Robert tells Lena a story

Who by Fire: Chapter 40 (Audio and prose)

tea by maxpgris

Note: Update: Robert tries to reach Lena with a story …

You can start reading here or anywhere, then go back. See Table of Contents. Come in the middle? Robert is the narrator who discovers after his wife Lena has died that she had a lover, Isaac. Evan is Isaac’s wife. Robert is on a search for how he lost Lena: He’s creating the story through memory, invention and a search for the truth and his role in what happened—and by stalking Isaac.

My Story

Gershon met me at the door. He startled me. I’d forgotten this was his house, that I visited, that I visited my own wife who had chosen to die in Gershon’s house. This was where she would complete this act. Once the action is taken, it becomes inseparable from the decision, the moment when one can still choose. Lena had decided and her decision acted. She left me now with purpose, not with acquiescence, not with unfortunate occurrence.

I know that she had nothing to do with the cancer that had invaded her body and I know, no matter what else I know, that she did not deserve to die. My anger toward Lena lay not in what she had done or what I guessed she had done, it lay in her complicity with death. And this I don’t know how to forgive. I hold it against her because that action, that choice, left me with less time and more questions. More of the why and the why and the why?

Gershon, who had opened the door—it was in the knock that I tried to redeem myself, after I had inappropriately turned the handle of the door like the owner of the house where my wife willfully died—said, “She’s not lost to you, you know.”

“Odd way to say ‘hello,’ don’t you think?” I was in no mood to be consoled or cajoled.

“Sure, but in your case, no.”

“What right do you have?”

“None. I’m sorry. Come in. I’ll go out for a bit.”

I sat down at his kitchen table. “I’m the one who should do that. She doesn’t want me here.”

He put the water on. “How about I make some tea before I go out. You can take her a cup. The chamomile, perhaps. And for you?”

“The same.” It seemed everyone was offering me something to drink. What you do when there’s nothing you can do.

He placed before me a shot glass. And along side it, one for himself, as well. The water hummed in the kettle. He took out the blue velvet bag. The Seagram’s Crown Royal. He poured me a shot, said, “About once a year, I have a shot. A sort of ritual with me. It’s not that I don’t drink. It’s that it’s good enough—once a year enough. That good. Join me?”

“Honored.”

He poured. “I’ve gotten to an age where I say what I think. Gets me into trouble.”

We both downed the shot. He continued. “You’re a concluder. Yeah, that’s it.”

“I have a feeling I should be offended. What the hell are you talking about?”

“You think you know stuff.”

“Yeah, that’s me. You got me.”

“Think of it this way. She would prefer not to.”

“Prefer not to what?”

“That’s all you know. And it’s enough. I’ll go out for a while now. You make the tea.”

When I entered her room, I had the tea and the Brompton’s cocktail.

She said, “I’ll drink the tea. But before the cocktail, read me The Little Prince.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Why not?”

“I guess I just prefer not to.”

“Bartleby.”

“Yeah and who’s he?”

“Melville, a short story. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, so why would you prefer not to?”

“I don’t know who gave it to you. I don’t know where you got it. I don’t know who visits, who gives gifts. I don’t know shit.”

She looked down at the book, then laid her head to the side on a pillow. “Give me the damn cocktail.”

“I’ll tell you what: I’ll tell you a story.”

“Oh, come on. As if you’d really like to do that?”

“I didn’t used to cook either. I’ll tell you a story but you have to help. We’ll tell it together. Make it up as we go along. That’s what we’re doing, anyway. Deal?”

“Deal.”

I told her this story: “She was a woman alone, older, one could tell, not by the shape of her body, which was small, thin—shapely, even, though not full in any way. One could tell by the slight rippling in her hips, the crinkle above her knee, this wisp of pure white hair that had slipped out from her hat and that curled along her cheek.”

“What kind of hat was she wearing?”

“A green canvas hat with a broad floppy brim.”

“Can you change the hat, please?”

“If you’ll tell me why, yes. Well, sure. What hat would you like for her?”

She adjusted the baby pillow beneath her breast. “I’ll wait. We can change it later. Perhaps you’re right about the hat.”

“He gazed at her, noted that she was old, gone, one might say or think. Yeah, think. A young man would think, No longer of my world, and dismiss her. But this young man was intrigued by the way she went into the water, carried herself, the bikini that someone else her age would not have worn. Her thinness, oddly, made it brave, he thought. He wasn’t sure why he thought this. He said out loud to locate the thought, ‘Rather brave.’

“He’d seen older women on other vacations, her age in skimpy suits, but they’d worn them proudly because of what they’d done to their bodies to allow the pretense. Surgeries that of course he’d heard of, but he disapproved.

