His Wife Leaves Him

romance. You know, when we’d driven back from the Spengler Cottage and you left me at my door? What was the reason? I was always a little confused by it,” and she said “What I told you that day in the car.” “And that was…?” and she said “A very strong gut reaction that turned out to be wrong. Anyhow, it worked out for the better. I found out how much I missed you. It could be that for any relationship to last it needs a breakup that feels real. That sort of fits in with what Grace told me: to have a long good marriage it helps if you had a bad one before.” “So where does that leave me?” and she said “You had serious relationships that lasted twice as long as my marriage to Richard. You were even engaged once and came within a hair of getting married, even if you only knew the woman for half a year.” “Terry,” he said, “and eight months total. She broke my heart twice. First time after two great months, when she suddenly dropped me for another guy, whom she married in a few weeks and divorced in a year. And two years later, when we hooked up again, got engaged too fast and she broke it off after six months. Plus, I forgot, one night thrown in when I got off the ship from France and was on my way to California, three years after she broke off the engagement. So, eight months and a day. Because she didn’t love me, to be perfectly honest, though she never said that. What she said the first time was she didn’t expect me to be so hurt. What she said the second time was to make it easier for both of us we shouldn’t see each other for a while and, yes, she probably is going to start seeing other men if she meets any she wants to. What did I know. I was a kid. Do you still love me?” That was the first time he said that to her, and then as a joke between them or some kind of ritual or annual verbal renewal of their love he would say the same thing at dinner on their wedding anniversary, even when the kids were with them, and they mostly were—“This is a serious joke between Mommy and me,” he explained to them once about what he was going to say — and she said “You know I do, very much,” and he said “I do to you too, very much, more than ever, if that’s possible,” and he kissed her and at the restaurants after he asked it and they gave almost the same answers each time, he would always take her hand nearest him and kiss it. They usually sat next to each other when they went out to eat with the kids or friends, and always the last two years so he could help feed her if she needed it or hold her glass to her lips or pick the food off her she might have spilled or had fallen off the fork he’d brought to her mouth. He acted calmly in the car. No anger, no words he didn’t mean or would hurt. He could see there was no changing her mind by talking about it and he felt they were finished for good, that she didn’t love him or even like him much anymore — she didn’t say it; her face did and he wasn’t going to ask it because he thought he knew what she’d say — and that would make him feel even worse — and he said something like “Well, if that’s the way you want it, then that’s how it has to be. Not the way I want it, that’s for sure, but what can I do? Nothing. So know I’m not going to phone or write, or anything,” and she said “I appreciate that.” “Then, so long, then,” and he choked up a little, his neck tightened, and he said “That’s because”—pointing to his throat—“I’m going to miss you,” and she said “Thank you.” “Ah, what am I talking for? Words not only fail me but are useless.” He started for his building, then slapped his forehead and said “Where am I going? My things.” He went back to the car and she smiled and said “I was wondering. All of yours in the trunk?” and he said “Yeah.” She gave him her keys, he opened the trunk, got his things onto the sidewalk and gave her back her keys. “Bye, cats,” he said through the back window to the cats in the carriers on the seat. “I’m going to miss you guys too. Oh, the key to your place,” and he got it off his key ring and gave it to her. He started bringing his things into his building’s vestibule, didn’t look at her again or say goodbye, and she drove off. He wanted to look at the car going down the street and then thought Why? He got everything upstairs in two trips — as always, manuscripts and typewriter first. He thinks he also said, after she said “I appreciate that,” “I’m not going to be a nuisance,” and she said “Good.” He didn’t call or write her. Doesn’t think he even thought to, and felt if she called or wrote him it’d be over some practical matter: money he might still owe her for the rent and utilities for the cottage, for instance, or car expenses coming back. All the things of his he had in her apartment he took to Maine with him and brought back in the car. She had nothing of hers in his. She didn’t have a key to his apartment because she didn’t come to it much and when she did he was either with her or there. But the first night he called. He thought, after wanting to call her for about a week, this is getting ridiculous, and so on. What’s to be afraid of? And wait too long — well, this would never happen but something like it could — she won’t know who he is and he’ll have to go through the