It feels like an ending every time she sees him standing there, smiling and false.
The professor tries to ignore Addie. She’s at the bar, next to the piano player, who’s on his break. She takes a cigarette out of her purse, taps it on the bar — a habit the professor has always found annoying; he can almost hear it over the din in the restaurant — and the piano player offers her a light. He uses a real lighter, not a disposable. He talks, and Addie nods and makes a show of listening.
The professor isn’t fooled. He knows why she’s here.
He thinks back to his first night in her apartment. “I have a policy,” she said, “against getting involved with my professors.” A policy she honored for as long as she was a student, which was years longer than most people.
From the beginning, he was clear about what he could offer and what he couldn’t. He and Addie made a point of not letting whatever they did together get in the way of what they did apart. He knew she saw other people. Sometimes she was unavailable for months. But even that on-and-offness, that in-betweenness, was something. There was energy in it, possibility. It made his marriage tolerable.
He doesn’t know when she first started having different expectations, when her vocabulary changed, when she first started using words to hurt him. When he stopped being brave, adventurous, risk-taking, and became a coward.
He is a coward. If he didn’t know it before, he knows it now, tonight, on his anniversary, in his favorite restaurant, the only place in Greensboro that serves Campari, while Addie sits at the bar flirting with the piano player.
She cups her hands around her wineglass and rests her mouth on the rim, not quite drinking. The professor is the one who taught her about wine, and about jazz. He introduced her to Merlot and Coltrane, Shiraz and Thelonious Monk.
The flame in the oil lamp is sputtering. The professor polishes off his drink, sets down his glass, and right away the waitress brings their dinner — salmon topped with white caper sauce, rosemary-roasted sweet potatoes, and his favorite, grilled asparagus. He bites into a spear. Smoky, delicate, still slightly crunchy. Delectable.
Addie can see them reflected in the mirror over the bar, picking at their food, not talking to each other. She isn’t jealous. Guilty, a little. Mostly she’s angry — with herself for having wasted so much time, with him for being such a cliché. How did she not see that right away? A married, middle-aged college professor with hairy knuckles. Too smart to be wise, too horny to be good in bed.
She should leave the restaurant now. But the piano player is talking to her. He has long brown hair, a gray suit, a nice smile.
“Beautiful blouse,” he’s saying. “It matches your eyes. The same dangerous shade of green.”
It’s not the obvious flirting that intrigues her. It’s that word, dangerous.
She holds up her wineglass and pretends to examine it. “I can’t remember all the esses,” she says.
“Sorry?”
“The way you’re supposed to drink wine. There are five esses. ‘See,’ ‘swirl,’ ‘sniff,’ ‘sip,’ and something else, I can’t remember.”
“’Swallow’?”
“No.”
“’Spit’?”
“No.” Addie laughs.
“I’ve got it,” the piano player says. “‘Stay.’ You sip your wine and stay through my next set and I’ll buy you dinner.” Without waiting for an answer, as if he’s already sure of her, he leaves her at the bar and returns to the piano.
She can see his hands on the keys — long, sleek, manicured, confident hands. You’d have to be a musician if you had hands like that. Or a surgeon. He’s playing “Spain” by Chick Corea. Every note is perfect, polished. Every note gleams.
He looks down when he plays, concealing his face. The way Roland used to play guitar.
Roland’s music was different — rougher, full of mistakes. But the blues is about mistakes. Mistakes and suffering. To play the blues, Roland once said, you have to reach down into the saddest part of yourself. “That’s where the music is,” he said.
She hasn’t thought about Roland in a long time. The memory of him comforts her somehow, makes her warm. She can feel heat rising, blooming in her face.
While his wife nibbles at her chocolate torte, the professor watches Addie and the piano player eat off each other’s plates and carry on animated conversation, their voices rising as if they want to be overheard. Addie drops names. “Bill Evans ….” “… like Keith Jarrett.” “… with Gary Burton.” Musicians she would never have heard of except for the professor.
The fact that he has no right to be angry only makes him angrier.
As if sensing his attention, Addie gets up. She is wearing a shiny emerald green blouse over tight black jeans. She starts toward the ladies’ room, then makes an elaborate detour, doubling back to his table. His wife looks up. Her cheek is flecked with chocolate. The professor has never felt sorrier for her, or loved her more, or been more ashamed of himself for wanting Addie. And he does; he wants her more than ever.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she says, and lays her hand on his arm. Her hand is warm, her face flushed. “I just wanted to say goodbye.” She leans toward him, her hair swishing forward, brushing the table.
Instinctively, he closes his eyes. He is terrified, thrilled, swallowed up in the moment. In every present moment, the past and future converge. When he opens his eyes, Addie is gone, so suddenly he wonders if he imagined her.
His wife sets down her dessert fork, sighing, as if the fork has become too heavy, a burden she can no longer bear.
“Full?” the professor says.
Dear Byrd,
Even now I don’t know why I thought to call your father after so many years. It’s a question I’ve often asked myself. Here are some possibilities.
1. I was feeling stupid and small and wanted someone to make me feel special like your father once did. You and me, we’re not like everybody else. Maybe he said that to everyone, I don’t know, but when he said it to me, it seemed true.
2. I wasn’t thinking of the times he had not made me feel special.
3. I’d heard from a friend that he was working as a musician in a famous place I’d never been. He had followed his dream, chased it clear across the country. He’d been brave in a way I hadn’t, and I wanted to congratulate him.
4. I had lived too long among academics.
5. Astrologically I was due for an adventure — north node in Sagittarius.
6. Retrocausality. This is how my philosophy professor would have explained it. At a point farther down the space-time continuum was a child waiting to be brought into the world. I called your father because you wanted to be born.
California
“Hello?”
“Roland?”
“Donna?”
“No. Addie. Addie Lockwood, remember?”
It’s early December 1988, a Sunday afternoon. Outside her window the magnolia tree glistens with ice. There is a chilly quiet in the apartment, throughout the house; the store is closed — one reason she chose today to make her call. She has been up since early morning. She practiced in the shower what she would say. I met a man who looks like you. He has your hands. She’s wearing her blue sweater. She’s wearing makeup. She wants to feel pretty, even if he can’t see her. For the last hour she has been sitting on her sofa, wrapped in her softest quilt, telephone on the coffee table in front of her, a scrap of paper with his number, and a bottle of Beaujolais, now half-empty. The wine makes her brave; it also makes her sad for having to spend so much bravery on a single phone call.