Merrion in the course of helping Diane through her sorrow had found her opinions to be based upon good instincts, and he got into the habit of seeking them when confronting important decisions of his own. It was natural enough, he supposed; after all, she was used to considering other people's situations and giving her advice, that being the way she'd made her living and career for a good many years. And she was obviously pleased, quietly flattered, when he consulted her. Once, more or less in obedience to some shabby impulse learned in politics, he supposed no point in having an advantage if you're not going to try to use it he tried to subvert her good will and affection. One evening late in 1992, over dinner at the Tavern, he had asked her advice about what he ought to do with Polly's house.
By then eleven years had passed since Walter's death, so there had been no question that Diane had recovered from the loss. The shattering decline into silence that would necessitate Polly's admission to St.
Mary's on the Hilltop had set in, rendering progressively more irrelevant his extreme reluctance 'to put her in the home'; he had reached a sort of marker in his life. But depressing as it was, the event had nonetheless been predictable for a long time; he had seen it coming much as Dan and Mercy Hilliard had known despairingly long before the day arrived that sooner or later they would have to put their daughter Donna in an institution providing long-term care. So he did not have the excuse that he had been dazed in shock that evening when he said what he should not have, asking Diane what he should do.
"You should move right back into it," Diane said immediately. "That's a good house, just like my house is a good house. That place you're living in right now," a large garden court apartment in the Old Wisdom House overlooking Hampton Pond, 'may be where the swells all want to go when they retire, half the year playing golf and shuffleboard in Florida, the other half back here playing golf and lying about their grandchildren. But you'll never be one of those silly men in colored pants with white belts and shoes. Besides, you're not old enough."
"Well," he said, 'the golf I could handle with pleasure, but it looks like I probably wont have the grandchildren."
"Looking for sympathy?" she said. "Won't get it from me. Rachel's always apologizing for not bringing her two back here more often, "so they can get to know you." Uh huh. "Perfectly all right," I always say. "Time enough for us to become dear friends when they go to Harvard. Then they can drive out and see me."
"Nothing wrong with where you live now, it's a very stylish place. But no matter what you have somebody do to it, it'll never be a good house, the kind of place you hang onto and go back to, because it's where you live, and belong. What you need's the sort of place that hangs onto you; that's what I really mean. It keeps you, not you, it, and that's what keeps you going strong."
"And you think I'm going to need one of those of my own," he said. He had been ashamed of himself even as he said it. It was arguably excusable 'never any harm in asking' but just the same it had also been a cheap dodge to take advantage of her compassionate mood in order to wheedle something out of her, something that she didn't want to give him.
She'd raised both eyebrows and gazed at him over the big white plate of veal scallops in cream sauce, and then after a brief but unmistakably reproving silence, she had snickered. "Amby," she had said, 'really now, of course you will. Of course you'll need your place to live. Of course you need a house."
So the terms of their non-aggression pact, 'our treaty," she called it, after that little stutter had resumed evolution along the lines they had begun to take, arriving at it fairly soon after Walter's death.
"Look, Amby," she had said to him she was a practical woman making coffee in her kitchen, using her foot to steer her possessive grey-and-black striped tiger-cat along the mopboard under the sink so that she wouldn't step on it; she had called Merrion Saturday morning and asked him to come over two days after they had gone to bed together the first time because that seemed to her what should be done next.
"This sex business: we've got to talk about it. Come to some kind of agreement we both understand. Or else it's going to get out of control and cause all kinds of problems, maybe end up ruining us. I don't want that to happen. I don't think you do, either. Tell me you don't either, all right? Humor me, at least, and say it, even if you're not really sure yet. This is important to me. I'm surprised how important it is."
