SEPARATE WAYS

SEPARATE WAYS

He lit a cigarette and took a sip of coffee, and she said, from across the table, long after the waitress had taken their orders, “I’ve always wanted a bed spread that hung to the floor on all three sides of the bed.  You know what I mean?”  He smiled, offering nothing in return, and contemplated the image that came into his head.  He looked across at her and asked, simply, “You’ve never had one?”  She was silent and sipped her coffee, looking down at the table.

     It was an early fall evening, her birthday, and they had gone out for dinner.  Over the last month he had taken her out three times.  He had never been to her apartment, always meeting her somewhere, they both returning home afterwards separately.  He was interested in her. 

     She had a hard, no-nonsense manner, like one who has been ill used by life and who has learned from experience to mistrust comfortable illusions.  He liked her.  She was a strange mix of brazenness and reticence, a contradictoriness that was reflected in her physical appearance, for she had large soft shy eyes and a fine pale complexion made paler by black hair, yet she was thin and flatchested and filled with aggressive energy.

     “It’s not the bedspread.  I mean, it’s not like I have something in mind and I want to go to the store and buy it.  That’s not what I mean.  Not all of it.  Not that by itself.  A bed with a bedspread that hangs to the floor on all three sides needs to stand away from the walls.”

     “I understand,” he said, looking at her with a commiserating expression.  He didn’t know what she meant, and it made him uncomfortable.  He wanted her to talk, so he didn’t shift the conversation.  He smoked, looking at her, silent, waiting.  And she let the silence build, glancing round at the diners, eating and talking--people who knew each other and filled the spaces between them with laughter and words.  She had been leaning forward with her arms on the table crossed in front of her coffee cup.  She leaned back into her chair and looked across at him, as if she expected him to say something.  But he didn’t.

     And then she pulled a deep frown across her face, as if she had concluded the evening was going to go bust and perhaps even the relationship that had begun between them too.  And still he said nothing.  He refilled her cup and his own and sat back himself, looking across at her while he smoked. 

     When he put out the cigarette, she leaned forward again and put her arms on the table as before.  “What’s wrong?” she urged, confrontationally, throwing the burden on him.  He felt the onus of it, and he felt also the innate aggressiveness with which she met circumstances she didn’t like. 

     Responding, he sat up and leaned forward, too.  Then he reached across the table, took her hand, lifted it up and kissed it, saying, “What’s not wrong?  The world’s a screwy place and dinner’s a long time coming.”

     “Ha,” she laughed, easing off, becoming alert again.  “You’re not kidding it is.  It screws us all,” she said, shifting the meaning of his words.  He didn’t know much about her, so he couldn’t tell whether she was referring to herself or to the general nature of things.  In their evenings out they spoke mostly of their work and of things they like to do and places they like to go.  Neither plumbed the other for personal information.  Reluctant to let the opening pass, he returned, “You’ve been screwed much?”

     “Oh, who hasn’t been?  Life’s like that, you’re a rare bird if you haven’t been screwed.”

     He wanted her to talk about it, so he asked again, “How have you been screwed?”

     “Isn’t it nice,” she said, “that we can sit here and wait forever for a dinner that never comes and talk about being screwed?”

     “Yes, it’s nice.  It’s like we’re getting screwed and don’t know it, we only know about it from talk.”

     “Oh, I’ve been screwed.  I know about being screwed.  Do you?”

     “You first.  Tell me how you’ve been screwed.”

     “No, uh, uh.  You’re the man.  Politeness requires you to go first.”

     “The world isn’t polite anymore.  Politeness is old fashioned.  Men don’t even hold doors for women anymore.”

     “And women aren’t ladies?”

     “Nor men gentlemen.”

     “Go first anyway.  Go first because you want to know.  How have you been screwed?”

     “Well,” he said, looking around and spotting the waitress sponging a table, “let’s leave this place.  Dinner’s not coming.  We’ll get a hamburger and walk beside the lake, and there I’ll tell you about being screwed.”

     “OK.  And beer.  Hamburgers and beer.  That seems more appetizing right now than what we’ve been waiting for.”

     They got up, and he put a five on the table.  The waitress didn’t even notice they were leaving.  It was late September and cool outside but not cold, and they were comfortable in light sweaters.  They walked to their cars, and both got into his, leaving hers in the parking lot of the restaurant.

 

     There was a road that followed the lake’s bank, winding through the trees that grew densely along it, and on this they drove slowly with the high-beams up looking for a likely spot.  Every once in a while a boat drop slanted into the water and beside it was a small parking apron.  Finally, he chose one of these, turned in, and stopped, the car facing the lake, black in the moonless night, but the sky itself clear and sequened with stars.

