The Best a Woman Can Hope For

By Deborah Harris

When Leonard phoned on an early spring morning, Joan was lingering in bed, searching the real estate listings. A downtown condo was what she wanted, bright and tidy, walking distance to a brand-new life.

“Listen,” he said, “there’s no good way to tell you this so I’m just going to come out and say it. I’m moving out. It’s been forever since we’ve slept in the same bed, and this business of sharing an address and nothing else just isn’t working for me.” The wind crackled in his phone; the highway hummed beneath him.

She felt a rush of hope. For years she’d suspected that she and Leonard stayed together only because each was afraid of hurting the other, of being all alone in the world. And, in fact, the very next thing she felt, after the rush of hope, was the fear of being all alone in the world.

Leonard continued, bolstering his argument. “When you get down to it,” he said, “it’s just too hard, being together but not really together. It’s got to suck a little bit for you, too. Aren’t you tired of being in limbo?”

All those years spent agonizing over Leonard’s feelings, wondering if she could live with the guilt of tearing the two of them apart, and it was Leonard who’d made the decision, Leonard who’d had the cool courage to pick himself up and go. She threw the covers aside and went to the window. The forsythia was beginning to bud; the woods behind it were still bleak.

“Joan? Are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“Is it that you don’t want to be alone? You’re already alone most of the time.”

“I need my alone time for my work,” she said.

“I know; I’m not criticizing. I’m just trying to explain.”

“So explain.”

“I’m falling apart, the world’s falling apart, and before it all goes to hell I want some pleasure in life, okay?”

“What’s her name?” she asked.

There was a long pause, then, “Why do you need to know her name?”

“I don’t need to. I want to. What’s the big secret?”

“Her name’s Amanda,” he said.

“What does she do?”

“She’s a social policy expert. She works in a think tank.”

Joan pictured an aquarium; a woman filled with deep thoughts, gliding and rolling behind the glass. She asked, “Does she want to get married?”

“I don’t know; she has her own life. She’s very resourceful and accomplished.”

“Unlike me?” She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. So petulant and weak. If only she were a bigger woman, a stronger woman. A woman who could congratulate Leonard on his good fortune and wish him luck. Or feel tough enough to go an entirely different way and tell him to get his stuff out of the house by next Saturday or she’d make a bonfire of it. Tell him, fine, you want to go off with your brainy mermaid, go ahead, but when she turns out to be a cold fish you can forget about coming back, because I am officially done.

She began pacing the hallway outside the bedroom. The oak floor was cold under her bare feet and the armpits of her nightgown were unpleasantly damp. The dog, grown anxious, followed her, wagging his tail in an appeasing little arc. Joan whispered to him, “It’s okay, sweetie, you’re fine,” and reached down to soothe him.

Leonard, hearing the whispers, asked, “What did you say?”

“Nothing. I was talking to Zephyr.”

“I don’t want to fight with you, Joan. I’d like us to get along.”

“Get along after you’ve dumped me? Sure, why not.”

“I haven’t dumped you,” said Leonard.

“No? Then what is this?”

“I don’t know. I just want to be on my own for a while.”

“So you want to be with Amanda but stay matrimonially unavailable to her?”

“Let’s leave Amanda out of this and stay focused on us.”

“Of course. Because Amanda can take care of herself. Since she’s so resourceful and accomplished.”

Leonard sighed and said, “Why don’t you take a few days and get back to me.”

“Right. I’ll get back to you. I’ll have my people get with your people.”

“Okay, Joan. I’m going now.”

Walking back and forth along the strip of hemlocks that bordered her property, Joan worked herself up, talked herself down, worked herself up again.

She called Sylvie, told her about Amanda and how Leonard had broken the news from his car with the wind in his hair. “He wants us to be friends.”

“Please.”

“I know. Why does he get to make the rules? Why does he get to move in with this Amanda person when I spent twelve months sighing and dying over my Novel in a Year instructor, doing absolutely nothing real about it?”

Before they signed off, Sylvie said, “I’m so sorry, Joan.” She said it with finality, as if pronouncing the marriage dead, and this worried Joan. Was it over between her and Leonard? She wasn’t ready to lose him, two-timer or not.

The dog stayed close. Joan took a liver nugget out of her pocket and said, “You could never be a two-timer, could you, baby?” He gave her his most devoted look and took the treat from her hand.

