Later, Neil would have a hard time believing what he’d done. He liked to think of himself as honest, not the sort of man who deceived his wife, or anybody else. It was the pressure of the situation, he decided after it was over. It made him both desperate and cunning.
Neil liked Celia’s parents, he liked her three lively sisters, but he’d never warmed to her brother, Richard. He was the youngest, the baby of the family and the only boy. Celia and her sisters fussed over him, gave him advice and money and discussed his disastrous girlfriends with each other on the phone. Richard was a struggling playwright, which gave a veneer of romance to what Neil considered his general fecklessness.
When Richard called with the news that one of his plays was being staged nearby, of course Celia invited him to stay. There was nothing Neil could have said; it would have been ridiculous for Richard to go to a hotel when he had family so close by. “How long will he be here?” was all Neil asked. Celia said it depended on how the play was received. That gave Neil some hope. The play was called “Maude in Mauve.” He couldn’t imagine it would run for more than a week.
On the day of Richard’s arrival, Celia went to pick him up at the train station. Richard didn’t drive. The Ellery siblings grew up in Manhattan and Richard had gone to NYU. Neil was sure he considered driving suburban and bourgeois, like marriage and homeownership and V-neck sweaters. Celia came in smiling, her arms full of back packs and duffel bags. Richard followed. Only twenty-eight, he walked with a weary slouch, as if life demanded too much from him. He was thin and pale, his hair artificially black and artifically matted, and he smelled of cigarette smoke and subway cars. Neil was dismayed by the amount of luggage he’d brought.
Neil had made dinner, couscous and chicken with green olives and apricots. He enjoyed cooking, especially for Celia, who loved to eat and was always willing to try new foods. Celia herself did not like to cook, although she would never admit this. Every month or so she’d devote a day to making dinner and by the time it was ready she’d be tired of the whole enterprise, tired of the very idea of bouillabaisse or cassoulet or whatever she’d decided to cook. The dish itself would be delicious, and Neil would have three helpings, but she’d barely touch it. At the same time, she was always appreciative of other people’s cooking and extravagant with her praise. Neil remembered a simple omelet he’d made once with fresh herbs and brought to her in bed on a tray with coffee and a slice of melon. It was perfect, she’d told him, after the first bite; it was the Platonic ideal of the omelet.
Now Celia made a salad and got out a bottle of their best wine. Richard stood in the middle of the kitchen, blocking the sink, and talked steadily about people Neil had never heard of. During dinner he made no mention of the meal, but Neil noticed him picking through his food and piling the olives on the side of his plate. The flames of the pale green candles flickered, shining on the wine glasses and on Celia’s dark hair. Celia tipped her head back and laughed. She had a throaty laugh and Neil realized that it had been a while since he’d heard it. “I got a call from Hans the other day,” Richard was saying. “He’s just back from Berlin.” Neil felt a surge of alarm. One of Richard’s other friends, a German actor, had been Celia’s boyfriend before Neil met her. He stood up from the table and was overcome by a series of violent sneezes. The other two looked at him in surprise. Celia put her hand on his arm.
“You’re getting a cold,” she said. “Take some vitamin C.”
Neil’s eyes itched. His head felt stuffy. “It’s nothing,” he told her, trying to smile. He carried his plate into the kitchen and stood at the sink, looking at his wavering reflection in the dark window. Neil had just turned fifty. Celia was thirty-six. He remembered reading once, in Robert Burton, a story about Death and Cupid meeting at an inn. They’d had a drink together and exchanged a few arrows; this was why young men sometimes died and old men sometimes fell in love.
Neil and Celia had met six years before, when her parents needed blueprints drawn up for alterations to their apartment on the Upper East Side. Celia, just back from New Zealand, had been staying with them and she’d been the one who met Neil at the door when he arrived to study the apartment. There were times when Neil went over the string of accidents that had led to their meeting; if Saunders had been in the office, instead of out with the flu; if the Cuenin project had been finished by the deadline. It still seemed miraculous to him. He and Celia were married less than a year later and bought a house in Connecticut. With her encouragement, he left the architecture firm he’d worked for in Manhattan and struck out on his own. He liked domestic architecture, the play of privacy and openness, and he was patient with his clients, who all seemed sure their three bedroom houses could be transformed into Versailles or Vaux le Vicomte. Neil enjoyed working at home and didn’t miss the city. He felt a deep and unexpected happiness.
