Fall 2007 / Spring 2008

Where Are You?

by Robert Moulthrop

As he reached for the butter, the toaster reflected his hand. Were my knuckles always so wrinkled? he thought. Knuckles are, by definition, wrinkled, he responded automatically. How could they be else, performing, as they do, the function of enfolding bones that must articulate, move, freely... Oh my fucking word, just butter the toast, just get on with it.

“So, will you?”

He recognized the intonation in her voice: he should have been paying attention. He looked over the toaster to her fresh morning face, her smile, the dimples that still made his heart ache. How can she start the day looking so fresh? he wondered as he did almost every day. Aphrodite from the head of Zeus. Venus rising from the sea. She did, he knew, look like that. Everyone said so. It was part of their stock-in-trade as a couple — Vivian, so beautiful, always so well turned out, always ready to answer a faculty wife who said: where did you get that sweater/skirt/blouse? Those pearls/earrings? That pin/necklace? Where do you get your hair done, you always look so great. And it was true, she did, always. Those darting blue eyes and the smile, always ready, always genuine. He looked at her through his glasses with the same smile, half rueful, half bemused that he always used to parry her questions. Unaccountably, his hand went to his forehead, brushing back the lock of gray hair that fell forward as he moved his head. He tried to stop himself, but either couldn't or wouldn't. It was the gesture he used in front of his classes; the gesture he knew his students used when impersonating him. Last week, late for class, he had watched, almost amused, as the fellow with the long hair, third row, second seat, had stood and intoned, “The law, ladies and gentlemen, the law is based in...(pause, raise hand, push hair back from forehead)...truth.” The boy was obviously not an actor; the impression lacked—Sam had remarked to himself at the time—gravitas. But the spirit was there. And then he had watched as the boy, acknowledging the applause of the class, broke into a wide grin, bowed at the waist, his long hair cascading down over his head, then whipping back up over his head as he snapped his head, beaming, then flinging an end of his long gray silk scarf over his shoulder; his wrinkled blue work shirt, blue jeans, and white sneakers—in contrast with the khakis, polo shirts, and loafers of most of the other young men in the class—established him as a conscientious member of a self-identified proletariat. But the scarf and the gesture had now become an almost automatic memory that came to Sam every time he touched his hair.

“Sam?”

“Yes,” he said, hoping that by being definite he could accomplish whatever she wanted him to.

“Yes what, Sam?”

“Yes to whatever you asked, darling.” Now he added charm. Charm usually worked, even with Vivian.

“I should have asked for that necklace,” she said with a smile, holding her cup with both hands, taking a sip of coffee.

“Conversational lottery,” he said. “If you had, I still would have said yes, and you would have had the necklace. As it is...”

“Yes,” she said, “as it is, well, you'll pick up the cleaning and be home for dinner.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Should I be worried? Should I, darling? You're so...”

“Distracted,” he said. “I know.”

“Distracted doesn't even begin to cover it. You are...”

“What? What am I?”

“I don't want to have this conversation,” she said. “I have too many things to get through today.”

He was a lawyer; confrontation held no terrors for him. But even though he suddenly felt a twinge (fear...how odd), he continued. “Do you mean,” he began in a tone he hoped was reasonable, “that you don't want to have this conversation now? Or that you don't wish to have this conversation ever?” Raising the specter now, he thought, might put it in abeyance forever. Then things—his well regulated life, his classes, his writing, his minimal law practice—could go back to the way they were, and stay that way. Without her noticing—or, even if she did notice, without her bringing it to his attention—his distraction might well abate.

Indeed, now, waiting for her answer, he began to feel something ebb through his body, leaving, in its place, a kind of sharpness, a new attentiveness that had lately been missing. He allowed himself the beginnings of a smile.

“I mean not now, darling,” she said. “We need to talk. There's something going on.” She put her cup in its saucer, brushed some imaginary crumbs from her side of the table, and stood. “I don't know what it is, but it's been going on for way too long. And it's beginning to be tiresome is all.”

She smiled again, taking away whatever sting the words might have had. He looked at her, into her direct blue eyes, taking in her face, the curves of her breasts, watching her hands smooth down her skirt, touch her hair, adjust her pearls.

“I know,” he said. “So...”

“Yes, darling,” she said. “Tonight or tomorrow. I know it's worrying you, too. I mean, I know you're here, because you're here. And it's not like when you're preparing a new course.”

“No,” he said.

“No,” she echoed. “It's as if you're a thousand miles away, and I miss you. That's not entirely true,” she continued. “It's been going on so long that I've almost stopped missing you.” She looked steadily at him, then turned.

