You probably won’t believe that, if you remember how hard I made you work to get me. Once I saw I’d caught your attention – the space between us seemed charged, remember? – I became distant, ironic, cool. I treated you with a casualness that bordered on the insulting. I was so desperate to be wanted that I didn’t dare let you suspect. Nothing drives people away more than neediness. And then, after we had become lovers, once you were well and truly caught, I guess it became a sort of habit, the way I was with you, as if you were an irritation to me, as if I suffered you to make love to me now and again as a very great favor.
But our affair went on for nearly seven years. Think of it. And eventually, our positions became reversed. I was no longer the less-loving, the more-loved – that was you. You grew tired of my undemanding presence, and called me less, or made excuses at the last minute to cancel a date. Did you really think I wouldn’t mind? That I might even be grateful to lose you? That it wouldn’t nearly destroy me?
Well, as I said before, people change. I might have shrugged and cut my losses – dropped you before you could formalize our break – and bounced back in my thirties, but, pushing fifty, the loss of you was the loss of the last of myyouth, practically the loss of life itself.
I was surprised by how hard it hit me. If I couldn’t win you back, I was going to have to learn some new way of living, to cope with my loss.
I thought about my friends. Over the years that once large throng of independent single women who had comprised the very core of my city, my emotional world, had been whittled away by marriage, parenthood, defection to other parts of the country, and even death. Three remained, women I had been friends with for nearly thirty years, whom I saw regularly and thought of as “like me”. Janet was an artist, Lecia was a writer and Hillary was a theatrical agent. We had similar emotional histories and similar lifestyles, in our small apartments with our cats, in love with men who saw us in the time they could carve out from their real lives with their wives and children elsewhere. Over the years we had kept each other going, cheered and commiserated with each other, staying loyal to a certain vision of life while the men, the cats, the jobs and other details changed.
Now that I thought about it, though, I realized that I alone of the sisterhood still had a lover. The other three were all “between men” – and had been for at least two years. What’s more, they seemed content. In the old days, celibacy would have been a matter for complaint and commiseration. I couldn’t think of the last time we’d had a good moan about the perfidy of men, or a plotting session devoted to fixing up someone with Mr Right. Bits of subliminal knowledge, memories of certain looks, words unspoken, hints, fell together in my mind. I scented a conspiracy. They knew something that I didn’t. And I needed help.
I went to see Lecia. Our friendship was based on straightforwardness, intellectual discussions, a liking for the same books, an interest in both philosophy and gossip. I felt we were a lot alike, and I knew I could be straight with her. When we were settled with our cups of decaffeinated latte, I asked if there was a man in her life.
She chuckled and gave me a funny, assessing look over her cup. “No one except James.”
James was her cat, purring in her lap. Lecia lived near Washington Square, and the cat had turned up in her life a few years earlier just after she’d embarked on her project of reading or rereading the entire works of Henry James.
“How long has it been since you split up with . . . ?”
“Three years.”
“And there hasn’t been anybody since?”
She shook her head.
“And it’s all right? You don’t miss . . . all that?”
Her mouth quirked. “Do I look frustrated?”
I gave her a careful inspection and shook my head. “You look great. Really relaxed. Is that the yoga? Hormones?” Lecia, who was a few years older than me, had elected to go for HRT when the menopause hit.
She chuckled. “I think it’s contentment.”
“You do seem happy, which is hopeful. But – wasn’ t it hard at first?”
“What’s all this about?” she asked. “William? Has William—”
I shook my head. “Notyet. He hasn’t said anything, but . . . I think he’s met someone, or if he hasn’t, he’s looking. He’s tired of me, I can feel it.”
“Poor baby.”
She sounded so detached, as if she’d never had to worry about being left by a man in her life. It annoyed me, because I remembered when things had been otherwise. Three years ago. What was the guy’s name? Jim. His marriage had ended, his affair with Lecia continued, and then he’d been offered a job in Albuquerque – and he’d taken it, just like that. Not that she would have, but he didn’t even ask Lecia if she’d go with him. She had been devastated. Looking at her now, remembering her face distorted with tears and the sympathetic tension in myself, I could hardly believe it was the same woman.
“How long did it take you to get over Jim?” I asked. “Did you just decide to give up on all men after he left?”
“Something like that. I decided . . . I decided I’d never be at the beck and call of another man. I was going to be in control from then on, and get what I wanted, take what I wanted – ouch!” James went flying off her lap. Lecia put her hand to her mouth and licked the scratch. She grinned crookedly. “Well, of course, there’s got to be give and take in any relationship. There’s bound to be conflict sometimes. But why let him make all the rules, call the shots, decide to leave you?”
“Are we talking about me or you? I mean, you said – are you seeing someone?”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You see me as I am, a woman alone except for her cat. And her women friends. You’re the one with man-problems.”
“And you’ve solved yours. So what do you advise me to do? Drop him before he drops me?”
“Only if that’s what you want.”
“It’s not. I want him.” To my annoyance, tears came to my eyes. “And if I can’t have him, well . . . then I want to be happy without him. The way you seem to be.” I pressed harder, trying to make her acknowledge me and my right to know. “You and Janet and Hillary . . . you all seem so content to be alone. What’s your secret?”
She looked at me, but there was a reserve, a withholding, in her eyes. “You should get a cat; then you wouldn’t be so lonely.”
“I have a cat.”
“Oh, yes, I was forgetting Posy.” She looked across the room at James, who was sitting in the corner washing his privates. I looked at Lecia’s face, which had gone soft, dreamy and sensual, and suddenly I saw that face on a woman lying naked on a bed, with the cat between her legs.
The grossness of my imagination shocked me. I felt too embarrassed to stay longer. Lecia’s serene contentment certainly didn’t have its source in bestiality. I was agitated not only by the unwanted pornographic fantasy, but also by the certainty that there was something which Lecia did not trust me enough to share.
I didn’t go home when I left her, but instead walked down to Tribeca, to the newish high-rise where Janet had her apartment. It was still Saturday morning, and I was betting I’d find her in. She was, working on one of her intricate black and white illustrations. Although she was trying to make a deadline, she seemed pleased for an excuse to take a break.
“Red zinger, lemon and ginger, or peppermint tea?” she asked as I followed her back to the kitchen. Grey the cat was sleeping on top of the refrigerator. He opened one eye to check us out, then shut it again.
“Red zinger, please.” I watched Janet closely as she made the tea. She was slim and strong and she moved lightly as a dancer, humming under her breath. If I hadn’t been there she would probably have been talking to herself, I decided, but apart from the scattiness which she’d always had, she looked serene and positively bursting with good health.