“Okay,” Bob said in a nonchalant manner. “Just don’t go dark on me.”
“Dark on you?”
“Don’t disappear.”
“I’m not going to disappear,” Matt said. “Because you’re tracking me!”
*
To be in love when the outcome is uncertain is an exquisite kind of agony. This is how it was for Bob. At times he felt he was living his very largest life, as though his soul were billowing before him like a huge and rippling sail. For the next few days after that last walk with Lucy, Bob slept profoundly well; he felt in the darkness as though Lucy were lying next to him, close against him, and this was extraordinary for Bob. When he woke, the world seemed magical to him, and he felt that he was experiencing some Large Awareness. But then he would crave Lucy, just to see her, just to be with her, and to really crave anything one might not ever get in this world is a difficult thing. For anybody. But Bob was a patient fellow. He simply waited until their next walk together.
*
But before they had their next walk together, this happened: Bob stepped through the automatic doors of the big grocery store in town, walking over the large sheets of cardboard laid on the floor to catch the grime of people’s boots, and he went down an aisle filled with various oils and pickles and then he saw Lucy looking at the meat section. She seemed small, diminished somehow, and Bob stopped walking as he watched her. Lucy bent over the chicken and then dropped a packet of it into her shopping cart. As she did this a woman walked over to her. Bob knew who the woman was, Arlene Cleary, she had worked in the local bookstore years ago, and her husband was head of the school board. As Bob watched, Arlene stopped and spoke to Lucy. It looked as though Arlene was hesitant at first to speak to Lucy, but she did. Much taller than Lucy, Arlene bent down slightly to say something, and Bob—he would never forget this—saw that Lucy had only a faint smile for the woman. Even from where Bob stood he could tell that Lucy was being barely polite. They spoke briefly, and then Lucy turned away. It went through Bob’s head that Lucy had called herself arrogant, and she seemed that way to him right now. Arlene Cleary walked away, Bob felt, with a slight sense of insult.
But then another woman—and it took Bob a moment to realize it was Charlene Bibber—rushed over to Lucy and flung her arms around her, and Lucy kept hugging her back. They hugged and hugged, and Lucy pulled her head back at some point and wiped a few hairs away from Charlene’s face and then hugged her again. And Bob saw that Charlene was weeping; her dog must have finally been put to sleep.
Bob left the grocery store without buying anything, and he kept thinking about what he had just seen. Many people in town would not have cared so much about Charlene Bibber, because her political views were very different from most people in this mostly liberal town. But Lucy, who had essentially snubbed Arlene Cleary, was hugging poor Charlene as the woman wept. This part did not surprise Bob, but he had been shaken by Lucy’s response to Arlene Cleary.
Bob was aware—as Lucy herself had said—that he did not know her as well as he thought he did. Isn’t that what she had said? We are all standing on shifting sand.
It shook him.
*
Ever since the evening of her fight with Bob, Margaret had felt an uneasiness. She did not fall asleep until late most nights, because these thoughts always came to her in the dark. Her marriage was not what she had assumed it was. But what did she mean by that? And then her mind would follow: She was not what she had assumed she was. It really frightened her. One night as she lay there next to a sleeping Bob, she thought: You’re an actress, Margaret. Quietly, she got up and went down the stairs and sat by the small lamp they always left on at night.
What had crossed Margaret’s mind to reach this understanding was her memory of when Bob had raised his arm and she had said, Don’t you dare raise your arm at me! Thinking about this now, she understood: It had been a false note. She knew that never in his life would Bob be violent toward her and yet she had said that, knowing even as she said it—she understood now—it had been histrionic, it had deflected from the real matter at hand, that she was self-absorbed. Although she still could not quite believe that was true; she rebelled against it inwardly.
But one morning not too long after their fight, as they were having breakfast, Margaret, tightening her bathrobe belt, said, “Bob, do you love me?”
He looked at her with genuine surprise. “Margaret!” He placed his hand on her arm. “Of course I do.”
6
And then came Bob’s weekly walk with Lucy, and she waved as she so often did from the fence, and she came to him quickly and said, “Oh Bob, Charlene had her dog put to sleep.” He listened as she went on about this, and he said, “That’s heartbreaking,” and Lucy said, “But it is!” Only later in the walk did he ask Lucy what she thought of Arlene Cleary, and Lucy waved her hand dismissively and said, “Oh, she’s only interested in me because every so often my name is in the paper. I hate people like that.” She added, “There aren’t many of them in Maine, though, which is good. Why do you ask?” she said. And Bob said, “I just wondered.”
“But something made you ask,” Lucy persisted, so Bob said, “I saw you blow her off in the grocery store.”
Lucy stopped walking. “You did?” She stood there looking at Bob. “Why didn’t you come over and say hi?”
“Because then Charlene showed up and she was upset. I figured it was about her dog.”
“It was,” Lucy said. Lucy didn’t say anything else.
“What?” Bob said. “You think I was spying on you at the grocery store?”
“A little bit.”
“I guess I was,” Bob said.
Lucy frowned and gave a very tiny shake of her head and started to walk again.
“Don’t be mad at me,” Bob said, walking with her.
“I’m not mad at you, Bob. Jesus.” After a moment she said, “I just don’t get it. It kind of makes me feel creepy to think that you were just standing there watching me.” She looked at him, her face was pained.
Bob thought: I could die.
He stopped walking again, and so did she. “Lucy, I’m sorry. I completely get why that would make you feel weird.” And then she smiled at him and reached and touched his arm. “Don’t worry,” she said.
“But I do.”
“I know. But don’t. I was just being an asshole. Seriously, Bob.”
They walked again, and Bob said, “No, I was the asshole.”
“It’s really okay. Don’t think about it.” And she smiled at him to indicate their joke about how they both thought of things too much.
“I bought Matt Beach a cellphone,” Bob said, and Lucy said, “He doesn’t have a cellphone?” And Bob said no, and he told her about buying one with Matt, how happy it seemed to make him, how he was killing Bob with his innocence of the world. “But I can’t say any more about it,” Bob said, and Lucy said, “Don’t.”
Then Lucy spoke of her daughters. She said, as she had before, that maybe in a certain way they didn’t like her anymore, but she wasn’t sure. But she was sure they didn’t need her anymore, and Bob said, “They probably don’t in a certain way,” and she said, “Oh, I know,” but still, she told him how it made her sorrowful. “But not so much anymore,” and again she smiled at him, this time with her full face. He thought that she was beautiful.
—
So there they were, walking and talking. When they reached the spot for Bob to have his cigarette, Lucy said, gazing out at the river, which was high and moving rapidly today, “That was a great talk we had last time. About envy.”
His heartbeat sped up. He said, “I know.”
