A Couple of Old Flames
At the autumn cocktail party of the American Economic Review, Billy Delielle ran smack into Francis Clemens, whom she had not seen for two years. He was wearing one of his beautiful tweed jackets, and the ridiculously long paisley scarf he affected was wound around his neck. At his left was a hefty black man wearing a white skull cap, striped trousers, and a long tan linen shift.
On Francis’s right was a girl so blond and pretty it caused Billy, who was dark and plain, to blink. The girl wore a fuzzy red sweater, dangling earrings, and lipstick to match her nail polish. She and Francis looked so wonderful together that it was hard for Billy to believe that at one time Francis had been her own illicit lover.
Billy was wearing her nine-month-old son, William, whom she carried in a hip sling. He was a very cheerful baby who clutched a rubber giraffe in one hand and a teething biscuit in the other. Crumbs from his biscuit ornamented his mother’s skirt.
Francis came right over and gave them a hard stare. He looked almost angry. Before Billy could stop herself, she blurted: “Who’s the dish?”
Francis’s features instantly relaxed. A smile lit his face.
“That’s Dr. Milton Obutu,” he said. “I know you’ve been reading his articles on the economic history of the developing nations with avid interest.”
“The other one.”
“Oh,” Francis said blithely. “A recent acquisition. Speaking of which, you seem to have acquired a little something yourself.”
“This is my son, William,” Billy said. “He’s nine months old.”
Francis leaned over and peered at William, who hid his face in his mother’s neck.
“Not very friendly,” Francis said.
“Don’t be shy, Will,” Billy said. “Show your face, please.”
William looked up, smiled, and began to spit.
“He has your social style, I see,” said Francis. “What a very good-looking boy.”
“He looks like his father.”
“He looks like you,” Francis said. “Of course, I am less intimately connected with the way his father looks.”
Billy felt her cheeks flush.
“So,” she said. “I see you’ve found my replacement. A much better model and much nicer colors.”
The beautiful blond girl was deep in conversation with Dr. Obutu. Her hair was swept up in a French twist and she wore an enormous gold bracelet.
“How interesting that after throwing me over you’re actually jealous,” said Francis.
Billy found she could not look Francis in the eye.
“Dr. Obutu looks very familiar,” she said. “Did he win a prize or something?”
“I see motherhood has not made you any keener on current events,” said Francis. “He won the Welch-Orlovsky Medal in economics. A neat change of subject. I never knew that jealousy was included in your emotional repertoire. Of course, I had no idea you were fixing to have a baby. How little we know!”
This, of course, was not true: they had known dozens of things. Billy felt her head cluttered with names of Francis’s friends, his children’s teachers in high school and professors at college, of Vera’s clients, of Francis’s former colleagues. She had heard countless stories about his landlady in the South of France, and in fact knew the history—that is, the history as Francis saw it—of this woman’s marriage, and so on.
Billy, on the other hand, was so unforthcoming that Francis had given in to snooping, but snooping around the Delielle household did not reveal much. Billy and Grey were a pair of minimalists. Furthermore, Billy felt it was a betrayal to tell Francis anything whereas Francis took the opposite tack. Information defused things, he felt. If he nattered on endlessly about his family, he could con himself into thinking that there was nothing odd about the way he was feeling. As a consequence, he sang like a canary.
The most fascinating subject was taboo. They did not discuss the reason for their love affair or its effect on their lives. They had broken up any number of times but the last parting had been final. Billy, as was customary, did the initiating. She said, with a tone of resolve in her voice Francis had never heard before, “My life is being ruined.”
Naturally, she did not say how it was being ruined but Francis knew the knell of finality when he heard it. He had been listening for it all along, and when it came he was not entirely unrelieved. While his life was not being ruined, it was made complicated in a way he often found unbearable. Now he was used to missing Billy. It was rather like a chronic pain of the lower back. When he looked at her and her child, a feeling akin to rage overtook him.
“I always said you’d leave me in the dust,” he said.
Billy was silent.
“You threw me over,” Francis said.
“I did not,” Billy said. Francis was pleased to see that there were tears in her eyes. “We were bound to part, one way or the other.”
“We were?” Francis said. “Not from where I sat.”
“Come off it, Frank,” said Billy. “I left you sitting right where you belong, in your ornamental house surrounded by your loving family and thousands of friends and relations.”
At the sound of the sharp tone in his mother’s voice, William began to fidget. “He’s getting bored,” Billy said. “I’m going to have to take him away soon.”
“Fine,” said Francis. “I’ll take you both away for a drink, and we can continue this most inspiring conversation.”
