5

FOR THE REMAINDER OF HIS LIFE, WILLIAM has been forever distracted. He is simply not very good at living. His heart is somehow not in it. He has been married and divorced and has two children and, although he believes they do not love him, in fact they do. It is merely that they detect the strong scent of failure upon him, of something a little like death on his hands. They would like not to be so wary of him, but they cannot but feel that to come too close would be to invite more sorrow than they are ready to bear.

William has had troubles similar to Edward’s, but he has never been able to focus tightly on one particular avenue of self-destruction. He spent a long time talking to a considerable number of professionals about the course of his life, and of late had found some ease in a medication. He felt a little weighted, a little heavy, but the medicine kept him going.

William’s current therapist had pressed him for a long time to try to establish a modus vivendi with what had happened at Lac La Cache and thereby to put it behind him. She proposed he might consider visiting the place again, the lake and the island, and she pressed this idea over the course of a year until, in the autumn of 1999, he finally agreed to do it.

At their next session, after he had returned, she asked him how it had felt.

“It didn’t really feel like anything. I mean, I could see it was the same place. I even found a couple of things we must have built or left behind on the island. The cabin was still there too. Pretty much the same. Same people own it. But it all seemed smaller, less real.”

“But of course it was real.”

“But not the way I imagined.”

“Maybe because what you imagined really is imaginary. It’s not real anymore. It’s gone. It’s past.”

“That’s very . . . apt,” William said and looked at her. He did not look at her most of the time. “But I feel like it ought to have felt real. That it kind of . . . dishonors what happened. Dishonors Emily. Or her memory. Not to be able to see it as it was.”

“Which is not how it is now. Not really. Not it. Not you either.”

William realized he was still looking at her and turned his head away. “I know,” he said. “I know. But I feel like I need to sort of embrace it before I can get beyond it.”

“Which is good. Which is exactly right.”

“So what do I do?”

“Well, if you’re willing, you could do something. A kind of exercise.”

“For example?”

“You could write something. To Emily. Like a letter. Tell her what you saw.”

“Like she was still alive?” William was looking at her, and he did not avert his eyes when she answered.

“If you want. Whatever way would make it real for you. That would allow you to say what you need to say.”

“Okay.”

William returned the following week with a letter he had written to Emily. He read it, and when he was done, he looked up at his therapist, a little slyly, he could not help but feel.

The therapist was looking at him and their eyes did not part until she said, “You’ve made her very real. Like she’s still alive. Like she has a life.”

“That seemed to be the way to do it. To make it real for me.”

“So it was?”

“I cried when I was done. I haven’t done that for a long time.” William turned his face away, as though in modesty.

“Maybe you’re finally grieving. And then, after you’ve finished, you can move on. Be done with all of it.”

They talked about this possibility for the remainder of the hour. William said he would try writing more letters. And at the end, his therapist made a suggestion.

“Maybe after you’ve done that—after we’ve worked on it a little—you’d consider something else. To get some real closure.”

“I suppose.”

His therapist spoke slowly. Her voice seemed softer, more musical than usual. “I wonder if you’d ever consider contacting her family? Just to talk about this.”

“To apologize?”

“Not even that. Not with any expectation at all.”

“There’s just her sister and her father. And what would be the . . . pretext? Why shouldn’t they just hang up?”

“There doesn’t need to be a pretext. And maybe they need to talk about this too. Maybe they think about it, just like you do. It would be strange if they didn’t.” When William looked back at her, he saw she had cocked her head, her brown hair, to one side, as if she were thinking very hard, trying to help him. “You could just tell them you’d gone up to visit the lake. That maybe they’d like to know.”

“I suppose,” William said, and he saw that she smiled at him just then.

William did indeed write some more things, and then, one evening in early November, he decided to call Emily’s father. He had never met her sister, and had heard that she had a low opinion of him. But he remembered—from where, he could not quite say; perhaps the picnic they had all had together once—that the father had seemed affable, or at least relatively approachable.

He dialed the number—he was pretty sure it was not the same number—and waited. It rang many times, and he was sure an answering machine would engage and he began to think what if anything he would say to it. But then a voice, male and a little tired, answered.

William spoke. “Mr. Byrne?”

“Yes.”

“This . . . this is . . . William Lowry,” he said, very quietly, and then he waited to see what happened.

