7

You can’t drive, I told myself.

But I could, taking a brittle pleasure in the operation of the vehicle, avoiding collisions. Connie didn’t say a thing, just sat there with her arms folded.

A eucalyptus had fallen across Capistrano Street, barely missing a blue Lexus parked at the curb. The owner of the car was turning off its car alarm, shrugging sheepishly at the scattered but grateful applause that came from front porches up and down the street. We couldn’t drive straight down the street; I had to drive around the block to get home.

We had not spoken on the way from the hospital. Now we both strolled silently up the street to look at the fallen tree. We were grateful for the distraction. The roots had levered out of the ground, and the smell in the air was sundered earth and that cough-drop scent of eucalyptus.

When a man in a yellow hard hat failed to get his chain saw working it was a moment of mild drama. A dozen people were watching, and a companion in a white City of Berkeley pickup called out something with a laugh. The man with the chain saw took his time, going back to the truck to put on a pair of ear protectors, rubber earmuffs with a large cup that fit over each ear, as though lack of readiness on his own part had crippled the saw.

Maybe he was right. It started easily, the air discolored with exhaust from the motor. The saw bit into the tree and white sawdust flew. The blade sliced into the tree easily, seventy years cut through in less than a minute.

When the tree was cut in two, one side sprang upward, severed but connected to the roots. The top half fell hard to the street, the shaggy branches and leaves quaking, settling.

We could hear the chain saw even in our house, the door shut. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, and was surprised at how commonplace my appearance was. People in movies are stained by crisis, smudged, artfully bloodied. Only my shirt was stained, with Rebecca.

I took it off, and folded it carefully, and put on another shirt just like it, fresh from the cleaners. And then I realized that my dark trousers, olive cavalry twill, were also stained, and I put on a pair of chinos, a man at leisure, time on his hands. I washed my face and shaved, and gave myself the same look I shot myself between meetings, when I popped into the men’s room to congratulate myself.

And then I stood with my hand on the the doorknob and could not move. Sorrow broke over me, leaving me helpless.

It was a form of comfort to dial my office when I was downstairs again. I gave Matilda an expurgated rundown of the day’s events. “You should be in the hospital,” she said.

“They told me I was okay.”

“But your lungs might be damaged.”

It was like her to think of my body like this. She was gifted when it came to dealing with computers and fax machines. I wondered if my lungs were a variety of office equipment to her. An emotional collapse would mean the same thing. If I couldn’t breathe or think anymore she’d be out of a job. Besides, she had asthma. I could hear her wheeze as we talked about smoke inhalation.

“Tell Stella Cameron I can’t make that phone conference today—”

Matilda took a deep, forced breath, using her inhalor. I waited for her to exhale. “She cancelled anyway,” said Matilda. “She’s having a baby.”

I stared at my appointment book, my own printing dominated with names and numbers Matilda had added in her rounded handwriting.

Matilda read my silence correctly. “No, I don’t mean she’s having the baby today. I mean she’s pregnant and she is having a checkup. Just routine, her doctor had to switch his appointments around.”

Even in my emotionally ragged state I marveled that Stella Cameron had been impregnated. It wasn’t that she was unattractive. She was very good-looking, the way a cruise missile is good-looking. Unless Stella had been artificially fertilized there was a man out there who deserved an award. And I had just spoken to her yesterday. People had so many secrets.

“I’ll take care of everything,” Matilda was saying, with that trace of accent that made her sound so intelligent. Perhaps it was the implication that because she was fluent in at least two languages, she was superior in other ways, too. Perhaps it was that Spanish grace in her voice, with its hint of Old World manners. I had the feeling that I could vanish from the planet and Matilda could keep my practice going for weeks—maybe months.

I hung up the phone and found Connie organizing her briefcase, finding a place for her laptop in among the catalogs.

“I think if I dropped dead Matilda would rearrange my appointments, turn off the lights, and go shopping,” I said.