“She wore the small suit, its yellow and black v-shaped pieces of material that formed two triangles over her small breasts, with an awareness of her age but no embarrassment. She walked with the slowness of her age but still agile and with the angle of posture one recalls in women who have borne their nudity with ease.

“She was not beautiful but her bones were, bones in her hip, the hip bones near the roundness of her belly, which was merely a curve but not flat, as with women too thin or the ones who exercise more than they enjoy. He suspected this of older women he’d seen and not admired on other beaches, that their carriage bore the burden of the fight, the struggle against aging.”

“What beach were they on?”

“He’s in Hawaii, on Maui, the beach at Kapalua.”

“The one where he could snorkel not way far from the shore, all that coral, and she could swim in the sandy bottom that lay ahead of all that.”

“Yes, that beach. But he’s alone.”

“I know, but he wasn’t always alone. We know that in the story, don’t we?”

“Do you think we need to know that?”

“Yes, I don’t think he would know as much about this woman if he’d not been with, lived with a woman he’d once loved. Don’t you agree?”

“I suppose, but if you know this without my telling you, if you can tell by the way he talks about her, perhaps I don’t need to put that in.”

“Yes, I can tell.”

“This woman wore her age and he admired that and she became beautiful to him. She was beautiful. He couldn’t explain it. He often said, ‘If you analyze beauty, it goes away.’ ”

“Yes, he did say that.”

“But he did think that one day he would explain it to her, the nature of her beauty, that he would try to put it into words for her in case she had forgotten this gift that he knew she’d once known.”

“But he doesn’t know her. You’ve left out something.”

“No I haven’t. He’s hoping. He believes he will know her. Get to tell her this, what he’d seen that day.”

“What a lovely man he is!”

“I’m glad you like him. May I continue?”

She nodded.

“He came to understand the nature of her beauty through her walk, the way she walked into the sea, the way she walked out of the sea. And when she sat in her low-to-the-sand chair, she read and ran her hand across her belly.”

“What was she reading?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he couldn’t see the book. What do you think she was reading?”

“Green Mansions.”

“But that’s a child’s story. She’s more sophisticated than that.”

“Her father died a couple of years ago, or maybe only a year ago and she still longs for him. He’d given her the book when she was a beautiful child. She’s reading it to remember him and to remember the gift of being seen as beautiful. That’s what gives her this confidence in her gait, in the way she walks into the sea when she’s old.”

“Yeah. That’s good. Maybe you should finish the story.”

“No, I want you to finish it, but I’ll tell you this: She’s the sort of person who might say, ‘I have decided that when I die I want to be buried with my unread books—just in case.’ ”

“I don’t think she believes in ‘just in case.’ Does she want to be buried?”

“Of course, you’re right. She wants to be cremated, doesn’t she?”

“Yes. She’s the sort of person who wouldn’t want to take up the space. She says things like that. ‘Some people take up too much space. I don’t want to be one of those people.’ ”

“Yes,” she agreed, “she does say that.”

“So, she ran her hand across her belly. This unselfconscious gesture struck him as particularly endearing because another woman—women never understand the attraction a man has to the curve of a woman’s belly...”

“Didn’t you say that already?”

“No. It’s something he should have said to the other woman he’d known.”

“But he’s a logical man.”

“And what would that have to do with his regret?” Would she tell me?

“We digress. I want to hear the story.”

“He found the gesture particularly endearing because another woman would have done this, considering herself flawed. Those others are always aware of the gaze of another, or hoping for it. But she was not like them. She ran her hand across her belly the way he, still in his fifties now—”

“I thought he was a young man.”

“Isn’t fifty young?”

“Yes. But he didn’t look it. He was ripped.”

“Oh, come on. He’s in his fifties.”

“He goes to the gym a lot. He enjoys the gym.”

“You don’t think that would make him a hypocrite to have talked about the women who exercise too much?”

“No. He’s right about them.”

“She ran her hand across her belly the way she still did in mid-sleep, the way she rubbed the back of her hand against the soft-from-washings sheets, the way she’d done as a child, a gesture of comfort and then of sleep.

“He watched her move to the towel she’d laid down next to her chair. He watched her slip away but not into sleep. She’d slipped away into dream. This, too, the waking dreamer, that’s how he thought of her, drew him. He hoped he would some day get to tell her all this and he hoped that she would tell him her dream.”

And then I handed her the cocktail.

“You were right about the hat,” she said. “It was the hat she would have chosen.”▵

Table of Contents

Coming next: Chapter 41: “My Father and Mother”

Only Connect, all sections, and this serial novel come from my heart and soul—and ten years of research. I know the saying ‘time is money’: I couldn’t help but pursue this story. If you have already gone paid, my heart goes out to you with my thanks.

Love,