With it had come a vulnerability that sometimes scared him. Neil knew Celia loved him, but he was sure he loved her more. Not because he was more capable of love; he wasn’t. It was a matter of dispersal. Celia was naturally generous. She went out of her way to be nice to people she didn’t like. She loved Neil, but she also loved her parents, she loved her clamorous sisters, she loved Richard, she loved aunts, uncles and cousins, nieces and nephews, she loved her friends and had them from every stage of her life, from Olive Mandelbaum whom she’d known since kindergarten to the other teachers at the art studio where she worked. For Neil it was Celia and only Celia. His own parents were dead; he and his brother had never gotten along. He was fond of Bernard Esp, a colleague of his from the firm with whom he still played chess by email, and of his nephew Wesley. But as for Neil’s love, Celia was the sole recipient.
* * *
Neil said goodnight early, claiming he was tired. His eyes felt puffy. “I’m not as young as I used to be,” he said, hating how pathetic this sounded even as he said it. Celia flashed him a smile and went back to talking about her sister Helena, whose marriage was teetering on the brink of divorce. From the bedroom Neil could hear the sound of their voices. He lay in bed and felt morose. Richard’s actor friend was the only boyfriend Celia never talked about. She was, of course, on good terms with the others; she and Neil had been to her college boyfriend’s wedding two summers before. Neil could tell the German actor was different by the way Celia seemed to close herself off at any reference to him. “That was an unhappy time for me,” was all she’d say, and Neil understood this to mean her heart had been broken. He didn’t press for details, telling himself it was all over anyway. But the mysterious German caused him a great deal of secret worry. Sometimes, when he felt particularly low, Neil feared that Celia had married him on the rebound. That he had been a safe bet. That the foreign actor and their tragic affair had indelibly marked Celia’s heart.
Now here was Richard, reminding Celia of the life she’d had before she married Neil. The actor loomed in Neil’s mind again. He imagined him dressed in black with a long, blonde ponytail, young, insouciant, broad-shouldered and tall. At fifty, Neil studied his own rapidly thinning hair. He had put on weight. And Celia, with her dark curls, her fine smooth face; she looked like a student! One night a few months ago he’d caught sight of himself naked in the bedroom mirror and despaired. He became self-conscious around Celia and started dressing and undressing in the bathroom. Making love in the morning light made him anxious. He was afraid Celia would come to regret the difference in their ages.
Neil dozed fitfully. His throat felt scratchy. It was midnight before Celia came to bed. He watched her undressing in the semi-darkness and thought he could see her smiling to herself. He closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.
Part Two
The next morning Celia drove her brother to the theater before going to work. Neil had a lunch meeting with a client and then stopped by to check on construction at the Slattery’s house. He came home in the late afternoon and settled down in his office to work on a set of blueprints. The house was quiet. His cold seemed to be clearing up on its own. Richard would doubtless be kept busy at the theater, he thought hopefully; once rehearsals started, they probably wouldn’t see much of him. At six Neil started the potatoes and washed the lettuce.
He was just beginning to worry that the salmon would be overdone when he heard Celia’s car in the driveway. In a moment she and Richard burst in. Richard was talking about the director in a voice that seemed meant to carry to the attic. He flung his coat on the sofa. “He’s a genius!” he cried, waving his arms as he spoke. “He loves this play as much as I do!” Celia caught Neil’s eye and smiled, including him in the moment. Neil felt a tingling in his nose. He began to sneeze.
