Evan

prose 2 of chapter Five

Sep 05, 2024

Lena heard her name in the insistent sound of the question and realized she must speak. “Yes,” Lena said, “a drink. How are you, Evan?” She waited for Evan to accuse her.

It was odd that she was here. She tried to think straight, but thinking was her way of disappearing.

I recall the office get together we’d attended when we’d ended up standing to the side, watching the younger women who gravitated to Isaac—he had many women colleagues. “Have you noticed how we seem to disappear after we turn forty?” Evan had said while we observed a young ingénue who appeared transfixed by him. “Disappearing. Funny you should mention it,” Lena had said.

*
That comment lingers with me now.
*
Evan had continued talking about a novel—or was it an essay? she’d read about a fit, gray-haired woman who walked down a New York street past a construction site where workmen regularly cat-called to passing women but never to her. Then one day she took the same walk with a fine silk scarf, tied à la Grace Kelly or Jackie O., covering her hair and chicly fastened under the chin and in the back and heard whistles from the workmen on the beams above her.

When Lena was working on the Biblical Manuscripts exhibit that’s part of the Freer’s small permanent collection and the reason she got the job on the Scrolls exhibit, Evan had come, stopped by her office and asked if she might have time to walk her around. Lena told me she hadn’t seen a way to refuse because she was too busy.

*
I now know that wasn’t the reason.
*

They’d stood in front of the old parchment and papyrus while Lena talked about Freer’s unusual decision to purchase the Biblical manuscripts without a full understanding of their worth. “Unlike most of the other stuff he put his money into,” she’d said. With this, Evan moved inexorably off the superficial at hand and slightly askance, Lena told me, to what mattered. “Funny, don’t you think?” Evan had said. “We step outside the proverbial box, take some sort of risk—doesn’t really matter how big—and everything changes.” “Like dominoes falling in a row,” said Lena.

All her coffees with Isaac must have lined up in a daydream with Evan ready to knock one over.

“I don’t know,” Evan said. “When you set them up right, they fall the way you think they will. I’m talking about messy stuff, life stuff. That kind of change.”

I see cups haphazardly spill onto one of Lena’s fine linen cloths that her mother had given her.

Now Evan dug in the parcel. “I have homemade pretzels and Gruyère cheese. I was walking through Fresh Fields and they were baking the pretzels—like the ones at the ballgame, Isaac. I couldn’t help myself. I bought two, but they’re so fattening, big and soft. Let’s share them and then the two of you can tell me what’s bothering you.”

“Bothering us?” said Isaac.

Of course, Evan would think they’d had a problem: the need for the drink, the oddity of the visit, the fact that he didn’t call.

He said, “Vodka?”

“Vodka and pretzels and cheese. Quirky and elegant. What do you think, Lena?”

Lena didn’t answer—she was struck dumb by the way this was going: congenial, hardly what she deserved. As usual, Evan was kind. She was the perfect hostess, the perfect mother, the perfect wife.

How could Lena have understood Isaac’s betrayal? She would try again to think straight. She would think, Evan should suspect me. But we’ve been discreet, exceedingly so, until today, and even today isn’t so odd. It was the intrusion Evan might object to—an intrusion she wouldn’t fully understand, an inconvenience, an unexpected guest. Yes, she was thinking straight and all that did was give her a tidy little package of self-serving reasoning.

“How frivolous we are,” Evan said. “Old codgers, drinking so early in the afternoon. What time is it?” She glanced at her watch, said, “Barely 5:30” and went to the kitchen.

And again, Isaac heard that question in her voice. Evan must wonder. It is too early for them to be here together. He must give some explanation. And he must get them out of here. For the obvious reasons, of course.

But he also had another appointment, the way he liked to think of it because he’d arranged to have a drink with Karen, a former lover. It wasn’t as if he’d planned it this way. But Karen had called. He’d figured he might not even show up, call her later, make some excuse. Now he wanted to get away, he wanted to keep the appointment.