Deep purple-blue sat on top of an orange horizon, and the trees turned inky black against the sky as Sid and I walked a loop that began at the base of an apple orchard, climbed up to meet the Appalachian Trail, then circled back around, dipping into a marsh, over an old railway track, and back to the little gravel pull-off where we’d parked. It was threatening to storm, the clouds moved quickly, a cluster of loosed metallic balloons crossed the sky at such a pace it was as though they were being chased.
All I wanted, the entire walk, was to talk to Sid about Vladimir. When she noticed my half-eaten omelet, I admitted all the thoughts that I had heretofore pushed away. I realized I was completely and utterly lovesick. It was love. I had restricted my caloric intake nearly all my life, eating half portions, carving little lines around globs to delineate what must be left behind, even throwing food into the trash; but there was only one other period in my life when I left food on my plate without even thinking about it, which was when I fell in love with David. There was a burning in my body, an extra level of excitement keeping part of me fed and running that required no sustenance. It was longing for the love of Vladimir Vladinski, junior professor and experimental novelist. Longing was energizing my muscles and organs and brain. Longing was replacing my blood with fizzy, expansive liquid. I loved him.
I have always been amazed at the mind’s ability to do several things at once. I remember reading to Sidney when she was a little girl—for hours I would read to her—and often during those times I would be in a completely different thought space and would have no consciousness of any of the words that were coming out of my mouth. As Sid and I walked the trail she told me about trends on social media (I didn’t have accounts, mostly because they made me feel undignified, and I relied on Sid to keep me updated), television shows that she watched, articles that she read. She gave me a long report on The Deer Hunter and how it was much campier than she remembered. All the while I was thinking about Vladimir. I imagined us in a flat in a European city, it didn’t matter which one, so long as the language outside was not English, the murmur of an incomprehensible tongue surrounding us like a curtain of privacy. It would be my flat, with open shelves and a big slop sink and cut-up fruit lying on a wooden slab on the counter. There would be one small bedroom with windows on two sides, big old windows that either stuck or flew up wildly, and a mattress on a floor with crumpled and cool white linens. We wouldn’t live together, that wouldn’t be what anyone wanted, that wouldn’t be compatible with a life, but he would come to me, some evenings, a few afternoons a week. We would drink wine, or not, we wouldn’t need the wine, we would spend hours in a tangle on the mattress or walking around half-clad with books in our hands. (I had to pause the reverie to consider that lately I was having more and more hip problems, so I would need to probably raise the bed, and inserted an antique iron frame beneath the mattress.) I might feel desperate and half-crazed by where he went when he was away, but I would restrain myself, cherishing the time we did have. I would write stories in reserved and pulled-back tones, like Mavis Gallant, about the life of the expatriate. I might teach, yes, I might teach, maybe a few wealthy students, one-on-one, a class here or there at a university. Not a university life, not that anymore—maybe the equivalent of a community college, something very incognito and undemanding. There would be something sad about our love, mainly when I started to become too old, to become Léa in Colette’s Chéri, and his eyes would pool with tears on the day that I told him he could—he must—go. Of course, I didn’t really picture my own self in all of this. I pictured some amalgam of film stars, with doctored teeth and antiaging programs, and money spent with fun, mean trainers who put their bodies through all sorts of tortures. I didn’t picture my already withered top lip with the bulging scar at the tip from the ingrown hair I had attempted to dig out with a razor blade five years ago. I didn’t picture my upper arm aloft, flesh hanging like a ziplock bag half-filled with pudding. I certainly didn’t picture my own breasts, which had always been more conical than globular, and which now, on a bad day, looked nearly phallic.
We had reached the pinnacle of the hike and were on our way down when Sidney impulsively grabbed and held me close to her. She smelled like grease, metabolizing alcohol, and piney men’s deodorant.
“What are you gonna do, Mom?”
“About what?”
“About your life.”
I was confused. Had she heard me thinking? No, I had been nodding at something she was saying about a man who claimed to espouse personal responsibility but, in fact, espoused fascism.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to leave Dad?”