     They had munched slowly on their French fries and nibbled their burgers, sitting side by side, looking at the lake, neither going back to the topic that brought them there.  Instead, they talked about the usual things--what they did during the day, what they were going to do tomorrow, the kind of small talk that allowed them to ignore each other, putting off the moment when he or she would have to reveal something.

     He had put his half-eaten hamburger in its paper wrapper on the dashboard and placed his can of beer in the slide-out holder under the radio, then threw his elbow over the back of his seat, pulled his right knee up onto the seat cushion as he turned to her, his left hip pressing against the steering wheel.  “I’m pretty much wedged in over here,” he said, looking at her in the near dark. 

     “Does that mean I’m safe?” she replied.

     “Only if you want to be,” he returned.  He couldn’t tell if she was smiling, even though she was looking straight at him and was only a few feet away.

     “Do you want to tell me?” she said.

     “Tell you what?”

     “How you’ve been screwed,” she said, “Isn’t that why we came here?”

     “Oh, yes, of course,” he muttered, embarrassed, for he assumed that the idea had been dropped.  She had been waiting and rather crudely brought it up, and it made him think of the type of person who waits at the carnival show to see the freaks.  He felt very uncomfortable.

     “See how black the lake is?” he said, and she said, “Uh huh,” not looking out the window where he pointed.  “That’s how I feel right now.”

     “You mean you don’t want to talk about it?”

     “No.”

     “Must be bad.”

     “You want to talk about it?”

     “I thought maybe it would be good to.”

     “Why?”

     “You Catholic?”

     “No.”

     “Catholics go to priests and confess, and afterwards they feel clean--sometimes they do, I guess.”

     “You?  You’ve been?”

     Oh, yes.  It works.”

     “I’m not a believer.”

     “Sometimes I am, sometimes I’m not.”

     “When it matters, you are?  Isn’t that....”

     He paused, for he didn’t want to say hypocritical.  That might end it, whatever they had going, and he didn’t want it to end, not yet, anyway.  He was getting over the feeling of creepiness and was wondering about her past, for she had fastenend onto the idea of their talking about it and wouldn’t let it go.

     “Having it both ways?” she picked up on his thought,   “sure, why not?”

     “It’s all right, I guess.”

     “I’ll be your priest tonight.  See, I’ll make the sign of the cross over you.  Now you’re blessed.  Begin.  I’ll just listen.”

     “I don’t feel like it.  I don’t like the game.”

     “What do you want to do, then?”

     “Let’s go for a walk.  The night is calm and the lake is smooth.  It’ll be pleasant.”

     “Pleasant,” she said, like an echo, from far away. 

     He detected the disappointment and felt the creepiness again.  The idea of confession was alien to him.  It made him nervous.  All the more he didn’t want to talk about the past.  The whole idea of being screwed was amusing to him when it came up in the restaurant.  Then, in the midst of people in a well lighted place, it seemed very different--a making light of the things he carried from day to day, things that got heavier as he got older.  But when it came to actually talking, he fled.  Now here he was.

     They were standing at the edge of the water at the bottom of the ramp.  Looking across the lake to the houses built into the steep walls of the bank on the other side, they could see starlight glinting off the boats moored at the docks and the intimate yellow squares whose glow was all the solace night offered to the needy.

     “I’m forty-three today,” she said.

     “Happy birthday,” he said, not at all cheerfully, not at all as though he meant it.

     “How about you?” she asked.

     “What about me?”

     “Won’t you even tell me how old you are?”

     “I’ve got you by two.”

     “One or five?”

     “Five.”

     “That’s good,” she said, taking his arm.  “I like older men.”

     They began to walk, at first climbing up the ramp, then turning into the trees on the edge of the lake, where they kicked up the first leaves of fall as they walked.

     “Ever been married?” she asked him from the deep nighttime darkness of the trees.  When he didn’t reply, she said, “Tell me that.  You have to.”

     “No,” he said.

     “No, what?  You’re not going to tell me or you were never married?”

     “No, I was never married.”

     “Sleep with women?”

     “Why do you want to know?”

     “Just because.  Some things are pretty basic.  You have to know them.”

     “I’m not gay, if that’s what you mean.”

     “That’s not what I mean.”

     “Yes.”

     “Yes, what?”

     “Yes, I have slept with women.  I never married.  Those details make a picture for you, I guess.”

     “No, they don’t.  I get nothing.  I need more.”

     “What do you want to know.”

     “Been in love?”

     “Yes, more than once.”

     “What happened?”

     “Got screwed.”

     “Ahhh,” she sighed.  “Want to talk about it?”

     “Not really.  Not much to say.  Things didn’t work out.”

     “Feel better?”

     “You want to give me, what is it that the priest gives?”

     “Absolution?”

     “Yes.  Want to give me that?  It’s not my sin, anyway.  I loved honestly.”

