The Age of Grief - Jane Smiley [10]
Although the apartment was neat and airy, the carpet vacuumed and the furniture polished, Lily apologized for a bowl and a plate unwashed beside the sink. Actually, she often wondered whether cleanliness drove love away. Fastidious, she suspected that life itself was to be found in dirt and disorder, in unknown dark substances that she was hesitant to touch. Lily overestimated her neatness in this case. The windowsills, for example, had not been vacuumed, and the leaves of the plants were covered with dust. She began to apologize for the lack of air conditioning, the noise of cars and trucks through the open windows, the weather, the lack of air conditioning again; then she breathed a profound sigh and let her hands drop limply between her knees.
Nancy Humboldt was moved by this gesture to remember how Lily always had a touch of the tragic about her. It was unrelated to anything that had ever happened, but it was distinct, always present. Nancy sat forward and smiled affectionately at her friend. Conversation began to pick up.
After a while they ate. Lily noticed that when Kevin carried his chest toward Nancy, Nancy made herself concave as she sidestepped him. Perhaps he did not exactly try to touch her; the kitchenette was very small. Jokes were much in demand, greeted with pouncing hilarity; a certain warmth, reminiscent of their early friendship, flickered and established itself. Conversation ranged over a number of topics. Nancy kept using the phrase “swept away.” “That movie just swept me away!” “I live to be swept away!” “I used to be much more cautious than I am now; now I just want to be swept away!” Kevin as often used the word “careful.” “I think you have to be really careful about your decisions.” “I’m much more careful now.” “I think I made mistakes because I wasn’t careful.” Lily listened most of the time. When the discussion became awkwardly heated, they leaped as one flesh on Lily and demanded to know about her prizewinning volume, her success, her work. Nancy wanted to hear some new pieces.
Lily was used to reading aloud. Finishing the fourth poem, she wondered, as she often did, why men did not come up to her after readings and offer love, or at least ask her out. She had won a famous prize. Within the intimacy of art she phrased things that she would not ordinarily admit to, discussed her soul, which seemed a perfectly natural and even attractive soul. People liked her work; they had bought more copies of her prizewinning volume than of any other in the thirteen-year series. But no one, in a fan letter, sent a picture or a telephone number. Didn’t art or accomplishment make a difference? Was it all invisible? Lily said, “I think Kevin was bored.”
“Not at all, really.”
“I wasn’t in the slightest,” Nancy said. “They’re very good. They don’t have any leaves on them.” She laughed and looked around, pleased with her own phrase.
Now was the time to broach her subject, thought Lily. The Humboldts had known her since college. Perhaps they had seen some little thing, spoken of it between themselves, predicted spinsterhood. Lily straightened the yellow pages and set them on the side table. “You know,” she said with a laugh and a cough, “I haven’t gone out in a month and a half. I mean, I realize it’s summer and all, but anyway. And the last guy was just a friend, I—” She looked up and went on. “All those years with Ken, nobody even made a pass at me in a bus station. I didn’t think it was important then, but now I’ve gotten rather anxious.”
“Do you ever hear from Ken?” Nancy asked.
“I changed my number and didn’t give him the new one. I think he got the message.”
“I’ll never understand why you spent—”
“Nine years involved with a married man, blah blah blah. I know.”
“Among other things.”
“When we were breaking up, I made up a lot of reasons, but now