“No, I will,” Sam said.
Sam caught a cab to the Vinegar Factory. He had the driver wait, promising an extra ten dollars. He bought two bottles of Arneis, eight ounces of smoked salmon, brown bread, poached salmon with green sauce, mixed greens, an avocado, a baguette, a fruit tart, bagels, and cream cheese. Flush with provender, he had the cab take him crosstown to Susanna’s at Ninety-Second and West End.
He gave his name to the doorman, adding, “She may not answer. She’s ill. I’m worried about her.” The doorman called up. No one answered. “Let’s go up and check on her,” Sam said. He sounded like his father. The doorman nodded.
The doorman locked the front door and went up with Sam to Susanna’s apartment. They knocked, then knocked again. No one answered. “Maybe she’s out,” the doorman said. “She’s ill. She’s at home,” Sam said, again sounding like Rupert. “I think you should get the key.” When the doorman had gone off to find the super, Sam called loudly through the door. “Susanna, it’s me, Sam. I’ve asked the doorman to get the key. I’ll make a scene if you don’t open up.”
After a minute, the door opened. Susanna stood there, the saddest person Sam had ever seen. He put down his groceries and clasped her to him. She burst into tears, burying her head in his shoulder. He was still holding her, by the door, when the super arrived. “I’ll take care of things,” Sam said. The super nodded. With his arm around her shoulders, Sam edged Susanna into the apartment.
Susanna’s crying ebbed. “Do you have a tissue?” she said, catching her breath.
“We need to talk,” Sam said, handing her his handkerchief. “And we need to eat.”
—
Andrew had called Susanna the day after Sam moved out. Susanna couldn’t tell if he was looking for sympathy, for someone to blame, or for Sam. Probably all three, she decided. Susanna was kinder than she wanted to be. Almost against her will, she found herself murmuring words of support. “It’s very sad. I’m so sorry.” He was in pain. He even cried at one point. What a schmuck, she thought. Andrew wanted to know if Susanna knew anything about the breakup. “No,” Susanna said. “I haven’t seen or spoken to Sam in a few weeks.” She went on, leaking irritation, “No doubt he wanted to wrestle with this decision by himself.” Susanna never heard from or saw Andrew again. Some weeks later, she asked Sam how Andrew was doing, out of curiosity tinged with politeness. “I don’t know how he is,” Sam said, “or where he is.” Susanna winced. Sam’s cruelty had at one time come as a surprise; lately, it came only as disappointment. Had he really been like that all along, the result of growing up the middle of five boys? Or was it peculiar to his relationship with Andrew?
Andrew disappeared from all their lives, like a drowning man beneath the waters. Every so often one of them might ask Sam how he was doing. Sam would shrug and shake his head. Eleanor almost expected him to say “Andrew who?” It troubled her, as it troubled Susanna.
“If you don’t want to talk about it,” Eleanor said, “I understand, but I’m curious. What happened?” A month had passed since Sam had moved out. They were having dinner together at the Café, downstairs from Eleanor’s apartment.
“I was tired of him. I was bored with him,” Sam said. He looked tired to Eleanor, as if he hadn’t slept well in months. “The second seven-year itch, worse than the first. I’d ask you if that was someone—I mean, something—you ever experienced if I wanted to know. But I don’t.”
Eleanor thought back to year fourteen of her marriage: 1975. She looked at her middle son, her outlier. She wished Rupert were here to talk to.
“I often ask myself what Dad would say,” Sam said. Eleanor smiled. He had often seemed to her to have a direct line to her thoughts, some of her thoughts. “I remember him saying,” Sam said, “?‘What’s most important to you? Do that. And don’t give up on it too soon or too easily.’?”
“I can understand you wanted to leave,” Eleanor said. “I don’t understand why you’re acting as though he never mattered. He was in your life, and our lives too, for years.” She paused. “I’m on your side, whatever your reasons for leaving.”
Sam asked the waiter for a scotch. He wanted his mother on his side for his reasons, not whatever reasons. The waiter brought him a double.
Looking down at his drink, Sam spoke softly, almost as if he didn’t want his mother to hear. “Andrew was the first. Freshman year. He was my TA. We were at a party. I was drunk. So was he. So he said.”
“And?” Eleanor said.
“You don’t set up housekeeping for fourteen years with your first.” He stopped. “I’m being stupid. You married the only man you had sex with—after you were married.”
“Did I?”
Sam sat up straighter. “What?”
“You’re moving sideways,” Eleanor said.
“You never liked Andrew,” Sam said.
“Didn’t I?” Eleanor said.
“Oh, for chrissakes, Mom, answer a question,” Sam said.
Eleanor looked at him, showing no anger, no annoyance, no sympathy. Sam started to speak, then stopped. He took a swallow of scotch.
“Sorry,” he said. “You don’t like loaded questions.”
“No,” she said.
“Sometimes I think you and Dad were too respectful of our privacy, not asking questions other parents might ask,” he said.
“When was this, upper school? Earlier? Later?”
“Middle school through college,” he said.
“Would it have made a difference?” she said.
“Probably not,” he said.
“We worried sometimes,” she said. “Even after college.”
Sam looked sharply at her.
“Dad told me about running into you on Houston Street.”
Sam could feel the vein in his neck pulsing. He had been walking with a man, not Andrew, their arms around each other’s waist. His father was almost upon him by the time Sam saw him. Sam nodded and walked past. Rupert nodded back. Sam was twenty-nine then, back in New York finally, after Princeton and New Haven, chafing at domesticity.
“Joe Macy,” he said. “Two years. After the first seven years with Andrew.”
“One of Bill Macy’s boys?”
Sam nodded. “He was a class ahead of me at Trinity. I didn’t know he was gay; I should have. He starred in all the musicals. He didn’t know I existed.”
—
Susanna was limp in Sam’s arms. Briefly, he had a Rhett Butler fantasy of swooping her up in his arms and carrying her away, to safety. Where the hell did that come from? he wondered. He walked her to the sofa, settling her there with pillows and covering her with a blanket. “Rest,” he said. “I’ll get dinner on.” He laid the table, using cloth napkins and place mats. He moved a bowl of flowers from the mantel to the table. He transferred the food to serving dishes. He lit the candles. He put on music, Brahms’s Requiem. He brought her a glass of cold Arneis. “Drink this,” he said. “Slowly.” Susanna took a sip.
“How do you know to do all that?” Susanna asked.
“I watched Andrew,” he said.