Over the days that followed, Neil and Celia heard about every aspect of the play’s rehearsal; the incompetence of the lead actor; the problems with the set design; blocking; lighting; objections to the understudy’s hair. Neil’s eyes watered and his throat itched. He sneezed through breakfast. During the day, while Richard was gone, he stopped sneezing. As soon as Richard came into the house, Neil started up again. On the fourth night, out of desperation, Neil left a note for Celia claiming he had a meeting with a client. Feeling like an adulterer, he skulked into the Chinese takeout and ordered moo shu pork to go. He drove to the end of a road that overlooked the lake, near where one of the houses he’d designed was going up, and ate the moo shu pancakes in the car, the plum sauce dripping down his wrists. It was blissfully quiet. He could hear the crickets and the last of the cicadas. He realized he’d eaten his entire meal without a single sneeze. On the way home he stopped at a gas station to wash the smell of plum sauce off his hands.
In the morning, Richard slept late. It was past ten o’clock before Neil heard him in the kitchen. Working in his office, Neil tried to concentrate on his blueprints while he listened to Richard at the espresso maker, inexpertly steaming the milk. The phone rang. Before Neil could reach it the ringing stopped. “Petra!” he heard Richard say. “Light of my life!” Neil was waiting for a call from the zoning board. He and Celia had never needed two phone lines; Celia was at work during the day. Now Neil watched the minutes ticking past. He should go out and tell Richard he was waiting for a call. Every minute or two Neil heard him give a raucous laugh, one that seemed intentionally loud. After twenty minutes Neil gathered up his things and fled the house.
On the day the play opened, Richard declared he couldn’t eat. He sighed expressively and put down his toast. “He’s so sensitive,” Celia whispered to Neil in the kitchen. “I just hope it goes well!” Neil thought this unlikely. Richard had railed about the idiocy of the director; he was not a genius, it turned out, but a shallow, conniving, narrow-minded enemy of art. He and Richard had been at loggerheads over the final scene, in which Maude is transformed on the cliff into a gull. The costume designer had made her look like a duck. “She’s a gull for a reason,” Richard complained. “That’s what no one seems to understand!” Celia spent the morning trying to coax her brother into better spirits while he lay on the sofa with a pillow on his head.
Celia’s parents and her sisters Margaret and Anne arrived in the afternoon. Margaret told Richard to stop being histrionic. “Your husband is a saint for putting up with this,” she told Celia. Mrs. Ellery asked Richard what he intended to wear to the opening and a long discussion ensued. By dinner time Neil’s allergies were so bad he told Celia he had to stay home; his sneezing might distract the actors. His eyes were puffy and red, his throat clogged and painful. “Poor darling,” Celia said, kissing him on the cheek. She wore a green silk dress and her hair was swept up off her neck. Richard looked pale and dramatic in a black jacket and a red scarf; his mother was still complaining about his scuffed black boots. They stood in the hallway like a flock of noisy birds, rustling into their coats and scarves. Celia blew Neil a kiss, and they were gone, leaving him alone in the silent house.
“Maude in Mauve” played for nearly three weeks. Neil, still sneezing, went to see it with Celia in the middle of the second week. They sat in the back. It was not as painful as he’d feared, though the story was an incomprehensible mess. “The director really hasn’t done it justice,” Celia whispered. Reviews were mixed. One gave the play credit for “wrestling with the search for meaning in the pastiche of contemporary America.” Another complained of the inexplicable goose motif in the final scene.
Richard went every night and spent the next day complaining about the most recent performance. When the play closed, he stalked about the house as if acting the part of Hamlet’s dead father. Neil asked Celia, in the mildest way possible, how much longer Richard was planning to stay.
“He’s very vulnerable right now,” she said. “I want him to feel welcome for as long as he needs us.”
Neil couldn’t think of anything to say to this. He’d been counting on Richard leaving when the play closed. “It’s not like we don’t have the room,” Celia added. At this Neil imagined Richard moving in permanently, and Celia must have seen something in his face. She reached out and took his hand. “Richard got me through a very hard time once,” she told him earnestly. “Before I met you. Helena and Margaret were in China then, and Mom and Dad were in Italy with Anne. Richard was the only family I had in town. I don’t know what I would have done without him.” Neil felt a numbness spreading out from his chest; she was talking about the time the foreign actor had broken her heart.
