@Expectations Read online

  Confusing, this. And wonderful.

  Waiting for Reverdy is sweet but lying here is sweet. Our breath synchronized, our flanks touching. But my mind does the same dance it does every night, seesawing between guilt and anticipation.

  I don’t have to go tonight. I don’t ever have to go back, I think, if Charlie turns out to want the other thing I want, the thing I haven’t named because I’m only now coming to terms with it. Which is: I am sick of being outnumbered here. I can wake him up and open the question, but if I do, I’ll never get away in time. If we talk, it will make me late!

  Two a.m.

  Reverdy will leave because he thinks I’m not coming.

  But this is the man I’m married to for life, there is something we both want that he doesn’t know I want, and if I can only … I touch his arm. “Oh, Charlie.” It’s crazy. Let’s have a baby. He sighs in his sleep. I shiver and slide closer to the edge of the bed.

  I can’t just come out and say that.

  So sometime soon after, I run my hand over Charlie’s profile—when I’m leaving the bed this way I never touch, I just bring my fingers close. I don’t want to wake him up, but I want him to feel the air—the grace of the gesture—and know that he is loved. I let my fingers outline his strong neck, the line of his shoulder and then I ease off the bed like a sailor jumping ship, blow him a kiss and slip out. When I look back the bed is bobbing in deep shadow like a small craft in the bay. Charlie likes a taut ship, but to me right now the bed looks like a raft with Charlie on it, floating away.

  I’m not hurting anybody. I’m not!

  @two

  ZAN

  In the deep, still night while Charlie sleeps and his cranky children sleep and the town of Brevert sleeps, Jenny slips away to the offshore island of StElene.

  She could find her way in the dark. Torchères light the path from the dock to the GrandHotel StElene with its generous porches; lights twinkle in outbuildings. The sprawling resort is an odd, psychic frontier where Jenny can shed her problems and walk free.

  A thousand lights burn in the Victorian heap and inside, the regulars meet and talk and fall in love and keep coming back because everything they want is just ahead, if they can only find it. The air buzzes with promise. Some nights it’s like coming into a costume party on the eve of the apocalypse—festive, crazy. In this hothouse everything runs close to the surface—love and loss, loneliness, desire. Identities are protected here, and with their faces obscured, people can be anybody. Do anything. Boundaries flex and change, and a married woman like Jenny Wilder, boxed in the deep South with two hostile kids that don’t belong to her can forget the hard parts for a few hours, and play.

  Home, she thinks, passing through the paneled lobby with its Bokhara runners and graceful damask settees. After the house on Church Street, it’s a welcome change. Almost everybody here is glad to see her and even this is a change. Definitely home. Here on StElene talk flows and transformations are easy. The transition transforms Jenny, too. Here, she goes by a different name.

  “Zan!” Her friend Jazzy greets her with a hug; he was her first friend here. They are both grinning. “What’s new in Magnolia country?”

  “Sameold sameold,” she says. “I’ve got to wonder, are my patients boring because Southerners are slower than New Yorkers, or because they’re less neurotic?”

  “Probably they have more boring neuroses,” Jazzy says. “That’s the great thing about surgery. Your patients don’t talk.”

  “Talk.” Zan laughs. “If only I got paid by the word…”

  Cahuenga cuts in, “Yeah, but head cases never code on you. Hey, if you want neurotic, I’m available.”

  “Hey, if I want neurotic, I’m neurotic,” Zan says, but she is skimming the faces in the room—Reverdy—not here yet, where is he, where is he.

  Fearsome mutters, “You say you want necrotic?”

  As Zan, Jenny can shed the shrink’s professional gravity; she can even afford to be flip. “Oh Fearsome, give up. I know corpses cuter than you.”

  “Corpse?” Del says evilly. “Did someone call my name?”

  If her patients talked half as well as her friends here—OK, if she could laugh in Brevert the way she does on StElene, maybe it would be OK. No wonder she loves coming here. “Neurotic, necrotic, narcotic, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference,” Zan says.

