“And I tell our daughter what?” Joy asked, as he stuffed two large suitcases with what he’d need for the summer.
“Tell her I’ll be home as soon as we deliver the script.”
“We’ve never lied to her.”
“That’s a lie?”
The following morning he’d driven to campus to finish reading the kids’ portfolios and put his academic life in some semblance of order. There was a summer program at the college, and his office would probably be used by visiting faculty. He put his father’s urn in the locked bottom drawer of his filing cabinet, promising himself he’d deal with it when he returned. Later that same day when he tossed the suitcases into the trunk, Joy noticed the urn was gone. “In your office?” she said when he told her what he’d done. “Why there?” she asked.
“I didn’t think it was fair for you to have to look at it every day,” he said, registering her sad, defeated smile. He understood-how could he not?-that this sort of “consideration” was at the crux of what was between them, but he was at a loss how to do things differently.
In L.A. the work had not gone well. It was clear from the start that he and Tommy didn’t view the material the same way. “Look,” his friend said. “You’re making too much of this. It’s Welcome Back, Kotter, except at college. The kids are smarter than their professor. They’re educating him. That’s where the laughs come from.” Never having taught, he seemed not to understand how arbitrary and artificial, how downright contrary to reality, this concept was. In the old days they’d been able to read each other’s minds, finish each other’s sentences, but more than a decade had passed and they’d lost the knack. Worse, Joy was now between them. Tommy seemed to know that not all was well in their marriage, but not much more. Griffin, who kept expecting to be cross-examined about what the hell was going on, didn’t know what to make of it when he wasn’t. It could mean Tommy didn’t have to because Joy, when she called him from Wellfleet, had already explained the situation in detail, but the opposite inference-that his friend was mostly in the dark but was respecting their privacy-was just as likely. To find out Griffin would have to ask, and this he refused to do.
After he’d been in L.A. for a couple weeks, Tommy finally said, “So, you’re not going to call her?”
“She knows how to reach me,” Griffin responded, both surprised and genuinely appalled by the bitterness and childish petulance in his voice. He’d been telling himself he hadn’t called her because he had no idea what to say. But the truth was uglier. What he was waiting for, he realized, was for Joy to blink, and with each passing day it became increasingly apparent that she wasn’t going to. In Wellfleet she’d told him as much, that his unhappiness had exhausted her, that it would be a relief not to have to deal with it anymore. Okay, if that was what she wanted.
Except for the proscribed subject of Griffin ’s marriage and not being able to hit their work stride, he and Tommy did all right. They both by nature were respectful, so they seldom crowded each other, and their mutual affection hadn’t waned. After that one remark about not calling Joy, Tommy made it a point to mind his own business, and Griffin returned the favor. His friend started drinking around five in the afternoon, just a glass of wine, no hard stuff anymore, but didn’t stop until he called it a night and went to bed. His color wasn’t good, and his paunch, while not large, was oddly asymmetrical, like it might contain a large fibroid cyst. For his part Tommy pretended not to notice that Griffin seldom slept for more than three or four hours. He himself got up to pee half a dozen times every night and sometimes poked his head into the living room, where Griffin would be watching television with the sound down. They were, that is, careful, as if consideration and not honesty was the bedrock of true friendship.
In this fashion the summer limped along. When Griffin arrived, they’d moved Tommy’s desktop from the guest bedroom to the dining room, and it was here they convened each morning. Tommy always brought in a pot of coffee from the kitchen, and Griffin would print out two sets of the last couple of days’ worth of work, which for continuity’s sake they always read over before beginning a new scene. One morning Griffin looked up from his pages to see Tommy studying him with a mixture of sadness and irritation. “Griff,” he said, “do us both a favor. Go home.”
“Another week and a half and we’ll have a draft.”
“Fuck the draft. You’re miserable. And you’re hurting that woman.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know her. And what about your daughter?”
Laura, in fact, was not taking it well. She’d called him twice in L.A., wanting to know what was going on. What she’d worried about most of her life was finally happening, even as she and Andy were planning their own wedding. He’d tried to comfort her, saying that he and her mother hadn’t decided anything yet, but the only thing that would really comfort her was for him to go home and resume his old life, to pretend nothing had happened in Wellfleet.
Two weeks later, in mid-August, he and Tommy turned the draft in to Ruby Hand. They both thought it stank but were of different minds about what was wrong with it, agreeing only about two things: that the script was unlikely to get better without additional input and that their producer was an even bigger dickhead than they remembered. Good luck getting valuable notes from him. He was prompt, though, give him that. He called the very next day, when Tommy was out. He’d read the script and thought it was definitely “a step in the right direction.” How about they all think about it for a few days and exchange notes later in the week?
“That’s that, then,” Tommy said when Griffin told him about the conversation.
“What do you mean?”
“God, have you really been gone that long? That ‘step in the right direction’ jazz is code.”
“You think we’re fired?”
“No, I know we’re fired.”
He’d always had an almost preternatural gift for knowing when the ax was about to fall, but in this instance Griffin wasn’t sure he agreed. “Our contract calls for a polish.”
“He’s going to eat the polish, Griff. Trust me, we’re shitcanned. You might as well pack your bags.”
Griffin decided to come clean. “I called the college last week,” he said, “and they’re granting me a year’s leave.”
Tommy nodded, then shook his head. “Joy knows about this?”
“Possibly. There aren’t many secrets in small colleges.”
“But you haven’t told her.”
“Not yet, though it won’t be a surprise. She predicted it, in fact. Also, I might’ve found an apartment.”
Tommy just sighed.
“I’ve stayed too long,” Griffin said. “If we land another gig, maybe we could rent a small office.”
Later that week, both their cells rang at the same moment. Griffin ’s said MOM CALLING, so he took it outside onto the patio. He’d been in L.A. a week before remembering his promise to visit and bring her the books and journals she wanted. “Maybe I can find what you need out here,” he’d offered, after telling her where he was and why, or at least the small part he wanted her to know. “August is soon enough,” she’d told him, confirming his earlier suspicion that she didn’t need them to begin with. Their conversation had been short, suspiciously so, he thought. It was almost as if she was relieved he wouldn’t be coming to see her as planned. Nor had she called him since, which was stranger still. For her, summer was open season for pestering.
“Mom,” he said now, “how are you?”
But it wasn’t his mother. The woman identified herself as Gladys, her next-door neighbor. She’d become concerned when Mary didn’t answer her knock that morning. They were on the buddy system, Gladys explained, which meant they each had a key to the other’s apartment, in case she locked herself out or something else happened. This was something else. She’d found Griffin’s mother in bed, still in her nightgown, the curtains drawn and the room dark in the middle of the day. She was staring at nothing and gasping for breath, barely conscious, unresponsive. A heart attack, the emergency people thought. They’d given her oxygen and just minutes ago taken her to the hospital. “She keeps your number on the refrigerator,” Gladys said. “I hope she won’t be upset with me for using her phone to call. I could’ve used my own, I suppose, but I didn’t think.”