whole awkward scene of reminding her. Call, and if she agrees to meet, they’ll meet and he’ll see where it goes from there. He knows he’ll want something to — to start with, another date, where he’d be a little more confident — but if nothing does he just has to accept it. Look, you’re past forty, he told himself, and if they meet for coffee, or whatever they meet for, and she says she doesn’t see the point of their meeting again, or however she puts it — tactfully, he’s sure — and he feels he’d be wasting her time and inviting disappointment on his part to call again for a second date because it’s obvious she doesn’t want one and she isn’t attracted to him or feels there’s any chemistry between them and so on — that he isn’t even interesting, she could think — he shouldn’t get upset as he always does when this happens. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if she called him. Dream on, lover boy. Although women have — a few, and not for many years — when he didn’t call them and even for a first date, but not women he wanted to see. Oh, yes: Terry. “You said you’d call. Change your mind? It’s okay if you did; I won’t shoot myself. And I’m not going to give the lamebrained excuse that I thought you might have lost my phone number,” and he said “I swear to you. After what you said about reading my play? I practically had my finger in the telephone dial when you called.” She said “You’re an unconvincing liar, but that’s okay too. Next time I see you I’m going to give you some basic acting exercises in it. We still on?” Why hadn’t he called? He forgets — nervousness, possibly; maybe for the same reasons he didn’t call Gwen till that night — because she was certainly worth calling: smart and quick and natural and funny and already successful as an actress — good part in a Broadway hit — and a beauty too. With all that going for her, why’d she call him? He was also smart — not overbright, just smart — and considered good-looking and he still had all his hair. And maybe she found him interesting, or at least literary — he tried to get that across to her in the two or so hours he was with her the night they first met — and potentially compatible: he wanted to be a playwright then and had told her he’d written several absurdist, or unconventional was the word he used, short plays and was working on his first full-length one. She said “I want to be the first one to read it. Promise me that. I also might be able to get it a stage reading, which I bet would be a first for you.” No reading. When she dropped him the first time after two months, his play still wasn’t finished. When they hooked up again two years later, he was only writing fiction and didn’t show his plays to anyone because he thought they all stunk. But there has to be a half-dozen Martin Samuels in the Manhattan phone book, he thought, and maybe another half-dozen M. Samuels, so he didn’t think this Gwendolyn woman would even try. Does she even know he lives in Manhattan? She could call Pati for his phone number — Pati has it, or would know how to get it, since she called him to invite him to her party — but she wouldn’t do that either. She just didn’t seem the type to ask a friend for the phone number of a man she only met briefly at the friend’s party or to call a man for a first date when he didn’t call her for almost a week after he said he would, even if only for coffee one afternoon, but he could be wrong. No, he’s not wrong. She had the look of someone who’d think if he’s interested in me, and it seemed he was — why else would he want my phone number? — he’ll call; if not, no big loss. But he could really use — oh, brother, could he, he thought — and be very agreeable to a new relationship that showed signs…well, signs of something. That could become steady and promising and deep and so on and lead to all sorts of good things, because the last three were busts. Actually, the first of the three, Diana, went on for a while — almost four years and was pretty good at the beginning — but then, a year and a half ago, she ended it and moved into her own apartment with her daughter. She was fooling around long before that with two or three other guys, even while they lived together for more than a year. She’d just stay out all night or come back to their apartment very late when she said she’d be home much sooner — always when her daughter was with her ex-husband for the weekend — and say she didn’t want to talk about it, “so stop talking about it; it’s my life, my business, maybe my mistake,” so it wasn’t as if he didn’t know by then their relationship was going nowhere. And a few months before their sublet was up and they separated, she didn’t let him have much sex either. He said once, after she said “I’m sorry, I’m too tired,” and pushed his hand away, “I guess you get enough of a workout with your paramours.” She said, “What a stupid dirty crack, but I’m going to answer it anyway. Yes, I suppose I do; yeah. Though I still, from time to time, like doing it with you. You’re here, you haven’t moved out, which I’ve suggested you do in spite of the hardship it’d be for me to pay the full rent, and you’re a skillful lover when you’re not rushing. So if I’m feeling hot to trot on my own