“We’re never meeting again?” she said.
“Excuse me,” the waitress said. She put the coffeepot on a busboy’s cart. “Would you like to order?”
Ben opened his menu. “Do you know what you want?” he said to Fran. Please get some excitement into your voice about the fisherman’s platter, he thought. Please get some excitement into your voice about something.
Her eyes lit up a bit when she ordered the fisherman’s platter. Coleslaw, not french fries. Yes: another iced tea.
He ordered broiled mackerel. He asked for a Samuel Adams. That satisfied both desires: not to drink, because he might get morose, but to have a beer, because a beer was not a potent mixed drink that would go to his head.
When the waitress walked away, he, too, looked at the tourists. They were pale and slightly overweight. Their teenage son did nothing to disguise his annoyance at being on the trip. One of the things Ben hoped most earnestly was that his three-year-old son would never become sulky and estranged from him. They could change the ground rules entirely when the boy hit puberty, if it came to that. Whatever it took, Ben was willing to do it.
“Well,” Ben said, “our rental on the Vineyard fell through. They returned the check last week, when there was no chance in hell of our finding anything else, with a scrawled note that didn’t even have our names on it. They said they’d decided to rent the house year-round, and the tenant was already occupying it. We’ve rented that house for the last six years, and that’s the sort of kiss-off we get. Great, huh?”
She gnawed her lip. She felt sure that he was saying something indirectly about the two of them. Obviously, that was why he was so angry.
“We had a signed rental agreement,” he said. “If my lawyer wasn’t already working on two other things, I’d dump this one on his desk.”
“You always talk about Rob as if you hardly know him. ‘My lawyer.’ He was your college roommate.”
He shrugged. “When we’re playing handball I think of him as my college roommate, and when I’m pissed, I think of him as my lawyer.”
The busboy brought bread and butter. For a second, the white napkin folded over the basket reminded him of his son’s diapers. He had been awake at five A.M., changing his diapers.
“You can find a place somewhere on the Cape to rent,” she said. “People always cancel at the last minute.”
“Maybe we could have your friends’ house,” he said. “Didn’t you tell me they were leaving for a month, but you could only be there two weeks because that was all the vacation time Chap had?”
She looked at him. There was some small chance that he was completely serious.
“It’s just a house in the middle of nowhere,” she said.
“Aren’t you skeptical of my wife for liking flashy things? It might be a way to start deconditioning her.”
“I think you and your wife should try to work out your problems on more neutral territory,” she said. “I always have thought you should work out your problems.”
He surprised her by laughing. He fluttered his eyelids and said, quite archly: “I always have thought you should work out your problems.”
The busboy, passing with bread he was carrying to another table, looked down as he heard Ben speaking in falsetto.
Ben saw the boy slow down and could hardly muffle his laughter. Fran, too, began laughing.
“You’re lucky he walked by when he did,” Fran said. “You’ll probably be shocked to hear that I was about to strongly object to your impersonation of me.”
“ ’Atta girl,” he said. “Got to defend yourself in this world.”
“You know,” she said, “you talk about people in the capacity in which they exist: my wife; my lawyer. You always say ‘my son’ and ‘my tenants,’ and the people who live downstairs from you have been there for what? Ten years?”
“I don’t get your point,” he said. “I hear your voice icing over, but I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at.”
“You don’t use people’s names,” she said.
The family they had watched earlier got up. The teenage son was the last to leave the table, and he pushed all the chairs back in place, which broke her heart. She could remember being places she had not wanted to be, and acting inappropriately. Tripping over herself in an attempt not to stumble. What equanimity she had now had not even begun until she was in her twenties. What did she still do that communicated things she was oblivious of signaling? Until Ben mentioned the way her voice became detached and cold — icing over, as he called it — she had had no idea of her immediate impulse to withdraw when there was contention. She knew she sometimes lifted her hand to her head and fluffed her hair, but she had not known about the voice change until he pointed it out.
“Ben,” she said suddenly, “I don’t feel there and I don’t feel here. I do think it’s a good idea that we be friends, but coming back to the city to meet you, when I was off in the woods on vacation, just makes me feel …”
“It makes you feel bad,” he said. “You’ve always been very consistent about saying that. That basically, seeing me under any circumstances makes you feel bad. Why don’t you tell me a lie for a change and see if there’s some truth in the lie.”
“I don’t want to lie to you,” she said. “I feel peculiar about seeing you. I’m afraid I didn’t cancel this lunch because of cowardice. I wanted to fall back on you, in case the vacation turned out to be a disaster.”
“Is that true?”
She nodded yes.
“We’re friends,” he said. “What’s wrong with wanting something from me?”
He was astonished when tears began to roll down her cheeks. So surprised that he pushed his chair back, wanting to embrace her. He would have, if she had not held up her hand. What a strange gesture! As if those delicate fingers could stop anything more tangible than a breeze. He thought of the school crossing guard at his son’s preschool. The black gloves so large they must have been padded. Yet why would a crossing guard have boxer’s mitts? Or was that the way the man’s hands had looked, after all? He blinked, remembering his son, early that morning, walking in front of him, the sun striking his ash-blond hair, and the gloved hand at the crossing guard’s side, the other hand raised to stop traffic. He thought: The crossing guard was Tony Hightower, taking his turn as a volunteer. Not a crossing guard, Tony Hightower.
“You look terrible,” she said, drying her cheeks. “I’m sorry. Let’s talk about something else. Do you know anything funny?”
He sighed, letting the image go. “I’m sure that’s what half the people in the restaurant are doing,” he said. “Half of them are recounting disasters, and the other half are telling jokes.”
The waitress appeared at Fran’s side.
“What do you think?” he said to the waitress, who was lowering a plate. “I just said to my friend that I thought half the people here were yukking it up and the other half were in great distress.”
“Whichever way it starts out, they always walk out in the opposite mood,” she said. She was standing there with her hands at her sides, like a child reciting. She reached up and touched her earring. “At least, that’s usually true,” she said. “If they’re drunk, it’s another thing. But if they’re just in a good mood, they’ll be sedate when they leave, and if they came in quiet, they’ll be talking up a storm when they go out.”
Ben was looking at Fran, who was looking at the waitress. It wasn’t collusion, Fran knew — there was no way he could have put the waitress up to saying what she’d said. But what had she said, really, that puzzled her so deeply? Just that people changed?