After this, Neil found Richard’s presence in the house increasingly unbearable. He could no longer work in his office, even with the door closed. Little things bothered him out of proportion; the sight of Richard’s t-shirt on the bathroom floor, answering the phone when it was for Richard, listening to Richard complain that it was impossible to get a decent cup of coffee in the suburbs. And beneath the irritation, like a rot or a fungus, grew his uncertainty about Celia’s affection.
A week after the play stopped running, Neil came home for lunch to see Richard’s luggage piled by the door. Relief surged through him like a stiff drink. Richard himself was stretched on the sofa, fully dressed and snoring. In the kitchen Celia was packing sandwiches and fruit into a paper bag. “He’s going back to the city,” she whispered to Neil. “There’s a train at four thirty. Don’t wake him. I’ll say goodbye for you.”
Neil spent the afternoon at the historic board and the building department. He found it difficult to concentrate. Had Richard left yet, he wondered? Had he managed to make the train? On the way home Neil picked up a bunch of gerbera daisies for Celia. They’d go out to dinner, he thought. There was a new Moroccan restaurant they’d been meaning to try. Her car was in the driveway. He opened the door: the luggage was gone. From the back of the house he caught the murmur of conversation; Celia must be on the phone, talking with one of her sisters. He walked toward her voice, the flowers in his hand. And then he heard Richard’s unmistakable laugh. Neil stood in the hallway. He could feel his eyes beginning to smart. He didn’t mean to eavesdrop. He was simply unable to move. He heard Richard say, “Oh, Berlin! The home of love and folly!” They were talking about the German actor, thought Neil. And then he sneezed.
Celia stepped into the hallway. “I didn’t realize you’d come home.” She seemed surprised, as if he were the outsider, the one who didn’t belong. He wiped his nose with one of the tissues he’d taken to carrying. Celia reached out for the daisies and Neil released his grip on the crinkly cellophane. “You always know when I need cheering up.” She lowered her voice. “Poor Richard. Trouble with Petra again.”
What came over Neil next he could never fully explain. Something seemed to lurch inside him. He felt a tremor in his spine and stared down at his hands, expecting them to shake. He moved through the evening as if through a dream. Food had no taste in his mouth. He must have spoken, though he didn’t remember doing so. “You seem distracted.” Celia was studying his face. “Is it your allergies? I think you should see a doctor.” Neil nodded stupidly. He had never before been so focused, so desperate. Every atom of his being moved together toward a single goal: getting Richard out of the house. Neil’s mind blazed, reckless with wild ideas. He would drug Richard and put him on a bus! He would report Richard to the IRS! He would inveigle him out to Hollywood to write for TV shows!
Neil banged his shin on the toilet and the pain brought him back. Somehow he was in the bathroom in his pajamas, a toothbrush in his hand. Celia was already under the covers, her bedside lamp turned off. He didn’t know anyone in Hollywood, he realized. He would have to invent a contact, a studio…
In the basement Neil had a box of papers from a house he was working on. They’d been discovered by the contractor in the top shelf of a closet, and Neil had taken them to return to his client. The client had lived in Sweden for many years, where she’d taught at a Swedish university. Neil remembered this because there’d been a sheaf of stationery with the university letterhead on the top of the box; he’d doubted at the time that she’d have any use for it now, but had kept the box to give back to her anyway. Now his heart pounded in his throat. He forced himself to breathe slowly. Sweden would be even better than California. He went to retrieve the box.
