“What are you going to do for the rest of the day?” asked Harriet.
“I’ve got a lecture to finish off for tomorrow.”
“Much?”
“An hour or two, maybe.”
“You can always make up a couple of hours,” urged Harriet. “Why don’t we take in a movie? Maybe a drink afterwards? You can work later.”
Janet shook her head. “You know how it is.”
Her friend sighed in reply. “The dedicated Janet Stone, pillar of Washington academia!”
“I like always being on top of things,” said Janet, defensive again. “You know that.”
“You sure you get sufficient recognition for all you do at that damned university?”
“Yes,” said Janet. “And it isn’t a damned university. It’s got very high standards.” She’d worked as determinedly when Hank was alive-anxious then for the promotion and extra money that was so important for their plans-and now she needed the time-consuming, after-hours preparation work and the difficulty with students and being imposed upon for opinions by other Middle East lecturers to block out the sterility of the other parts of her life.
The Capitol dome was very clear now, starkly white and almost artificial in its perfection, more like a decoration than the seat of the most powerful legislature in the world.
“With your ability and qualifications you could get a hell of a job there,” Harriet said, gesturing towards the administration building. “Ever thought about it?”
“No,” said Janet.
“Why don’t you? You’d probably double your salary.”
“I’m happy enough where I am,” said Janet. And safe, she thought. No longer being safe-no longer having someone she could completely rely on to protect and take care of her-had been one of Janet’s worst and most persistent fears after Hank’s death. And secretly-so secretly that she’d admitted it to no one-it still was. She kept the Rosslyn apartment despite its painful memories because she felt safe and cocooned in it and it was the need for such a feeling that had been her major reason for resisting her parents’ demands that she return to England. She wanted always now to be with things and in places that were familiar. Safe: like hideaway holes.
Harriet smiled sideways. “You want me to ask around?”
“Ask about what?”
“John Sheridan, who props up walls and nurses one drink.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Janet said as forcefully as she could. “I had a drink with a shy man, a lonely man… lonely like me. OK? No drama. No nothing. Just that.”
“What happened after the drink?”
“Less than happened with your starch-free gay.”
“He didn’t make a pass?”
“No.”
“Ask for your number?”
“No.”
“Ask if he could see you again?”
“No.”
Harriet sighed, heavily. “Isn’t life sometimes a bucket of shit?”
“Yes,” Janet agreed. “More often than not life is a bucket of shit.”
They stopped by the side of the enormous building, able from the top of the hill to gaze out over Washington and its orderly patterns of grassed malls and reflecting pools and museums and monolithic monuments to past presidents.
“I really could get you fixed up with a terrific job,” Harriet said.
“I’ll stay where I am.” For how long? Janet wondered. Forever? Why not? There was nothing else for her to do.
“You sure about that movie?”
“Positive.”
“Call me during the week?”
“You know I will.”
It took Janet little over an hour to complete the Lebanese lecture, and she was pleased with the way it went the following day. A teaching assistant named Barnett who’d come close to making a pass several times asked her to go over his master’s thesis, which she agreed to do although she knew it was a ploy giving them time together. The thesis was weak and badly argued-he actually predicted the Israelis might agree to surrender the occupied bank and the Gaza Strip, which Janet dismissed as ridiculously naive-and she told him so, hoping the rejection would go beyond the academic paper.
That week a letter arrived from her parents, who lived in Sussex, asking when she intended to visit. They planned to take a long tour through Egypt and the Sudan and Saudi Arabia, in each of which her father had served, and they did not want the dates to clash. She replied that she wasn’t sure yet so why didn’t they make their arrangements and she would fit in, whenever.
She had dinner with Harriet one night and brunch with her as usual the following Sunday, and the week after that went with Harriet to Garfinkels and to the Georgetown Mall, setting up for Harriet’s trip to Europe. Prompted by the shopping expedition, she thought about buying a winter coat in the sales but decided against it, because it was too soon in the year and she’d be gettting the previous autumn’s style anyway. Her cat, George, developed a dry cough and she had to take it to the vet, who said it was easily treated this time but warned her that it was six years old. Sundays were lonely, like all the other days in the week, with Harriet away. She got cards from Bonn (“dullsville”) and Berlin (“super”).
Janet was marking papers in the Rosslyn apartment on a Wednesday evening when the telephone rang and momentarily she frowned at it, curiously, because she got so few calls.
“I don’t know if you remember me,” the voice said. “It’s John Sheridan.”
“I remember,” Janet said.
4
J anet’s collapse into complete and abject despondency had come the day after the funeral, when she’d finally accepted Hank’s death. She’d refused to get out of bed or to bathe-wash, even-or to eat. Most of all she had refused to eat, and when her mother warned that unless she did she would cause herself harm the idea of committing suicide settled in Janet’s mind. For several days she lay curled beneath the covers, with her knees up under her chin, very calmly planning how to do it. She’d bought a lot of painkillers when Hank’s cancer had first been diagnosed, scouring magazines for every brand name and every formula to find the maximum strength she thought would be necessary, not realizing there would be no pain and stupidly imagining she might find something better than the doctors would prescribe if there were. And they were all still in the bathroom cabinet. She’d been very confident about how easy it would be. She planned to respond to her mother’s urging to take a bath, actually letting it run while she started swallowing the pills, slowly and carefully because she did not want to vomit and spoil everything. When the bath was ready she was going to get in with the bottles where she just had to reach out to go on, willing herself to fight against the initial sensation of unconsciousness and to continue swallowing to ensure she took enough to die and not just lapse into a drugged sleep from which she could be resuscitated if they got to her in time.
Her mother had smiled gratefully and helped her from her disheveled bed and Janet had forced herself not to think of the anguish she was going to cause the woman, sure her own anguish was greater. She said she felt a lot better and was going to take a long soak, to avoid her mother becoming alarmed and forcing her way in before the pills had time to work. Immediately inside the bathroom Janet had pressed back against the locked door, not frightened at all, her feeling rather one of impatience to get started, in a hurry to die. From outside her mother asked if she was all right and Janet called back that she was, turning the taps on in further reassurance.
And then she’d opened the bathroom cabinet to find every pill bottle gone. The frustration had whimpered through her as she scrabbled through what remained, thinking they might be hidden by something else, and then whimpered again at the awareness that her mother had cleared them out. Her mother called again and Janet made a sound back, slumping on the bath edge, emptied so completely she was unable even to think.
The bathroom was small and mirrored, to make it seem bigger, and when Janet had finally looked up, to turn off the water before it overflowed the bath edge, her instant and absurd reaction had been to wonder whose reflection she was seeing. The shock at realizing it was herself actually made her gasp.