The Writing Circle Read online

  He took a last look at the study: the two pillows squashed together at the head of the bed, the two armchairs pulled close to the fireplace, the ash in the fireplace, feathery, the color of doves. He closed the front door behind him and stood on the doorstep looking out at the marsh. He watched Gillian as she walked along, head bowed as if she were studying the ground. She bent to pick something up, a shell perhaps? Before she had straightened up again to examine it in her hand, he had begun running towards her. He had stopped thinking now, stopped trying to decide what to do; he just moved.

  She turned when she heard him approaching. He was out of breath, and she gave him a little smile, her head cocked, while she waited for him to speak. But it wasn’t just the running that kept him from speaking. He had no words, all he had was images: Gillian’s long, slender thigh, his own fingers running from her knee up to the curve where the pale skin stretched tight across her hip. His hand moved now, to touch the hair on the side of her face that had gotten free of the sweater’s hood, but it moved too slowly. He rushed ahead and kissed her mouth—kissed her without asking if he could—and then turned and started running back towards his car. He got in and started it up without looking towards the marsh. But after he had turned the car around and was ready to drive off, he stopped and looked back at the whole scene. Gillian was walking towards the house now, her hands in her pockets. She looked so small against the wide marsh. The last thing in the world he wanted to be doing was to drive off, to leave her there. But that’s what he knew he had to do.

  KIM HAD LEFT HIM SEVERAL MESSAGES on his cell phone, as well as his voice mail at work. Her voice, perky and familiar, grew more querulous with each call.

  “I got offered free tickets to the Natalie MacMaster concert last night,” she said when he got back to her. “I was so frustrated I couldn’t get ahold of you.”

  “So, did you go?”

  “Yup. Sandy went with me.”

  “How was it?”

  “Amazing,” said Kim. “You would have loved it.”

  To make up for his initial annoyance at the persistence of Kim’s messages, Adam took her out for dinner at Peking Garden, the more expensive of the two Chinese restaurants in town. Across the booth from him, Kim unwound her long scarf and laid it on the seat next to her. Her soft blond hair was puffed out on one side of her head with static electricity. She leaned back against the banquette and smiled at him. She had a round face, and her eyes were set wide apart, which gave her, Adam felt, a slightly bovine look.

  “How come you turned your cell phone off?” Kim asked.

  “I didn’t,” said Adam. “Battery must have run out.” The lie came to him so quickly, so easily, it startled him. He wasn’t a skilled liar, wasn’t used to lying. He couldn’t remember ever having lied to Kim. He had never had any reason to lie to her before.

  “Where were you yesterday?” asked Kim after their food had arrived and they’d started eating.

  “Helping out a friend.”

  Kim’s eyebrows went up.

  “No one you know,” said Adam. “Just an old friend who was in a bit of trouble.” He said this in a tone designed to lead Kim to believe it was someone who had gotten themselves into something possibly illegal and it was best for all involved not to discuss it further.

  “Okay,” said Kim, and she didn’t ask anything more. She wasn’t a prying person. Also, she trusted him. He’d never given her any reason not to.

  “Here,” she said. “Open up. I know you love these.” She held her chopsticks out towards him, a piece of slick, black mushroom pinched between the ends.

  “You like them, too.”

  “Not as much as you,” said Kim. “Besides, I’ve had some.” The mushroom was out of focus now, close to his face. He opened in compliance, felt the slimy surface against his lips. Kim pushed it into his mouth.

  “Good?” she asked.

  He chewed and nodded, but it was hard for him to swallow.

  They went back to her apartment after dinner. He didn’t want to stay the night, but she looked so hurt when he said he had to leave, he ended up staying anyway. The bathroom Kim shared with her two housemates was filled with hair products, gels, makeup, and lotions that smelled cloyingly of fruit. A hair dryer rested like a pistol across the cluttered counter. He thought of the bathroom in Gillian’s house, an oval of bone-colored soap in a clamshell beside the blue basin. When he came back to the bedroom, Kim was standing by the bed, setting her alarm. She’d taken out her contacts earlier, and she had her eyeglasses on. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt and fuzzy slippers, and the heavy-framed eyeglasses made her look like a precocious child.

