Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk(28)

The waiter returned and set Max’s lobster before him and my Delmonico steak before me. Almost two inches thick and shot through with delicate marbling, it was delectable. But I did not feel like delecting. A small, shapely mountain of Delmonico’s potatoes lay on the side—mashed, covered in grated cheese and buttered breadcrumbs, gently baked—but I could scarcely scale it.

We talked—about the logistics of sharing our place up in Maine, holidays, saving for Johnny’s college, and so on. I picked at the meat and moved the potatoes around the plate, hoping Max wouldn’t notice. He did. The same eagle eye for detail that had made him so effective as the head rug buyer at R.H. Macy’s never failed to set itself upon any and everything in his line of sight.

“I thought you said you had your appetite back,” said Max. “I thought Dr. R put you on a program.”

“Please don’t be critical,” I said. “I’m trying.”

“Lils,” he said, using the nickname only he used. “You’ve got a fine mind. Don’t let’s confuse criticism with concern.”

“I’m not confused, Max,” I said. “But surely you can understand that this cuisine is a bit more robust than the dining options I had in the hospital. I’m still adjusting.”

“All right, all right,” he said, with that gesture I’d come to hate: two open palms facing me and patting the air, as if pushing me away, pushing me down, pushing any tears I might be preparing to cry back into their ducts.

Max had ordered Lobster Newburg, a sea bug drowning in butter and cream and eggs and cognac. As he ate, I could practically see a future heart attack peering over his shoulder, licking its fatty chops. But it was not my place any longer to remark upon ways he might extend his life.

Things between us had always been light and witty; we realized too late how grave life could be. By then I found I had no effective means of being serious, and the needle of my personality flung itself all the way over to crushing sadness and debilitating ennui. Now I was the kind of person who said things like:

“You know, Max, you could have been a lot more decent about all this. Writing to me in the hospital, asking if I could leave long enough to fly to Reno and get it over with faster?”

“Look, Lils, I know that. I admit it and I’m sorry,” he said. “But you could have been a lot more decent about a lot of things too. You’re not being fair.”

“What I’m driving at isn’t fairness,” I said, “but honesty. If, for example, you’d been earning more money, I wouldn’t have needed to write that letter to the orthodontist. The judge said that you’re responsible for those incidentals, but we both know you’re not good for it right now. Let’s be frank about that.”

“If you were being honest, you’d admit what you’ve been like these last few years,” he said. “How difficult. Unfunny. Not the girl I married.”

“If you were being honest,” I said, “you’d admit what you’ve been like, too. And no one stays a girl forever, Max. Time doesn’t work that way.”

“You’re a poet, Lils,” he said. “Therefore I fail to see your need to be so literal minded all of a sudden. That’s not what I meant.”

“No?” I said. “I just want you to admit—honestly—the realities of Julia. Much more girlish, yes? Fifteen years more girlish than I. And you took up with her almost a year before I got sick. She wasn’t just your employee at the import-export for all that long.”

The Amarone and my otherwise empty stomach had helped make me righteous but reckless: Even as I felt the reins slipping, I heard my voice regaining youthful force. Though I was in the right—the injured party, near Christlike in my magnanimity for not having shared what I knew of Julia with the judge—I had until that moment avoided confronting Max about her fully. He would know that my information could only have come from one source. While it was clear that Johnny was destined to become simultaneously the referee and the playing field for a stupid, degrading, protracted scrimmage between Max and me, I had intended to delay the starting whistle a bit longer.

“Listen,” Max said, “let’s drop it. What’s done is done. I’m leaving New York. Johnny’s staying. I wish you well. Enjoy the apartment.”

“Of course I’ll enjoy the apartment!” I said. “It’s mine. I paid for it. And don’t try to pretend that I’m taking it from you, or that you even want to stay here. You’re moving to Chicago because Julia’s uncle can get you a job in the Merchandise Mart.”

The sad and wounded expression that Max had been wearing finally failed, becoming apparent for what it was, a mask. He balled his napkin up and threw it on the table. “I don’t have to sit for this if that’s the way you want to play it,” he said.

“I’m not playing, Max. I just think we should tell the story straight. We owe it to Johnny, if not to each other.”

That was an underhanded move on my part, and to no end. If Max recognized it as bait, he didn’t take it. He was a hard, brash, handsome man to the day he died. “The story’s been told, Lillian,” he said. “The story’s over.”

“Yes,” I said. “Between us it is. And your next story is already well underway. You’re going to be the suburban lord you’ve always wanted to be.”