His Wife Leaves Him

which he was glad of. He liked a backside that bulged and he could clutch. She also seemed to be as gentle as any woman he’d gone with, he thought at one of those places: drugstore, bar, restaurant, first two times in her apartment, even while walking with her outside on those dates. A few years ago — before her first stroke — he said to her — she was at the dining-room table correcting papers while eating a lunch she’d made, he’d come into the room from their bedroom where he was working then—“Look what I found I wrote about you on the inside of my thesaurus book cover,” and he read to her — he’s memorized it since, he’s read it so many times, coming upon it accidentally or opening the book on purpose: “‘May 6th, 1999. I didn’t choose you for your beauty and sexuality, but more for your intelligence, kindness and gentility.’” The rest of the conversation went something like this: “Did you mean to say ‘gentleness’ instead of ‘gentility’?” and he said “I wrote it as ‘gentility,’ but I meant both.” “Very nice,” she said, “but how do you know it’s about me? Does it say so?” “No, but who else could it be? Nineteen ninety-nine. Twenty years after we met, and she said “You could have been thinking of one of your old flames. You’ve told me they were all intelligent and sexy and pretty and a couple of them were quite beautiful and sweet.” And he said “Sweet, I don’t know. They were intelligent, in varying degrees, but none as intelligent and learned as you. And sexy, some more than others, but again, nothing compared to you, and I’m not just saying that. But they were all, for the most part, or turned out to be, awful, or just to me. You’re the only one who’s unfailingly been gentle and kind, and for all our years together, I want to tell you, so for sure since May, 1999. I know you can’t say the same about me of the men you’ve known, in gentleness, intelligence, refinement, maybe sexiness, and the rest of it, but that’s okay so long as I take the lead in artistry. We’ll pass the last off as a joke, though there’s a little seriousness to it. What’s more, you’re the only women I’ve loved and hankered for and everything else like that since I met you, or a week or two after. And by far and more than that the one I’ve loved the most of all the women I’ve known, and you don’t have to respond to that with some fanciful something about my own desirability and so on,” and she said “Okay, I won’t. What you said, of course, is very nice to hear, and I believe you,” and indicated with her finger and then pointing to her lips that he should come closer because she wanted to kiss him, and he lowered his head to hers and they kissed. Then she said “I made enough chicken salad for both of us, if you want some,” and he said “Yeah, I’d love to sit down with you, if I won’t be disturbing your work.” “Want something else to eat?” he asked at the drugstore, when the counterman took their knife and plate, and she said “Little I ate, I’m full.” “Then like to walk it off a little? It’s not bad out, though I’ll have to find a men’s room first,” and she said “That’d be nice. We could head uptown, and then I’ll catch a bus home along the way.” She took the check, he just now remembers, when the counterman held it out to him. He said “No, please, let me,” and reached for the check in her hand, and she said “I’d like to take care of it. It isn’t often a check for two is so small that I can afford to pick it up.” “Fine, if you let me pay for dinner out sometime, if we ever have one,” and she said “We’ll see.” She paid up, he went to the men’s room, they went outside. She left a generous tip on the counter, he noticed, much more than he would have. Did he mention that the opening in his coffee mug handle was so small that he could barely fit the tip of his forefinger through it? For some reason this intrigued him, or he thought it might make for funny conversation, so he brought it up with her just after the counterman poured him a refill. “Why didn’t they make the opening larger? We can’t blame everything on the Chinese. It was probably made there but the design for it could have been done here. Your finger could fit through it but mine almost got stuck. How would it look, my walking around with a coffee mug I couldn’t get off my finger? Seriously, though, it’d also seem the mug would be easier to spill, with so little handle to hold on to. That could result in the drinker burning himself, especially when you get it hot and black, like I do,” and she said “I haven’t a clue.” Outside, she said “Should we head up Broadway, Riverside Drive or the park? Not West End. It’s the dullest avenue in New York. All bricks and stunted trees and awnings with pigeon droppings on them and sixteen-story apartment buildings on both sides of the street.” He said “Any of the ones you said would do. Though the park might be a bit dangerous this time of the year. Fewer pedestrians, and it’ll be getting dark soon,” and she said “It’s safe till the low nineties, but okay. Riverside Drive, on the park side. It has the prettiest views and I can get a number five bus on it, which stops in front of my building.” “That’s right,” he said, “you live on the Drive. Do you see the river from your apartment, or have I asked that?” and she said “Most of it, like now, when the trees aren’t leafy.” “So you probably see stars and sunsets and barges and all sorts of lights on the river,” and she said “All that plus enormous apartment buildings on the Palisades that make the ones on West End look small, and the sunrise reflections off their windows. What do you see from your place?” and he said “Oh, I have a huge terrace in the rear, so I get to see lots of other terraces and backyards and the backs of buildings, especially the one at the corner of Columbus and 75th — La Rochelle, it’s called, though nobody calls it anything but its number, fifty-seven. Also, some