After Corinne and Lenny leave, I write a second letter to my husband, pretending that there is a chance that he did not get the other one. In this letter I give him a detailed account of the weekend, and agree with what he said long ago about Corinne’s talking too much and Lenny’s being too humble. I tell my husband that the handle on the barbecue no longer makes the grill go up and down. I tell him that the neighbors’ dog is in heat and that dogs howl all night, so I can’t sleep. I reread the letter and tear it up because these things are all jumbled together in one paragraph. It looks as if a crazy person had written the letter. I try again. In one paragraph I describe Corinne and Lenny’s visit. In another I tell him that his mother called to tell me that his sister has decided to major in anthropology. In the last paragraph I ask for advice about the car—whether it may not need a new carburetor. I read the letter and it still seems crazy. A letter like this will never make him come back. I throw it away and write him a short, funny postcard. I go outside to put the postcard in the mailbox. A large white dog whines and runs in front of me. I recognize the dog. It is the same one I saw last night, from my bedroom window; the dog was staring at my neighbors’ house. The dog runs past me again, but won’t come when I call it. I believe the neighbors once told me that the dog’s name is Pierre, and that the dog does not live in Woodbridge.
When I was a child I was punished for brushing Raleigh with the dog’s brush. He had asked me to do it. It was Easter, and he had on a blue suit, and he came into my bedroom with the dog’s brush and got down on all fours and asked for a brushing. I brushed his back. My father saw us and banged his fist against the door. “Jesus Christ, are you
I play Scriabin’s Étude in C Sharp Minor. I play it badly and stop to stare at the keys. As though on cue, a car comes into the driveway. The sound of a bad muffler—my lover’s car, unmistakably. He has come a day early. I wince, and wish I had washed my hair. My husband used to wince also when that car pulled into the driveway. My lover (he was not at that time my lover) was nineteen when he first started coming, to take piano lessons. He was obviously more talented than I. For a long while I resented him. Now I resent him for his impetuousness, for showing up unexpectedly, breaking my routine, catching me when I look ugly.
“This is foolish,” I say to him. “I’m going into the city to have lunch.”
“My car is leaking oil,” he says, looking over his shoulder.
“Why have you come?” I say.
“This once-a-week stuff is ridiculous. Once you have me around a little more often you’ll get used to it.”
“I won’t have you around more often.”
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he says. “Two, actually.”
“What are they?”
“For later. I’ll tell you when you get back. Can I stay here and wait for you?”
A maroon sweater that I gave him for his birthday is tied around his waist. He sits in front of the hearth and strikes a match on the bricks. He lights a cigarette.
“Well,” he says, “one of the surprises is that I’m going to be gone for three months. Starting in November.”
“Where are you going?”
“Europe. You know that band I’ve been playing with sometimes? One of the guys has hepatitis, and I’m going to fill in for him on synthesizer. Their agent got us a gig in Denmark.”
“What about school?”
“Enough school,” he says, sighing.
He pitches the cigarette into the fireplace and stands up and takes off his sweater.
I no longer want to go to lunch. I am no longer sorry he came unannounced. But he hasn’t jumped up to embrace me.
“I’m going to investigate that oil leak,” he says.
Later, driving into New York, trying to think of what the second surprise might be (taking a woman with him?), I think about the time when my husband surprised me with a six-layer cake he had baked for my birthday. It was the first cake he ever made, and the layers were not completely cool when he stacked and frosted them. One side of the cake was much higher than the other. He had gone out and bought a little plastic figure of a skier, for the top of the cake. The skier held a toothpick with a piece of paper glued to it that said “Happy Birthday.” “We’re going to Switzerland!” I said, clapping my hands. He knew I had always wanted to go there. No, he explained, the skier was just a coincidence. My reaction depressed both of us. It was a coincidence, too, that a year later I was walking down the same street he was walking down and I saw that he was with a girl, holding her hand.
I’m almost in New York. Cars whiz by me on the Hutchinson River Parkway. My husband has been gone for seven months.
