Isn’t it amazing the things one can learn on YouTube? Isn’t it amazing the things one can learn from art?
1999
GRETCHEN’S MATCHING SUITCASES—no wheeled luggage for her, not when she had a set of beautiful leather bags that had been presented to her over a series of birthdays and Christmases, from ages fourteen to eighteen—were lined up in the hall outside their apartment from smallest to tallest, almost like the von Trapp children getting ready to sing.
“I’m going back to New York, Gerry,” she said, “and I am divorcing you.”
“Why?”
“Because I have been offered a very good job at Lehman Brothers. And because I don’t like Baltimore and because you don’t belong in New York.”
It was the third part that hurt. What did she mean, Gerry didn’t belong in New York? What was she saying about him? That he was second-rate, a regional writer. It was true, his novels, three so far, had all been based here. And books two and three had been a bit of a misfire. Not bad books, but not the books that people expected to follow his first book. Had Gretchen forgotten that they had met in New York, that she was the one who insisted on the move to Baltimore when she got the offer from T. Rowe Price? He had not dragged her here, quite the other way.
That said, he had liked their life in Baltimore. The enormous apartment, which cost a pittance relative to New York, teaching a single class per semester at Hopkins, plenty of time to write, while Gretchen’s salary paid the major bills.
“I’d be happy to go back to New York, all you had to do was ask.”
“I don’t want you to come with me. Good lord, Gerry—you don’t even like me.”
She wasn’t wrong. He didn’t like her. She was humorless and pedantic. The only fiction she read was his, and then only grudgingly, in that way more traditional wives fraternize with a traditional husband’s coworkers. The only thing they had in common was sex and even that had a kind of grudging aspect to it, almost as if she resented how much she liked it.
And yet—the idea of her leaving him was something he could not bear.
“Maybe if we went to counseling—”
“I’m not your mother, Gerry.”
“You’re nothing like my mother.” Actually their stature was similar, although his mother didn’t have such thick calves.
“I mean—I know you don’t want to be your father all over again, disappointing woman after woman.”
“Woman after woman—I didn’t realize I had disappointed any women!” Okay, Lucy, but who was to blame for that?
“I can’t stay in this marriage so you can prove to the world how good you are, Gerry. We’re wrong for each other. It’s not a crime. We have no children. Divorce is not a big deal.”
Some part of Gerry’s brain was arguing that it was a big deal when one spouse outearned the other ten to one and owned an apartment overlooking Gramercy Park. Gretchen owed him. Could he bear to collect? Could he afford to collect? Even simple divorces had costs, as he had learned when he and Lucy ended their marriage.
“I love you.” He sounded tentative, even to his own ears.
“You did. And I loved you. But we’re wrong together, Gerry, and it’s been clear for a long time.”
“There’s someone else. You wouldn’t do this if there wasn’t someone else.” Gretchen had been going to New York a lot. For work, she claimed, but now it was clear to Gerry what all those trips had been about.
“Goodbye, Gerry. I’ll be in touch about the legal end of things.”
The elevator arrived, carrying only a wheeled cart that someone downstairs had clearly sent up to Gretchen at her request. She piled the von Trapp children on the cart in a neat pyramid. Good night, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu. She shook his hand and refused his help in pushing the cart back onto the elevator.
He ran down eight flights of stairs, but she was gone by the time he reached the lobby. There was nothing to do but to walk. It was a fine autumn night, smoky and cool. He had forgotten his jacket, but his wallet was in his back pocket. He would walk until he was too exhausted to think or feel.
April 5
SO A SECOND FREEZER ARRIVES, the whine of the cordless saw resumes, and Gerry wonders if a different soup kitchen will be receiving a side of beef or if that ruse was required only when Victoria was lurking about. He lives by the motto Don’t ask, don’t be told.
At Aileen’s urging, he leaves a message for Victoria the first day she fails to show up for work. It is spooky to speak to Victoria’s truly disembodied voice, on a phone now in her car’s glove compartment, but he tries to sound as normal as possible.