“I've got to start my day,” she said. “The rocks are waiting.”

“Geology, the solid science,” he said, relishing the old joke.

“Mmmm,” she said, as always, choosing to ignore the jest and accept the words as fact. “Tonight, then.”

+ + +

“Is this a quarrel?” he asked. He waited, looking through the lamplight, trying to fathom her look. Idly he noted the familiar oriental carpet, the fire, their matching glasses of sherry, the dark wood paneling reflecting back an oh-so-cozy glow. So perfect, he thought. So fucking perfect.

“No,” she said quietly. “At least not yet.” She put down her glass. “It's a discussion, Sam. People discuss things. Couples—most couples—discuss things.”

“We discuss things,” he said.

“I don't mean the gardener's problem with the crab grass, the tax bill, the shocking State of the Union,” she said.

“Some couples never get to the State of the Union,” he said.

“I'm talking about the state of our union,” she said. “Don't let's dance, Sam.” She looked over at him and shook her head. “Don't.”

“Is this about children, Viv?” he asked, looking away from her, into the fire.

“Oh, Sam, please,” she said. “We don't need to revisit that decision. Twenty years, darling. You can't tell me you're still not sure.”

“Careers,” he said. “What did we say then?”

“You said,” she said. “ 'Benign selfishness.'”

“So pretentious. Are you sure I said that?” He watched her look at him, blue eyes so calm, so serene. He loved her eyes, the way they could, without even seeming to try, pierce his innermost thoughts. When he let them.

“I know,” he said. “I remember. Well, it was selfish. We both wanted our careers, we both wanted each other. Bringing a baby, an incipient being, into the world would have been...”

“I didn't mind, Sam. I never minded. I had you.”

“Had?”

“That's what I'm talking about.”

“I don't understand,” he said. Even though somewhere in his depths he felt an icicle forming, felt the beginnings of a sharp jab he knew he wanted to avoid, he willed himself to stay in the chair, willed his hand to reach for the glass, bring it to his lips, take a small sip, try to taste the sherry with lips suddenly parched and tongue suddenly dry, and return the glass to the side table, with a steady hand.

“Sure you do, Sam,” she said. “You're smart, you're a lawyer, you understand. You're not here. Even now, just the two of us, quiet and alone, me trying to talk with you about us, where we are, who we are, you're twenty million miles away. And I don't know why, and I certainly don't know where.”

She waited for him to respond, but he sat there, one hand on the arm of the leather chair, the other in his lap.

“We don't make love any more,” she said.

“We're busy,” he said. “You're busy.”

“Busy would do for a day or a week. Busy would even do for a month. But not for a year.”

“Has it been that long?” he said, looking over at her. “Has it really?”

“That's what I mean, dear. Dear, dear Sam. That's what I mean.”

“Dammit, I am here, with you. I'm sitting here, looking at you, the woman I love, the woman I've loved ever since the first minute I saw you.”

“Then what, Sam? What is it?”

“I don't know, Vivian.” He turned toward her, put his hands on his knees, gazing into her eyes. “But I know I love you. Can't things just stay as they are? Can't we just, well, be with each other. We're good for each other, Vivian. You make me strong.”

“Do I?”

“And I,” he said, “do I make you stronger?”

“I used to know,” she said. “You were steady, and I knew.”

“And now?”

“Now you're not here, and I don't know.”

She sat quietly, waiting for an answer, but he only sat, his head against the high back of the chair, looking into the fire.

“I'll grill some salmon,” she said. “And string beans. With the new Riesling.”

“Yes,” he said. “That'll be nice. I'll be here.”

She stood and looked over at him, willing him to turn to her, to stand, take her in his arms, hold her, embrace her, pull him toward her. But he continued to sit very still, eyes staring toward the fire, focused either somewhere far outside himself or very deep inside.

+ + +

“I took to rocks,” she liked to say, “because of the Grand Canyon.” She'd tried to answer the question truthfully for at least a year, trying to phrase her answer around the mystery and spectacle of layers, strata, color, texture, the feeling that, every time she picked up a rock, stroking its veins with her thumb, that she was close to unraveling a large and important secret. The light and shadow and depth of that one long-ago trip, rafting down the Colorado, had literally taken her breath. She still remembered her first sight of fluted limestone in Marble Canyon; still could picture the waterfalls over the gray and white limestone layers in Matcameba Canyon; the early morning trip through Marble Gorge, as the sun struck the red canyon walls, plunging the river into deeper blue. She knew her soul had been touched, that she would never be the same, that her life must now include learning about, naming, studying, becoming intimate with the earth. “My rocks,” she called them, the two words encompassing a universe.

