“That would be great,” Graham said. “You go find a table and I’ll order a sandwich and be right with you.”
He ordered his sandwich in such a slow, distracted manner that the deli guy kept sighing and rolling his eyes. Graham was busy trying to remember how many times he’d seen Elspeth since their divorce. Not many. Once he’d passed her going through the turnstiles at the Columbus Circle subway station—she was coming in and he was going out. She hadn’t seen him but he had glimpsed her expression and she’d looked so unhappy that he’d stopped and turned to watch until she was out of sight down the stairs. He’d told himself that she wasn’t unhappy about him. They’d been divorced for four years at that point. She could have been unhappy about anything. And then once when he’d gone to the funeral of a mutual friend. Elspeth had been sitting near the front of the funeral chapel, tall and slim and regal in a black suit. Somebody must have whispered to her that Graham was there, because she had swiveled her head—like a pale blond swan breaking formation—to stare at him. Then she’d looked forward again, and Graham, furtive as a poisoner, had slipped out before the service was over.
The deli guy handed him his sandwich—Graham was so flustered, he almost forgot to pay for it—and he joined Elspeth at a table in the corner.
She smiled when he sat down and Graham recognized the smile. It was a gracious, for-company smile that she put on sometimes, the way another woman might get out her Spode china or whip the dustcovers off the best sofa.
Graham smiled back and then took a big bite of his sandwich to buy himself some time.
“So,” Elspeth said. “How are Audra and Andrew?”
Now Graham regretted the big bite because he had to chew for a while before he could answer.
“They’re good,” he said at last. He didn’t bother to correct her about Matthew’s name because he wasn’t sure if she’d said the wrong name as some sort of passive-aggressive thing. “And you? How are work and—things?”
“Work is good,” Elspeth said, lifting her sandwich with long fingers. She was a lawyer at a midtown firm.
“Still at Stover, Sheppard?” Graham asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“And do you still live in the same apartment?” It occurred to him suddenly that he didn’t know her address or phone number or email. He had a moment of disconnect—was she even real? What tethered her to the world?
“Actually, I’m moving,” Elspeth said. “Or trying to. I want to buy a place in that building over on Seventy-sixth and York? It’s called the Rosemund. Do you remember that?”
Graham nodded, although he didn’t.
“Well, anyway, I want to buy there but it’s very tough—the board has to approve you.”
“I can’t imagine a better tenant than you,” Graham said sincerely, and then faltered for a second. He had been married to this woman, and the best thing he could say about her was that she’d make a fabulous tenant?
“I’ve heard they don’t like lawyers,” Elspeth said. “Too litigious.”
Graham had a sudden flash of how Elspeth would come across in an interview: cold, hard, perfectionistic. Her favorite drink was a gimlet, and she was not unlike a gimlet herself, in either sense of the word.
“Anyway,” she said. “What about you? Where do you live?”
Graham told her about his apartment and they compared mortgage rates.
There didn’t really seem to be anything to say but they both still had half a sandwich to go, so they talked about the privatization of workers’ comp in West Virginia and Nevada, and pretty much the only personal thought Graham had was that she was still the tidiest eater he knew.
When he told Audra that night that he’d seen Elspeth, she got so excited that she accidentally poured half a bottle of syrup onto the waffle she’d made for Matthew.
“I can’t eat that,” Matthew said.
“Sure you can.” Audra put it in front of him. To Graham, she said, “What did she look like? What did she say?”
“Is it going to be squishy?” Matthew asked. He wouldn’t eat anything squishy, or lumpy, or crispy, or spicy, or really any food that could be described by an interesting adjective.
“If it is, I’ll make you another one,” Audra said absently. “Tell me, Graham!”
“Well, she looked the same, only sort of older,” he said slowly. “She still wears her hair the same way.”
“And?” Audra prompted.
“And what?”
Audra made an impatient gesture. “What’s her life like? Is she happy? Why has she never remarried? What does she do for sex?”
Graham glanced at Matthew, who was, amazingly, eating the soggy waffle.
“Well, I don’t think I want to know the answers to any of that,” he said finally.
“Then what was the point of even having lunch with her?” Audra asked. “You could have had a more meaningful conversation with someone at a bus stop!”
That was Audra’s view. But Graham was not so sure. He thought that sometimes just having a polite conversation with someone, just surviving thirty minutes in that person’s company, just realizing that that person did not dislike you enough to sit at a separate table—sometimes that was a major triumph all on its own.
—
In a way, it was very nice having Bitsy live in their den, because she was so good with Matthew. She was unfazed by Matthew’s picky eating, and patient with his slowness at homework, and gentle with his refusal to pick up his room. And she had endless energy for origami and paper airplanes and dominoes, which were Matthew’s main passions, and which Graham and Audra had tired of long ago.
And in a way it was not very nice having Bitsy live in their den, because Audra knew about the miniskirt girl and Bitsy didn’t. The trick was not to reveal it, but Audra felt they had this responsibility to bring Bitsy around to the idea, slowly and gently.
“I think that’s Bitsy’s husband’s responsibility,” Graham said.
“But he’s not doing it!” Audra protested. “He gives her all this nonsense about the sabbatical and she believes him. She’s in denial.”
And so they had long awkward dinner conversations with Bitsy during which Audra tried to bring Bitsy around to acceptance—a process akin to steering a river with a spatula.
“Tell me more about Ted’s sabbatical,” Audra would say.
“I don’t really know,” Bitsy would answer placidly. “He says it’s very private. He does a lot of yoga.”
“What else?”
“I think it also involves massage therapy.”
“I’m sure it does,” Audra would say and Graham would bite back a groan.
Or Audra would say, casually twirling spaghetti with her fork, “Is it, um, common for bank managers to take creative sabbaticals?”
“Ted’s the only bank manager I know,” Bitsy said. “His company has been very generous.”
Twirl, twirl. “Where does he live in Ithaca?”
“A very small studio,” Bitsy said. “He sleeps on a futon and uses a board on sawhorses for a desk.”
“That sounds like a young person’s apartment,” Audra said.
“Yes, it does,” Bitsy agreed calmly.
“It sounds like, well—like an apartment a girl in her twenties might have.”