“What about your friend?”
“Ishbelle?” Francis said. “She’s very enterprising. She’s writing a profile of Dr. Obutu for the Wall Street Journal.”
“Ishbelle?” said Billy.
“She’s half English, half Dutch,” Francis said.
“And won’t she think it’s odd that you’re leaving with me?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Francis said. “Besides, you’re a woman with a baby. What could be more safe and respectable?”
They ambled to the corner. Francis took her by the arm. The air was chilly and wet, and it was getting dark.
“Here we are,” he said, leading her through a wooden door.
Billy had had hundreds of meals with Francis, mostly in out of the way delicatessens, Chinese restaurants, or coffee shops. Now she found herself in a bar full of polished blond wood, with a fire burning in the grate and fresh flowers in an ornamental urn.
“Do you come here often?” Billy said.
“Once in a while.”
“We never went to such a nice place.”
“Not for lack of trying,” Francis said.
They took a table with a banquette. William’s eyes were closed, so Billy spread a little blanket, unzipped his snowsuit, and set him down to take a nap. She took off his hat and kissed his hair.
“Ah, motherhood,” Francis said. “How odd it looks on you. In the old days you used to throw your keys into the pocket of one of your hideous jackets and off we’d go. Now I see you carry a little mother bag, with a blanket inside, and probably diapers, toys, and bottles too. How well organized you’ve become! Why, just days ago, it seems, you allowed me to wonder what sort of child we’d produce.”
Billy had very accurate recall and reminded Francis that this had been his exclusive fantasy.
“You played your own small part,” Francis said.
“Stop trying to make me feel more awful than I feel, Frank.”
“I don’t believe you feel awful,” Francis said. “You let me go without so much as a goddamned by-your-leave.”
“We had a million by-your-leaves,” Billy said. “Besides, you had your baby. In fact, you had two.”
Francis looked at her with an expression Billy had often suffered as fatherly tenderness. It made her wince.
“All right,” Francis said. “As long as you ditched me for family life, you may as well tell me about it. How did it go?”
Billy had heard Francis’s birth stories countless times. His son Quentin had been born in Paris on New Year’s Eve and the doctor had set off a bottle of champagne in the delivery room. Aaron was a labor so fast he had almost been born in a taxicab.
Billy told Francis how she had been hospitalized for toxemia two weeks before William’s birth, and William had been born by cesarean section; how he had been slightly underweight and made to stay in the hospital for eight days after Billy was released. It had felt like eight months. Billy knew she had not quite gotten over it, and she was reluctant to tell Francis anything at all, but once she started, she found she could not stop. At one point Francis was amazed to see tears streak down her cheeks. Francis leaned back in his chair and listened with no particular expression on his face.
“And the baby’s father?” he said conversationally.
“Are you referring to my husband, Grey?” Billy said.
“And what does he think of all this?” said Francis.
Billy gaped at him. Did he really want to hear her tell him how wonderful and patient Grey had been, how he had taken a month’s leave of absence from work and had barely left her and William except to run errands, how tender and besotted he was?
“He’s an excellent father,” she said.
“And you are finding motherhood very fulfilling?” Francis said.
“It’s very public.”
“As opposed to your previous activities?”
“Quite,” Billy said. “For instance, if I take William to the bank and he begins to squall, at least three people give me advice—to feed him, to give him a toy, or prop him up in his stroller. When I took you to the bank, no one told me those things.”
Francis sipped his drink in silence. “What a change,” he said. “No more charming dalliance in that nasty study of yours, which I assume is now the child’s room.”
“It isn’t,” Billy said. “We had that spare room, which is warmer than my study.”
“A snug family group,” Francis said.
“Oh, shut up, Frank,” Billy said. “You’re snug enough. Didn’t you used to drag me by the hair over to your little snuggery and show me album after album of happy family portraits? Don’t be so mingy.”
“I’m not mingy,” Francis said. “Look, your baby is awake.”
William looked up from the banquette. His cheek was pink from sleeping on it. Billy took him into her arms. “You look like a hungry boy,” she said.
Francis suddenly looked alarmed. “I don’t suppose you’re one of those nurse-your-baby-in-public types,” he said.
“Yup. I am,” Billy said. “But don’t you worry. I’ve got a nice bottle in my bag.”
The lights of the bar gave the room an orange glow. Billy bent over her baby, who drank his bottle peacefully and stared up at her. Her hair fell into her eyes, but she did not have a free hand to push it away. Francis restrained himself from doing it for her.
“From mistress to mother,” he said. “A tender scene. I wonder what sort of parent you are. Probably no nonsense. Schedules, enforced naps, and so on.”