  “Say what? Necrophiliac?” Jazzy says and he and Fearsome and Del start free-associating, doing a riff while Zan looks for a fresh conversation. Nobody minds; people are easy here.

  “Oh Zan, I finally did it,” Harrald whispers. Zan has heard her friend’s confessions over time and in an odd, sweet way, he depends on her. What’s more, unlike Amanda, this is a patient she can help. “I told Faye it’s over. Really over. And I got a place!”

  “That’s wonderful.” It’s funny, she thinks. We are who we want to be here, but we’re still very much ourselves. Over the months Zan has helped several friends in crisis. They start playfully, safe behind their party masks, but sooner or later their true selves emerge. She’s heard Harrald’s particulars—bad marriage, worse job, no money, image problems; he’s working on his weight, amazing what people tell you in this oddly confessional space.

  Harrald beams. “Moved yesterday. I feel like a new person.”

  “Fantastic.” On StElene, Zan is more friend than therapist; she can even have opinions. Where Jenny has to be cautious and professional, Zan can be blunt. “Faye was bad for you.”

  In the ballroom, chilly old StOnge waves to her; he’s a longtimer here, a Director! Flattered, she’s still smiling when she bumps into her friend Articular. She’ll needle him, but with a grin because they spend hours talking about how much time they waste on StElene. “If you’ve kicked your habit, A., what are you doing here?”

  “Just passing through.” Articular winks. He spares Zan his daylight troubles and she doesn’t tell him hers. “What’s your excuse? OK, if you must know the truth I’ve started a grape arbor by the swimming pool. Bamboo chairs. A dance floor.”

  She guesses, “With vines that drop down and strangle people.”

  He grins. “Only people who aren’t smart enough to know you can pick the grapes and make wine out of them.”

  “And how many hours would that be? Of your time, I mean.”

  “Oh, time, what’s time for, unless you can waste it?”

  Everything Articular does spells itself out in elaborate metaphor. “Sweetie.” They are both laughing. Unlike people she’s met in Brevert, her friends here on StElene are smart and playful. Converging in the night, they try on lives and experiment with things they’d never dream of doing anywhere else. “You spend too much time here.”

  “You should talk.”

  “So I’m a conversation junkie.” This is only part of it.

  Delphine joins them with a warning. “Red alert. PMS. I’m ready to explode and hurt somebody. Shrapnel everywhere.”

  Zan feeds her friend the straight line. “Does it hurt much?”

  Disarmed, Delphine grins. “Only when I laugh.”

  “Reverdy’s tied up,” nineteen-year-old Lark reports breathlessly. A sudden, gawky presence, he hugs Zan. “Big meeting with the Directors.”

  “The Directors?” She hugs too. “But I just saw StOnge.”

  “That’s another story. Rev sent me to explain.”

  “He could have left a note.” Zan is in love with Reverdy and Reverdy’s in love with politics. “I wish he didn’t have such a big stake in the way things are run here.”

  Lark shrugs. “You know him. He won’t do anything halfway.”

  It’s exactly what she loves him for. “I know.”

  Lark coughs. “Ah. Could we talk? Look, I hate to bother you but. Oh Zan, listen. If a guy keeps having dreams about … I don’t know if I should tell you what I dream.”

  “Sweetie, people can’t help their dreams.”

  “This one is kind of ugly.”

  Zan is closer to this kid t
han anybody here, with the one exception. She knows how hard it is for Lark just to get through the days. “Lark, if you can’t tell me, who can you tell?”

  After an awkward pause, he whispers, “It’s a variation on the old dream, you know, but this time it … I’m kind of scared.”

  It will take her almost an hour to talk the kid down, lead him through the maze of doubt and self-hatred to the point where he’s mostly OK. “You’re stronger than you think, Lark. Hang in.”

  Leaving, he gives her a hasty hug. “Mail me? You know where.”

  Her heart goes after him. “You’re in my address list. Take care.” She and Lark have been in touch by daylight, not just here. Yes she remembers Jazzy’s early warning: Be careful here. Don’t get in too deep. “And if you need to talk, you have my number.”