  Adam took off his clothes and slipped under the bedcovers. Kim laid her glasses on the bedside table and lifted her arms to take her T-shirt off. There was still a pink semicircle under each small breast, a mark from her underwire bra. She turned off the light, darted under the covers, and cuddled next to him.

  “I missed you,” she said. She stretched her neck up and planted a series of loud kisses on his mouth.

  He didn’t say anything in return, but he put his arm under her and drew her close.

  “Tired?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m beat,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I’m pretty tired, too.”

  He reached over with his free arm and rested his hand on her shoulder. She lifted it to her face and gave it a kiss. Her fingers touched the band around his wrist.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  Grateful for the dark so that Kim could not see his face, Adam struggled to figure out what to say. “Just something someone left on my desk at work.”

  “Why are you wearing it?” asked Kim.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Just fiddling with it.”

  “It’s not good to have something tight around your wrist like that,” said Kim. She slid her finger under the band and began to pull it off.

  He pushed her hand away. “Hey, leave that, will you?”

  “Okay,” she said. She moved away from him a little. “Adam?” she asked after a moment. “Is something the matter?”

  “No, everything’s fine,” he said. “I’ve just had kind of a hard day.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Kim. “You want to talk about it?”

  “No, I just want to go to sleep.”

  “Sure,” said Kim. “It’s just nice to have you here.” She snuggled close. Her hair smelled of strawberry-scented shampoo.

  Adam closed his eyes, but he did not sleep. He didn’t want to think about the night before, didn’t want to touch any of that here, now. He was afraid he might injure it in some way. But there was nothing else he could fix his mind on, and images of Gillian kept intruding. He forced himself to think about things in her house instead—the wax pooling around the bases of the candlesticks at dinner, the logs settling in the fireplace in the study. His arm, pinned under Kim’s body, ached, but he felt obligated to keep it there.

  Nancy

  ON THE MORNING OF THE NIGHT THAT ROBERT OATES Mullingford asked her to marry him, Nancy put fresh linens on their bed. With luck, he’d be home for dinner, but even if his flight were delayed, he’d certainly be home by that night. Nancy never changed the sheets while Oates was gone—she wanted to sleep with the nap of the flannel matted down by his warm body, with the scent of his breath and his sweat. But before he came home, she always made the bed up with clean sheets. Ever since they’d started living together, she’d done it every time he was gone for a business trip; it had become a ritual, a way of ensuring his safe return.

  Nancy pulled the duvet cover off the down quilt, stripped the sheet off the mattress, and shook the pillows free from their pillowcases. A small white feather rose on a draft of air. She watched it float past the bedpost, then settle on the floor. She laid the folded fresh linens on the bed. They smelled of the lavender sachet from the closet, but she knew the smell wouldn’t last long. Oates had been gone for two weeks, and now, so close to the
time of his return, she didn’t mind being alone. She wondered what it would be like if he no longer had to travel for his business. Maybe he would have to go away somewhere just so she could suffer their separation, the price she paid so she could savor the anticipation of his returning, so she could feel the relief and joy—no, it wasn’t hyperbolic to call it joy—of their reunions.

  They’d bought the bed at an auction on impulse. It was their first purchase together, only three weeks after they met. By then Nancy didn’t want them sleeping in a bed she had slept in with other men, or worse, a bed he had slept in with other women.

  On their first night in their bed, Nancy had said, “I guess I own this side, and you own your side,” but Oates had laughed.

  “You don’t divide beds sideways,” he said. “You divide them across the middle.”

  “And who gets which half?”

  “You get the heads, of course,” said Oates. “And I get everything from the waist down.”

