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mother’s coffin. “I go for the princess, even though I knew from the outset that I would never make her happy, that she belonged with some Park Avenue ophthalmologist with a weekend place near a Jewish country club on the Island. But I still had to send myself in her direction. And the result was . . .”
But he never finished the sentence, sinking back into the thickly upholstered seat and reaching for his cigarettes while muffling a deep, anguished sob.
“And the result was . . .”
What? Disappointment? Unhappiness? Sadness? Entrapment? Anger? Rage? Disquiet? Despair? Resignation?
Take your pick of any of the above to fill in the blank. As any thesaurus will show you, there are a vast number of synonyms in the language that reflect our grievances with life.
“And the result was . . .”
Can we ever really predict what that result will be? Consider the random nature of an encounter: a look across a room; a casual conversation on a subway train. Consider, a little further on from this initial meeting, the decision to take the hand of this person as she sits opposite you in a restaurant. Your companion may pull away. She may allow you to keep it there. She may take this as a sign of intent or nothing more than a come-on. She may think you’re worth spending a night with and change her mind ten minutes later. She may be wanting something more. She may be wanting something far less. In the aftermath of whatever happens, there is one undisputable fact surrounding the event: when you took her hand, you were after something. Though you might think, at the time, that this “something” is rooted in an obvious need (sex, romance, or other variations on an amorous theme), the truth is: you won’t understand what the true meaning of the moment was until long after it has been stored in that cluttered room we litter with memory. Even then, the hindsight that we bring to this incident will only serve to heighten the conflicting emotions surrounding said memory . . . if, that is, there is any memory to begin with. Everything’s interpretation, after all. As such, we can look back on an action, a gesture, several words uttered without premeditation, and find ourselves wondering: did everything change because of that? Or are we simply rendering the past in such a way to explain the uncomfortable realities of the present?
“And the result was . . .”
A bad marriage that lasted twenty-four years, that saw the two players in this melodrama play endless self-destructive games and my mother commit suicide on the installment plan, courtesy of cigarettes. Say my mother—who had finally broken it off with a certified public accountant named Lester Hamburger only a week before—hadn’t shown up at the wedding? Or say she had arrived with Lester in tow? Would that look across the room have ever happened? Would Dad have met someone more caring, more loving, less judgmental? Would Mom have ended up with the rich bohemian she always talked about wanting to marry—though Lester Hamburger and my Nixon-supporting dad weren’t exactly the Rimbaud and Verlaine of Manhattan. But one thing is for certain: had Alice Goldfarb and Dan Nesbitt not have hooked up, their shared unhappiness would have never existed—and the trajectory of their lives may have been completely different.
Or maybe not.
Similarly, if I had not reached for Jan Stafford’s hand on that third date . . . well, I would certainly not be sitting here in this cottage, glancing anxiously at the petition for divorce that still occupied the same place on the kitchen table when I fled from it days ago. That’s the thing about a tangible reality like a divorce petition. You may shove it to one side or walk away from it. But it’s still there. It does not go away. You have been named as the respondent. You are now answerable to a legal process. You can’t dodge this fact. Questions will be asked, answers demanded. And a price will be paid.
My lawyer had been in touch with me by