  Of course Lark isn’t his real name. Half the excitement on StElene comes with anonymity. The rest comes from trusting somebody enough to tell them who you are. And where you live when you’re not here. In life away from StElene, Reverdy goes under the name his parents gave him, not the one he chose. Solemnizing their relationship, Reverdy and Zan exchanged real names like marriage vows. And started sharing their daylight lives. Reverdy has told her about his work, told his secrets, about things he wants and things he’s afraid of. He’s told her all about the worst parts of his bad marriage. He’s told her everything, in fact, except his home phone number and where to find him off StElene.

  It’s killing her. So is waiting.

  She came to meet Reverdy, and Reverdy’s with the Directors. If she stays too long Charlie will find out, but she needs him!

  Impulsively, she goes to Reverdy’s place. In a dazzling synchronicity, they arrive in the Dak Bungalow at the same time. Her heart makes that familiar lurch. “Oh, Reverdy.”

  “Zan!” Reverdy hugs her in that wonderfully doomed way he has. Everything in her lover rides close to the surface: aspiration, love, pain. Immediately funny, quick and articulate, Reverdy is in fact a pageant of inner states. She loves him for the vulnerability. It’s as if, stripping his soul naked, he’s declaring that their love is the only place in the world that makes him happy.

  Yes he needs her, OK, she needs him needing her. “Reverdy, I missed you! Look, this thing with the Directors…”

  “Let’s don’t talk about that now. I missed you too! It was close tonight,” he says. “I wasn’t sure I could get away in time.”

  She knows this isn’t about the Directors. “Trouble at home?”

  “There’s always trouble at home.”

  She and Reverdy tell each other everything; they always do. They can talk for hours and never run out of things to say. Sometimes they talk about nothing—movies, food, confessions out of childhood. Sometimes they don’t talk at all. It’s just a pleasure to be together, dreaming, smiling, just being together.

  Reverdy’s first gift of trust was describing the historical project he is attached to. He’s coding for a group of academic blockheads. Zan explained what it’s like to have patients she can’t help. They went deeper. In a breathtaking demonstration of trust Reverdy walked her through what he calls the Stations of the Cross, the stages of his terrible marriage to Louise. They exchanged confidences like gifts. Zan told about falling in love with Charlie and finding out later that he had ulterior motives—the kids!

  Reverdy said, “I know just how you feel.” They talked, they talked! She hoards scraps of their conversations as if she can glue them together and build a whole person she can keep. When she’s alone she rehearses all the things he’s told her, from what favorite foods and which music to terrible scenes with Louise. Her treasure is the bizarre, intense vision of Reverdy at fifteen. Onstage in the high school play he’d written—overturned like Saul struck from his horse. When he came to himself he was shuddering with discovery. No matter what you do in this world, it’s never enough.

  But tonight they are too starved by separation to talk about anything but love. Zan says, “I’m so glad we’re here!”

  Reverdy says, “Forget the world. We’re here. That’s all that matters.”

  It is but it isn’t, you know? “If only we could…”

  “Shh.”

  What if she told him how close she came to telling Charlie about their affair, a step toward leaving him? She knows what Reverdy will say. It’s too soon. They’ve talked about it often enough. Reverdy temporizes. We have to wait for the right time. It would hurt too many people. She’s so glad to see him that she can’t stop herself. “I wish…”

  “Sshshh. Not yet, love.” Reverdy keeps her close with promises. “It isn’t time.” When the time is right they’ll know everything and we can he together. When it’s time. It keeps her going.

  Sometimes she tries to rush it, begin a timetable. We’ll tell them after … She does not spell out the after, she can’t. Jenny spends her life solving other people’s problems and she can’t figure out her own life. Off StElene she is married to Charlie Wilder and she loves him so much that she’s determined to work it out, but when she’s here … “When, lover?”

  “Oh,” he says, “in good time.”