Part Three
The pages on the top had yellowed a bit with age and the whole sheaf had been folded. But the letterhead of the University of Upsala was clear and impressive. Below the paper Neil found a stack of blank university envelopes still wrapped around the middle with a strip of white paper; each one was sealed shut from humidity and age. Neil worked at them with his letter opener before remembering something from a book he’d once read. He tiptoed into the kitchen and boiled water in the tea kettle, then held an envelope over the steam. It was easy enough to ungum, after that. The pages he carefully ironed, pressing them flat on top of the atlas of the world and then covering them with a dish towel so they wouldn’t scorch. He worked with a manic energy he’d never felt before, terrified that Celia would come out of the bedroom and catch him. What took him longest was the composition of the invitation. It needed to be flattering, imperative and plausible. He couldn’t risk Richard trying to contact the university to confirm. Neil went through draft after draft, finally settling on two brisk paragraphs that outlined the University of Upsala’s interest in, and commitment to, promising young playwrights of every nationality, praised Richard Ellery’s existing work, and invited him to Sweden to give a talk on contemporary American theater and assist in the production of one of his own plays. He could not imagine Richard turning it down. “We will expect you on the 23rd,” he wrote. “All arrangements have been made for your accommodations. If you have any questions, please contact us in writing.” He signed it Nils Bildt, Chairman of the Department of Theater Arts. He did not include a telephone number.
Neil addressed the envelope to Richard’s New York City address, after some struggle, because it seemed more believable. Richard’s mail was being forwarded, so it would come eventually. But how would Neil mail it, and from where? Richard would expect to see a Swedish postmark and a Swedish stamp. Neil sifted through the contents of the cardboard box, hoping for a roll of Swedish stamps. And then he saw them. They were all over the outside corner, portraits of Carl-Gustav XVI with “Sverige” printed across the bottom. The box had been mailed before it was used as storage. Neil wetted a sponge with warm water and set it on top of the stamps. While it soaked, he changed the date on the letter from the 23rd to the 16th, reprinted it, and erased the file from his computer. Then he peeled the moistened stamps off the outside of the box with a pair of tweezers. He blew on the stamps to dry them, like a father cooling a child’s oatmeal. Choosing the least crumpled, he glued three to the upper right hand corner of the envelope. He waved the envelope back and forth to dry the glue. When it had set, he took a red pen, and, trying to match the lines on the box, recreated a smudged postmark as best he could. In the kitchen garbage he found one of Richard’s discarded envelopes with the forwarding sticker still on it. Carefully, Neil eased the sticker off. He was gluing it to the new envelope, as meticulous as he had ever been with a ruler and protractor, when the door to his office opened. He had neglected to lock it.
“I didn’t know you had a deadline,” Celia said. She stood in the doorway in her sleeveless nightgown. “It’s two in the morning.” Neil found that he was shaking. But her eyes were on him. She hadn’t glanced at the table, where the incriminating letter lay. Pretending to look for something on his desk, Neil placed a folder of building plans on top of it.
“Sorry,” he told her. “Just trying to keep my head above water.”
“I hate to see you like this, darling,” Celia said. “You look exhausted. Can’t you come to bed?”
Neil shook his head. He’d moved the box off the table earlier, because it had been in the way. It was by his foot now, hidden from Celia’s view. “I’ll be in soon,” he said. Celia sighed. She turned to go. Neil waited until he was sure she was back in bed before he closed his office door softly and clicked the lock.
To obscure the postmark, Neil scraped the envelope over a piece of sandpaper a few times, then ground it with his foot. He rubbed a little charcoal into it and crumpled it a bit. The results pleased him; the envelope looked like it had come across the Atlantic and been forwarded up from Manhattan by a series of surly postal clerks.
The next day Neil waited until the mail truck had passed the house. Celia was at work, and Richard was taking a shower. Neil approached the mailbox and glanced around. Quickly, he shoved the counterfeit invitation between a bill and one of Celia’s catalogs and hurried back inside. He stuck the box with the Swedish stationery and the first version of the letter into the trunk of his car. At the construction site of one of his building projects he pitched it into the dumpster. His client, if she missed it, would assume it had been lost. He could not afford the risk of leaving it in his house.
Neil arranged his day to arrive home after Celia. He found his wife and brother-in-law sitting in the living room drinking scotch. The mail was in a pile on the kitchen table, where Celia usually put it. He kissed Celia and waited. Richard seemed withdrawn. He stared moodily at the floor, his glass still full. “Richard got an invitation today,” Celia said with affected brightness, raising her glass in a toast.