She’d always thought of Leonard as a man immune to the disturbances of passion, a man who held himself in check. Now she saw he was a man who held himself in check with her. Despite their troubles, though, or maybe because of them, they’d learned a kind of patience, endurance, indulgence. There was something generous about that, she thought, something sweet. But they never talked about sweet things. Joan, especially, distrusted syrupy sentiment, as well as unchecked fun. No doubt that made her a difficult partner. So if Leonard had finally found himself a little happiness, good for him.

But he was swimming with his think-tank cutie while she was all alone in the hundred-year-old colonial with thirty years’ worth of his stuff cluttering the basement and a family of squirrels living in the attic.

In late summer, when slivers of cedar started appearing on the patio, Joan decided they were just shedding from the tall trees that surrounded the house and declined to worry about them. With Leonard gone, her approach to the house was that of a dependent or a boarder. If the place was in desperate need of attention, too bad. She had enough to do just taking care of the daily necessities: feeding and walking the dog, showering, brushing her teeth, shopping for groceries, cooking dinner, doing the laundry. If she added home maintenance to the list she’d never find time to write her novel, which she worked on every day, and restarted frequently. She was drawn to the promise of a fresh beginning, a perfect white page unmarred by imperfect words.

She’d been working at the kitchen table for several fruitless hours when a droplet of water landed on her head. The sun had started high, behind her shoulder, then slid past. Now, as it became shrouded in dark clouds, the drop of water fell.

Startled, she said, “No,” aloud, and kept going.

Another drop landed. This one was fatter and rolled down her forehead.

Looking up, she saw that the ceiling was splitting and swollen. A drop of water was hanging onto the belly of the swell, fattening, getting ready to fall. Cursing the rain and the roof, she put a pail beneath the leak, grabbed her laptop, and went upstairs to Leonard’s room.

Before Leonard had made it his own, the room had been intended for overnight guests, and Joan had decorated it impractically, indulging her vision of a pastel, provincial idyll. Now, Leonard’s high-tech desk was wedged between an antique ladies chair and a hand-painted armoire that held a collection of ties dating from Leonard’s dark-suit-and-white-shirt days. Joan set her laptop down on the desk and stood browsing the ties, thinking of the early years on West 3rd Street: motorcycles roaring past the apartment at 2:00 AM, brunches at Elephant and Castle, death-defying walks on the crumbling West Side Highway.

When she came back to the kitchen, the pail was full. How was it possible? From such tiny drops of water? The floor was still dry; the water was holding itself together even though it had risen just above the sides of the pail. If she tried lifting it she’d slop water everywhere, so she started syringing with a turkey baster, transferring the water to a smaller bucket, then emptying it into the sink.

“The writer at work,” she said aloud.

The dog came running at the sound of her voice. She gave him a treat and he lay down and waited for more.

The rain started coming faster. How would she sleep that night if she had to bail every hour?

She called Leonard.

“Call the roofer,” he said. “It’ll be dark in a few hours, so call him right away.”

“Why don’t you call him?”

”You’re the one living there.”

“But you’re the guy,” she said. “Guys listen to other guys.”

“Tell him it’s an emergency,” said Leonard.

The roofer, whose name was Antonio, had a certain swagger and a neat, compact body. The last time he’d come to the house, to replace some broken shingles, Joan had asked him for help with a clogged vent. He’d carried a ladder from his van, set it down in the master bedroom, and climbed to the high ceiling (like a cat, she’d thought). And when he’d taken the vent cover into the adjoining bath to run a sponge over its smooth surface, Joan had drifted after him and watched. She’d felt a rush of pleasure, as if it were she being stroked.

“There are a lot of damaged and missing shingles,” said Antonio.

“So that’s what all those pieces of wood on the patio were,” said Joan.

“Yes,” he said. “They were pieces of your roof.” He told her he could do a temporary fix, but the roof was in bad shape overall. She’d need a new one pretty soon.

“Okay,” she said. Okay to whatever he said, it was all okay with her.

When he began working, she went inside. It made her too nervous, watching him walk on a sharply angled roof with old, damp shingles that could slide out from under him any minute.

She called Sylvie and said, “I think I’m in love with my roofer. He’s up there right now and I don’t know what to do when he comes down.” She described how he’d moved close and smiled at her months ago, then done the same thing today. How she’d found herself flirting. “I wish I knew more about him.”

“Talk to him and find out.”

“He only talks about the matter at hand. He tells me about the roof and what’s wrong with it and what he’ll need to do to fix it. He’s a total mystery.”

