must have been using him all along. Which is what Betsy had said immediately when he first told her the story, as he stood in the kitchen of their Cambridge home shaking visibly.
Elaine’s face tonight, he realized, had a coldness to it that had surprised him. Her makeup was too perfect, there was something cold about that. And then he realized: I was cold. So he probably had been attracted to, without recognizing it, this coldness in her. Betsy had not been cold—except to him. But her nature had not been a cold one. She was friendly and people liked her.
Oh, Betsy—!
Betsy, who read all those books by Sharon McDonald. Oh, how he wanted right now for Betsy to be back with him, he did not care how dull he had found her, how careless she had been of him, he did not care, he only wanted her back. Betsy, he cried inside himself, Betsy, Betsy, Betsy, you don’t know how much I miss you!
And he did. And it was not just tonight. There had been nights—a few—while Olive lay snoring in their bed, that he had sat on the front porch and—half-drunk—wept, because he wanted to be with Betsy instead. It seemed to him at such times that Olive talked only of herself—he knew that that was not (completely) true, but she was fascinated by herself in a way that was tiresome for Jack on those nights, and was this because he wanted to talk about himself instead? Yes. He was not stupid, Jack. He understood that he had as many qualities as Olive had in that way. And he also knew, even tonight in his grief, that his marriage to Olive had been surprisingly wonderful in many ways, to go into old age with this woman who was so—so Olive.
* * *
—
But in his memory, now, he thought of Betsy, her quiet prettiness, her simplicity of self, yet she was not simple at all. She had, without blinking an eye, accepted the fact that Cassie was a lesbian, she had had an affair (oh, Betsy!)—no, there was nothing simple about Betsy. And on this night, he wished she was alive and with him. And this baffled him and yet did not. It baffled him because of their whole life squandered—only not really their whole lives, they had had many laughs, many sweet moments, and these came to him fleetingly tonight. He pictured how he made crêpes on the weekends, and they, all three of them—Betsy and Cassie and himself—ate them at the kitchen table; in his mind, they were laughing. He pictured his wife later, as she came to bed, her face lowered, but then the sudden open smile she might give him, and his heart felt a horrifying rush then, because he really had loved her in his way, and she was gone. But they had still squandered what they had, because they had not known.
When he thought of Betsy’s affair with that Tom Groger he did not know what to think. But it had obviously begun way before his own. And sitting in his chair now, looking out over the dark, dark night, so dark he was not even able to see the trees and the field, he tucked his elbows into his stomach and said out loud, quietly, “Oh, Betsy, I wish you had not done that, I wish you had not done that!”
But Betsy was dead. And he was not.
* * *
Jack almost slept downstairs. But in the end he climbed the stairs and got into the bed next to Olive; he had no idea if she was awake or not.
That night he dreamed of Betsy and Cassie: His child was young, and she was holding her mother’s hand, their backs were to him. But then they turned and waved at him, and he felt joy—joy—and he walked to them quickly, but then it was only Cassie, and then even she disappeared, and in the dream Jack found himself on a large, large rock; it curved downward as though it was the earth itself, or the moon—because it felt that isolated—and he was alone on this rock and the panic he felt was estimable. He woke, crying out, and even then he did not know where he was.
Olive spoke his name, “Jack,” she said, she was sitting up in bed. When he said, “Olive, I don’t know where I am!,” she said, calmly, “Okay, Jack, come with me,” and she walked him