“Wow!” Neil said. “That’s terrific!” He did not say, “How soon are you leaving?”
“It’s from the University of Upsala,” Celia went on, smiling in Richard’s direction. She passed the invitation to Neil and he pretended to scan it.
Richard sat morosely in the corner, hunched like a crow. “Upsala,” he said to himself. After a minute he rose abruptly and left the room.
* * *
“Don’t you think there’s something odd about that letter?” Celia asked, once she and Neil were in bed.
Neil felt a chill start on the back of his neck and radiate down his arms. “What do you mean?”
“Do you really think anyone in Sweden has heard of Richard’s plays? He’s very good, he has all sorts of interesting ideas. But he’s not exactly established, yet.”
“I thought that was the whole point,” Neil said. “They’re looking for promise.”
“I suppose.” Celia switched off the light. It was quiet for a moment as she got comfortable beside him and Neil closed his eyes. “No,” Celia said. “It’s got to be something else.”
Neil kept silent. His palms were wet with sweat.
“I think Daddy’s behind it, though I’d never breathe a word. I wonder who he knows in Upsala.” She snuggled closer, and Neil put her warm arm around him. He felt his muscles beginning to relax. “Not that it matters,” she added, as an afterthought. “He’ll never actually go.”
“What?!” cried Neil, sitting up. “It’s a great opportunity. We could help with the air fare.”
“But Richard doesn’t fly!” Celia said in surprise. “You know that.”
Neil hadn’t known. But now, looking back on it, it made complete sense. The rest of the Ellerys were always traveling, but Richard never left New York. “He could go by ship,” Neil said.
“I thought of that, but it would take too long. They expect him in a week. He would have known sooner, you see, but the letter took longer to reach him here.”
Neil knew that. He had timed it on purpose, dating the letter earlier to look like it had been delayed in the mail. “Idiot!” he muttered fiercely to himself, angry he’d taken all that trouble only to ruin everything with the date.
He felt Celia stiffen beside him. “What did you just say?”
“Nothing,” Neil cried.
“There’s no need to insult him,” Celia said. She sounded shocked.
Neil wanted to explain that he’d meant himself, but this would lead to other questions. “I didn’t mean…” he started to say.
Celia cut him off. “Imagine how hard this is for Richard. He needs support, not criticism.” She moved away, toward her side of the bed.
The next morning Celia treated Neil with a careful politeness. No one mentioned the invitation. Richard barely spoke. He was up early and went out after breakfast without saying where he was going. Neil tried to enjoy the quiet but he found himself thinking about Celia and waiting for the sound of the door. Finally he left the house himself and went to check on the progress of the Cole’s sunroom. He arrived at the site to find the contractor in a rage. The windows that had taken so long to get there were the wrong size. Neil spent a long afternoon dealing with an exasperated client, who wanted everything finished by Christmas, and the contractor, who hadn’t liked the windows from the start.
He came home tired and frustrated. The house seemed unnaturally hushed. Richard, usually so voluble, stood over the telephone, his eyes wide. He looked very pale. “I’m going!” he announced theatrically. “I just bought the ticket!” He advanced on Neil until he stood directly in front of him. Neil tried, reflexively, to step backwards, but Richard reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. It was closer than they had ever been to each other. “Celia doesn’t believe I have it in me,” Richard told him hoarsely. “None of them do. But I’m going to surprise them all. You’ve got to help me. Tell me I can do it!”
Neil forced himself to stand completely still, the other man’s hand heavy on his shoulder. “You’re getting on that plane,” he said, with more vehemence than was necessary. “I’m taking you to the airport myself.”
Celia was delighted with the news. She gave Neil a look full of gratitude, forgiving him for the night before. She said they were both the most wonderful of men. Privately, she thanked Neil for offering to drive Richard to the airport. His flight left on the night she taught her weekly drawing class. “I could cancel,” she told Neil. “But I’d rather you two had some time together.” She bought Richard a Swedish-English dictionary and for the next five days she practiced breathing exercises with him.
