IV
I have never watched a lot of situation comedies on television, but I do recall hearing that Seinfeld and George and Elaine used to claim that the best sex is make-up sex. I would not argue with that, but I am happy to be able to add a further refinement: a special sub-group within the more general category of make-up sex. It is make-up sex an hour after you were intending to commit suicide. It’s really the best.
Rachel quickly realizes, even as much as she might need to re-assert our father and daughter relationship, that Diana and I also have a lot of work ahead of us. Rachel offers to take a walk and meet us downstairs in a couple of hours.
“Do you think you can forgive me, Stanley?” Diana asks me when we are alone in the room.
“I was going to eat that pudding.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was going to eat that poison pudding.”
She walks to the windowsill and picks up one of the little plastic cups of pudding. She holds it up to her nose and sniffs it, then throws both containers into the wastebasket.
“Forgiveness seems like an intellectual exercise,” I say. “It doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult.”
“But that’s all it would be,” says Diana. “An intellectual exercise.”
“At first, anyway. I mean, I don’t have any trouble understanding why you would have thought I was guilty. It was a pretty good set-up.”
“But there should have been something to keep me from falling into that hole.”
“Loyalty. How could there not be loyalty, after everything we have been through together?”
She knows enough not to answer that question straight on.
“I’m so sorry, Stanley. If you could see your way clear to take me back now there would always be loyalty. Every day of the rest of our lives.”
“You’re kind of saying it like you have learned your lesson.”
“It’s true. I have learned my lesson.”
“I guess so.”
“But you don’t feel it.”
“Feel what?”
“Like taking me back.”
“I want to.”
“You do?”
“Intellectually.”
“Intellectually?”
“Well, it would be a really complicated pain in the ass if we didn’t stay together.”
“Yes. It would.”
“Is that why you want us to stay together?”
“No. It isn’t.”
“Then why?”
“Stanley. You want me to beg you?”
“Not necessarily,” I lie. “I just need to know what you are putting on the table. And you need to know what I am putting on the table.”
“This isn’t pinochle, Stanley.”
“No, it isn’t. But we don’t have the luxury of a lot of time for courtship like we did the first time around. We are under a certain amount of pressure now. Where is Sam?”
“He’s with Lia.”
“If he was here it might be easier. In one way.”
I cry some. So does Diana.
“I didn’t think of that.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“What are we going to do, Stanley?”
Her tears are still flowing.
“Maybe we should act as if we were back together, and see how that feels.”
“You mean--?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe so. Do you think that would help?”
“It could.”
It is heavenly in the full sense of that adjective. Diana’s body engaging mine is like the sound made flesh of the voice I have loved for all these years, the light ringing of small bells caressing me and inviting me into her again and again. Each of us weeps intermittently during our lovemaking, and we call each other’s names in whispers a time or two. Otherwise there are no words.
I don’t trouble myself trying to understand what her feelings or thoughts might be. For myself, the sweetness of these moments is also seasoned with anger and hurt at her betrayal and every other malevolent action behind or beyond it. I am angry with Diana and with Rachel and with Mary Kate and with Bruce Gibbs and with Daisy Hamill and with Christopher Reardon and with Wade and even Gwyneth Gannon and the list could go on and on. I am an angry man. But the anger and hurt find union with the sweetness as we pump each other and in the empty end it could all pass more and more for love.
“Will we get back to where we were?” she asks.
“We’ll get close enough.”
“We will?”
“Yes,” I say. “We have to. And we will. But let’s not keep talking about it.”
“The only thing that Amy really had to convince me about,” says Diana when we have caught out breaths, “was that it wasn’t you who blew yourself up in the car.”
“Because suicide is tantamount to a confession.”
“I think so. I mean, it seemed so, when the newspapers said you were dead.”
“But it wasn’t my confession.”
“I’m so sorry, Stanley.”
“I know. But if I had killed myself up here in a hotel room in Quebec, all by myself, because my wife and daughter had turned their backs on me and my life seemed like it was over—“
“That wouldn’t have been a confession.”
“Well, maybe it would have. A confession that I wasn’t strong enough to fight this fight.”
“A confession that you are human.”
“So how did she convince you?”
“She told me that she was with you that morning after she read in the papers that you were dead. That she had been with you all that night.”
“She told you that.”
“Yes. She said that nothing happened.”
“And you believed her.”
“I told her that I could accept it either way. That I wouldn’t have blamed either one of you.”
“Under the circumstances?”
“Under the circumstances.”
Down in the hotel offices, Amy faxes pages and pages of documents back to Boston.
“On the way up here Amy and I spoke at length with Wade Gannon on my cell,” Diana says. “He is going to take what Amy is giving him and wrap it all up in a nice little bow for Carter Bagley and Daisy Hamill. Wade says ‘Carter Bagley is going to make this all go away or I’m going to make Carter Bagley’s political career go away.”
“Wade Gannon is a snake.”
“He’s not a snake, Stanley. He was just being loyal to me.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Wade told me to tell you he wants to go for a jog along the River with you Saturday morning.”
“Wade can go fuck himself.”
The four of us spend the next day as a dazed parody of four American tourists in the Old City. We eat French food and drink French wine and walk around the 18th century buildings waiting for an all-clear signal from Boston. The weather is surprisingly warm and clear as a bell. There are too many pigeons.
The following day Wade calls to say that the coast is clear. All charges have been dropped. We have returned the Navigator to Budget Rent-a-Car at the Airport, and we drive back in Diana’s Prius.
Rachel has brought a DVD player and she and Amy sit in the back seat watching an old movie, Say Anything. They are bonding. To my amazement the two of them go through only the slightest transformations that enable them to find common ground, perhaps half the distance between their two ages. They sound like two teenagers together, talking about music and movies and colleges and, yes, where they like to shop.
Diana catches my eye surreptitiously and I am mortified.
“I might have blamed you a little bit,” she whispers, leaning over and letting her lips touch my ear as I drive.
I drive on, hoping for a grippy hug when I see Sam.
Sam and Shadow and I will go out for a spaceship search. We will bring Shadow. If Shadow happens to do his business on Paula Levitt’s front lawn, it is possible that we will not intervene.
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