Oh, that. Leave Dad. Dump his ass. At least she had some skin in the game. At least it had something to do with her.
“Do you think I should?”
“I feel like if you stay with him you’re giving some signal that you condone his actions, and I don’t think that makes you look very good.”
“To whom?”
“To the college, to all these women that you mentor. I think the optics are bad.”
“That’s a cliché.”
“For a reason.”
“Another cliché.”
“Fine, but I’m saying it doesn’t look good.”
“You want me to destroy our family?”
“I’m a grown adult. You and Dad have been on separate tracks since I’ve been conscious. We’re just three people, how much do we really identify as a family?”
Her comment hurt, she saw it did, and apologized.
John and I had one child on purpose, but one of the great questions of my life was about whether that had been the right thing to do. He had a vasectomy when she was a toddler, which meant the issue was decided. We had agreed on it, but when it was finalized I was filled with grief. When David and I had talked about running away with each other, part of my excitement had been the thought of another baby, with another man, more things to love in our house that would be so filled with love. Once Sid got over the shock, I thought, once I was allowed back into the fold and we all came to an understanding, as painful as it would be, she would have a complex and interesting relationship with her half-brother or -sister. We might even have two, I had fantasized, and by the time we were old at Thanksgiving there would be his daughter and my daughter and our two children and their partners at the dinner table and scads of children running underfoot, a big, raucous family gathering in which someone was a professional chef and bossily did the cooking while the men did all the dishes.
As it was, our holiday dinners were usually only the three of us and often took place at restaurants. Some years we invited old friends, but the relationships between our children weren’t ever as easy as it was when they were small and we could foist them together, no matter their preferences.
She cautiously stroked my cheek and brushed a hair away from my eyes.
“I want you to have the life you want, Mom, not some compromise.”
Always, the touch of my daughter thrilled me. I still marveled at how cellular the love between a mother and child was—how little I had to think of it, how much I simply felt it.
We reached the car. In silence we strapped in and I started up. The road from the trail back to town was long, with fat, winding curves, swooshing and swooping past woods and farmland.
“I want to be honest with you honey. You have always done exactly what you wanted to do. Every time you leaned in one way or another, your father and I were there to support you.”
She drew a breath in, to defend herself.
“That’s not a criticism, or a judgment, it’s a fact. And it’s as it should be. You’re a force for good in this world, I think, because of it. Also, I think more importantly, you have ideas about what you want and ideas about what will make you happy. I’m so glad for that. I’m so glad you know what you want. I’ve never had a clue. I’ve wanted people, I’ve wanted acclaim, but it’s all turned out so lukewarm. Other than being your mother, which has been the most unmixed and positive part of my life, it’s all been a series of ups and downs, and I don’t expect any more.”
“That’s a horrible way to live.”
“Your father does all the business stuff. The taxes, the bills.”
“That stuff isn’t hard.”
“He does the chores around the yard, he fixes things that are broken, he does upkeep on the cabin. What would happen to me if I got divorced? I’d move into some terrible condo—”
“Dad wouldn’t get the house!”
“I couldn’t afford the house on my own.”
“He could pay alimony.”
“Sid, I always knew. And he knew that I knew.”
“That’s so gross.”
“Why?”
“Because, oh God, you were enabling him, with these underage women.”
“None of them were underage.”
“Under-mature, then.”
“How was I enabling anything? It’s not like I built him some secret chamber for his trysts, or groomed or cultivated women to go engage with him. I knew them by sight, if at all.”
“But didn’t you understand there was a power dynamic?”
“Of course, but aren’t we attracted to power? When I was a young woman it was said—and maybe it was a powerful man who said this, I’m not sure—but it was said that men were attracted to looks and women were attracted to power. Yes, he had more power, but I imagined that made it fun. He could bless them with his approval and what’s more arousing than that? You’ve got to understand, and I’m not saying this is right, but we were all still thinking about sexual liberation—about freeing women from feeling that if they were sexual they weren’t serious, or good, or that they would be judged. We didn’t think of sex as trauma. He didn’t drug them or coerce them, he didn’t even have anything to give them.”