After a time, the voice said, “Oh,” and then, rising and a little less hushed, “I see.”

William did not know quite what to say, but knew he must say something before Mr. Byrne hung up or, worse, said something like “What can I do for you?” So he began, not knowing quite where he would end up, “I went up to Lac La Cache a couple of weeks ago. Just to . . . kind of remember. To remember what happened. To reflect on it.”

“I see.”

“Anyhow, I just thought maybe . . .” And here William found he had exhausted everything he could think of to say. He would have hung up himself, just like that, if the voice had not said something; and this thing in particular.

“So you’ve been thinking about Emily, I gather.”

“A lot. All the time.”

“Me too, Mr. Lowry.”

William did not know how to take this. He quickly said, “Please. Call me Bill.”

“Of course. As you wish. Bill.” And then Edward said, “She must still mean a great deal to you. For you to have gone. For you to have called.”

“Yes,” and then William added, “I just thought . . .” although he did not quite know what he thought.

“It’s good that you did. That you called. That you went.” Edward paused, and then he said, “Did you know I went up there that fall? That I got within twenty miles of you two?”

“No. I never knew.”

“Oh, yes. But that’s where I stopped. Where I gave up. Right there.” Edward then added, “I always wondered what became of you.”

“I always figured you must hate me.” William felt a kind of relief at saying this, or in being able to say it first.

“I suppose I did at one time. We all did. Susan, of course. Even Emily’s mom.”

“I heard that she passed away. I’m sorry.”

Edward said, “It wasn’t that long after . . . the other. Not that there was a connection. They said the cancer would have started way before that.”

“I’m still sorry,” William said, and then he seized the chance. “I’m sorry about all of it. I really am. I just wanted to say that.”

There was another silence, nearly as long as the very first one. “I know you are.” Edward paused again. “I’m not going to say anything beyond that. Not ‘apology accepted.’ Or anything about forgiveness. I’m not holding back. It’s just taken so long to get here. And it’s good enough.”

“I understand. That’s fine. Really it is.”

“It’s enough that we can just talk together like gentlemen, isn’t it? That’s no small thing.”

“Maybe sometime we could have a drink or something—”

“Oh, I don’t drink anymore. Can’t.”

“I suppose I really shouldn’t either.”

“But it’s a nice thought. It truly is,” Edward said. “When I was your age I used to have a lot of nice visits with a doctor friend of mine. I suppose he was the age I am now. It was during that autumn. It helped me get through it. It was a consolation.” Edward paused, and then he said, “He was a fine man.”

William knew it was his turn to speak, but he felt no pressure upon him. Finally, he said, “I see.”

“You end up keeping your own counsel,” Edward said, and then he added, “How’s your mother?”

“Oh, she’s fine. Pretty happy actually.”

“That’s good. You know, I thought of her the other day. I heard Leonard Bernstein had died. Not that recently, but news gets to me slowly. Anyway, she was very big on him. So I thought of her.”

“She was. Still is, I guess.”

“You tell her I said hello. You tell her I said—let’s see—” Edward stopped. “Tell her I said, ‘Mahler foretold all.’ That’ll give her a tickle. She’ll know what I mean.”

“Okay, ‘Mahler foretold all,’” William repeated, and paused. “And did he? Foretell all?”

Edward thought and then said, “Mostly. But I don’t know. We’re not quite done yet, are we?”

For Jane, not a great deal changed in all those years. She was not entirely surprised that she never heard from Edward, even after his wife was gone. She pretty much gave up politics, commiserated with her friend Frances, and went on living at 475 Laurel Avenue, where she still lives today. And if you pass by her apartment (as people are wont to do so as to have a peek at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthplace, which is right next door) on a summer day when the windows are open and the air is thick and resonant, you may well hear a snatch of Mahler or Candide.

William had been told, and knew full well, that he remained a prisoner of certain beliefs which would remain the primary obstacles to his recovery. He believes a little too strongly in romantic love or at least holds an unsophisticated view of its powers and importance in human affairs. But the fact remains for him that he only saw how very much God loved Emily, and could not but love her too.

His mother lives as if it were always 1966 or thereabouts; and for William (for whom at the best of times Emily lives, in California, with her children, near the tennis courts) it is always just now. In this way, they keep the intervening years—the history, the ruins among which their loves transpired—at bay.