That was their honeymoon. And for the next twenty years she used her brain to rate, sort, categorize, and explain the highly compressed textures of the earth's most solid portions. She also used these considerable powers of observation on her husband, coming to know the structure of his moods, the turns of his psyche, the meaning of a glance, the gloss of an intonation, as easily as she came to understand the layering of a geode or the veins of unpolished marble.

But suddenly, all her powers of observation were not enough. He had, somehow, changed. She would watch him suddenly rise from his study and wander through the house, prowling from room to room to room like an animal searching for the comfort of something familiar who, finding none, returns to an original position disgruntled and uncomfortable, wanting to move again, not ready to move, distrusting movement, unable to settle and, she could tell from his eyes, ultimately baffled by the forces driving him to rise again and walk his house. She had thought that by engaging him, breaking into the pattern of his roving, she might be able to get beneath. But tonight's conversation, like the others over the last two months, only served to drive him deeper into himself.

+ + +

“This can't go on,” she said the next morning, watching him butter his toast, his knife smoothing the butter evenly across the bread, purposefully approaching each edge, stopping, moving back.

“What can't go on,” he said.

“This, darling,” she said. “You buttering your bread on autopilot, your mind three thousand miles away, you looking at me like you just did.”

“I looked at you,” he said.

“That's what I mean,” she said, then took a sip of coffee.

“Aren't you going in?” he said.

“I cleared my morning,” she said. “Just for this.”

He sighed. “Vivian,” he said, “I'm here. I look at you. I pay attention. It's twenty years. What do you want?”

She thought of all the things she wanted, layers of desires accreting over the years, until now there is, she thought, this smooth surface of Vivian-ness, the perfect wife, perfect professor, perfect housekeeper, such an easy smooth surface.

“I don't know what that means,” he said, “when you sit there, silent, looking at me. Are you judging me?”

Twenty years, she thought. “No,” she said. “No more than you judge me.”

“I don't,” he said. “You are perfect.” He was looking at her with eyes she knew were on the verge of desperation.

“That's a judgment, Sam,” she said. “I'm not perfect. I'm me. Vivian.”

“My rock princess,” he said.

“Not so solid any more, Sam,” she said.

“Meaning?”

“I'm not sure,” she said.

“About?”

“About us,” she said, and watched the two words drop like stones into their lives. She could almost see the ripples move across the room, watch his eyes fill with . . . what? She watched him blink, watched his blue eyes ice over, become the blank slates she had seen him use in the courtroom, in the classroom, and now, for the very first time, with her.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” he said.

+ + +

He asked her the question because, in truth, he wanted the answer. He knew what the words meant: it was a question about place. “Where are you?” Here, behind the tree. I'm in the living room, dear. I'm upstairs in bed, waiting for you. But he knew that wasn't what she meant. He knew he was sitting across from her, again, buttering his toast, this morning keeping himself from looking at the reflection of his wrinkled knuckles in the toaster's bright chrome. He knew he had made his eyes go purposefully blank so she wouldn't see, wouldn't get past, inside, where, he knew—because she knew him better than anyone, because he had allowed her to know him—she would uncover his terror.

Because that was where he was. In terror, a place he had never been before. Months ago something had grabbed him, pulled him away from a life he knew and loved, and plunged him into a chaos where no one thing had the meaning he thought it had. At lunch at the Faculty Club with Doug Wiltsey, an old friend, now suddenly chair of the Psych Department, he had pushed the edges of the conversation to general topics of mid-life crisis, starting the conversation by talking about some older students, asking questions with a purposefully wry detachment (“Does every man buy a red sports car, still?” “I guess the women have that hormonal thing to deal with, but why do the men seem to get so strange?”), not really caring whether or not Doug saw through the conversational screen, so anxious for an answer about the terror he now felt every moment, could feel it in his stomach as he turned the leaves of his spinach salad, dragging them through the dressing, wondering whether standing and screaming might be the best answer.

“Sometimes it all has nothing to do with anything,” said Doug. “I know a shrink who just prescribes Prozac or one of those, then basically waits to see what happens. Maybe these students of yours are his patients—are they particularly zonked, these guys?”

“No more than usual, from what I can tell,” said Sam, listening intently to the sound of Doug's spoon hitting the side of the cup. He was almost ready to ask for a referral to this drug-dealing shrink, when his attention was caught by a group of students walking by the window and he noticed that the terror in his stomach suddenly eased, not completely, but enough to notice. He turned his head, but saw nothing but a group of retreating backs, heavy jackets against the early fall chill, denim and khaki legs, boots, someone gesturing.

“Did I tell you,” said Doug, “that Madeline's now openly lobbying for department chair?”

