What He's Poised to Do

Mortenson was the one who left, which was predictable. He was mobile. In fact, he could not stop moving, and the minute he was gone it seemed like a small miracle that he had ever been there at all. Schiff never regained his balance, morally speaking. After he parted ways with Mortenson, he became sullen and capricious. He would not come out of his house except to go to his office, and vice versa. Two weeks after Mortenson’s departure, Lisa left to return to school. That was how my summer ended, and how the things in it ended, too. I went back to school. I graduated, aged, did my best not to let time do its worst to me. I wrote Lisa one long letter that I never mailed and eventually threw away, keeping only the envelope, which was addressed to her but not stamped. Years later, I drove by the building, checked the nameplate, relived that summer. Then I returned the car to the airport and flew back home.

ABOUT FOUR MONTHS AFTER my visit to Florida, I was traveling by train to my sister’s home in Delaware, and as we pulled out of the Philadelphia station, I looked up and saw Lisa standing in the aisle. I had already experienced a sense of displacement, thanks to a young man I had seen when I was boarding the train. His hair was uneven to the left, as if put to the side by an idea, but other than that he was exactly what I was at that age. I put up my bag. I sat down, read a little bit of history, looked up, and Lisa was there.

We were in our fifties by then. Or rather, I should say that I saw with a start that she was, and I realized that I must be, too. I debated whether to reach out and tap her on the hip, and when I realized that the only thing deterring me was the idea that the gesture might be perceived as flirtatious, that was enough to push me forward. She turned and smiled even before she saw who it was. Then her smile vanished and returned, somewhat dimmed and thus more powerful. She sat down next to me. I tried to see her as she was, hopeful that it would help her see me as I was. Can a man be happy in memory or only lonely?

We had a grand old time, looking out the windows until night fell and making light of what we saw. After that we traded stories about the lives we had lived, and those we had failed to live. She had married a man who owned a small lumber company. The two of them had been through good years and bad years. They had two children who gave them equal parts joy and trouble. “I’m happy, but like everyone, I didn’t do nearly what I wanted to do,” she said. She did not, despite her story, look like a woman who had made sacrifices.

For my part, I told her that my first wife had been a poet, by which I meant an heiress, and that the union had ended badly, and that I had spent quite a bit of time living the bachelor’s life before eventually finding a second wife. “No children,” I said. “That’s maybe the one abiding regret.” We got, after a time, on to the matter of the office. I told her about my recent visit. “Same little building,” I said. She asked me if I had heard that both Schiff and Mortenson had died. I said no but that I had assumed so. We sat in silence for a little while. She hummed, and I tried to recall her as a younger woman, when her papery skin was a pliant pink and the clothes she wore suggested their own absence.

“I remember that summer so well,” she said. “Do you?”

“A little,” I said, lying.

“Remember Jeff?” she said. I nodded. Now she was back in the past with me, or more accurately without me. “We had such a wonderful trip that week. I’m afraid I didn’t let him work on the model even for a minute.” She smiled at me. “You and I had quite a discussion about it, if I remember correctly.”

We had not, of course, at least as far as I remembered. And I would have remembered. Still, it didn’t surprise me; I may have suspected as much at the time, and by now I was far past being harmed even by confirmation. Still, and despite all the wisdom I believed I had acquired, I was overcome by a sense that all the time since had been miserably misspent, and that fear propelled me up from my seat.

“I could use something to wet my whistle,” I said.

“Wet mine while you’re there,” she said, laughing. Her eyes went up coyly, as if she were a much younger woman.

I went off to the dining car. At the far end I noticed the young man I had seen boarding the train, the junior version of me. He was pushed up close to a young woman, speaking animatedly. “I don’t know how you feel about me, exactly,” he said. “You don’t say.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t say.”

His head bowed in sadness. He was better than me at being me, right down to the failures.