  Nancy worked the corners of the quilt up inside the duvet cover—always a trick—and held it tight on the bottom edge while she shook it. Lofting, that’s what the saleswoman in the shop had called it when she and Oates had bought the quilt together. The saleswoman had given them a demonstration, expertly fluffing the quilt till it was inflated to three times its size. Then she had compressed it and stuffed it back into the cotton storage bag, tightening the drawstring top, a conjurer undoing her trick. It had made Nancy uncomfortable to have this strange woman handle their quilt, touch something intimate, something that would float on their naked bodies, that they would make love under.

  Before she went downstairs, Nancy put on perfume Oates had given her for her birthday, Je Reviens, I will return. Strangely, she had never thought before that he might have selected it for its name rather than its scent. She touched the glass stopper to her wrists and neck, then ran it down her chest to the hollow between her breasts, stretching the neckline of her sweater. She dabbed her belly button and reached down inside her pants to the crease of her thigh. But she did not touch herself more, as she might have done if Oates were not coming home that night.

  She looked at the bed and readjusted the pillows. It seemed important that the bed be perfectly symmetrical, the pillows aligned. When the phone rang, she held her breath for a moment before answering, afraid it was Oates saying he was delayed. But to her surprise it was Chris.

  “By any chance are you free for lunch?” he asked.

  “Today?”

  “Yes, today. I know people usually schedule lunches weeks in advance, but then they’re always canceling and rescheduling. So I thought I’d see if you could join me at the last minute.”

  “I suppose I could,” said Nancy.

  “I’ll take that for a ‘yes,’ ” said Chris, “though I’d hoped for a bit more enthusiasm.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Nancy. It was the expression she used so often it came out automatically, whether she was actually sorry or not. “I didn’t mean to convey a lack of enthusiasm.”

  “It’s okay,” said Chris. “I’m sure you’re wondering why is this guy asking me for lunch? Am I right?”

  Nancy couldn’t help laughing. “Yes, you’re right.”

  “I thought it would be nice for us to get acquainted. You’re new. Others know you, but I don’t.”

  They settled on a time and a place, a new restaurant in town called Xantha’s, which she hadn’t been to yet, but Chris obviously had. She did wonder what the real reason was for him asking her for lunch. He didn’t seem like a man who would waste a lunch on something as inconsequential as getting acquainted.

  Nancy hung up the phone carefully. So far Oates’s return was still safe. She went downstairs to her study. She wanted to work on her novel this morning, but she had a deadline for the newsletter. She finished an article she’d been doing on the disappointing news about virtual colonoscopies and turned her attention to licorice, which had recently been implicated in a study on hypertension. It caused salt retention, contributed to weight gain, and raised the risk of heart arrhythmia. Still, the very word licorice made her salivate. She loved all kinds of licorice: the soft twisties you had to peel apart, the disks stamped to resemble coins, the bean-size pastilles that came in a little tin. Her mother hated licorice, but her father relished it as she did. He’d buy a bag of licorice shoestrings and they’d eat them together, twirling them around their tongues, dangling them into their mouths like black spaghetti. One time they’d started at opposite ends of a long strand and chewed towards each other until they were nose to nose. Nancy’s father’s top drawer always smelled of Black Jack gum. You didn’t see it around anymore, that blue package with the black oval.

  Condemning licorice in her newsletter made Nancy feel like a traitor to the pleasure of her past. After all, she had eaten licorice all her life and hadn’t suffered any ill effects. At least not that she knew of. Old loyalty made her suspicious that maybe it wasn’t licorice but something else that would prove to be the culprit, licorice merely the innocent bystander. Studies were always contradicting previous studies, though it could take years for a reversal. All her newsletter did was alert people to the latest findings. But it was all so pathetic, really. In spite of all the fancy technology, they were still naïve about the mysteries of the human body. She could forgive the medical community its innocence, but she had more trouble forgiving it its arrogance. The so-called wisdom doctors dispensed was just the theory of the moment. Her father had known this. In his early life as a doctor, he had learned about it firsthand.

