And he did. He understood the situation this woman was in. He felt the sadness of it as though an outgoing tide moved slowly through him.
“I brought it on myself,” she said, sitting partly up and looking at him. He only shrugged. “No, no, I did. I know that.” And he shrugged again and shook his head with a small, slow shake.
He almost said, What are you going to do, Pam? But then he understood that she had come here to Maine for him to tell her what to do. And so he said, “Well, Pam, here’s what I think you should do.” And her eyes quickened, and she sat up straighter on the bed and said, “Tell me what to do, Bobby.”
“First, get yourself into a good AA program, and second, decide whether you want to leave Ted or not. Think about the boys. And then think about what it is you want to do with the rest of your life. You’re healthy, and you’re smart, Pam. You never thought you were smart, but you are. So think about what it is you want from the next fifteen years of your life.”
She put a finger near her mouth and nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“Find the best AA program in the city, Pam. Just do it.”
She nodded, as though she had already thought of that—which she had.
“What about Ted? Did you tell him what you heard with Lydia?”
She looked at Bob with slight disgust. “Of course not. First, I would have had to tell him why I was in the dressing room, but the real reason I didn’t tell him—”—and here Pam shifted so that she was sitting up straight against the headboard of the bed—“—is because I don’t really care. I don’t care, Bob.”
“You don’t love him.”
She looked at Bob for a long time and then she said, “No, I don’t.”
“Do you respect him?”
She glanced at the wall and then out the window and then back at Bob. “Why in the world would I respect him?”
*
They spoke for almost four hours. The sun had gone down, and Bob was hungry. But he was also— What was he? He was filled with the deepest sensation of loss and also of love, he loved her, and she was no longer his wife. But she was Pam, and as he watched her walking across the room, he thought that just to have her in his life was enough. When he asked her to come to his house for dinner, she said, “No, Bob. No disrespect to Margaret. But she might think I have Covid, and just— Well, thanks, but no.”
As he opened the door to leave, Pam called, “Wait! Wait! I wanted to ask you about Lucy Barton. Did she come up here with William?” She walked over to him.
Bob said, “Yeah, she’s still here.”
“Do you know her?” Pam stood with her hand on the edge of the door.
“I do. She’s become a good friend.”
“You’re kidding me! Bob!” Pam put her hand on his arm. “I met her a few years ago at William’s birthday party, but I didn’t even know I was talking to Lucy Barton! I just thought she was one of William’s ex-wives. She doesn’t look anything like her jacket photo. But do you think she would do a Zoom for my book club? Oh my God, that would give me so much social stock if I got Lucy Barton to come to the book club!”
And then Bob realized that she was still who she was, Pam.
He simply shook his head and said he would see her tomorrow before she left.
—
In his car driving back home, Bob kept shaking his head. Her book club! When they had just spent the entire afternoon talking about her—as she had said repeatedly—her insipid idiot friends. Oh Pam, Pam. Pam.
*
Margaret said, “She’s not with you?” And Bob said, No, Pam was afraid you might think she had Covid, and Margaret didn’t answer, but when Bob said to her “I’m glad I’m married to you,” Margaret leaned over and kissed his cheek.
“How was she?” Margaret asked.
Bob said, “She’s become an alcoholic.”
Margaret held up the wooden spoon with which she had been poking at a pan on the stove and said, “Nobody becomes an alcoholic, Bob. They are born alcoholics.”
And then Bob remembered that they had had this conversation before, about the Alcoholics Anonymous group that held its meetings in the church. So he said, “Well, she’s quit for the moment. She’s going to go to AA.”
—
Margaret had a lot to talk to him about. The locksmith in town who was a heroin addict—Margaret had learned this from a parishioner—had some younger man living with him, and the gossip was that the younger man wanted money from the locksmith, he was trying to blackmail him, and this younger guy was using fentanyl. Also, Elaine Harwood’s husband had fallen on the sidewalk and hit his head and was in the hospital, so Margaret had to deal with Elaine, and so on and so forth.
Bob did not tell her anything more about Pam and her drinking and her son who was wearing women’s clothes. He listened to his wife. But it went through his head unbidden: the story that Olive had told Lucy about living with a ghost in one’s marriage, because he thought: I will tell Lucy about Pam, and she will care.
*
The next morning, as Bob tugged Pam’s rolling suitcase behind him to her rental car, Pam said that she was going to Shirley Falls to see Susan before going back to the airport, she had not seen her in years. It made Bob extremely glad to think of Pam and his sister visiting with each other after so many years. “That’s wonderful,” he said. He and Pam hugged by the car. “What was wonderful was seeing you, Bob, oh my God,” Pam said, and Bob told her the same.
A few hours later he had gone to have his midday smoke, which he sometimes did in the back parking lot of an old inn that had closed years before and had vines growing all over it. He had just lit his cigarette when Pam called him. “Bobby? I’m calling you from the car. I’m on the way to the airport and I just left Susan. Listen, I don’t know if I should tell you this— Well, I’m just going to.” She stopped. “Maybe I shouldn’t.” Bob exhaled his smoke, and then Pam said, “Okay, Helen is dying. She has—at the very most—one month to live, and Jim doesn’t want you to know yet, even though he told Susan a week ago. It’s her pancreas,” she added.
Bob said, “What did you say, Pam?” She repeated what she had just said. And here was what was so interesting: Bob felt nothing. After talking to Pam some more, he hung up, and he felt nothing. Nothing!
—
And then, of course, as he finally finished his cigarette, it came swooping down and grabbed him by his stomach, it seemed, and he just kept murmuring: No. No, no no….
7