sunsets, though not so far when the sun sinks into New Jersey and drowns, like it probably does from your window. Mine, I just see disappearing behind La Rochelle, and maybe twenty minutes later some nice colors in the sky.” He pictures her looking pleased, talking to him as they walked. He’s never been able to describe that look. Tried, verbally and on paper. But he knew by it when she really liked something. Maybe “pleased” or “satisfied” or “self-satisfied” is all it is. He would love to hold her as they walked, he thought. Hold her hand, he meant. Then to put his arm around her shoulders and draw her to him. Then stop to kiss. Nobody was around. Even if someone was. What would she do if he tried to kiss her? he thought as they walked. Don’t try. Whatever you do, he thought, don’t. But if he did try and she complied? And he’s talking about a deep kiss, or something like it: eyes closed, lips pressed. That would be it. He’d be so happy. “Kiss me,” he says in bed, in the dark, on his back, covers up to his neck, and shuts his eyes and puts his lips out for her. He actually once imagined — it wasn’t too long ago — he felt something wet and soft on his lips when he did it. He knows it’s crazy but at the moment he believed it and has tried the same thing a couple of times since. Anyway, he was really getting to like this gal, he thought as they walked. Or maybe he thought all that when he walked her to her building from the restaurant on their second date. Or maybe he didn’t think it there, either, and is only thinking it now in bed. He doesn’t think so but it’s a possibility. He remembers, he forgets, he thinks something happened that didn’t, he gets things mixed up. It was so long ago. Twenty-oh-six, end of seventy-eight. She mentioned her age — something about how it took her a few years longer to get her Ph.D. than it does most candidates in her field, and gave the reasons for it — marriage, travel, working as a guide in a USIA exhibit in Belgium and France for six months, divorce, getting over it — and he got concerned about their eleven-year age difference, though for eleven days a year, he later learned, it was ten. Again: they talked about the woman who gave the party they met at. He said “It was very nice of her to invite me to such an…well, I was going to say ‘elegant,’ but to some other word gathering,” and she said “It was a pretty distinguished group of people, but why are you so surprised you were invited? I’m sure she liked you, and that you were a writer — she loves writers. And she might even have been a little taken with you — she also likes younger men. What she might not like is that we met after the party, even for coffee. Have you spoken to her since?” and he said no. “I don’t like asking this, but could you tell me if there was anything between you two, just in case I need to know what to be prepared for with her?” and he said “I think I told you. We shared the same bathroom at Yaddo, but at different times, and had some lively breakfast conversation. So lively that people at the silent table whispered to us if we could tone it down. As for Pati being even a little taken with me — you said it, I didn’t — I would have heard from her sooner, wouldn’t you think? Because from what I’ve seen, she doesn’t hold back,” and she said “True.” Talked about a well-known Russian poet, now American, who was there. “He and I were the only men without ties,” he said, “though he did wear a dress shirt and crisply pressed slacks.” “I had a long talk with him,” she said. “He’s a brilliant poet and essayist — he supposedly came close to getting a Nobel soon after he emigrated here — and he gave me his card,” and he said “What’s that mean…he has eyes for you?” and she said “It’s possible.” “Have you heard from him?” and she said “I think he wants me to call him. But he was a bit filled with himself. And he smokes too much and still has a wife in the Soviet Union and, according to Pati, a girlfriend or two here.” “So you spoke to her about him?” and she said “No, she spoke to me about him. You seem to be cross-examining me, Martin,” and he said “Well, I want to know what I’m up against. Poets always get the girls,” and she said “That’s utter nonsense.” “Then the girls always get the poets,” and she said “Nonsense too.” “I’m sorry. Are we still friends?” and she said “We haven’t known each other long enough to be friends.” “Then putative friends,” and she said “You’ll have to translate for me.” “I think I meant it as ‘potential,’ and got the word wrong,” and she said “Don’t let it bother you.” About a well-known literary and cultural critic and his psychoanalyst wife. She’d first met the woman at one of Pati’s parties. “Or possibly it was at some PEN event I was taken to. We’ve had coffee several times. I like her very much. She’s exceptionally intelligent and articulate and knows as much about literature as her husband — more about foreign literature — and has a greater love for it. With him, it’s often his business. No, that’s too harsh. Erase that. Did you get to speak to them?” and he said “Wanted to, but I’m intrinsically shy, so didn’t know how.” “You could have asked Pati,” and he said “I also didn’t want to intrude.” And lots of other writers. “Again, I didn’t speak to many people,” he said. “Mostly just noshed, sipped and watched, though that wasn’t what I wanted. In fact, I talked almost to no one at any length — writer or otherwise. I was also too busy following you around, looking for an opportunity to introduce myself. Boy, were you popular. But there was a young novelist and his young short-story writer wife.” “I know them,” she said. “I was his sister’s counselor at summer sleepaway camp. He and I became friends when we were both in graduate school at Columbia, he in writing. A bright talented couple.” He said he’s never heard of either of them and she said “They’re just starting out. Although each had a story in