Part Four
On the drive to the airport Neil sneezed constantly. Richard sat beside him, his hands clenched in his lap. Neither of them spoke. At the check-in counter Neil waited for Richard to change his mind. Richard’s face was pale and haggard. There were dark circles under his eyes. But he handed over his luggage and his ticket, and the attendant pointed toward the gate.
“Let me buy you a drink,” Neil said, steering his brother-in-law into the airport bar and seizing a table that did not face the runway. Richard no longer looked merely pale; he looked like something that might glow in the dark. Neil ordered two scotch and sodas. Richard stared fixedly at a point across the room and seemed to be concentrating on his breathing. Neil noticed that he’d begun to sweat.
“Here,” Neil said, when the waitress brought their drinks. “Down the hatch.” Richard took the glass and drained half of it. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Thanks,” he said. He smiled weakly and leaned forward. “You’re not going to believe this,” he confided, “but there was a time I actually thought you didn’t like me.”
Neil tried to look surprised.
“Really,” Richard said. “I get these crazy ideas.” He began to shred the edges of his white paper napkin. Neil looked discreetly at his watch as Richard took another swig of scotch and soda. “I’m going to be okay,” Richard said, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. “Thanks again for all your help. I can’t believe I thought you didn’t like me.”
Neil glanced at his watch again, then signaled for another round. “You’re going to be fine.”
“Because you know,” Richard went on, “I’ve always liked you. You’re good to Ceel and I can tell she’s happy. I’m not hung up about the age thing. Her last boyfriend was her age exactly, down to the month. And look how that turned out.” He gulped at his second scotch and soda. His hands had begun to shake.
Her last boyfriend, thought Neil. The actor from Berlin. “Keep talking,” he told Richard. “It’ll take your mind off the flight.”
“Actors seek me out,” Richard said. “They want to insinuate themselves with the playwright, as you can imagine. Dietrich was like that. Self-involved. A real poseur.” Richard gripped his glass in both hands and Neil could see his tendons. “And he had the worst teeth I’ve ever seen.” Richard looked down at his watch. He began to stand up. “I think I’d better get over to the gate now.”
It had not occurred to Neil that the German actor might have bad teeth. He found himself putting a hand on Richard’s arm. “It’s better to board at the last minute,” he said, thinking quickly. “Go on. It’ll help distract you.”
Richard glanced nervously toward the gate. He drained his glass. “Celia’s too soft sometimes, you know? She let Dietrich move in with her after he got evicted. I think he played up how pathetic he was, all alone in New York with his asthma attacks. Anyone could see he was a leech. But she stuck up for him. He’d had a hard childhood, ran away from home when he was fourteen. At least, that’s the story he told her. He probably made it all up. Maybe he should have been writing plays instead of acting! I’m only joking, of course. He would never have had the discipline you need. You can’t imagine the time it takes…”
In the distance Neil could hear the announcer calling rows 35 and over. He tightened his grip on Richard’s sleeve. “How did it end?”
A little blood had returned to Richard’s face. His hands had stopped shaking. “Didn’t Celia tell you? There was some woman in Copenhagen. I don’t know if they were married but they had a kid together. Celia found a letter, with pictures of the little boy and everything.” Richard stopped talking and cocked his head. “That’s my flight,” he cried, grabbing his carry-on bag.
Neil tossed some bills on the table and hurried after him. At the gate Richard stood in line with his boarding pass ready. “You’d think no one had ever misjudged somebody before. Believe me, I told her some stories. There was this woman I used to visit at Oberlin, Lavender Sneed…”
“Final boarding,” the stewardess announced, glaring in their direction.
A memory of an overheard conversation ticked in Neil’s brain. “Oberlin?”
“Yeah, in Ohio,” Richard said. “Home of love and folly. But Lavender was small potatoes compared to Dietrich. I had to call the police on him. Eventually he got deported. Celia told me she was off men for good after that. That’s why I was surprised when she fell for you.”