     They were still in among the trees and from where they were they couldn’t see the water any longer.  It was quite dark, and she was holding onto his arm and he was feeling his way through the trees, keeping the sound of the water softly lapping the bank to his right. 

     “What does that mean, ‘loved honestly’?”

     “It doesn’t seem like a hard thing to understand.”

     “I know.  But we could mean different things by it.  What does a man mean by loving honestly?”

     “Same thing a woman means.  There’s no difference.”

     “A man and a woman sometimes feel love differently.  And they have different ways of being honest.”

     “I’m not so sure.  Honesty is honesty and love is love.”

     “The women, the ones you loved, they cheated or had other things than love on their minds?”

     “I have no idea how deep this wood is, here.  Do you want to go back?  Maybe we should try to find the road.”

     “The lake’s just there.  You’ve kept us near it.  We can’t get lost.  Can we?”

     “I think we’re already lost.”

     “Don’t say that.  Say, rather, we’re finding our way. That’s what we’re doing.  Finding our way.  We’re making progress, aren’t we?”

     “Let’s go this way,” he said, moving her off to their left, deeper into the trees.

     The ground had begun to slope upward and they fell silent as they worked their way between the trees.  It was dark.  They tried to stay side by side, but they parted around first this tree and then that, always coming together again, seeking each other by reaching and touching and then going on.  It was a steep climb, but they came finally to the road and stepped onto it.  He took her hand and put her arm into his, and thus linked, they continued to walk, further and further from the car. 

     “I’ve never been married either,” she said, “and I’ve never been in love, though I’ve slept with men, beginning when I was very young.”

     So that’s what it’s coming to, he thought.  She offered what she said not as confession but as exchange.  He wondered what was going to come of it.  He didn’t respond, for he didn’t know how to.  He simply gripped tight to her arm, and she felt it as encouragement.

     “That life came to an end when I was in my middle teens.  Know why?”

     “Why?” he responded, for she had paused and he knew she wanted to explain.

     She pulled her arm loose from his and with her two hands rubbed her chest.  “I was blessed with these,” she said.

     “You mean not having them?”

     “Yup.  When I was very young, men paid for me because they wanted a kid.  But when I got older, they wanted women more endowed.  That’s when my mother left.  She just walked out one day and never came back.  I was seventeen.  Actually, I date my life from the day I realized she was gone.  That’s my birthday, that’s what I celebrate on this date.”

     “It’s not so bad with me,” he said.  “You were screwed, all right.  I’ve had my disappointments, been disillusioned.  But what the hell, I’ve pretty much gone my own way.”

     “Is that what you call a failed love?”

     “What?”

“Disappointment.”

“How else?”

     “You musn’t have loved if that’s all it was.”

     “Maybe I didn’t.”

     “Maybe you did.”

     “No, maybe I just didn’t.”

     “Maybe you did,” she said urgently, anxiously.  “Who am I to say?”

     They walked then for a long time, not saying anything, her arm still linked in his.  The trees opened up on their right, yielding a broad view of the lake and the starry sky, and just below another boat ramp sank into the still water.  They must have walked a mile or more, he thought.  He wondered if she was tired.  He felt still quite fresh and could go on for some time before needing to return to the car.  He guided her down the ramp.  At the lake’s edge, off to the left in front of the trees, several large boulders jutted up.  They each sat on one and looked into the star—shimmering water.  They were apart, but after a while, she rose and came beside him and he moved to let her share the space with him.

     “It’s a long way back to the car,” he said, as she leaned into him and he put his arm around her.  “Are you tired?”

     “Yes and no.”

     “Yes, you’re tired.  No, you’re not?”

     “Yes, I’m tired.  But no I don’t want to go.”

     “We’ll rest for a while and then go back to the car.”

     “I like it here.  Do you want to leave?”

     “Not just now.  But we must, sooner or later.”

     “I like it here just fine.  I like it here better than anywhere.”

     She put her arm around him, too.  She put it around his waist and held on to him.  She didn’t want to leave.  She didn’t want to ever leave.  This was the place her forty-three years had brought her to, and she felt it was the right place, the place she would have wanted to come to if she could have foreseen it and chosen it among others she might have been.

     He felt the pressure of her holding and liked it.  He too felt this was the right place to be and didn’t want to leave.  But his man-sense told him this moment was, like all such moments in his life, only temporary, it’s warmth dissipating as they generated it.  That was how it was.  As they sat, no matter how much they clung to each other, it would not be enough, the night would defeat them, and they would, in the end, go their separate ways, she back to her own car and then to her own apartment and to her own bed, standing away from or up against the walls, and he to his.  And the loneliness he was so used to came upon him in a rush, and he clung to her, holding her tightly.