“You Mind-Folk” said Sam. “Never a moment's peace.”

“Did you hear what she did last week?” said Doug.

Now on very familiar turf, Sam shook his head, and began spooning sugar into his own coffee, nodding every now and then as the familiar hills and valleys of academic politics unrolled. He noticed, bit by bit, the terror begin its relentless march inside his being until he felt it pressing on his heart.

+ + +

The divorce unfolded with a seeming logic Sam felt helpless to contradict. When Vivian suggested counseling, he went along willingly, but at the first session found himself seated in the small office in the strange office park feeling as if he were wrapped in cotton.

“Where would you like to begin?” said the woman. She was seated behind a dark wood desk in a dark paneled office. She wore a dark suit and even though she was seated, Sam thought she was probably tall. He and Vivian were seated in matching chairs, placed on a diagonal, facing her and facing each other. He waited for Vivian to speak, finally looked at her directly, but she was gazing at the middle distance, waiting, he felt, for him to take an action. He reviewed the path that had brought him here, to this chair at this time, and wondered, idly, why, at the moment, the terror was less.

“I'd like to begin here,” said Sam. “I'd like us to begin by leaving, by going home, by starting over.”

“Sam,” said Vivian.

“I would, dear. I don't want this.”

“You know,” she said, “I don't either. But going home is no solution, Sam. We'd walk in the door, you'd open the wine, I'd put dinner on the table...”

“What's wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Except it's not enough. For either of us.”

“Why not?” said the woman behind the desk, one hand stroking the strand of single pearls around her neck. “Many couples accommodate. You two seem, well, very well matched.”

“We are,” said Sam.

“And there's an absence of acrimony that is truly admirable,” said the woman.

“We don't hate each other,” said Vivian. “It's just that he's not there, and I can't get him back.”

“I am,” said Sam. “I am, too, here. I'm here now...”

“Because I said we had to, and you agreed...”

“I don't think the reason matters, Vivian. It's the fact.”

“But I know you, darling. You're very good. You do this with company, with your classes, even sometimes with me. This is a very good impersonation of someone paying attention. But you're not. I know you, Sam. You can't wait to get out of here and get back to your room and...well, do whatever it is you do there...”

“Grade papers,” he said.

“Sam,” she said. “Don't.”

“But I love you, Vivian,” he said.

“And I love you, Sam,” she said. “It's just that I can't live my life alone any more. Especially not alone with another person.”

“Is that true, Sam?” asked the counselor. “Are you not present?”

Sam looked back and forth between the counselor and his wife. There were, he knew, words he could say, convincing phrases, stunning arguments. But he was suddenly too terrified to open his mouth.

+ + +

At the next sessions he heard the counselor's words (“present” “reality” “acknowledge-ment”), nodded, used the words himself, looked at his wife, watched her looks change from anger to sorrow to puzzlement, wrote the checks, then came home to his study and read his journals and looked at the essays his assistants had already graded, idly leafing through the typescript pages, hoping somehow for a clue. When the lawyers agreed that selling the house in an up-market was the best solution for both of them, he signed. Forced, then, to think about what he might want, and knowing that he didn't really know, he decided to move away from the campus, closer to town, into a large furnished apartment. He left most of his books in storage, turned the second bedroom into a study, and stocked the freezer with dinners he could microwave. He taught and read, ate lunches at the faculty club, answered the telephone—usually a call from Vivian about money or property—and waited for the dread to seep away. Occasionally, most often when he was in front of one of his classes, usually in the silence between calling on a student and hearing the beginning of an answer, he noticed a feeling he could name as calm, or at least of non-dread. But even while the terror was in abeyance, he could feel its onset as soon as he left his classroom; it increased as he walked through the halls and down the stairs; by the time he was sitting behind the wheel of his car, it was a fog that pressed against his face, his chest, his arms, his legs. He would sit, willing himself to breathe, to move, hoping that this time it might abate. But it stayed and stayed. At times he felt as if it was his only friend.

+ + +

“A singles bar?” he said.

“Well, you have to do something,” said Iris. She was a striking brunette—Sam thought of her as the anti-Vivian—his law faculty colleague of legendary appetites. She had barged into his office one afternoon as fall leaves once again filtered golden light into his office.

“Are you propositioning me, Iris?” he asked. Word had it that she liked to increase the notches on her horsewhip, playing, it was said, both sides of the faculty pasture.

“You?” she said. “Are you crazy? No way I'm getting involved with somebody who doesn't even know the color of his necktie and who barely makes his socks match.”

“Well, why would you want me to go to a singles bar?” he asked.