  Nancy pushed her laptop towards the back of her desk and closed the lid. She realized she’d lost the proper narrative tone for her article. Lost faith, for the moment, in the voice she had created, that friendly, authoritative voice, the pseudophysician who informed, illuminated, reassured. She needed to get away from her desk, get out of the house. She often took a walk in the late morning as a break from work. She grabbed a jacket and went outside. Few cars came along her road at this time of day. The road paralleled the river, and she walked upstream, as she usually did, towards the Kleinholz farm.

  Teresa Kleinholz was Nancy’s friend, though their friendship was constrained by their political differences. Nancy liked everything else about Teresa. Teresa was instinctively generous and worked hard without talking about it. She had a pudgy face, little blue eyes, and wore itchy-looking sweaters and scarves that she knit herself. Although they’d dexterously avoided talking about politics all the years they’d known each other, the bumper sticker Teresa put on her car at the last election ended any possibility they would ever be close. Even now, the bumper sticker, dirty and torn at the edges, made Nancy tighten her lips each time she saw it.

  The Kleinholzes owned two horses, bought for Teresa’s daughter, Kate. Kate was busy in high school now and no longer enchanted by equines, and Teresa had inherited the horses and their care. One of the horses was a mare with an attitude, the other an old gelding named Jackie, whom Nancy had ridden a number of times. He had a white patch on the front of his face that looked as if he had leaned against a freshly painted fence. He was slow, gentle, and partially blind in one eye. When Nancy took care of the horses when the Kleinholzes were out of town, she was partial to Jackie, sneaking him an extra apple. Today, as she climbed the hill towards the farm, she recognized the vet’s black pickup truck in the driveway and walked faster. When she got closer, she saw a little tableau in the far corner of the field: Jackie was lying on the ground, with Teresa and the vet bent over him. The mare stood eyeing things from a safe distance.

  Nancy leaned on the fence and tried to make out what was going on. Teresa and the vet were intent on what they were doing and didn’t look up. Nancy debated going across the field, but it seemed wrong to disturb them. Also, she was afraid to get any closer. Whatever was happening there in the field, it didn’t look good. Horses didn’t lie down like that unless there was something really the matter. Nancy turned and started walking back home again. Then she bro
ke into a run. The road had a lot of sand in the pavement. Slivers of mica glinted in the sunlight. Nancy ran until she was far enough from the Kleinholzes’ farm, far enough so she didn’t have to see if Jackie was dying.

  WHEN SHE GOT TO THE RESTAURANT, Nancy found Chris already seated at a table by the window. She would never have chosen that table, where they were on display to everyone walking by. The glass came right down to the floor, so even their feet, under the table, had no privacy.

  Chris had a pink, freshly shaved look, and his dark hair looked as if it had just been professionally styled. Oates’s hair was grey, and Nancy cut it herself while Oates sat on a stool in the kitchen, an old bedsheet draped around him.

  “It’s great you were able to come,” said Chris. “I thought I should get to know you a little, not rely on what others said about you.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “Only good things,” he said. “What a valuable addition you’d be to the Leopardi Circle. What a magnificent writer you are.” He leaned towards her over the table. He smiled and sniffed. “Nice!” he said.

  How much perfume had she put on, anyway? It had been a while ago, but perhaps sweating had brought it out again. She had a horrible thought that Chris might think she had perfumed herself for him. Was it possible that he thought she was available, that this lunch was a prelude to a date? She would have to work Oates into the conversation as quickly as she could.

  But Chris was a step ahead of her. “Just so you know,” he said, “there are no rules about people seeing each other outside of class.”

  “Do you mean seeing each other, as in having lunch together, or do you mean something more?”

  “Either,” he said.

  The waitress appeared to take their order. Chris had obviously already studied the menu and knew what he wanted. Nancy looked at it quickly and ordered a turkey sandwich, usually a safe choice.