Bob said, “I wish I could talk to you about this Matt Beach case. But it’s unethical, so I can’t.”
“I understand,” Lucy said. “But do you have any idea how much longer it will go on?”
“No. Just waiting.”
“Oh Bob,” and she looked at him as she said this; her voice was quiet with understanding. And then she said, with excitement in her voice, “Look at the dandelions, Bob, look at them!”
And so he did. And they were just dandelions. He said nothing.
Lucy tapped him on his arm. “But, Bob, they’re beautiful! Don’t you just love them? I always remember when I was young and they would show up in the grass by the side of the dirt road we lived on.”
He stopped walking, and so did she. “Lucy, what exactly is it you like so much about these dandelions?”
She said, “Well, they’re yellow, and they grow in green grass, and the combination of the green and yellow— Oh, I just love it!”
He stood looking at the area where the dandelions grew, and then he saw what she meant: their spots of yellow in the green. “Got it,” he said. And they kept walking.
—
They reached the place where Bob had his cigarette, and as they sat down together on the granite bench he said, “Remember how I told you I’m always terrified?”
“Oh yes,” Lucy said.
“It’s a terrible way to live.”
Lucy said, quietly, “I know that. I know exactly what you mean.” Then, after a moment, she said, “For me, it’s when the sun goes down. God, do I get scared. I can’t help it, I just get so scared.”
He lit his cigarette and watched her. “I’m sorry,” he said, and she said, “Yeah.” He wanted to ask her if William was kind about that—her getting so scared when the sun went down. But he did not ask her. Instead he asked, “What is it that makes you so frightened?”
She looked at him with surprise. And then she pursed her lips as she stared at the river, and she finally said, “Honestly, I don’t know. I really don’t know.” She shrugged slightly and said, “Probably stuff from my childhood.” She glanced at him quickly and then away, and she said, “No one has ever asked me that before. Even that shrink I saw for years in New York. Maybe I never told her how scared I am when the sun goes down. But the answer is, I don’t know.”
“That’s okay,” he said quietly, and for a moment he placed his hand on her knee. They sat together without talking, and then Lucy said, “It’s a strange thing to get older. I mean, thank God the girls seem okay, Chrissy with her baby and Becka with her new fellow. Except as I told you before, Chrissy having that baby has somehow changed her relationship to me. I mean, it almost feels like sometimes she doesn’t even like me anymore.” Lucy waved her hand. “I’ve told you all that. But I think: Something bad is going to happen to those girls after I die, and I won’t be there for them.”
“They’ll have each other,” Bob said, and Lucy said, “Yes, I’ve thought of that. They’ll have each other.”
“I hate getting older,” Bob said. “I think that adds to my terror. But honestly? The way the world is going…I wonder if that’s just because I’m old, or if we really are in a mess.”
“Oh, we’re in a mess.”
They sat together quietly for a few moments. Then Lucy said, looking at him, “Bob, have you ever envied people?”
“Envied them?” he asked.
“Yeah. Like, who is it you envy?”
He glanced at her. He said, “It’s funny you ask that. Because back when Jim was so famous during that Wally Packer trial, people would say to me—some people would say this—‘You must envy your brother.’ But I didn’t. I didn’t envy Jim at all. I loved him. Oh, he was an asshole, but I loved him, and I never envied him, even with the life he had with Helen. That wasn’t my life. So I never envied Jim at all. And it was—it is, now that you’re asking this—interesting that people thought I would. But I just loved him.” After another moment he said, “And I still do.”
Lucy said, “I’ve been thinking about Jim, because you told me once that he said, People always tell you who they are if you just listen—they will always eventually tell you who they are. Do you remember his saying that?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“And I was thinking about that this morning because I got an email from a person I’ve known for years, and the word envy showed up at least five times in her email, and all of a sudden I realized: Oh, she envies people. And I think she might even envy me, because of my success.”
“She probably does.”
“You say that so easily. But it took years for me to realize that.” Lucy shook her head and sighed deeply. “Actually, I only realized that this morning as I read her email.”
He waited.
“I remember when I envied that poor girl who was marrying the prince in England, I was so young, but I remember feeling envious.” Lucy tapped Bob’s arm. “And you know why? Because she had so many clothes! I’m serious. I can remember exactly where I was, when I realized, Oh my God, she has people coming to her to deliver all these clothes! My envy lasted, I’m serious, probably ten minutes. And of course it turned out she was probably the loneliest person on this planet. But I don’t remember feeling envious a lot, Bob, and I don’t understand that. You would think, I would think, that I would have been envious of people from the start, all these mothers who seemed to love their children as they picked them up from school, all those kids who seemed to have normal lives, but I just somehow understood: That’s not my life. And I was always inside my head, and I remember thinking: I’m glad this is my head.”
Bob smoked and squinted out at the river. Lucy kept on talking. “Even as I was working so hard to become a writer, I wasn’t envious of the ones who had success. I would just read their books, and if I liked the book I would think: Wow! Good for you! And if I didn’t like the book but they had gotten a lot of recognition for it, I would think: Well, I’m glad I didn’t write that book, so who cares?”
He watched her while he smoked. She was struggling to say something and finally turned her face to look at him. Then she said, her voice quiet with an understanding, “I think there must be an arrogance involved.”
“What do you mean?” Bob asked, squinting at her through the smoke.
“I think it’s because I’m secretly arrogant.”
Bob shook his head. “I think—since you asked me—I think that being envious is just not a part of your personality.”
She said, “But being secretly arrogant is.”
Bob said, “I used to be envious of people with kids.”
Lucy looked at him quickly. “Oh, of course,” she said.
“But it was kind of a generalized envy. I didn’t want to be those people, I just wished I could have kids.”
