“Oh, okay,” I said, but I felt a little disappointed. For sentiment’s sake, at least, you would think she could have agreed to it. “Where, then?” I asked.
“Maybe Jean-Christophe?”
“Jean-Christophe! Good grief!”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Jean-Christophe is so pretentious. They bring you these teeny froufrou bites to eat between courses, and you have to make a big show of being surprised and thankful.”
“So don’t make a show,” she said. “Just fold your arms across your chest and glower.”
“Very funny,” I told her. “What on earth made you think of Jean-Christophe? Is this another one of your receptionist’s ideas? Jean-Christophe didn’t even exist, back when you and I were courting.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize it had to have historical significance.”
“Dorothy,” I said. “Would you rather just not do this?”
“I said I would, didn’t I? But then all you can come up with is this fusty old place where your parents used to eat. And when I question it, you fly into a huff and turn down everything else I suggest.”
“I didn’t turn down ‘everything else’; I turned down Jean-Christophe. It just so happens that I dislike a restaurant where the waiters require more attention than my date does.”
“Where would you be willing to eat, then?”
“Oh, shoot,” I said, “I don’t care. Let’s just go to Jean-Christophe.”
“Well, if you don’t care, why do we bother?”
“Are you deliberately trying to misunderstand me?” I asked her. “I care that we have a good meal together, preferably without feeling like we’re acting in some kind of play. And I was thinking it might be a place with associations for the two of us. But if you’re so set on Jean-Christophe, fine; we’ll go to Jean-Christophe.”
“Jean-Christophe was just a suggestion. There are lots of other possibilities.”
“Like where?”
“Well, how about Bo Brooks?”
“Bo Brooks! A crab house? For our anniversary?”
“We did go to Bo Brooks a couple of times while we were dating. It would certainly meet the ‘associations’ criterion.”
“Yes, but—”
I stopped and looked at her.
“You really don’t get it, do you,” I said.
“What don’t I get?”
“Never mind.”
“I’m not ever going to get it if you refuse to discuss it,” she said, and now she was using her doctor voice, her super-calm, let’s-be-reasonable voice. “Why don’t you just begin at the beginning, Aaron, and tell me exactly what you envision for our anniversary dinner.”
“How about what you envision?” I said. “Can’t you be bothered coming up with any ideas of your own?”
“I already offered an idea of my own. I offered two ideas, as I recall, and you rejected both of them. So it’s back in your court now, Aaron.”
Why am I telling this story?
I forget.
And I forget where we ended up eating, too. Someplace or other; I don’t remember. What I do remember is that familiar, weary, helpless feeling, the feeling that we were confined in some kind of rodent cage, wrestling together doggedly, neither one of us ever winning.
I was rinsing vegetables for my supper, and I turned from the sink to reach for a towel, and I saw Dorothy.
“You’re here,” I said.
She was standing next to me, so close that she’d had to step back a bit to give me room when I turned. She wore one of her plain white shirts and her usual black pants, and her expression was grave and considering — her head cocked to one side and her eyebrows raised.
“I thought you might never come again,” I said.
She appeared unsurprised by this, merely nodding and continuing to study me, so that it seemed I’d been right to worry.
“Was it the cookies?” I asked. “Were you upset that I ate Peggy’s cookies?”
“You should have told me you liked cookies,” she said, and I don’t know why I’d ever doubted that she actually spoke on these visits, because her voice was absolutely real — low and somewhat flat, very level in tone.
I said, “What? I don’t like cookies!”
“I could have baked you cookies,” she said.
“What are you talking about? Why would I want you to bake cookies? How come we’re wasting this time discussing cookies, for God’s sake?”
“You’re the one who brought them up,” she said.
Had I lived through this whole scene before? I felt tired to death all of a sudden.
She said, “I used to think it was your mother’s fault. She was such a fusser; no wonder you fended people off the way you did. But then I thought, Oh, welclass="underline" fault. Who’s to say why we let one person influence us more than another? Why not your father? He didn’t fuss.”
“I fended people off?” I said. “That’s not fair, Dorothy. How about how you behaved? Wearing your white coat even to go out to dinner; carrying your big satchel. ‘I’m Dr. Rosales,’ you’d say. Always so busy, so businesslike. Bake cookies? You never even made me a cup of tea when I had a cold!”
“And if I had? What would you have done?” she asked. “Swatted the cup away, I guarantee it. Oh, it used to bother me when I saw what people thought of me. Your mother and your sister, the people in your office … I’d see your secretary thinking, Poor, poor Aaron, his wife is so coldhearted. So unnurturing, so ungiving. Doesn’t value him half as much as the rest of us do. ‘Shows what you know,’ I wanted to tell her. ‘Why didn’t he marry someone else if he was so keen on nurturing? If I’d behaved any other way, do you suppose he and I would ever have gotten together?’ ”
I said, “That wasn’t why we got together.”
“Oh, wasn’t it?” she said.
She turned away to gaze out the window over the sink. Earlier I’d switched the sprinkler back on, and I could see how her eyes followed the to-and-fro motion. “I had a job offer in Chicago,” she told me in a reflective tone. “You never knew that. This was one of my old professors, somebody I looked up to. He offered me a much better job than what I had here — not better paying, maybe, but more prestigious and more interesting. I felt honored that he even remembered me. But you and I had just gone to our first movie together, and I couldn’t think of anything but you.”
I stared at her. I felt as if heavy furniture were being moved around in my head.
“Even after we were married,” she said, “I’d have patients now and then who wore braces or splints or the like with Velcro fasteners, and they’d be undressing in a treatment room, and from my office I’d hear that ripping sound as the fasteners came apart, and I would think, Oh! I would think of you.”
I wanted to step closer to her but I was afraid I would scare her off. And she didn’t seem encouraging. She kept her face set toward the window, her eyes fixed on the sprinkler.
I said, “I probably did save up that barberry thorn.”
I wasn’t sure she would understand what I was referring to, so I added, “Not to make you feel bad about the L.A. trip, though. Just, maybe, subconsciously to … oh, let you know I needed you, maybe.”
Now she did look at me.
“We should have gone to Bo Brooks,” I said. “Who cares if it’s a crab house? We would have gotten all dressed up, you in the beautiful long white gown you were married in and me in my tuxedo, and we’d eat out on the deck, where everybody else was wearing tank tops and jeans. When we walked past they would stare at us, and we’d give them gracious little Queen Elizabeth waves, and they would laugh and clap. Your train would be a bit of a problem — it would catch on the splintery planking — so I’d scoop it up in my arms and carry it behind you to our table. ‘Two dozen of your jumbos and a pitcher of cold beer,’ I’d tell the waitress once we were seated, and she’d roll out the big sheets of brown paper, and then here would come the crabs, steaming hot, dumped between us in this huge orange peppery heap.”