“I guess they’re brewing up a fresh pot ofthe decaf,”Daniel says.“Are you going to have time?”
They talk about the children, and Daniel feels the minutes ticking away;it’s like feeling himself bleed to death.He wonders, wildly, ifIris remembers that he is not really Ruby’s father.How can he bring that up without it seeming small-minded? Iris’s coffee has still not arrived, and she checks her watch, looks quickly over her shoulder at Becky, who is at the far end ofthe counter leisurely chatting to an old man in a tractor cap and suspenders.
“I’m having such a hard time in school,”Iris says.“And I can’t be late for this meeting with my advisor.He already thinks I’m a flake.”
“He can’t think that.”
“I’m getting my doctorate inAmerican Studies, and I can’t even figure out my thesis.I keep changing it.The thing is, I really want to get my de-gree, but another part ofme would be happy to stay in school forever.It’s so much fun, and it’s not like I’ve got to put bread on my family table.”
“When I first met you, you were thinking aboutThurgood Marshall.”
“That was my husband’s idea.Marshall was sort ofa friend ofhis family.Well, there have been many changes oftopic since then.God.All this time offfrom school, all this marriage and motherhood, it’s sort of gummed up my brain.I’m in a state ofconstant confusion.”
“I never liked school,”Daniel says, though it’s not true.He’s not sure why he said it.
“I like school.I just don’t like my brain right now.”Her laugh is soft, heartrending.She pushes the sleeves ofher sweater up, showing her ar-ticulated forearms, dark and hairless.“I better get out ofhere,”she says.
“This is ridiculous.You didn’t even get your coffee.”
“It’s no big deal.”Her heart is racing;how long will it take him to figure out that the waitress is deliberately not serving her?“Anyhow, you said the coffee’s not very good here.”
“Well, at least drink the water, the water’s excellent.”
Outside, they linger for a moment.“Becky was weird in there,”
Daniel says.
“Becky?”Iris can feel it coming;he is going to declare himself outraged on her behalf.He is going to be her prince in shining liberal armor.
“Yes, our waitress,”he says.He feels a quickening, he has found a way to say what he has wanted to say for so long.“The thing about Becky is she’s weird around beautiful women.”There.It’s said.He makes a helpless ges-ture, as ifhe were tossing up his life, seeing where it would land.He doesn’t dare look at her.“Because you are.So extraordinarily beautiful.”
“Oh.”She says it as ifhe were a child who has come up with something adorable.“Well, thanks.”
“I still owe you a cup ofcoffee,”he says.“How about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,”she says.
He watches her as she hurries toward her car.Her generous bottom, her funny little run.The sky is dark blue and the autumn sun is warm and steady, as ifpromising that winter will never arrive.A slow breeze moves down the street, carrying the perfume ofthe slowly dying leaves, a nearby field’s last mowing, the river.What can the world do to you with its beauty? Can it lift you up on its shoulders, as ifyou were a hero, can it whoopsie-daisy you up into its arms as ifyou were a child? Can it goad your timid heart, urge you on to finally seize what you most shamefully desire?Yes, yes, all that and more.The world can crush you with its beauty.
Back in the city, Daniel’s firm had offices that took three floors in a styl-ishArt Deco building on LexingtonAvenue, with astrological mosaics in the lobby, and arte moderne numerals over the filigreed brass elevator doors.But here in Leyden his place ofwork is as humble as his practice, two rooms in a wood-framed building near the center oftown.It’s an ungraceful, stolid sort ofbuilding, the architectural equivalent ofa schoolmarm, a nun, a maiden aunt;it once had been, in fact, a board-inghouse, from1925to1960,owned by two musical, free-thinking German sisters, and run exclusively for local unmarried women—gen-teel shop-women, schoolteachers, and a woman named Marjorie Inger-soll, who had a small private income that she supplemented by giving painting and drawing lessons, and whose cheerful landscapes, with their agitated skies and roller coaster hills and valleys, are still displayed along the stairways and in the hallways.Now, the house has been turned into an office complex, where Daniel rents a two-room suite, where century-old locust trees scrape their branches against the windows at the wind’s slightest provocation.Eight hundred and fifty dollars a month, which back in the city would get him thirty square feet in Staten Island.
Daniel climbs the back stairs to the second floor, so lost in thought as he replays and what-ifs this morning’s meeting with Iris that he forgets today’s first appointment will be with his parents, who have announced that they wish to review their last will and testament.Daniel is not their lawyer;the meager bits oflegal business they have generated throughout their adult lives have been handled by one ofthe town’s old-timers, Owen Fitzsim-mons, an ectoplasmic old sort with funereal eyes and icy hands.Fitzsim-mons was a longtime chiropractic patient ofDaniel’s father’s, and while Mrs.Fitzsimmons was alive, the two couples took golfing vacations to-gether to Phoenix and San Diego, formed a wine-tasting club that was quite a success in Leyden in the late1970s, and one summer traveled together to Scotland and Ireland, where they stayed in castles, golfed, and came back home percolating with plans to retire and expatriate to what they continu-ally referred to as“the British Isles.”When his parents called for an ap-pointment, Daniel had wondered ifthere’d been some falling-out with Fitzsimmons, though that seemed to him unlikely.Daniel found Fitzsim-mons both vain and dour, a chilly man in a worn blue blazer with some mys-terious crest over the pocket.But then Daniel’s parents—Carl and Julia Emerson—were no less dour, and even shared with Fitzsimmons whatever circulatory difficulty it is that prevents one’s hands, fingers, and particularly fingertips from getting the blood flow necessary to keep them at a mam-malian temperature.Because their work entailed touching people, both of them were continually blowing on their hands to try to warm them.
Daniel’s secretary is named SheilaAlvarez.She is a stout, round-faced woman.She wraps her dark braids so they sit like a woven basket on top ofher head, and she wears complicated necklaces with tiny stones, bits of seashell, and pantheistic amulets.The least alluring ofthree daughters, she is one ofthose women who get stuck with the task ofcaring for ag-ing, suffering parents, and when they died she was all alone in the world, and too emotionally spent to do anything about it.She has a far-flung net-work ofwomen friends, with whom she is continually on the phone.She is, however, unfailingly efficient, and since getting ill last winter, when Daniel not only protected her job during a long convalescence but also paid for the hospital charges that the insurance company didn’t cover, she is fiercely loyal to Daniel, protective and vigilant, as ifthe office were un-der continual attack, or threat ofattack, though, ofcourse, it is not:it’s just a humdrum rural practice, with one criminal case for every ten real estate closings, and even the criminal cases rarely come to trial.