“Invite him in for coffee. Put your hand on his arm. Ask about his life. These things don’t come along every day Joan, especially at our age.”

Sylvie was right. Why was she holding back? Pining away in purdah? She would change, she would live. She would have sex with the roofer.

Antonio’s text appeared on her phone: The repair is done.

She told Sylvie, “He just texted he’s done.”

“So get out there and catch him before he leaves.”

Joan splashed some water on her face, put on lipstick, and went to him.

They smiled at each other. When a cool breeze came up, Joan hunched her shoulders and crossed her arms.

Again, he moved close and held her eyes. When she was unable to do more than stare back, he turned and headed to his van.

Feeling more panic than desire, she called out, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

Inside, she chattered as she put the coffee on. Antonio sat at the kitchen table and watched her. His smile had gone a little forced. And he had a new haircut she didn’t like: the top thick and the sides cut very close. At the back of his head, just above the neck, there was a small bald patch where the barber had lost control of the clippers.

When his phone rang he had a short conversation in Spanish. His tone was unceremonious, familiar, as if he were talking to someone he knew well. A family member, perhaps. She wondered if he’d come to this country as an adult or a child, pictured his native village: small, sunbaked houses on a hillside leaning this way and that, narrow cobbled streets where old women trailed carts, men led goats. What had his life been like? And his boyhood home: had it been an ancestral treasure or a flimsy lean-to? What had he eaten? Where had he slept? In a cot, a hammock, a bunk bed? She wanted to know everything.

She poured the coffee, sat down, and asked, “Everything okay?”

“My sister had a test and now they want to do more tests.”

“Oh boy,” she said. “They’re always testing, those doctors, making you worry.”

“Yes.”

“Does your sister live in the States?”

“Yes.”

“And your parents?”

“My mother is in Spain. My father died fifteen years ago last spring.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She could see him tiring, wanting this conversation to end, so they finished their coffee in silence. When she got up and went to the sink he came up behind her and started kissing her neck and unbuttoning her blouse. She thought she should do her part and disrobe him too, so she turned to face him and started undoing his shirt but found herself fumbling with the buttons, which were too big for the buttonholes. With no choice but to keep going, she gave him a quick, dry kiss on the cheek and floated around near the ceiling as she watched herself stumble along below.

When he tried kissing her for real, she turned her head and said it was uncomfortable here in the kitchen. Could they go upstairs?

He followed her up the stairs and into the bedroom, where she folded the coverlet, turned down the comforter, and said she’d just need a minute. She invited him to sit on the bed, or lie on it, whatever made him comfortable, then went to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

When she came back, he was standing beside the bed. He kissed her, pulled her tunic top over her head, and eased her onto the mattress. Moving her fingers over the prickly hairs on the back of his neck, she tried picturing the two of them like this, embracing, thinking the image might excite her, but it only made her feel more cut-off from her body. When he pressed himself against her hip and moved his hand over her belly she rolled away. “I’m sorry,” she said. I think I need a drink. A real drink.”

He watched as she grabbed the tunic and hugged it to her body. Then he let out a breath, stood up, and went downstairs.

She yanked the top over her head, rushed after him, and found him standing by the open front door, shirt half-buttoned, boots unlaced. She’d imagined taking his hand and coaxing him back upstairs, but now, seeing his sullen face, she hesitated. He turned from her, stepped into the brilliant day, and pulled the door firmly shut behind him.

She sat, head in hands, at the kitchen table, a cup of chamomile tea cooling beside her. “I’ve just driven the first man I’ve been attracted to in twenty years completely away,” she told Sylvie. Her voice quivered with agitation.

“Well don’t cry over it,” said Sylvie. “Call him up and say you want another chance.”

Of course, thought Joan. She’d call, the two of them would laugh over her panicky blunders, and they'd go on from there.

Feeling she’d fly into pieces if she didn’t move, she went back outside to walk beneath the hemlocks. Dodging low limbs and skirting gnarled roots, she rehearsed words for Antonio and spoke them aloud.

The phone rang and the connection was made. From the other end of the line came rustling noises and the muffled squeaks of a phone being handled, and then another sound: a rush of air. A sigh, she thought, or an intake of breath. She held her own breath and waited. Finally, the sounds stopped and her phone displayed its message: Call Ended.

She became deliberate then, mechanical, thinking only of inhaling and exhaling, moving her legs and pumping her arms, getting to the end of the tree line and back, again and again.