“Because, Sam, you are lost. You are the divorced man starting over. No one has taken you in tow. Everyone is scared to death of you, except me. And I am, uncharacteristically for me, going to take you in hand. Save the day for you. Carpe,” she said finally, “the fucking diem.”

“Is this a dare?” he asked, suddenly locking eyes with her.

“Oh, Sam, please,” she said. “Do you really think the law faculty has nothing better to do than save you from yourself? I know you have an ego, but that's ridiculous.”

“Well...”

“Look, Sam. I'm going. I'm tired of lawyers, tired of people my own age, tired of pretending I don't want to get laid...”

“I thought you said...”

“Not you, Sam, dear. Not you. Especially not with that tie and not with those socks. Go home, change into something less...academic. No patches on the elbows, no paisley tie. In fact, no tie. I'll pick you up at nine.”

He found he was breathing a little more quickly. “Where are you taking me?” he asked.

“Hooligans,” she said. “It's past downtown, over near that new shopping mall.”

“What if you...”

“We'll go in two cars,” she said. “You can follow me out there. Then, if I get lucky, or you get lucky, we'll each be able to cope.”

“Lucky,” he said. “Okay then. Nine o'clock. Thank you, Iris. No tie.”

+ + +

It was, at first, new and therefore interesting, he told himself, interesting and fun, to watch the people, the young people, the others, some as old as he, one or two women, some men. He watched the younger women look at him, and he fixed his face in what he hoped was an inviting smile, but he thought it probably was not, because they looked past him or at his shoulder, and moved on to someone else. Finally, he stood at the bar, his back to someone sitting on a stool, his elbow propped against the bar, a glass of beer in his other hand. He had promised Iris he would stay for at least an hour. (“Takes that long just to settle in,” she had told him. He was at first surprised at her fund of knowledge; then surprised at himself for even wondering that she might not know.)

There, in the sea of men and women, he was merely another man wandering, standing, drink in hand, music assaulting him. He stopped and looked for Iris; she was heading toward the exit door with a tall man, young, easily fifteen years her junior, perhaps even a student. He watched them open the door, saw her turn, find his eyes across the room, watched her wave, give him a thumbs-up sign, then the door closed, and he felt the terror begin to return.

“Interesting place.”

The man's voice was at his ear. Sam turned toward the man seated at the bar.

“I guess,” he said. The man was young; his wool scarf hung on his work shirt, tucked into denims. Sam looked down at the white sneakers.

“I don't usually come here, except on Thursdays,” said the man. “But Alice...” He waved at a girl whose short, blue hair was bobbing in and out of the dance floor lights. “...Alice needed a friend tonight, she said.” He looked at Sam and smiled. “We've been best friends since seventh grade,” he said. “We know how to help each other out.”

Sam looked, and was surprised to hear himself speaking. “I don't usually come here at all,” he said.

“I know, Professor.”

“Do I know you?” asked Sam.

“Last year's contracts class. Seat 37. Mr....”

“Hopgood,” said Sam.

“Almost. Hopewell. George.”

“Yes,” said Sam, waiting as the memory pulled him back to the classroom, to the young man standing in front of the class, the imitation so almost-perfect as to be beyond reproach. “The actor.”

“Actually not,” said George. “Just a good ear. Comes in useful for trial work. At least I hope it will.”

Sam looked at him, as if for the first time, at the hands smoothing down the scarf, at the right hand reaching for the glass of beer, at the knuckles on the hand, almost, he thought, as wrinkled as his own. When he looked up he was surprised to find himself looking into his eyes.

“So,” said Sam, “why are you here tonight?”

“Curiosity,” said George. “See how the other half lives.”

Sam felt something inside move against the terror. Instinctively he took a sip of beer.

“Other half?” he said.

“Yes,” said George. “Usually I come on Thursdays. That's gay night here.” He stopped and smiled. “Lots more fun. For some of us.”

“Is it?” said Sam. He looked into the boy's eyes—he was a boy, Sam was sure, a student, yes, but maybe an older student, it was hard to tell—and noticed that the eyes were deep, deep brown, almost black. And as he looked he felt his chest rise and fall with his breath, and with each breath, felt the terror ease, a little.

“Is it really?” Sam asked. If I were deposing myself against myself, if I were doing this to answer Vivian's question, my question, would I be truthful? Could I be? Can I be now? Where I am now, standing here, with this—for the first time he allowed himself to say the word—man, whose eyes invite me to fall into them. Are you aware, Counselor, of what you are doing? What you are about to do? Has your life been a lie, counselor? No, he thought. How can my life have been a lie if there never was a question.

“Thursday,” said Sam.