Cost. Roxana Robinson
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one that no one had ever heard of, in northern New Hampshire), but at least he had a degree. Which had led him exactly nowhere, so far. He lived a Gypsyish downtown life of start-up bands, part-time jobs, optimistic schemes, and the very occasional unpaid musical gig. He was in a band, though not a rock band. It's not rock music, he'd told Julia, shaking his head and grinning with that generic rolling-eyed amazement at parental ignorance. As though she'd called it Latvian chanting. What it was, instead of rock, was a mystery to her. Mostly rhythm and electronic feedback, as far as she could tell.
But Jack loved it, and she loved watching him play, seeing him onstage in his skinny black jeans and black T-shirt, his head nodding in charmed obedience to the monstrous beat. That slow grin, the magnetic sideways glance. Who knew how he'd end up?
The bands he was in never actually seemed to progress. They seemed continually to be part of some emerging and dissolving process, like early life forms, and Julia wondered how long this ought to go on. At some point, didn't you accept the fact that the music wasn't succeeding? Move on? Though your child should decide this for himself; the parent's task was to be supportive. What Julia was determined never to be was like her father: judgmental. The world would always be the critic, her job was to be the fan.
Despite what seemed very ill-considered choices. There were things it was hard not to worry about. Drugs, of course, had always been a part of Jack's life. Certainly part of the downtown music scene, they were all around, she knew it. Julia rolled onto her stomach and burrowed her head into her flattened pillow.
During his adolescence, drugs had seeped into Jack's landscape like a toxic plume. All those things she kept finding in his bedroom, under the bed, among dirty clothes in his duffel—the grubby bags of pot, the bongs. And nothing seemed to stop Jack, not her and Wendell's serious talks, not their later anger and shouts and threats, not Jacks suspension from school, not even, once, his expulsion. They might as well have been ordering him to breathe a different kind of air.
She picked up the pillow, punched it, and laid her head down again.
That time they'd gone together—though by then they'd been separated—to visit him at college, when he was so weird all weekend, grinning, unfocused, completely stoned. Wendell was angry, but Julia was hurt to see he wouldn't face them without chemical protection. But it had been just after the divorce, maybe Jack had been angry at them for that. Acting out his rage.
For a moment Julia allowed herself the luxury of blaming all Jack's problems on Wendell's despicable behavior—why not? Wendell actually had been despicable—though this lasted for only a moment. It was a dangerous luxury. Considering Wendell's despicable behavior would lead to considering her own behavior, and to the (morally indefensible) fact that she did not know, absolutely, who Jack's father was. It had been Julia's only affair, and brief.
For five months she'd been caught up in its runaway current. She'd been in thrall, powerless, it seemed. Each time she came home from seeing Eric, each time she stepped into her own apartment, into the safe domestic haven she'd created, the one which she now mocked so cruelly by her behavior, she felt remorse. Each time she opened the door onto its mute reproach, each time she saw the trusting faces of Wendell and Steven looking up with pleasure as she arrived, each time she saw them like this—innocent victims of her deceit—her heart smote her, and she determined in that instant to end it.
And the next day—the very next day!—hearing Eric's voice on the phone, she felt her heart quickening again in her chest, and nothing else was permitted entry into her mind. She thought of nothing else. She abandoned the rest of her life. She found herself rushing from the apartment, beds unmade, dirty dishes on the table, appointments ignored or forgotten. She lied to her husband, friends, babysitter, anyone who asked. She lied about a dentist's appointment, a seminar, a student conference, moving the car on the street. When challenged, she produced more lies. She'd been shocked and impressed at herself, she'd had no idea what she'd been capable of. She'd done things that she'd never have thought of doing. In the back of their own car one night, parked on the street, on their own block. At a party, standing up, in a bathroom, Wendell knocking at the door. She'd been insane.
She'd been helpless, willing, thrilled. The tautness and electricity of this sumptuous, illicit love, how your body yearned for it! How her skin, everywhere, had waited for Eric's touch, for his breath on the back of her neck, for the urgency of his gaze. How her blood quickened at his husky, intimate whisper in her ear. She'd been taken over by pleasure, by ecstasy; it had been her entire life for five months.
Wendell, though, had started it all.
Late one evening, after dinner, the two of them still at the kitchen table, they'd emptied a second bottle of wine. Wendell's eyelids grew heavy, his manner affectionate and confidential. He told Julia how very fond he was of her, very fond. Then he admitted, grinning, almost proud, that he'd taken the secretary from the Classics Department to a motel just across the George Washington Bridge. He'd told her all this as though she, Julia, were his accomplice. Just for the afternoon, he said, as though that made a difference. When Julia stared at him, furious, he seized her hand unsteadily.
“Don't get so mad,” he said. “It doesn't mean anything. Anyway, it was in New Jersey.”
“You think you're not married in New Jersey?” Julia asked. “How many other states are you not married in?”
“Come on,” Wendell said, shaking her hand gently. “Don't be jealous. I thought of you the whole time. When we parked the car I just sat there. I wanted to call the whole thing off.”
“But you didn't,” Julia pointed out.
“Don't be cross. You're much better in bed than she is. I'm weak, that's all.”
Julia said nothing, furious. What she thought was Why am I bothering to be faithful?
So when Eric Swenson, a sort of post-Expressionist with a long auburn ponytail, smelling of turpentine, whose studio was near hers, asked if she wanted to go for coffee, she said yes, and for five months she was swept up in that stream. Then one morning she'd waked up to nausea, and when she rolled over in bed she felt the tenderness of her breasts and knew she was pregnant, but with no idea by whom. At that moment the switch was turned off. After that, she felt exactly nothing at the sound of Eric's voice. His touch on her skin made her twitch, and she wanted to shake off his hand like an insect. It was over.
When Jackie was born—after nine months of fervent virtue, as though she could make the unborn child into Wendell's son simply by her own good behavior—she told herself he was Wendell's son. It could easily be true; she'd never know. Jackie had her blood type, A negative, and he'd grown up as Wendell's son. Julia had never told anyone.
But Jackie was the secret reminder of her scarlet season, those days spent swinging out into thin air, over the wild shadowed depths of the canyon. It was the thrill of it, the luxury of yielding to something so dangerous, so delicious, so irresistible, intoxicating. She'd been incapable of resistance, she'd had no thought of stopping. It was a madness, it was addiction. Remembering those days was like a soldier remembering the battlefield—the explosions around him matched by those in his thundering heart—in disbelief that this life and the earlier one could have been contained within the same body.
Jack was himself, of course, but he was secretly this as well, and sometimes when Julia looked at him she saw a double image—himself and his mother's secret stain. She loved him for this as well as for himself.
Long afterward, Eric asked her about Jack, at a crowded cocktail party in someone's apartment on Claremont Avenue. Eric was standing near her, too close. He held a cache of peanuts in one hand, a glass of wine in the other. His voice was low and confidential, and Julia drew away. His eyes were bloodshot, and the skin on his nose was tight and drawn.
“I wondered,” Eric said, watching her, “about your son. The younger one.” He raised his hand, opened his mouth, and tossed in a peanut. “Because of when he was born.” He chewed, his jaws grinding steadily.
“He's not yours, Eric,” Julia told him. “He's Wendell's. There's no question.”
Eric said nothing. He closed his hand over