Inside the house, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She wanted to weep with abandon, like a woman in a dusty, war-torn country rocking her dead, tearing her garments, howling at the heavens. But she’d never learned to mourn so frankly. She could only push a reedy tone up from her gut until her breath gave out. The dog, from vocal stock, listened to her sad, one-note song, and gave his answering lament.

When she was able, she got online and read about Call Ended messages. Several posts claimed that the messages signified not a hang-up, but a dropped call. It was possible, then, that Antonio had never received her call at all, or that he had, in fact, answered and gotten the same rustling, squeaky noises that had greeted her. It was possible he thought she’d hung up on him.

She tried him again and her call went to voicemail. Three days later she phoned again, then texted. She didn’t hear back.

For a long time she worked on hating him. He was a serial womanizer. A thousand women had no doubt fallen for him over the years and he’d worked his way through them all, seducing them then tossing them aside when they became too much trouble.

But even if all that were true, it didn’t matter. He was still standing very close, telling her she must clean her gutters twice each year: once when the trees leaf out, and again when the leaves fall. And she was saying yes, twice a year, and feeling his chest rise and fall with each breath.

A year later, her memory of his physical presence had faded. The outlines of his face were unclear, and she no longer felt him breathing next to her. Full hours went by in which he didn’t cross her mind.

Leonard and his think-tanker had broken up. He was renting a studio apartment in a Manhattan neighborhood that pulsed with life, the kind of place Joan continued to want for herself. Instead of being annoyed that Leonard had preempted her, she decided to admire his initiative, to even take advantage of it. So, on a sunny Saturday, she met Leonard for lunch a few blocks from his apartment.

A brief rain shower had rinsed the street clean and filled the air with the fragrance of wet pavement. Shoppers strolled the sidewalks, laughing and bumping shoulders. In the roadway, which was closed to traffic, white tables were set atop painted diagonal lines. Next to Joan and Leonard, a couple ate lunch with focused intention, accepting forkfuls of food from each other, nodding their appreciation, attending to their toddler, never breaking stride.

Leonard looked puffy and tired.

She asked, “You’re pining for Miranda?”

“Amanda,” he said. “I haven’t been sleeping.”

“Sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t entirely sorry. Mostly, she was curious, eager to know about the affair: the exciting beginning, complicated middle, and unhappy end, but some personal code of silence would probably keep Leonard from ever talking about it. Thinking she might encourage him by sharing her own story, she said, “I need a man’s perspective on something.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Just a theoretical situation. A quick, answer. Two, three words, that’s it.”

He gave no response.

Joan, recognizing this particular silence as Leonard’s shorthand for go-on-if-you-must, went on. “So this woman calls her roofer and when he comes to her house she realizes she’s very attracted to him, she’s always been attracted to him, so she flirts with him and he, you know, responds, so they start to kiss and get into bed, but she gets nervous and pulls away and he leaves in a huff and afterwards he won’t answer her calls. Did he really like her? Or was he just thinking, hey, if she wants me, why not?”

“The latter.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You don’t think it was possible he really liked her and he was very hurt when she wouldn’t have sex with him? He was so hurt he couldn’t even talk to her?”

“If that’s the explanation that makes you happy, then go with it.”

“But what do you think?”

“I told you what I think.”

“But you don’t know the details, how it was, how they moved and talked and looked at each other. You never even met the guy. You know nothing about him.”

Leonard threw his hands in the air. He said she’d asked for his opinion, he’d given it based on what she’d told him, and now she was arguing that he didn’t know enough. Exasperated with her, he looked much better. His skin had taken on a ruddy tone and his eyes were bright.

Somebody began playing a boom box. Couples found an open strip of pavement and danced to the Salsa rhythms. Unable to sit still with the beat pulsing through her, Joan got up and allowed herself a subtle sway of the hips as she watched the other couples move. They were so young, their movements so fluid and sure. When she extended a hand to Leonard he shrugged helplessly, so she stood beside the table and danced alone. She was considering the benefits of reaching the age when nobody notices or cares much what you do, when a slender young man took her by the hand and led her to the open pavement. She closed her eyes, followed his lead, and gave way to the music.

THE END

Author Bio: Deborah Mooney Harris received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in Dissent Magazine and The Southampton Review. She teaches creative writing at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Hudson River Community Education in Dobbs Ferry, New York.

Next Page