Alternate Side(67)

When she turned she could see his big pale hand raised in the darkness, caught for an instant in the streetlight coming through the curtains. He waved it in a circle that seemed to take in the room, the house, the city outside. “I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t.”

He never came to bed. She never fell asleep. And so the day was done, and another dawned.





          NORA NOLAN HAS MOVED.

     HOME: 601 West 100th Street, apartment 15B

     OFFICE: The Beverley Foundation, 60 West 125th Street, suite 1010

     She can be reached by email at

     [email protected]

     or [email protected].





Nora and Charlie soldiered on for months after Jack Fisk died, but that night in the living room something had broken, and it became clear by inches that it could not be mended. When one of you wanted one life, and the other wanted something completely different, there was a technical term for that: irreconcilable.

Nora realized that she was familiar with three kinds of marriages: happy, miserable, and somewhere in between. Somehow the words Charlie spoke that June evening moved them from one column to another. They started to look around for middle ground and realized they’d been on parallel paths for so long that there wasn’t any. One minute you were two people who loved each other despite your differences. And then one morning you realized—granola for him, oatmeal for her, skim milk for him, full-fat for her, coffee for him, tea for her—that you were nothing but.

“What do you think of couples’ counseling?” Nora had asked Sherry, who was sitting in the Greek diner on Broadway while real estate agents wandered her house to decide which clients might buy it.

“I’ve never known anyone who stayed together because of it,” Sherry said. “Best case, it stops people from using tooth and claw on each other, which can mean it’s really worth it. Do you know someone who needs a referral?” Nora didn’t know what showed on her face, but Sherry put down a piece of rye toast and said, “Oh, no. Oh, goodness. Can I help?”

Expired, she thought to herself, looking at Sherry and remembering that evening at the Fisk house. We’ve expired. Charlie drank more and slept less. When he was home, the place somehow seemed even emptier. Jack’s downfall and death had been like a dog whistle, sending Charlie a signal that only he could hear about his own existence.

It was a happy event that finally did them in, which she supposed came as no surprise. She remembered once telling Christine that at weddings people decided either to break up or to take it to the next level. They had been at the wedding of friends from high school, at a big country club overlooking the sound, boat horns drowning out the string quartet, and Christine turned to her and said, “I’m going to dump Bradley in the morning.” Just like that. She remembered Charlie squeezing her hand during the vows. From this day forward, as long as you both shall live. Somehow when you’re saying those words, you never realize what a long time “as long as you both shall live” will amount to.

Jenny had invited them to dinner at her apartment, although Jenny made it her business never to cook, early on saying it was a tool of the patriarchy and later insisting that with the takeout options in her neighborhood alone, it was simply foolish. “I think it’s to admire her new kitchen,” Nora told Charlie, the two of them sitting side by side in the back of a car like two strangers who left a party and realized at the curb that they had nearby destinations.

The cabinets were beauties, sleek to the ceiling, a pine with a showy grain that had been stained to a pale shadow of its usual gold, even prettier than the sample Jenny had shown her. And there was not a takeout container to be seen. Jasper had made a chicken stew with dried fruit and shallots, and a loaf of sourdough bread. Apparently he had a sourdough starter that he had been toting from place to place with him for years. “It’s been his most enduring relationship,” Jenny said, smiling at Jasper, dipping her bread into the stew, at which point Nora noticed the rigged silver band on her left hand. Nora looked at Jenny, then at Jasper, then pointedly back at the ring.

“I made an honest woman out of her,” Jasper said, shrugging.

Jenny blushed. Nora had never, in all the years they were friends, seen Jenny blush.

“What?” Charlie said with his mouth full. “What am I missing here?”

The ring looked oddly familiar. “He made it out of a quarter,” Jenny said.

“Doesn’t that count as defacing currency?” Charlie said.

“Really, Charlie?” Nora said.

“That was a stupid thing to say. Let me see.” Charlie put out his big hand, and Jenny dropped the ring into it. Charlie looked at Jasper and nodded. “That. Is. Cool,” he said, handing it back to Jenny. He and Nora looked at each other, and he nodded again, and they had a moment of understanding: We had this once, but no more. It reminded Nora of that moment at the symphony when there is a silence and, instead of the end of a movement, it means the end of the piece. She was grateful that Jenny was looking down at her ring and hadn’t seen.

When they had paired off over port—“the guy knows wine,” Charlie said afterward—Jenny had said, ruefully, “He needed decent health insurance. You should have seen the premiums on his plan. And the deductible was a joke.”