“Do you have kids?”
“Two kids from my marriage. I’m divorced now. They’re in college.”
“Do you remember your wife being pregnant?” Sonia asks, thinking she can get some interesting information from him because he’s drunk. He seems like a friendly drunk, but you never know, they can get nasty. But if that happens, she’ll just go to her room.
“I do, of course. I remember the first one was a little overwhelming, for her and for me,” he says.
“No shit. Did you guys have sex?” she asks.
He laughs. “Not at the very end.” He drinks. “By the way, that’s a very bold question.”
“I’m researching pregnancy and families and what husbands think,” she says.
“Are you a journalist?”
“No, I’m a sociologist,” she says. Her lies are feeling really good. She should lie more often. She thinks about the lie she told on her way to Boston, about Dick being dead and the pity fuck she got out of that. “You say your first wife. Why’d you divorce? Did the stress of having children cause the divorce?”
“If you’re doing research, how come you’re not writing any of this down?” he asks.
“I have a photographic memory,” she says. Sonia feels like getting a piece of chocolate cake and she orders one from the bartender.
“If you have a photographic memory, that means you remember what you see and we’re just talking,” he says. For a drunk guy, his brain works well. That must be because of the pro-quality vibe he gives off as a drunk person.
“Oh yes, I do have that, too,” Sonia says, giving herself a fake little “silly me” knock on her forehead, “but I also remember everything people tell me. It’s very useful in my line of work.”
“That sounds really strange, to remember everything people tell you. In fact it sounds like something out of a Borges story,” he says.
“Well, Borges probably was inspired by meeting someone like me,” Sonia says, faltering a bit. “His story had to come from someone, right?”
“I’m not so sure. But anyway, you asked about my marriage?” Sonia watches as the bartender refills his glass again. “Let’s see, we were married for fifteen years. I don’t think the stress of having children — which of course it is stressful — ruined our marriage. I don’t think any one thing ruined our marriage. Frankly, the children kept us together more than anything else. What is more important in life than one’s children?” he says and takes a drink with a sort of expertise. Clearly the man has lots of practice with drinking. “The children were our connection to each other, their future and health our greatest concern. As they got older and more independent, we had less of a connection, maybe. I don’t know.” Sonia now thinks that despite the drinking, he’s a lot older than she thought at first, that he’s well-preserved. “My wife started to feel a little lost as they got older. They had been the focus of her life and now they were at school all day, playing sports all afternoon, wanting to go to camp in the summers. She had a hard time adjusting. But that wasn’t it, that wasn’t the reason for our divorce. Or for our affairs.”
“You both had affairs?” Sonia asks “Couldn’t the children have pushed you to do that? I’ve found in my work, in researching for this study, that having children affects the sex life in a marriage.”
“Sure, when the children are very little,” he says, and he seems amused by Sonia and Sonia decides to like that rather than be annoyed. “But they don’t stay little for long. And our sex life resumed pretty much. My memory isn’t perfect. But your children are little so you don’t know. You don’t understand how things change. I do remember my wife, when she was taking care of the kids when they were little — it was as if she couldn’t see into the future. The present was so strong, her daily life so all-encompassing. And then — boom — it was over. And by that I mean ten years later, or something like that. I don’t remember how old they were, but one day I came back from work and she was sitting in her armchair, the same one she nursed the children in, held them in her lap when they were toddlers, and she was crying, just sitting there crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said, ‘They’re gone. They’re gone and I’ll never have them back. It’s over. It’s all over.” I tried to convince her that wasn’t the case — they were still living in our house, they were alive for God’s sake, but in the next few days after that day, I realized she was right. We never would have a four-year-old again. A kindergartner. We’d never watch our own flesh and blood take his first steps. But that’s not why we cheated on each other. Or maybe it sort of is.” He finishes his drink. “Are you memorizing all of this?”
He smiles at her and Sonia thinks he’s very attractive and normally she’s not into older guys. Her fantasies tend to revolve around professional athletes in their twenties, which she knows isn’t very creative of her. Maybe she’s not creative after all, although she did have that cop fantasy. That was something new, and here she is finding this guy who is most likely in his fifties attractive. Then again, she is pregnant and she basically wants to have sex all the time, to the extent of not being as picky as she would be otherwise. “Yes, I am memorizing all of it.” She points to her head. “It’s all in here. I’ll transcribe it later. You know, write it down word for word on my computer.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” he says.
“I’m an excellent liar,” Sonia says. “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve convinced people of. So did you get divorced because of the affairs?”
“I think I started having affairs because once I realized how fleeting it all is, how everything goes away and you can’t have it back, I wanted to take advantage of everything I could. And that included having sex with women I wanted to have sex with, if they wanted to have sex with me. I assume my wife felt the same way, but I can’t be certain. I would have forgiven her, taken her back or whatever, but that didn’t happen.”
“Why not?” Sonia asks, feeling panicky.
“There was just not enough love left. Love is something you have to nurture. Sort of like a plant. Or like anything. You have to nurture your talents, your business. Your marriage, in particular the love part of the marriage. And we didn’t do that.”
“Well how can you if you’re screwing someone else?”
“You can.” The bartender pours him another drink and Sonia feels like she’s getting a contact high just sitting near the man, smelling his scotch. “I’ve seen it done. But we didn’t.”
Silence. Sonia has no more questions. Suddenly, she’s exhausted beyond all reason. “I have to go to bed,” she says. “Thank you so much for contributing to my study. If you like, I’ll mail it to you when it gets published.”
He hands her a card. “You do that.”
SONIA FALLS ASLEEP IN a daze. She sleeps on her side and normally she’s not sleeping well, she never sleeps well when pregnant, which is a cruel thing considering that soon enough she’ll be up all hours with a baby and really not sleeping well. And Sonia loves sleep, always has, more than most people. She is not the kind of person who is up at the crack of dawn. But this night, she sleeps well, dreamlessly, and it’s noon before she props herself up to call room service. After calling room service, she calls Dick at work.
“Hi, it’s me,” she says.
“Sonia?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Happy New Year.”
“I’m in a meeting, one sec,” he says. She hears him make excuses and pictures him walking into the hallway, leaving a conference room.
“What on earth?” he says. “Why are you calling me?”
“Did you get my postcard?”
“I got it,” he says.