“I get it,” she said.
As he continued to smoke, a thought arose in Bob’s head, he was really thinking about this, and then he said quietly, “Honestly, Lucy? The only people in the entire world that I feel envy for are your daughters.”
“My daughters?” And they looked at each other then, he saw her looking straight at him, as though her gaze had gone inside of him, and then she said quietly, “Oh, because I love them so much.”
“Exactly,” he said. He felt a blush come to his face, and he looked away and took a last deep drag from his cigarette.
For many moments they were silent. Then Lucy said, “But you’re not jealous of William?”
“Nah.” And he meant it. “Sorry,” he said.
She looked at him again—it was hard for Bob to have her looking at him so intensely—and she said, “I get it. I’m not jealous of Margaret either.”
Bob squished out his cigarette and put the butt back into the pack.
—
Lucy stared straight out at the river for a long time, and then she said, “Bob, I think that we are all standing on shifting sand.” She did not look at him as she spoke. “I mean, we don’t ever really know another person. And so we make them up according to when they came into our lives, and if you’re young, as many people are when they marry, you have no idea who that person really is. And so you live with them for years, you have a house together, kids together—” She stopped and said, “Sorry.”
“No, no, go on,” Bob said.
“But even if you marry someone later in life, no one knows who another person is. And that is terrifying. You know how you said you were terrified? As far as I’m concerned, everyone should be. I mean, every so often a couple has a fight and things get said, and it scares them both profoundly, and yet in a heartbeat they pretend that fight never happened, because they can’t proceed with what they just learned. And I understand that. I do.” Lucy nodded, still looking at the river. “What I’m trying to say, Bob, is that people just live their lives with no real knowledge of anybody—like that woman who emailed me this morning and might be filled with envy, but I don’t know if she is!” Lucy said, looking at him now, “My point is that every person on this earth is so complicated. Bob, we’re all so complicated, and we match up for a moment—or maybe a lifetime—with somebody because we feel that we are connected to them. And we are. But we’re not in a certain way, because nobody can go into the crevices of another’s mind, even the person can’t go into the crevices of their own mind, and we live—all of us—as though we can. And I respect that, Bob, I do.
“But none of us are on sturdy soil, we just tell ourselves we are. And we have to. And I get that, and as I said, I respect it. I’m just saying…” She stopped then and looked at him with eyes that had become red-rimmed.
And then— Oh, she had more to say: He could see it in her face, in her body as she sat forward. “But maybe I do envy people and I just don’t know it.” She looked at the river again and said, “Because back in New York, when I was young and William sent me to my first shrink, I remember telling this man—he was a sweet man—I remember saying to him, ‘I’m not lonely.’ But what I remember about that, the whole reason I remember it, is that I saw something move across his face when I said that to him that day, and it wasn’t until probably years later that I realized: Oh, he saw that I was really lonely, but I just didn’t know it. I mean, Bob, you don’t come from my background without being lonely.”
She looked back at Bob with fear on her face.
“Well, if you’re you, maybe you do,” Bob offered.
She didn’t answer him, she had gone somewhere in her thoughts, he could see this. So he said, “When did you first know that you were lonely?”
And she became deflated then, he saw her energy leave her, and she said, “When I found out about William’s affairs. It was as though some bubble I had lived in my whole life just burst, and I realized: Oh.”
He wanted to wrap his arms around her and say, Oh Lucy.
—
She turned again to him and said with a sense of acceptance, “I’m so good at being lonely, though. I’m just so good at it.”
—
He looked out at the river, which was low today.
And then she said, “You know who I envy? All of a sudden I envy someone, Bob!”
“Who?” He turned to look at her.
“I envy a person who is my age who can just leave her life and go on to another.” She was silent then.
And after a long moment, Bob said, “Ah, Lucy, that’s a made-up person. You can’t envy a made-up person.”
“Well, I do,” she said.
“I hear you.” (But he thought: She wants to leave her life?) He added, glancing over at her, “I think I do.”
She said, “You do.”
He held up his cigarette pack. “Thanks,” he said.
“Of course,” she said.
—
As they walked back, Bob felt a sense of dislocation, and they did not speak as they would have in the past. Bob felt—what did he feel?—a quiet inner lifting of exhilaration. He finally said, “Say something. Anything. Just tell me anything.”
Lucy said, “Okay. Charlene Bibber’s dog has dementia. She told me the last time I saw her. We were supposed to take a walk together that week, and I met her in the grocery store, and she told me that her dog—it’s a rescue collie named Boober, very big, I’ve seen him, long thin nose, slanted blue eyes, gorgeous fur—and Charlene has had him five years and she’s just crazy about him. But now he can’t get up unless he can place his legs on a mat, and even then she has to help him. And he really doesn’t understand what is going on. But he does recognize Charlene. Anyway, Charlene can’t leave the house for too long or the dog sort of loses it. His bowl has deep ridges in it so that he can’t eat too fast—he has to lick the food out of the ridges.”
Lucy looked at Bob and continued.
“Charlene has a vet who gives him acupuncture for now, but she knows she’ll have to put Boober to sleep soon, and she’s just not ready to do that yet. The vet says he’ll put the dog down when she’s ready. Oh, and she has a neighbor, some strong man, who said he will pick up the body when the vet puts the dog to sleep.”
They stopped walking and looked at each other. “The vet gives the demented dog acupuncture?” Bob said. “Seriously?”
“That’s what she told me.”
“I’m sorry,” Bob said, because he had started to laugh. “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but, Lucy, what a story.”
