They exchanged a gaze that encompassed their burgeoning domesticity and all its quiet pleasures. I saw it as if it were a shelf full of photo albums. I saw it all ahead. Their life. Would she go? Or have babies instead? I felt as betrayed by this possibility as I did by Virgil not warning me this was coming. As if reading my thoughts, he looked at me sheepishly.
He got a towel and wrapped his hands with it to lift the hot pot. The wind whistled outside and they murmured in appreciation. “I feel a draft, don’t you?” Karen asked him in a beseeching feminine manner I’d never seen her employ before.
He nodded as if this were of no concern. He ladled out the soup and passed the bowls while Karen cut the bread. As we ate, they told me their love story. It began last fall… or earlier, depending, though they weren’t aware… hadn’t said… hadn’t spoken to each other. The first thing that was said was in, again depending, October, but the signal had been missed, or had there been one? There were glances, and moments, but neither was certain of the other. Didn’t I remember when she’d asked if Virgil would be there for dinner that time? So on and so forth tumbling over each other, excited and thrilled to have an audience, what love doesn’t want one, what is better than having love witnessed? The worst irony: I was making them happier by the moment, and sealing them tight.
I smiled. I congratulated. I died.
I died.
October. I’d been so sure his whole mind was on me. I wondered if he’d ever thought about me again after that night under the sky. All along I’d believed that aspect of our love would return. What a fool.
We washed the plates and sat back, feeling safe and fortunate, or they did.
“Have you told Nan?”
Virgil looked at Karen, and Karen touched my arm. I’d never known her to be affectionate, but it seemed that in love her body had gone beyond its bounds and didn’t want to stop. “We wanted to tell you first, Agnes. This is all thanks to you. You are the greatest friend of us and our future, you are our true family, and we want you always as a beloved aunt, welcome with us at all times.”
Beloved aunt. Ant.
“We plan to tell her tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
“And—” She removed her hand and laid it with the other in her lap. Demure. “We have a favor to ask.”
I was so uneasy, so miserable, that my mind was growing dim. I wanted to be alone with him, to ask him if all this was really true or if he was under some kind of strange spell, and I wanted to go home. I did the closest I could. I picked up Star and held him in my lap, in spite of my prohibition against animals at the table.
“We’d like to ask if Nan could stay with you tonight.”
The look on her face—hunger, tension, pressure, pleading—what could I do or say? I was trapped. How many dozens of nights had Nan stayed at my house? More than I could count, she did so all the time. She was always welcome. To call this a favor! To me! Who was essentially her mother! Or had been.
I dared not look at Virgil. What if I saw that he’d forgotten everything?
“Yes, that’s fine,” I managed to say. Star tipped his head and stared longingly at the bread, so I gave him a piece.
“Thank you so much, Agnes. You have no idea how grateful we are to you. All right, on to the show!” Karen stood and raised her arms, indicating that all of life could start up now. “Agnes, I’m going to ask you to stand up for a moment.” What was this about? What show? The two bounced around the tiny room, moving furniture so we were no longer in a dining room setting, but in a classroom or a theater. Two chairs were placed to face the desk, with the third behind it. Karen continued to touch this and that, not that there was much to touch, but she placed the candlesticks in the corners of the desk closest to the seats and made other similar small adjustments. It’s amazing how much difference a quarter of an inch here or there makes to the feeling of placidity in a room. It’s like beauty, or identical twins—the fraction of difference in the width of an eye, the lift at the corner of a mouth, the one with pleasing proportions owns the world while the other with a variation indiscernible except in the total effect, the other blends into the crowd of the norm. Karen swiftly made the room more attractive than I’d ever seen it. I had never interfered, thinking that was the more appealing way to be.
“You sit here, Agnes,” Karen showed me to a chair, “and I’ll be just beside you. Are you ready?” she asked him.
He pulled a sheaf of papers from a shelf and walked behind the table, so it stood between him and us.
“Pretend it’s a podium,” Karen instructed me.
I went along with all of this with no sense of what was happening, or being too dull-witted to want to try. I settled next to Karen and she squeezed my hand quickly. The scent of woodsmoke came off her clothes. I pulled Star up into my lap again.
“Ready?” she said to Virgil.
He nodded.
“I am going to read something new. It’s something like the story behind the story of writing Scalene.”
Karen clapped, and I took her cue. For the next forty-five minutes he read. I heard a story about a man and his young child who move into a cabin on a point of land in Maine. There they meet the most wonderful woman who lives in the big house nearby. She takes them under her wing, nurses the child through an accident, helps the man with his writing. Pure horror. I died and died and died again. Then the stupid woman introduces the man to the town librarian and they fall in love. No, that wasn’t what he’d written. It was in my exploding head.
The shadows and the fire’s warmth changed him into a wholly tender man—or love did. So very beautiful. But not for you, I reminded myself, not for you. He will never kiss you again. He will never make you feel beautiful. He’ll never speak to you in the dark, nor will you ever watch him as he sleeps. You won’t make plans with him. You won’t be the person sitting in the front row when his work is performed to great crowds. You won’t see Paris through his eyes, or hold him when he is in tears. You won’t live with him any more than you do now. You’ll never again get dressed in the morning in hopes of pleasing him, nor will you hear his expressions of gratitude as a form of lovemaking. There’s as much distance between you now as there was before you knew him. You don’t know him; he kept a secret from you. A lie of omission. Now you know. He’s capable of lying to you. Now you know. Now you know. What of Nan? She’ll learn to love Karen more. Karen will have children, and Nan will be part of a happy family. You’ll be a visitor.
He finished and bowed. We clapped again.
Karen turned to me, her cheeks pink with excitement. “How did you like our surprise?”
“Oh—” I fumbled.
“The piece was for you,” she said.
“Was it?” I felt weak, defeated. What I would have given if the piece were really for me.
“Your kindness to him. To us.”
“Oh.” Kindness. Terrible word! Kindness equals nothingness in this context. “Thank you.” I stood. If I didn’t get out of there, I’d begin screaming. “Thank you so much for the lunch and the reading. I must get back to work.”
There was no protest. They wanted to be alone. “I’ll just get Nan’s things,” I said. “From her room.”