“He wrote recommendation letters and gave grades. He was responsible for their future.”
“None of those women suffered professionally or academically because of your father.”
“They’re saying they did now.”
“They’re reacting to a moment now.”
“What about the ones who wouldn’t sleep with him?”
“They came to him. He didn’t pursue.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, Sidney, I’m not sure. I haven’t ever wanted to know as much about this as I know now.”
“But didn’t it hurt you? Or make you angry?”
“The only time I ever got angry was when it affected our schedule. Once he forgot to pick you up from soccer, and that made me angry. Once he missed a dinner with the dean. That made me angry. But in general it made him happy. And when he was happy my life was easier. I am not, and was not, some woman staring into the distance and waiting sadly for her husband to come home. I won’t be seen that way.”
“I feel like you’ve endured your whole marriage being tough for the sake of being tough.”
“What do you want me to say? That I’ll divorce him? Maybe I will. But I’ll do it because I want to, not because other people think I should, or the ‘optics’ are bad, because there are things you simply don’t understand.”
“Like what?”
I drove past the turnoff for our house, making my way toward a country road that would lead me into a neighboring town and then eventually back onto the highway and around again.
Sid didn’t know about the doe-eyed student. She didn’t know about Boris the artist, Robert from the business department, Thomas the contractor. She certainly didn’t know about David, whom she was familiar with from departmental gatherings, and whose daughter was only a year younger than she. She thought I was a faithful, saintly ostrich of a mother, head in the sand, while my dirty-dog husband romped wherever he pleased. I remembered, when she was eight years old or so and found a lighter in my purse. “Why do you have that?” she had asked. When I feigned like I was puzzled and told her I didn’t know, she said, “It must have been someone’s birthday,” and warned me to be careful in case it lit itself by accident and set my purse on fire.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want Sid to know. Part of me longed to tell her war stories, tell her of Boris’s barn, the half-finished art more erotic than his dry, anticlimactic kisses, or Robert, always in his suit and tie when he met me at the motel room we rented each week, or the time I got a rash from the sawdust on Thomas’s hands. I wanted to tell her about my obsession with David and how our romance was so intoxicating that I was ready to leave my whole life, including her.
I also wanted to keep my own secrets. It was a pact I held with myself, a game. If I didn’t tell anybody about certain things in my life (notably the things that I would most like to divulge) then, like the men who hold themselves back from orgasm to preserve their life force, I would accumulate some inexplicable strength.
In the corner of my eye I saw Sid bite her thumbnail and tear off a sheaf, layered like mica.
“Let’s cut your nails when you get home.”
“Let’s?”
“Cut your nails when you get home.”
“What about Lena?” I felt her eyes scrutinizing my face.
“Who?”
“Lena the babysitter, the one I had growing up.”
“Your father never did anything with Lena.”
“Yes he did. I saw them, I remember, it’s an early memory. I came into the kitchen and I saw his head in her neck and his hands wrapped around her, and she was giggling. She saw me and pushed his hands off her. I remember I asked if he was trying to get something from her pocket, and they both laughed.”
“That was me.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“Yes it was.”
“I remember what I saw.”
“No, sweetheart, you don’t remember it right.” And I told her how when she was little, John had been groping me in the kitchen as he was wont to do, and she came in and asked that exact question. And he had said, “Yes, I’m trying to get something from your mom’s pocket,” and she had said, “Give it to him, Mom,” and he had leered and said, “Yeah, Mom. Give it to me.”
“You know how unreliable memories are, my love,” I told her, but Sid just shook her head.
