“Oh, but I’m here to see you,” he said.
This was Greta’s cue to blush, or perhaps giggle. A series of small strokes had left Seymour permanently palsied but not at all confused, and, even though his teeth were the color of Brach’s butterscotch candy, he seemed to expect Greta to be delighted by his presence, maybe even transported.
He lurched toward an empty chair, lowered himself onto the cushion, and looked at Greta expectantly. She offered him a cigarette.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Thank you very much.”
Given his resemblance to Gene Hackman, living or dead, Greta wished he sounded like Popeye Doyle from The French Connection, but Seymour had grown up wealthy on Long Island and spoke with one of those old-fashioned lockjaw accents—singsongy, with long, quivering vowels. Like a snob, he pronounced the Ts in “but-ter” and “lit-tle.” He had a tendency to emphasize at least one word per sentence, even if the words didn’t require emphasis. Popeye Doyle would’ve beaten him up and taken his money.
Except Seymour didn’t have any money. Greta savored the disparity between his accent and his present circumstances. Scraping by on social security, Seymour lived alone in a studio the size of a saltine box. His rich and famous friends were all dead. He read the same ghastly novel over and over, John O’Hara’s BUtterfield 8, and subsisted on cocktail onions and oyster crackers. He didn’t drink, but only because he couldn’t afford proper booze, and his clothes were frayed and full of holes. And yet, Greta detected not a trace of bitterness. All he asked for were cigarettes and a bit of conversation.
Just now he was looking around as if seeing the place for the first time. The bees were still bearding the hive, and she couldn’t help but imagine the beard transferring itself onto his face and neck. Why? Because she was a ridiculous person with too much time on her hands, and morally bankrupt. Lusting after her good friend’s teenage son: obscene. Disparaging her decrepit father for no reason: also not great.
“Are you writing?” Seymour asked.
“Here and there,” Greta said.
Seymour himself was the author of an unpublished novel called In the Mood. He’d written it during his midlife crisis thirty-five years ago, hadn’t read it since, but referred to it often in conversation.
“I’ve been writing letters to my mom,” Greta said.
“Wonderful,” Seymour said. “She must love hearing from you.”
“She’s dead,” Greta said. “She died over thirty years ago.”
“Well,” Seymour said.
Greta waited, but Seymour had nothing to add.
“I guess it’s more like a journal,” Greta said after a minute.
“What’s that?” he asked.
He’d suffered some memory loss, yes, but it often seemed like a performance.
“It’s a diary,” Greta said.
He asked if the diary was “up-to-date.”
“How do you mean?” she asked.
He opened and closed his mouth three times. He swallowed, shrugged, and then tried to look sly and knowing. Groping for Words, a one-act play she’d seen many times now.
“You’re not wondering if you’re in my diary, are you?” she finally asked.
She hoped that by phrasing it this way he could only say no, which was what she wanted to hear, but he gave her a relieved smile and said yes, as a matter of fact, he was wondering, thank you.
“No,” Greta said. “But I’ll tell you an embarrassing secret: I have a small crush on your grandson.”
He smiled nervously.
“Absurd, right?” Greta said. “He’d probably be horrified, which is why I’d never tell him in a million years. I’d hate to make him uncomfortable!”
Seymour pursed his lips. “Well, while you were falling for Mateo, I was falling for you. As a matter of fact, I was hoping we could have an affair.”
Dear god in heaven. So that explained the voicemail he’d left the other day, asking her to dinner.
“I’m forty years younger than you,” Greta said. “Forty’s a big number, Seymour. It’s a whole other person.”
“I know,” he said, proud as a peacock. “I never expected to feel this way again. I was certain you felt the same way.”
Yes, people age horribly. They suffer strokes. Their bodies and brains fall apart. But the male ego? Firmly intact until the bitter end.
Greta’s phone rang. It was Sabine, thank god, checking in from the city. Greta turned away from Seymour and cupped her hand over the mouthpiece.
“Your father’s here,” Greta whispered.
“Why?” Sabine asked.
“Bumming smokes,” Greta said. “And… professing his love.”
“For who, Mateo?”
“Moi.”
“Oh god,” Sabine said. “His dementia.”
“He seems pretty self-possessed at the moment,” Greta said.
“If I’m alive at his age,” Sabine said, “and I hope I’m not, I’ll give myself pneumonia. Surely pneumonia will be sold in vials by then. If that doesn’t kill me, I’ll think of some other way. Put him on.”
Greta passed the phone to Seymour.
“Go home, Dad,” she heard Sabine say. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”
Seymour turned bright red and handed back the phone.
“I won’t see you again,” Seymour said, furious.
“Sorry,” Greta mumbled.
In her dream that night, Seymour climbed into her bed while she was sleeping and pressed himself against her back. To her horror, he was hung like a donkey. Greta shrieked, ran out of the room, and climbed the stairs in search of Mateo. She found Mateo asleep in Sabine’s bed. She pulled back the covers and groped his crotch, expecting another donkey situation, but there was nothing between his legs. It was all perfectly smooth down there. “You’re like a Ken doll,” she said in the dream. “I don’t want any trouble,” he replied sleepily.
And he hadn’t gotten any. He’d finished building the shed the following day and driven back to wherever he’d come from—Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, one of those—and she never saw him again, not even at Seymour’s funeral six weeks later. Poor Seymour had died in his sleep, alone in his saltine box.
Dear Mom,
I was needlessly cruel to an old man. His name is Seymour, and he told me he had feelings for me, and I was too grossed out to be gracious about it. I behaved like a child and ratted him out to his mother. I mean daughter. In other words, I treated him like a pedophile, even though we’re both adults. Now he’s dead. He died alone, like you, and I feel terrible. There were only four of us at the memorial and we all looked guilty as sin. Anyway, if you see Seymour, don’t be unkind. Let him hold your wrist when you light his cigarette, and tell him you’ll read his novel.
PS: Take a quick peek into the future, if possible, and let me know if I’m getting some any time soon.
3
Until last year, Greta had been engaged to Stacy. Most engagements last a year, maybe two. Although Greta couldn’t imagine herself with anyone else, she’d felt incapable of making plans for the weekend, let alone a wedding, let alone the rest of her life, and so their engagement had lasted ten years. In the meantime, she kept catching the bouquet at other people’s weddings. The bouquet was never tossed into the air, it seemed to Greta, but rather hurled directly at her head, and she had no choice but to catch it and then quickly pass it like a football to the woman standing next to her, who always dropped it. “Fumble!” Greta yelled each time. The woman would then pick up the bouquet and pass it back to Greta, and Greta would feel like dying.