stimulus or your hand suddenly feels good on my thigh, which it didn’t just before, why not? You know me: when I feel like it I help myself to what others might push away, even sometimes when I’m filled up. Is that enough of an answer or do you want more?” “No, I’m satisfied. But you don’t want to put out for me a little now? I’d wake up in a better mood,” and she said “Goodnight, or does one of us have to sleep in the spare room?” Why didn’t he move out when she gave him the opportunity to? The apartment was in the Village, a part of the city he always wanted to live in. And it was luxurious and spacious compared to what he was used to — he had his own writing room — and his share of the rent was less than what he paid for his last apartment. And she was pretty and intelligent and she and her daughter were for the most part easy to live with, and when they did make love it was very good. But the woman about a half year after her, Karyn — she was right; they never would have worked out. She was just a kid — around ten years younger than Gwen, whom he met several months later — and different than he in so many ways. She didn’t read fiction, for instance — said she never liked it. Always found the plots and characters shallow and absurd and the language and dialog windy and unreal. “Always?” he said. “Yes, always.” “That’s ridiculous, “ he said, and she said “That’s what you think. But what would really be ridiculous would be for me to read your work”—he’s never encouraged anyone to—“because I know from the outset I won’t like it and because I am the way I am I’d have to tell you.” She loved biographies and other books about visual artists and art history, though she wasn’t an artist or studying to be one or an art historian; she was about to enter her first year of law school. Great big beautiful body and sweet face and always a long ponytail. When she told him — they were having lunch at a restaurant near where she worked — that she’s been seeing another guy — a med student — and it is getting serious, so she’s going to have to stop seeing him — he started to cry. “Martin,” she said, “what’s wrong? You know yourself there was never anything between us. It was more lust than love — a lot more; there was no love — and who cries over that? You liked me in bed and I enjoyed you. So we were just sex partners, till something better and more fulfilling came along — and it has for me; I’m sorry — servicing each other’s physical needs. Look, I gave you crabs this summer, you remember that? Sent you the medication for it at that art colony of yours, something you wouldn’t have forgotten because it must have burnt the skin off you as it did to me. But my point is that if we were really serious, would I have been screwing the guy who gave it to me, who’s not the one I’m seeing now, same time I was screwing you? Please, stop crying. They know me here; I come in a lot.” He said, “You’re wrong; I loved you,” and she said “You’re lying, just so you can get me in bed again. But you can’t, and I don’t believe your crying anymore. You never loved me and I never loved you. Once more, and if I have to, again after that, till it sinks in: we were pals with mutual interests, culturally and sexually, but that’s all. And the age gap — two days shy of it being exactly twenty years — is enormous and insurmountable and would still be enormous twenty years from now.” He said, “I know it. What the hell could I have been thinking?” “You wanted young meat; what else? Come on, let’s go; I have to get back to my books.” She signaled for the check, looked at it and said “Fifty-fifty again?” and put some money on the table. “I’ve included my share of the tip. Be as generous as I was, because you made quite a little scene here.” He pushed the money back to her and said “No, I’ll pay and you go.” She got behind him, kissed the top of his head and left. He stayed seated. Didn’t want to leave right away and possibly see her on the street as he walked back to his apartment. The waiter came over and said “Everything all right, sir?” and he said “Yes, thanks; I’ll be going,” and sat for another minute. Then he put the money for their lunch on the table, plus two dollars more of a tip than he’d normally give, and left. Never spoke to her again after that. Three years later — he was teaching in Baltimore and coming, during the teaching weeks, to New York for long weekends with Gwen — he bumped into Karyn’s best friend on the uptown Broadway bus. He had visited his mother and was on his way back to Gwen’s. He asked how the friend was and then she asked how he was and he said “Couldn’t be better. I’m getting married in two months.” “That’s right,” she said. “I heard about it from Karyn.” “How’d she know? I’m not in touch with her and I haven’t spoken to anybody who is.” “I don’t know, but she knew and she told me she couldn’t be happier for you…that you no doubt met the woman of your dreams.” Then she said “Karyn also got married, to an Italian count she sat next to on a plane going to Italy. She left law school after two years and is now living in Milan and New York and trying to have a baby. The man’s much older than her and wants to have a baby now before people think he’s the kid’s grandfather. But