Neil felt a sudden painful wrench in his chest; it was his dislocated heart, returning to its socket. He threw his arms around his brother-in-law. Richard patted him on the back, a little embarrassed, then pulled away. “I can’t believe I used to think you didn’t like me!” He held out his boarding pass and the stewardess snatched it.
Richard turned toward the tunnel that led to the plane and Neil saw him hesitate. He looked lost, out of place with his silly blue-black hair and his ragged jeans, an awkward, overgrown kid. Neil watched as he took a deep breath, mustering his courage. Then he turned and gave a little wave. “Thanks for everything! I’ll call from Upsala!” He set off down the narrow tunnel with his loping Ellery stride and disappeared around the corner.
Upsala, thought Neil, my God, what have I done? “Richard!” he called. “Richard!” But the stewardess was already clipping a chain across the entrance to the runway.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she told him with satisfaction. “This flight is closed.”
Neil stumbled back through the airport. Celia didn’t talk about Dietrich because he was an embarrassment to her, a reminder of kindness misplaced. Neil was the man she loved.
But he had been a fool; he’d jeopardized everything. Neil thought of Richard. He would be in the air soon, shaking in his scuffed black boots, enduring a flight across the ocean. Neil tried to imagine what awaited his brother-in-law in Upsala. For the first time he felt the full force of his own guilt, his reprehensible insecurity. He was shocked by what he’d done. And he was terrified that Celia would figure it out. The whole business felt suddenly transparent. He began to sweat.
At home it seemed unendurably quiet. “What’s the matter?” Celia asked, as he roamed the bedroom, picking up a framed photo of the two of them on their honeymoon and putting it down again. She stood in front of him, her hand on his arm. Neil shook his head. He mumbled that he wasn’t feeling himself. “You’re not sneezing, at least,” Celia remarked. Neil nodded dumbly. He realized with a horrible certainty that he was going to have to confess what he’d done. Only not tonight, he thought. Celia had sat down on the bed and was brushing out her dark hair. She would never forgive him, he thought. He felt like he was watching her for the last time.
* * *
Neil was deeply asleep when the phone rang. In his dream he was drowning while Celia, her back toward him, rowed away in a white boat. The muscles of his jaws ached and he knew he’d been grinding his teeth. The red numbers on the digital clock said 3:54. Celia held the phone. “What do you mean?” Neil heard her say and his heart shrunk in his chest, a sour walnut. “What?! You have to be kidding me!” She turned toward Neil, angry and disbelieving. “It’s Richard,” she said. “You talk to him.”
Neil took the phone. His hands were slippery with sweat. “Ceel thinks I’m making a mistake,” he heard Richard say. “But I’m not. Love is destiny! Believe me, I’m sorry to disappoint them…”
It took a moment for Neil to grasp the situation: Richard had fallen in love on the plane. He had sat beside the most amazing woman, he told Neil. She had helped him to understand his fear of flying for what it really was, a fear of living. He’d gotten off the plane with her in Amsterdam, instead of catching his connecting flight to Sweden. He wanted to call Nils Bildt directly, but there seemed to be a problem getting through to the right department. So he’d written him a letter of apology instead. He couldn’t go to Upsala now, Richard said. His writing was just another way of avoiding life. It was time for him to experience the world. He and Nadia were catching a train to Groningen in half an hour. “You understand how it is with love, Neil. And I want to thank you. You made this possible! Without you, I’d never have gotten on that plane.”
Relief made Neil light-headed. “I don’t know what to say. That’s great! I think that’s just great! She sounds like quite a girl.”
“Woman,” corrected Richard.
“Quite a woman,” Neil said. “You’re doing the right thing.”
They said goodbye and Neil replaced the receiver. Beside him Celia frowned and shook her head. “How can you tell him that?” she demanded. “Think of the chance he’s passing up.”
Neil leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. The world was full of the miraculous and the unexpected. “Don’t worry about Richard,” he told her. “He’s a man in love. Fate watches over men like us.”