When we arrived home, John was gone again. I hardly minded, though this was the second night he had left the house without telling me where he was going. Sid had a bottomless hangover stomach, the kind that can be fed and fed and never gets full, so when we returned I warmed the carbonara sauce waiting in the fridge with fresh pasta and eggs and we shared a bottle of Malbec. She went to bed and I brought my laptop and cigarettes outside. There was an email from Edwina, apologizing for failing to confirm our appointment, telling me it was a busy time, telling me how much she valued my mentorship, asking if we could reschedule when things calmed down. Though I had completely forgotten we were supposed to meet, I was slightly offended. It seemed unlike her not to fix a new date. But then again, I expected my students to have dips and peaks in maturity and accountability, and I wrote her telling her not to worry and of course, and signed it with x’s and o’s. An email from John appeared, with the subject “D-Day.” Where was he that he was forwarding emails? In the dark in his office? His face illuminated by the blue light of his computer? Alone in some bar with his phone? It was the date for the first day of the dismissal hearing that would decide if he could stay on with the college: October 20.
I lit a cigarette and drew hard into my chest, letting the smoke permeate all the little crooks and spaces of my lungs. Students were innocent to tobacco nowadays, they called smoking a death wish, considered it a suicidal tendency. Many of them had no idea what it felt like, they thought tobacco affected your mental state, like marijuana. October 20—why was that date so familiar? Sid, mercifully, hadn’t brought up that she saw me smoking. She said she remembered going into the pool, but besides that the whole encounter was blurred in her brain. To my knowledge, she never found out that I had smoked. I had kept it secret from her, because I didn’t want her, when she was fifteen or eighteen, to have some image of me, in the past, smoking mysteriously. Nothing is more alluring than a mother-before-she-was-a-mother, an unknowable and irresistible figure. My own mother smoked until I was ten. After she quit, she struggled with an excess forty pounds until she died. I started smoking at fourteen when her Australian colleague offered my best friend Alice and me a cigarette in the parking lot of a company picnic. I was crazy for his height and his sunburn and his accent and his white-blond hair. He taught us how to suck in, hold the smoke in our lungs, and release. I prided myself on not coughing. After a few drags, Alice stood up and passed out briefly from the head rush, and the man and I, I forget his name, carried her into the shade and pepped her back up with Hi-C and ice cubes. Once she revived, we chased and teased each other, dropping ice cubes down each other’s shirts. As the summer went on he hung around the two of us more and more, and we smoked and mixed the rum and vodka he brought us with pineapple juice and ice. One night when my mother was out with her boyfriend and my sisters were off on a beach trip with friends, he and Alice came over and we sat on the couch to watch the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. He had both of his hands on our legs during the long jumps, and up our shorts during the sprints. By the time we were watching now–Caitlyn Jenner set the world record for the decathlon, we were squirming horizontal on the itchy woolen couch. I remember I had one breast exposed and another still in my white lace bra, and I didn’t know whether I should undo the whole thing—if I looked ridiculous or asymmetrically appealing. At a certain point, he guided my hand to his penis. Not knowing exactly what to do with it, I jerked it wildly until he took my hand off and pushed me away. I fell off the narrow couch onto the floor. I had the feeling of failing a test, and watched as he kissed and groped Alice, who, always more knowledgeable than I, held him expertly. Disgusted with myself, I retreated to my bedroom, leaving them entwined, and cried myself to sleep with self-pity. That was my last summer in Texas.
The moon reflected on the pool. I made a mental note to call the guy to come and cover it this week. Oh God, still so much self-hatred could ripple out from those adolescent memories. Always the shame, not of being too fast or engaging with a perverted Australian man who was at least thirty, but of being laughable—of being a slightly chubby girl of fourteen with one fat-nippled breast hanging out of a bad brassiere and not knowing how to give a hand job. Some of my students, when they read Victorian or Edwardian novels, would become so angry at all these heroes and heroines whose lives are ruined because they are afraid of embarrassment, but I did not know of any emotion more powerful, more permeating, more upending than that. You could die seemingly pointlessly or loveless to avoid shame, but shame could also make you feel as though you wanted to die, as I still felt, forty-four years later, when I pictured myself on the floor, looking at the beige strands of our wall-to-wall carpet as Alice and the Australian writhed above me. Then I remembered why October 20 was so familiar: it was, of course, the day of my lunch date with Vladimir.