Billy, who found the experience of having a baby exactly like being madly in love, looked at Francis.
“I only treated you that way,” she said. “Actually, I’m a very indulgent mother.”
“It’s funny what we didn’t know about one another,” Francis said.
“It’s entirely appropriate to the situation,” said Billy.
“For instance, I never figured out you and Grey and your attitude toward money. He makes a lot, you’re an economic historian, and neither of you seems to care much about it.”
“You mean what it buys,” said Billy.
“I do mean that,” said Francis, who was interested in it for no other reason. How he and Vera loved things! English cars, early American sideboards, Swedish tables, trips to Mexico, houses in the South of France, cashmere jackets, kilim rugs.
“Grey sees it as an abstraction and I see it as a force of history,” Billy said.
Francis sighed. So that was that!
William had finished his bottle and was sitting on his mother’s lap trying to take all the silverware off the table. Billy reached into her bag and pulled out his rubber giraffe and a set of plastic keys. When they both looked up, Francis could see what a replica of his mother William was. Billy kissed her baby’s neck and he began to laugh. A look Francis had never seen before appeared on Billy’s face. Francis sighed. He felt weak and depleted as if after a long swim.
“It’s time to go,” Billy said.
“One more thing,” said Francis. “I’ve always wanted to know. When you and I snuck off to Vermont for our little trip when Vera and Grey were away, what did you tell Grey?”
She looked suddenly so stricken that Francis realized their trip had been the occasion of the first lie Billy had ever told her husband.
“Never mind,” he said.
Billy pushed the hair off her forehead. She felt rather exhausted herself. “Okay, William,” she said. “It’s time for the horrible torture of your snowsuit.”
She set William down on the banquette and started with his feet. He began to fidget and squirm. Then he began to cry.
“They all hate this,” Billy said to Francis.
“Ours didn’t.”
“Really,” Billy said. “How totally unusual.”
Finally William was bundled up and fastened into his hip carrier. Francis threw some money on the table and they walked into the street.
It was misty and dark; halos formed around the street lamps.
“It feels like snow,” said Francis. “It’s very odd seeing you.”
Billy was silent.
“Is it odd seeing me?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Billy.
“What a rewarding conversationalist you are,” Francis said. “I suppose now that you have so many motherly chores you no longer wonder what we were doing together.”
“I think about it a lot,” said Billy.
“And what brilliant thoughts have you come up with?”
“Love seeketh only self to please,” Billy said.
Francis grabbed her arm. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
“It’s a quote from William Blake,” said Billy. “Now I get to ask you a question.”
“Yes,” said Francis. Billy had never really asked him anything at all.
“Where’d you get that paisley scarf?”
Francis felt as if the air had been let out of his tires. “Is that all you want to know?”
“Sort of.”
“It belonged to Vera’s grandfather, who was quite a dandy. I’d be happy to give it to you as a good-bye present. You can keep it for William, and I can say I lost it.”
“Oh, no!” said Billy. “I always think of you in that scarf.”
Finally the three of them reached the corner. Francis was about to hail a taxi when Billy clutched his arm. “Are you in love with that girl?” she said.
Francis spun around. “What’s it to you?”
“I want to know,” Billy said. Her voice was shaking.
Francis looked down at her intently.
“Are you?” Billy said. She was clutching his arm rather painfully.
“She’s my daughter-in-law,” Francis said. “Aaron got married last year.”
Billy let go. Francis saw that her face was flooded with relief, which was instantly supplanted by anger.
“You bastard,” she said. “Stringing me along like that.” She felt tired and sad. So Aaron had gotten married and she had never known!
“It shouldn’t make any difference to you one way or the other,” Francis said. “Now that you’re a respectable wife and mother.”
“Are you in love with anyone else?”
Francis did not have to repress the desire to kiss her: it was not easy to contemplate kissing a woman who was holding a baby. Instead he hung his scarf around her neck and pulled her a little closer. William found this very entertaining and began to laugh.
“Does that mean that if I can’t be in love with you, I can’t be in love with anyone else?” he said.
“I didn’t mean that,” said Billy, slipping out from under the scarf.
“I think you did,” said Francis. A few fine snowflakes began to fall. “I’ll get you a taxi so your precious darling doesn’t get wet.”
Francis hailed a cab and opened the door. He bent to kiss Billy good-bye.
She ducked her head to get through the door, so instead of kissing Billy, Francis kissed William on the side of his head, and as he watched them drive away, he could still smell that clear, benign baby smell of talcum powder and biscuits.
