There was a moment of silence when they both seemed to realize that they had actually meant what they were saying. They weren’t speaking in code anymore. Graham felt a needle of fear: God only knew what she might say now.
So he said he had a meeting and that they should all have dinner again soon and he would be in touch, and she said the same sorts of things back, and—safely cloaked in code again—they hung up.
—
“Can I just ask,” Audra said that night. “Is Elspeth in or is she out?”
They were sitting on the sofa after dinner and she was drawing dolphins freehand for a brochure she was designing for a scuba diving school. Dolphins in left profile, dolphins in right profile, dolphins looking straight ahead, smiling, staring, laughing. She tore each sketch out of the book after she drew it and threw it on the floor. It was how she got inspired.
“What are you talking about?” Graham asked.
“It’s just something I’ve noticed about you as you get older,” she said, sketching. “People are either in or out with you. Either you accept them as a friend and someone you’re interested in, or you want no interaction with them.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong,” Graham told her. “It’s not something that’s happened since I’ve gotten older. I’ve always been that way. I don’t need to be friends with the doormen and the man at the bodega and the dentist.”
“I’m not friends with the dentist,” Audra said. (They had their own marital code.)
“You had lunch with him.”
“Never!” She looked scandalized. “I think you mean Dr. Medowski.” She’d had lunch with her gynecologist? This seemed even worse on a number of levels, but before he could say anything, she continued, “And you should be friends with the doormen, Graham. They’ll do anything for me—call me a cab in the worst weather or carry the teeniest package.”
“I can call my own cabs,” he said. “And carry my own packages, too.”
“You miss out on a lot, though,” Audra said, tearing another sketch out of her book. A drawing of a dolphin talking on the phone floated to the floor. “They know so much gossip about everyone in the building. You know that couple on Two with the little redheaded boy who keeps pulling leaves off the plants in the lobby? Well, they hired a nanny last week and she quit after half an hour. Half an hour. Can you imagine? Anyway, you never answered—is Elspeth in or is she out?”
Graham considered for a moment before he answered. He and Elspeth had not made a very successful married couple, but maybe they could be successful friends. Didn’t they have all the ingredients for that: a shared history and common interests and similar intellectual outlooks? Certainly if Audra could be friends with the checkout girl at the health-food store, he could be friends with Elspeth.
“In,” he said finally. “She’s in.”
—
And so they began, cautiously, occasionally, to do the things that couples do.
Graham and Audra had Elspeth and Bentrup over for brunch and introduced them to Matthew.
“Do you know who Satoshi Kamiya is?” Matthew asked them.
“The head of Toyota?” Bentrup guessed.
“No,” Matthew said. “He’s the best origami guy in the world.” He turned to Elspeth. “Did you know who he is?”
“No,” she said. “Do you know who Alexander Fleming is?”
Matthew shook his head. “Does he do origami?”
“No,” Elspeth said, never one to volunteer information.
“Do you do origami?”
“No.”
“Who is Alexander Fleming?” Audra asked.
“He discovered penicillin,” Elspeth said.
Audra frowned slightly. “I thought that was Jonas Salk.”
(The rest of brunch went a lot better.)
But mainly they walked. They walked through Central Park and had hot dogs; they walked through Little Italy for the cannoli; they walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Since four people can’t easily walk together, they tended to divide into pairs, and the formation of these pairings and subsequent conversations were fascinating to Graham.
Sometimes he walked with Elspeth and they updated each other on mutual friends’ lives. (He and Elspeth never spoke directly of their marriage, only of the times before and after. Graham imagined it would be this way if you had a relative who went to prison.) Some of their friends had done so little in thirteen years that it was boring to hear the updates—“He still works in finance, his mother lives with them now”—but others were intriguing: Elspeth’s cousin had left his wife for the teenage pool boy; one of their former neighbors had started a healing ministry after his eczema mysteriously improved; another friend had invented a self-propelled vacuum and was now a multimillionaire. It amazed Graham that he had forgotten some of these people completely, and yet they were still around, still in touch with Elspeth. He in turn told her about his mother and her sciatica; about some people he worked with whom she’d always been fond of; about a friend from high school who still called drunk at three a.m. sometimes. Every time they exchanged information about someone who had chosen sides in that long-ago split, Graham felt a little less responsible, a little like he’d repaired some tiny bit of damage.
He wondered sometimes why Elspeth agreed to these outings, and even suggested them. Surely she didn’t feel guilty about their divorce. He thought maybe it was because she was, and always had been, a difficult person socially. He didn’t mind her quirks, and neither did Audra, but how many other friends did Elspeth have? Not many, was Graham’s guess.
Graham and Elspeth talked about the marble kitty cat sometimes, too, and speculated on its fate. Three months had gone by and Sotheby’s had yet to sell it.
“I feel bad for it,” Graham said.
“And for Aunt Mary, too,” Elspeth said. “She thought it was this treasure and no one wants it.”
“She should have had it buried with her,” Graham said, and wondered suddenly if he’d gone too far and offended Elspeth, but she only laughed.