Becoming Mrs. Lewis(40)

Or perhaps I did know my fear: that I’d never know real love.

Must I settle for the trouble that was mine? A life of disappointment and anger, alcohol and despair with Bill.

After stashing my valise under a seat, I walked to the dining car and ordered a gin. A tall woman came and sat next to me, and she was elegant in the way I would never be, like Renee.

“Hello,” she said and settled into her seat, crossed her legs daintily. “Are you headed to Edinburgh also?” She swung her fashionable bob of shiny hair.

“Worcester and then Edinburgh,” I said. “I’ve never been to either.”

“Oh, you’ll be charmed, unless you stay too long,” she said with a laugh. “You know, like a man you think you love until you have to live with him.”

I joined her laughter and then added, “Love. It’s never what we believe, is it?” I sounded like a bitter old woman at the end of her affairs.

“Never,” she said. “But isn’t it great fun—the falling into it?”

And it all spilled out. “I feel as if I’m falling in love. And I mustn’t.” I felt the weariness bearing down on me, the way it arrived, bone deep. I pushed my drink away and thought I might sleep for the entire train ride and forget everything.

“Oh, I’m always in love,” she said with a gay sound as tinkling as ice falling from the trees. “Well, where are you from? It sounds like maybe New York.”

“Yes.” I was conscious again of my difference. I would never be like these cultured women with their painted nails and English accents and tiny waists.

A gray-haired man in a suit who smelled of too much cologne sidled to the bar and greeted her. She smiled at him in that secret way women know, and he ordered her a drink. I rose from the barstool, feeling quite awkward, and returned to my seat to collapse. I had just told a stranger that I was falling in love, as if I’d had to say it out loud to know it. I closed my eyes, but sleep was as elusive as Jack himself.

Sunlight poured through the square window as the train skated along the tracks, the scenery a blur of every green. I took out a pad of paper. Who else could I possibly confide in?

The page. It was always the page.

If I looked backward at my loves, perhaps I could rearrange the now, summon the ghosts to this train compartment and reconcile them so they could no longer influence my future. I didn’t want to ruin this friendship with Jack. I needed to go back, start at the beginning of my ash pile of love affairs.

As far as other men, they had paid me no mind until college—my sicknesses, awkwardness, and absences in high school hadn’t led to a social life of any kind. And whom did I choose to first seduce? I was young, only sixteen, and it was my married English professor in college. Dark curly hair, a deep voice that resonated in my chest as we talked about books and history. His eyes so piercing blue they seemed painted on. I’d thought in those days that sex would be enough—that conquering him would satisfy me. But it was never enough. The quick ducking into small rooms, the furtive glances and our bodies coming together in frantic need—remembering it now was shameful. His body had seemed the answer to all my questions and needs. How could I hold Bill’s indiscretions in high-horse judgment when I had done no differently? There had been a wife at home. I’d known that and yet I’d grasped at him all the same, my desire fierce, disguised as love.

For it wasn’t love; it was obsession. The compulsion to own him along with a clawing need to prove I was worthy of such notice. I’d wanted him to sacrifice his life, his wife, to be with me—proof that he loved me. I was as much acting against my father as I was for myself.

Then the next love—a writer at MacDowell Colony. Four summers I’d spent there, the balm of my early writing years. I’d found another writer; he too was older. And I had pursued him as if he were a savior of my own making, proving a fool of myself as I banged on his door in the starry night or waited outside his cottage to see if he’d emerge, seeking me. Was that love? Or avoidance of my own work with obsession? I’d tangled him together with MacDowell, confused the feelings for the place with my feelings for him.

I’d sought lovers to still the spinning sadness inside. I’d sought lovers to quell my pain. I’d sought lovers to fix what could not be fixed. Even when I found solace in another body, even when I’d conquered, still my soul cried out in loneliness. It was never enough to fill me. And still I’d pursued men with embarrassing voracity.

Then there was the movie star—the worst of all embarrassments. Oh, it had been anything but love during those lonely, miserable months in California, trying to be someone I could never be. How I’d pursued him, even as he ran. When he was cast in a show and moved to New York, I stalked him, once even boarding the train he took home to his family merely to catch a glimpse of him.

Obsession and possession again confused with love.

Then, of course, there was my husband. How desperately I’d been trying to verify my worthiness to him, and how long he’d been telling me I wasn’t worthy. I never would be. And still I tried, over and over, expectantly, as if I were bringing Father my report card.

All of my loves had been lost causes, and yet some wrecked part of me kept reaching for more.

My pattern of pining came into view as if I’d stared at the stars until the astrological signs were clear as drawings. My design needed men who could not and would not have me, especially older men.