The next day Billy and Penny Stern took William to the park. Penny, who was a month away from having her own baby, and her husband, David Hooks, were William’s godparents.
The park was in the back of a private school and was open to local children. The walk was lined with hedge, and beyond a lawn were swings, baby swings, a play house, slides, and a jungle gym. In the center was one enormous old cherry tree used for climbing.
Penny pushed William in his stroller, and Billy ambled along.
“Do you realize,” she said, “this time next year we’ll both have children to take to the park?”
“I realize it but I don’t believe it,” Penny said. “I can’t even believe how enormous William is.”
“He looks more like Grey every day,” said Billy.
“Not so,” Penny said. “He looks just like you. Of course, you and Grey look alike, so it’s hard to tell who William resembles most.”
It took having a baby to see how true this was. Billy had spent countless nights nursing William to sleep in the red rocking chair trying to figure out how in this gigantic, overpopulated world you invariably found your true other: a person you could live with who even looked like you. Grey might have married someone else, or become an anthropologist and gone to Mozambique, or he might have gotten a job in Buenos Aires and the world would have swallowed him up. Instead, he was waiting for her, right where they had started out—in London, on a warm June night. She could not get over that she and Grey had created this remarkable child, who looked like both of them but also looked only like himself. Someday he would go off and find his other.
And where, Billy wondered as she walked, did Francis fit into this? The fact was, he didn’t. He had never fit in at all. He and Billy had nothing in common and were as different as two people can be. Yet there was no denying they had fallen in love, a process as mysterious as creating a child out of two cells. A love affair was another amazing product of human ingeniousness, like art, like scholarship, like architecture. It was a created thing with rules, language, and reference. When it was finished it lived on in its artifacts: a million memories and gestures.
William cooed in his stroller. Soon he would learn to talk. It often seemed unfair to Billy that she and Grey had not known each other as babies. His first word, according to his mother, had been “boot.” Since William had been born Billy had been through boxes of her own and Grey’s baby pictures. As far as she could tell, they all looked like William.
These days William was her constant reference. She liked to sit quite still and let her feelings for him run over her, like pure, warm, water. Early in the morning when William got up, she brought him into bed between her and Grey, and she often felt at once content and quite wild with happiness.
The park, when they got there, was full of children, but the baby swings were empty.
“Give that child to me,” Penny said as Billy got William out of his stroller. “I need swinging practice.”
Billy sat on a bench and watched a group of little boys climbing the cherry tree under a sky full of low, silver clouds. She watched her child being swung by her oldest friend. William loved the swing. He closed his eyes and shrieked with joy, revealing his four beautiful teeth. It seemed an instant ago he had been an infant. Soon he would be walking, talking, going to college and writing articles on third world economies, like Dr. Obutu. Or perhaps he would fulfill one of his father’s secret desires and become either a marine biologist or a forest ranger. He would grow up, get married, and have a baby of his own. The baby on the swing would be a sweet, distant memory.
“We’re bored,” said Penny sitting down beside Billy. “Let’s go swing on the big swings. You take him. I don’t have a lap any more.”
They sat on the big swings, side by side. William settled into Billy’s arms.
“I saw Francis Clemens yesterday,” she said.
“Really?” Penny said. “And what did he have to say for himself?”
“He said his children loved their snowsuits.”
Penny arched her eyebrow.
“I saw him at that party,” Billy said. “He took us out for a drink.”
They swung for a while and watched the children climbing on the jungle gym. In their bright clothes, they looked like a flock of parrots.
“How was it?” Penny said.
“Seeing Francis?” said Billy. “He was with a really beautiful girl who turned out to be his daughter-in-law. I was extremely jealous.”
“Hmm,” said Penny. “What’s that about?”
“When I think about him it’s always in the past tense, but when I saw him I realized how alive these things are, even when they’ve ceased to be,” Billy said. “The water doesn’t close over your head. I mean, it doesn’t close over mine. I realize that no matter what happens Francis is indelible. He’s part of my experience—like seeing Stonehenge or traveling in India.”
“Or going to college,” said Penny.
“He was more like graduate school,” Billy said.
She looked down and saw that she had swung William right to sleep. She felt her heart open and expand: she loved everyone—William, Grey, Penny, Francis. Her baby breathed against her. He was growing so fast he seemed to melt away before she could get used to him.
She wondered what William would look like at thirteen. She remembered Grey so clearly at that age with his wavy hair, and his round, wire-rimmed glasses and the ink stains on his fingers.
She looked over to the street and gave a start. She thought she saw Francis walking toward the park but it was only a man about Francis’s height, wearing a familiar-looking coat.