Anything Is Possible(13)

Angelina was still slim and youthful-looking, although she was a few years older than Patty. Yet when Patty saw them both briefly in the mirror at Sam’s Place, she thought that she, Patty, looked much younger—and that Angelina looked drawn. Right away Patty was going to tell Angelina about the book by Lucy Barton. But as soon as they sat down, Angelina’s green eyes swam with tears, and Patty reached across the table and touched her friend’s hand. Angelina held up a finger, and in a minute she was able to speak. “I just hate both of them,” she said, and Patty said she understood. “He said to me, ‘You’re in love with your mother,’ and I was so surprised, Patty, I just stared at him—”

“Oh boy.” Patty sighed and sat back.

A few years ago Angelina’s mother, at the age of seventy-four, had left town—had left her husband—to marry someone in Italy almost twenty years younger than she was. Patty had tremendous sympathy for Angelina regarding this. But she wanted to say right now: Listen to this! Lucy Barton’s mother was awful to her, and her father—oh dear God, her father…But Lucy loved them, she loved her mother, and her mother loved her! We’re all just a mess, Angelina, trying as hard as we can, we love imperfectly, Angelina, but it’s okay.

Patty had been dying to tell her friend this, but she sensed now how paltry—almost nutty—her words would seem. And so Patty listened about Angelina’s children, in high school, almost ready to fly the coop, she listened about the mother in Italy, how she emailed all her girls—Angelina had four sisters—and how Angelina was the only one who had not gone to see her mother, but Angelina was thinking about it, she might go this summer.

“Oh, go,” said Patty. “Do go. I think you should. I mean, she’s old, Angelina.”

“I know.”

Patty was aware of how much Angelina wanted to talk about herself, and yet this didn’t disturb Patty, she merely noticed it. And she understood. Everyone, she understood, was mainly and mostly interested in themselves. Except Sibby had been interested in her, and she had been terribly interested in him. This was the skin that protected you from the world—this loving of another person you shared your life with.

A while later, well into her second glass of white wine, Patty told Angelina about Lila Lane, but she said only the Fatty Patty stuff, and how they all thought she was a virgin. And then she said, “You know, Lucy Barton wrote—”

“Oh, for the love of God,” said Angelina. “You’re as pretty as ever, Patty. Honest to God, to have to listen to that. No one calls you that, Patty.”

“They might.”

“I’ve never heard it, and I hear kids all day long. Patty, you can still meet a man. You’re lovely. You really are.”

“Charlie Macauley is the only man who interests me,” Patty said. This was the wine.

“He’s old, Patty! You know, he’s a mess.”

“In what way is he a mess?”

“I just mean he was in the Vietnam war years ago and he’s— You know, he’s got terrible PTSD.”

“He does?”

Angelina gave a tiny shrug. “I heard that. I don’t know who from. But years ago I heard it. I don’t know, really. His wife is— Well, you’ve got a chance, Patty.”

Patty laughed. “His wife always seemed nice.”

“Oh, come on, she’s an anxious old thing. I’m telling you, go for a spin with Charlie.”

And then Patty wished she hadn’t said anything.

But Angelina didn’t seem to notice. It was herself—and her husband—she wanted to talk about. “I asked him right out the other night on the phone, are you going to start divorce proceedings, and he said no, he didn’t want to do that. So I let it drop. I don’t know why he’d leave but not want a divorce. Oh, Patty!”

In the parking lot, Angelina put her arms around Patty and they hugged, squeezed each other tight, for a moment. “I love you,” Angelina called out as she got into her car, and Patty said, “Back at you.”

—

Patty drove carefully. The wine had made her feel things, although she was not supposed to drink with her antidepressants. But her mind felt large now, and through it went many things. She thought of Sebastian, and wondered if anyone knew what she had not known until he told her—the unspeakable things that had happened to him. She wondered now if it had showed. Something showed, certainly. She remembered how she’d heard in the clothing store one day, as she’d left with Sebastian, the young clerk saying to another clerk, “It’s like she has a dog.”

In Lucy Barton’s memoir, Lucy wrote how people were always looking to feel superior to someone else, and Patty thought this was true.

Tonight the moon was behind Patty, almost, and she saw it in the rearview mirror and winked at it. Her sister Linda came into her mind. Linda saying she didn’t know how Patty could work with adolescents. Patty, driving, shook her head; well, that’s because Linda never knew. No one except Sebastian ever knew. After Sibby’s death, Patty had gone to a therapist. She had planned on telling this woman. But the woman wore a navy blue blazer and sat behind a big desk, and she asked Patty how she felt about her parents’ divorce. Bad, Patty had said. Patty couldn’t figure out how to stop going to this therapist, until she lied and said she couldn’t afford it anymore.