pause. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“I waited a long time to see you,” he said. “I wanted you to come back. I wanted to see you come through that door. To come and to stay. But that’s not why you’re here.”
“No,” she said.
“We don’t share secrets anymore. I think that’s a fact of life.”
“I suppose so. But you understand why I came?”
“Yes.”
“You would have done the same—right?”
“Yes. I would.”
They sipped coffee in the silence of the kitchen. A breeze lifted the curtains over the sink.
By noon, Barbara understood that, yes, he was preparing to go away for a long time; that he was secretive but probably not suicidal; that she might not see him again.
Adjusting to this last nugget of information was harder than she’d anticipated. She had left him months ago, and the break had been final; she had never made plans to meet him again. The separation had been difficult but not traumatic. But maybe that was because, at the back of her mind, he was still there, as solid and invulnerable as a monument, a part of her life cast in stone.
His bout with alcoholism had disturbed that complacency and now it had been shaken to the roots. This wasn’t Tom as she’d left him. This was some new Tom. A wilder Tom, deep in some enterprise he wouldn’t explain.
Selfish, of course, to want him never to change. But she was afraid for him, too.
He fixed a little lunch, omelettes, ham and onion—“I don’t live entirely on TV dinners.” She accepted gratefully but understood that the meal was a gesture; she would have to leave soon.
“Whatever it is you’re doing,” she said, “I hope it’s good for you. I mean that.”
He thanked her; then he put down his fork. His face was solemn. “Barbara,” he said, “how much do you love the year 1989?”
It was a weird question. “I think it sucks,” she said. “Why?”
“It’s bad because—well, why?”
“I don’t know. Where do you start? It’s a bad time for the world because people are starving, because the climate is tough, because we’ve stripped away the ozone layer—all kinds of reasons. And it’s a bad time in America because everybody is very, very nervous and very, very careful. Except the bad guys. Remember Yeats? ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.’ Why do you ask?”
“What if you had a choice?”
“What?”
“I’m serious. What if you could step out of the world? What if you knew a place—not a perfect place, but a place where you could live without some of the uncertainties? A place where you knew for sure there wouldn’t be a nuclear exchange in the next thirty years. Where there was disease, but not AIDS. All the human agony—repression, pain, ugliness—but on a slightly less massive scale. And suppose you could predict some of it. Maybe not stop it, but at least stay away from it—floods, plane crashes, terrorist raids. What do you think, Barb, is that a good offer?”
She said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s a hypothetical question.”
“Even hypothetically, it doesn’t make sense.”
“But if there were such a place. If you could go there.”
She thought about it. She meant to answer carefully: the question might be hypothetical but it certainly wasn’t casual. She read the intensity in Tom’s face. “I might be tempted,” she said. “Well, hell. I would be tempted. Who wouldn’t? But in the end—no, I don’t think I’d go.”
He seemed disappointed. “Why not?”
“Lots of reasons. I have business here.”
“Saving the world?”
A small vein of sarcasm. She ignored it. “Maybe doing my share. And there are people—”
“Rafe, for instance?”
“Rafe. Among others, yes. I have a lot to live for, Tom.”
“I wasn’t talking about dying.” I hope not, she thought. But then, what?