Everyman

"I don't think it will," he was saying to their daughter. "There's a reason I was never a painter. I've run smack up against it."

"The reason you weren't a painter," Nancy explained, "is because you've had wives and children. You had mouths to feed. You had responsibilities."

"The reason I wasn't a painter was because I'm not a painter. Not then and not now."

"Oh, Dad-"

"No, listen to me. All I've been doing is doodling away the time."

"You're just upset right now. Don't insult yourself – it's not so. I know it's not so. I have your paintings all over my apartment. I look at them every day, and I can promise you I'm not looking at doodlings. People come over – they look at them. They ask me who the artist is. They pay attention to them. They ask if the artist is living."

"What do you tell them?"

"Listen to me now: they're not responding to doodlings. They're responding to work. To work that is beautiful. And of course," she said, and now with that laugh that left him feeling washed clean and, in his seventies, infatuated with his girl-child all over again, "of course I tell them you're living. I tell them my father painted these, and I'm so proud to say that."

"Good, sweetie."

"I've got a little gallery going here."

"That's good – that makes me feel good."

"You're just frustrated now. It's just that simple. You're a wonderful painter. I know what I'm talking about. If there's anybody in this world equipped to know if you're a wonderful painter or not, it's me."

After all he'd put her through by betraying Phoebe, she still wanted to praise him. From the age of ten she'd been like that – a pure and sensible girl, besmirched only by her unstinting generosity, harmlessly hiding from unhappiness by blotting out the faults of everyone dear to her and by overloving love. Baling forgiveness as though it were so much hay. The harm inevitably came when she concealed from herself just a little too much that was wanting in the makeup of the ostentatiously brilliant young crybaby she had fallen for and married.

"And it's not just me, Dad. It's everybody who comes. I was interviewing babysitters the other day, because Molly can't do it anymore. I was interviewing for a new babysitter and this wonderful girl I ended up hiring, Tanya – she's a student looking to earn some extra money, she's at the Art Students League just like you were – she couldn't take her eyes off the one I have in the dining room, over the sideboard, the yellow one – you know the one I mean?"

"Yes."

"She couldn't take her eyes off it. The yellow and black one. It was really quite something. I was asking her these questions and she was focused over the sideboard. She asked when it was painted and where I had bought it. There's something very compelling about your work."

"You're very sweet to me, darling."

"No. I'm candid with you, that's all."

"Thank you."

"You'll get back to it. It'll happen again. Painting isn't through with you yet. Just enjoy yourself in the meantime. It's so beautiful where you are. Just be patient. Just take your time. Nothing's vanished. Enjoy the weather, enjoy your walks, enjoy the beach and the ocean. Nothing's vanished and nothing's altered."

Strange – all the comfort he was taking from her words and yet he wasn't convinced for a second that she knew what she was talking about. But the wish to take comfort, he realized, is no small thing, particularly from the one who miraculously still loves you.

"I don't go in the surf anymore," he told her.

"You don't?"

It was only Nancy, but he felt humiliated nonetheless by the confession. "I've lost the confidence for the surf."

"You can swim in the pool, can't you?"

"I can."

"Okay, so swim in the pool."

He asked her then about the twins, thinking if only he were still with Phoebe, if only Phoebe were with him now, if only Nancy hadn't to work so hard to shore him up in the absence of a devoted wife, if only he hadn't wounded Phoebe the way that he had, if only he hadn't wronged her, if only he hadn't lied! If only she hadn't said, "I can never trust you to be truthful again."

It didn't begin until he was nearly fifty. The young women were everywhere – photographers' reps, secretaries, stylists, models, account executives. Lots of women, and you worked and traveled and had lunch together, and what was astonishing wasn't what happened – the acquisition by a husband of "someone else" – but that it took so long to happen, even after the passion had dwindled and disappeared from his marriage. It began with a pretty, dark-haired young woman of nineteen whom he hired to work as his secretary and who, within two weeks of taking the job, was kneeling on his office floor with her ass raised and him fucking her fully clothed, with just his fly unzipped. He had not possessed her by coercion, though he had indeed taken her by surprise – but then he, who was conscious of having no peculiarities to flaunt and who believed himself content to live by the customary norms, to behave more or less the same as others, had taken himself no less by surprise. It was an easy entry because she was so moist and, in those daredevil circumstances, it took no time for each of them to achieve a vigorous orgasm. One morning just after she had gotten up from the floor and returned to her desk in the outer office, and while he was still standing, face flushed, in the middle of the room and adjusting his clothing, his boss, Clarence, the group management supervisor and an executive vice president, opened the door and came in. "Where is her apartment?" Clarence asked him. "I don't know," he replied. "Use her apartment," Clarence said severely and left. But they couldn't stop what they were doing where and how they were doing it, even though theirs was one of those office trapeze acts in which everyone has everything to lose. They were too close to each other all day to stop. All either of them could think about was her kneeling on his office floor and him hurling her skirt up over her back and grabbing her by the hair and, after pushing aside her underpants, penetrating her as forcefully as he could and with an utter disregard for discovery.

Then came the shoot in Grenada. He was ru

They had a stop in the Caribbean, and he got off the plane and went into the waiting room and looked around, saw all the models, and said hello to them before everyone got onto another, smaller plane and took a short hop to their destination, where they were picked up by several cars and by a small jeeplike vehicle, which he decided to ride in with one of the models whom he'd taken note of when she was hired. She was the only foreign model on the shoot, a Dane named Merete and probably, at twenty-four, the oldest of the ten; the rest were American girls, eighteen and nineteen years old. There was somebody driving, Merete was in the middle, and he was on the outside. It was nighttime and very dark. They were squeezed in tightly together and he had his arm around the top of her seat. Only moments after the car took off his thumb was in her mouth, and without his knowing it, his marriage had come under assault. The young man who started out hoping never to live two lives was about to cleave himself open with a hatchet.

When they got to the hotel and he went to his room, he lay there most of the night thinking only of Merete. The next day when they met, she said to him, "I waited for you." The whole thing was so quick and so intense. They shot all day in the middle of the forest with the small natural pool, worked hard and seriously for the entire day, and when they got back he found that the photographer's rep who was along on the job had rented a house on the beach just for him – he had thrown a lot of work her way, and so the rep rented it for him and he moved out of the hotel and Merete came with him and they lived there on the beach together for three days. In the early morning when he was coming back up the beach from his swim, she would be waiting on the veranda wearing just her bikini underpants. They would start then and there, while he was still wet from his long swim. For the first two days he was always diddling around her ass with his fingers while she went down on him, until finally she looked up and said, "If you like that little hole, why don't you use it?"