  When Zan is with Reverdy, she believes only in their future together. In the myth they are writing here, both marriages are beyond redemption, which in Zan’s case is not exactly true. No. It’s true when Charlie’s gone. Rather: when she and Reverdy are alone together on StElene, he is the most exciting man she’s ever known. But he is holding something back, and until he stops holding back, she can’t let Charlie go. In a way, she’s holding back too. When Reverdy tells her he’s leaving Louise … Then she’ll decide what to do. She needs him to tell her where he lives. Where she can phone him and send email instead of leaving notes on StElene. After all, she knows where Charlie is. Charlie’s in bed waiting for her, but when they aren’t together Reverdy’s whereabouts are a mystery. When he tells Zan which house on what street in which town or city, she’ll choose. In a way, she wants them both! Now, that is not good for me. It makes her weird. “Rev, what if Charlie finds out about us?”

  He hugs her close. “You’re here now. There is no Charlie.”

  Like that, Charlie vanishes. “Oh my love, I do love you!”

  “And I love you.”

  “And we have time.”

  “Yes, my darling. Time.”

  Zan is trembling. “If only we could be together.”

  “Love. Lover, we are.” This makes her eyes sting and her belly soften. “You and I are closer than you and Charlie could ever be.”

  Quickly she adds, “Or you and Louise.”

  He doesn’t affirm; he just continues. “Closer than anyone.”

  “If only we could meet…”

  “We have met! Are meeting.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “What are bodies, when our souls are fused?”

  “I just need you so much.”

  Reverdy knows where this is heading. Married as she is, Zan would leave Charlie in a flash if she could be with Reverdy on StElene and off it too, not just on these nights, but always. And married as her lover is … she doesn’t know where Reverdy is with this, married as he is. He never says. Would he leave Louise? Could she leave Charlie? She doesn’t know. “Shh,” he says. “I want to run my lips across your hair. Here, in the soft place by your ear.”

  Zan shivers. All the fine hairs at the nape lift and tremble. “And you will.” Exquisite. Everything between them is expectation.

  “And you want me to.”

  “I do.”

  “Then I am.” Reverdy calls this miracle performative utterance; it’s magical. He is the master of performative utterance. Scientists limit the meaning but for dreamers like Reverdy, words have tremendous power. Find words for what you want, he says. Say it and it becomes true.

  Mesmerized, Zan murmurs, “And you are.”

  “And then you will touch me here …”

  Which is how it begins. Making love. What they say and do to each other in these sealed
spaces is intense and intensely private.

  And so, like a sleight of hand artist distracting with a flourish while he steals the family silver, Zan’s lover begins the first movement of the beautiful, extended sequence they slide into when they are alone together with the time and the leisure to make long love. What passes between Reverdy and Zan in these private times is specific to them and constructed to please them—nothing here to remind Jenny Wilder of her lovemaking with Charlie, who is strong, loving and relentlessly physical. Brilliant, gifted in love, Reverdy knows how to make love to her soul.

  What Zan and Reverdy do together begins with individual arias that match and fuse, gesture on gesture, phrase on phrase. They create a duet that leaves her shaking with passion as, in the space they occupy—in their minds and hearts, at least, if not in physical fact—they become one. Their joined words stand taller in her imagination than anything she and Charlie can ever do. Love here on StElene, with Reverdy, is a little masterpiece of creation, with certain passages repeated for effect and others improvised, cadenzas building to climax, so that what they do together is always fresh and it is always different. Approaching the moment, Zan and Reverdy move as one, pure thought distilled into pure love. But at the end Zan cries aloud. “If only I could hear your voice!”

  “You do, Zan. You do.”

  She does and she doesn’t, you know?

  As if he knows what she is thinking, Reverdy waits until they have had their fill of each other and are breathing hard and then, to remind Zan that he loves her even though they can’t be together past sunrise, he lets her into his life in the outside world. “I’d have been here sooner but the project chairman won’t green-light my time line!”

  “That’s terrible.” It isn’t so much what he tells her in these interludes that makes her love him, it’s what she puts into the interstices. Every new detail is like a little gift. Don’t they know how smart he is? “Why not!”

  “They claim I’m trying to rewrite history, when I’m only trying to organize it. All my projections focus on the ideal. How things ought to be. Do you know how important that is?”