“She works for you,” said Connie. “She doesn’t necessarily love you, or even like you.” She was pale, her face showing no feeling, her movements crisp and exact. “How’s her asthma?”

“She’s on a new aerosol, albuterol. It seems to work.”

“I thought Matilda might be the one,” said Connie. “So much of it is proximity, the women men spend time with.”

That was one way to handle it, I thought, like a subject on a talk show. Intellectualize it, make it a subject, not a crisis.

“What do you think we should do?” I asked. It was a dangerous question, the kind I was trained to never ask.

“We won’t have our big talk right now. I’m in the middle of figuring out new inventory software,” she said. “And a couple from La Jolla is flying up just to look at that cork-pull, the one you made fun of.”

“I didn’t make fun of it, exactly. It looks like a water pump. Who would use that to open a bottle of wine?”

“Wine stewards,” she said, putting a hand over her eyes for a moment. “People collect them. I have to be in the shop in half an hour. Go take a rest, and maybe have some of that rhubarb pie.”

“I feel all right,” I said.

“All right is what you are not, Richard,” she said with the gentle condescension of a woman talking to a child or a very cantankerous old person. She was impatient, too. And angry. It would be awhile before she would let it show, but I could tell, the way she kept flicking her hair back, the way she sounded understanding.

I made coffee, poured whole beans into the electric grinder, set the coffee filter in place, the deliberate steps a boy would take when asked to make fresh coffee for his parents.

When I had a nice steaming cup of French roast I strode into the living room and said the words I had planned. They came out pretty well, without preamble. “I’ll go stay in one of Steve’s apartments.”

She took her time turning to look at me. I could see her debating whether or not to have that important conversation now. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk,” she said. “I do have some regard for your feelings. You’re upset.”

The living room was not as cluttered as it had appeared last night. The cello-like shape against the wall was what it appeared to be, a stringed instrument, and the Easter-Island profile was a carved Polynesian idol, grimacing, showing its teeth made of cowries. Connie made money in her shop, but she spent the cash on new imports and paid a crushing insurance premium every six months. Every now and then our home became a temporary showroom, when her shop was crowded and someone had driven up from Carmel to pick up a five-thousand-year-old Cycladic figurine that would match their new sofa.

“I know it’s a little like having a spat right after Pearl Harbor, but I feel like finishing everything.” I sounded like a man who would torch his own home.

“Shut up, Richard. I want to have a nice long talk. We can both air out our feelings. This isn’t the time.”

“Ask me. Anything you want to know.”

Connie looked away, gazing at the fierce mouth of the wooden idol.

I told her everything, with some soft-focus over the sex, the other, spoken intimacies. But I held nothing else back. Rebecca’s music, her blindness, her fondness for scrambled egg sandwiches. It didn’t even take very long. This secret love, this wonderful, departed woman, and I could summarize my love for her in the same amount of time it took a cup of coffee to go from hot to warm.

Connie straightened the wrinkles out of her skirt, smoothing them with one hand. “I know how much you need me,” she said.

“Connie, you don’t grasp this essential point. Give Stella a call. She’s smart. She’s fair. She wouldn’t mind giving you a little legal advice. It’s time we both woke up.”

“You think it’s that simple. We’ll file some papers and end what we have together.”

“It’s already over.”

“I won’t forget how you treated me, Richard. You have torn something out of me.” She was at the front door, years of television causing me to expect the parting zinger, the exit punchline. For the moment, she had power over me, and she knew it.

This was her chance, a crippling parting shot. She stood at the door, looked at me, and said, “Our marriage may be over. I’m not conceding that it is. But I’m going to see you through this crisis. Before I can help you, though, I do think I’ll need some time to myself, to prioritize.” Prioritize was one of Connie’s pet words. She liked to make lists, what had to be done and when. My name would move to the top of her list.

Once again I felt sorry for Connie. I stood there watching her back down the driveway in her Volvo. She caught my eye from the driver’s seat, just before she steered the car up the street.

Neither of us waved.