.
The paper’s a bookmark that came with the last book he bought at the only shop he buys his books at. They always put one in the book you buy. “I think I have everything I need now,” and he gets off the phone. He lies on his bed. He should call his younger daughter in Chicago. What did he do with the bookmark? Oh, if it’s lost, it’s lost. But it couldn’t have gone far. He should call one of his sisters. But what will either of them do but scream and cry and say this is the worst possible thing that could have happened. He wishes he could speak to his wife. He can’t handle this alone, at least now. Maybe if he shut his eyes and slept a while. He shuts his eyes. He has to call his younger daughter. They were very close. But then he’ll have her hysteria to deal with. Maybe he could get one of his sisters to tell her, but she’d only want to hear it from him. He gets up and goes into his older daughter’s room. When was the last time she slept in it? A few weeks ago. She came for a brief visit. She had a free roundtrip because of all the flying she’s done the past few years. When he dropped her off at the airport, she said she had a wonderful time. When he called her the next day in L.A., she again said she had a wonderful time. He had dinner ready for her the day she came. She said it was the best meal she’s had since the last time she was here. He said he started making it a week ago and defrosted all of it yesterday. The salad, he said, he made today. They went out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant her third and last day. What did they do for dinner the second night? She gave him a drawing she did in California. She worked on it for several weeks. “We should get it framed,” he said. The day after she got here they went to a framing shop. “You choose,” she said. “No, you know better about these things than I. Get what you want, and I don’t care the price.” He left a deposit for the frame. The shop hasn’t called yet to say the frame’s ready. What will he do when they call? He’ll say “I can’t speak. I’ll call you in a few weeks.” They went out for lunch after they left the shop. Later that day he was going to the Y to work out and swim and asked her if she wanted to come. She said if she finds a yoga class in town, would he drop her off there? She found a yoga class on the computer in his wife’s study. He dropped her off, then picked her up after he went to the Y. They got Persian takeout that night, a favorite food of his wife and daughters. He sits on her bed. She comes into the room. “What are you thinking, Daddy?” “Nothing,” he says. “Just thinking.” “It’s got to be of something.” “Your mother. It’s been so lonely without her. But I don’t want to make you sad by telling you how sad I am. Two years, already, and I’ve barely adjusted to it. All the decisions I have to make on my own now. She was so good at giving me advice and helping me to make up my mind and planning what we should do. I’m also sad that you’re leaving.” “I wish my visit was longer, but I’ve got my teaching to get back to.” “We should have timed it better. Planned your coming here during your spring break. That’s what Mommy would have suggested, because what was the rush? But I’m glad for even the short time you were here. It’s been fun. A good change for me.” She sits on the bed and holds his hand. “I’ll try to come back here for spring break too.” “Do it. I’ll pay for the trip, and I don’t care what it costs. Now I should call your sister. I don’t want to but it’s something I have to do. And I have to call an airline. What airline flies to Santa Barbara or the closest city to it? I don’t know how to find out.” “Call any airline in the phone book. They’ll tell you.” “Good thinking. Could you do it for me? Then I’ll call your sister. And your aunts, or one of them, who can call the other.” “Now I’m the one who’s not thinking,” she says. “I can get all the information you need on the computer.” She leaves the room. He goes into his bedroom and lies on the bed. He folds his hands on his chest and shuts his eyes. I must look like a corpse, he thinks. All I need is to be in a suit with all the buttons buttoned and to have on a dress shirt and tie. The phone rings. He’s going to let it ring. But maybe it’s his older daughter. He gets up and grabs the receiver off the phone on the dresser and says hello. “I found out what airline you should take,” she says on the phone. “Tell me,” he says. “I’ll write it down. Though what am I going to do about the cat? I’ll have to get someone to look after him.” “Call one of your friends, or Mommy’s friends. Anyone would do it for you.” “That’d mean I’d have to speak to someone other than your sister and one of my sisters and you. I couldn’t do that. It’s not in me right now. I really don’t see how I can go to California.” “You have to. I’ll be here. We’ll have so much fun. I’ll show you my favorite places. We’ll go to museums. And there are so many good galleries and restaurants here.” “Okay, I’m coming.” He lies back on the bed and clasps his hands again on his chest. He sees he’s wearing a suit and dress shirt and tie. The suit’s the same one he got married in at her apartment twenty-nine years ago. His wife insisted he buy it for the wedding. He was going to wear an old sport jacket and freshly pressed slacks. The suit has a few moth holes in it but it still fits. “I am a corpse,” he says. “I can’t move.”
A woman calls to him from his bedroom. He’s reading in an armchair in the living room and drinking some wine. “Come on,” she says, “what are you waiting for? Get your penis in here.” The voice sounds like his wife’s. It also sounds like the woman he met three months ago at a Christmas party and whom he’s very attracted to and he would like to start a serious relationship with and even thinks he’d eventually like to marry. His wife died a little more than a year ago. Today is the thirty-first anniversary of the day they met. It was at a book party for a woman they both knew. She’d come from her parents’ apartment uptown. She’d stopped off there to spend a short time with them and give them a present for their wedding anniversary that day. He’d never slept with this other woman. They hadn’t even kissed on the lips. Or once, but mistakenly on her part, she said. They were saying goodbye by her car after one of their weekly lunches and she put out her lips when she meant to offer him her cheek to kiss. “That was unintentional,” she said. “It was nice, though,” he said. “But it was an accident, caused by my momentary absentmindedness, which I admit I’m prone to, so it meant nothing, means nothing, and we should continue our friendship as if it didn’t happen. In other words, don’t make anything more of it than it was.” They’ve been meeting for lunch almost every Wednesday since they met. All but once at the same restaurant. “Why go to another?” she said. “We’re more interested in the conversation than the food, although the food’s more than adequate there, and they leave you alone once you get it. And if you want more coffee, which we always do, you just go up to the counter and help yourself from one of the Thermoses. I like sticking with the same thing, if it’s good, how about you?” and he said “The same.” Two weeks ago she came to his house at night when he wasn’t expecting her. Rang his doorbell. He turned on the outside lights and looked through the kitchen door and saw it was her and let her in. “I was in the neighborhood,” she said. “I’ve been dying to see what your writing space looks like and thought now would be as good an opportunity as any.” “That the only reason you came?” and she said “That’s the only reason, and maybe to have a glass of wine with you after. I’m fascinated with writers’ work spaces and what the whole room looks like. I’m planning to put together a photography book on the subject, even if a couple of excellent ones have been done. But mine won’t have the writers in the photographs. Just where he writes and what he writes on, and if there’s a cat sitting on the keyboard, that’s okay too.” “My writing space is ordinary,” he said. “Except that I work in my bedroom and I still write on a standard manual typewriter. So there’s that, and when I’m not writing, the typewriter’s always covered so no dirt or dust or cat hair blows in. And lots of paper around it, of course, and I write on a long formica work table. I’ll show you.” He led her into his bedroom. “This is perfect,” she said. She pulled out a camera from her should bag, adjusted the lens and took lots of photographs of his work table and manuscripts on it and the typewriter with the dust cover off and then with two sheets of paper in it. Then they had a glass of wine, she said she had to go, he walked her to her car, and she offered her cheek to be kissed. “See you Wednesday,” she said. “Same time and place.” “Where was that again?” he said. “You’re so funny,” she said. “I like that.” Now, either she or his wife is in his bedroom. If it’s his wife, then “their” bedroom.