Box

He loved Cambridge in the fall, winter, and spring, but he did not love it in the summer. He wouldn’t have liked it under the best of circumstances, but now he found it unbearable—air-conditioning instead of open windows, the campus inundated with foreign visitors. Even the Charles was a disappointment; it looked like spoiled chocolate milk and smelled even worse.

Box ate every meal out, most of the time venturing across the river into Boston proper to do so, because it stretched out his night. He walked for the same reason. Now, there was nothing more depressing than his apartment after dark. If left to his own devices, he would sit in a chair facing the window and drink an entire bottle of wine by himself while listening to Mozart’s Requiem.

What had he done wrong?

His thoughts skipped like a broken record: he had put work first, he had taken Dabney for granted, he had become complacent with their arrangement, he had not always returned her passionate advances and especially not in years of late, he had settled into contentment, he had assumed she would create her own happiness and excitement—and guess what? She had!

He couldn’t pretend to be surprised.

If he had known twenty-five years earlier that it would end this way—Dabney would return to Clendenin—would he have married her anyway?

Yes. The answer was yes.

  

Coming out of Grill 23 one night, Box bumped into a fellow he recognized. It was…he couldn’t quite grasp it at first. He had drunk a lot of wine. It was…

The man stuck his hand out. “Box?” he said. “Christian Bartelby.”

“Oh!” Box said. “Hello!” And then once his brain processed who exactly Christian Bartelby was, he summoned some enthusiasm. “Yes! Hello, Christian Bartelby! The good doctor!” Box was swaying on his feet. He had eaten at the bar and the comely bar maiden had enticed him into ending his evening with a glass of vintage port. Box had gazed upon the bar maiden and had wondered why it was that no other woman in the world could maintain his interest, no matter how beautiful or charming she was.

Christian held on to Box’s hand for an extra beat. “I assume you’ve heard that Miranda has gone off to New York.”

“Yes,” Box said. “She’s left us both, it seems.”

Christian Bartelby let go of Box’s hand and ran a hand through his hair. He was wearing a navy T-shirt under a navy blazer and a pair of khakis and loafers with no socks. Box wondered if Christian Bartelby was going into the restaurant to meet a date. Was everyone moving on but him?

“And your wife?” Christian Bartelby said. “How is she?”

“Ah,” Box said. “She has left me as well.”

“Left you?” Dr. Bartelby said.

“It seems so,” Box said, but he couldn’t bring himself to say any more, so he saluted the good doctor and sidled away.

  

Every few days, a call came from Agnes, “checking in.”

“Daddy?” she said. “Are you working?”

“Yes.”

“Eating?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“What what?”

“What are you eating?”

“Out, mostly. The usual places. Freddy at the Russell House is sick of me.” Box cleared his throat. “How is your mother?”

“She…lost her job,” Agnes said.

“What?” Box said.

“Vaughan Oglethorpe and the board asked for her resignation.”

“For what reason?” Box said. “Certainly not over the business with Hughes. That’s hardly legal. Her personal life is private and separate.”

There was a long pause. “She missed a lot of work this summer, Daddy,” Agnes said. “It was all documented. And Elizabeth Jennings sits on that board, and Mom felt like maybe it was a personal vendetta.”

Now it was Box’s turn to be quiet. She missed a lot of work this summer. Because she was with Clendenin, because Box was around and Agnes was home and thus Dabney had to conduct her rendezvouses during the workday.

Oh, Dabney, what have you done? Your life is falling apart. It didn’t have to be this way. Was he worth it? Was he?

And still, Box felt indignation on Dabney’s behalf. Vaughan Oglethorpe was a pompous, self-important ass, and Elizabeth Jennings was petty and jealous. They had done an unconscionable thing in asking Dabney to resign. It didn’t matter how much time Dabney had missed. Box and everyone else in the world knew that Dabney could run the Chamber of Commerce in her sleep, or from an outpost on the surface of Mars.

Leave my wife alone! he thought.

“Is she there?” Box asked impulsively. Dabney had called every day with updates about the healing of Agnes’s head wound, but he hadn’t answered once, because even her voice on the message made him too upset for words. But it seemed impossible to him that Dabney would have been fired from the Chamber (the very phrase was inconceivable), and she hadn’t called him to tell him. But that, he supposed, was what their new arrangement meant. Separated.   

“Um…” Agnes said. “No, she’s not home.”

Not home, he thought. Of course not.