T G *

T * a man,forty-seven years old.Once he'd believed himself lucky, now he understood that his luck had drained from him. Like his life's blood, or his sperm. These precious liquids you imagine in the prime of young manhood are infinite, and in middle age you understand are finite, and will one day fail you.

What is mortal wishes to be immortal.

"Oh, Adam. Hell. I'd settle for being just mortal, if it meant at least I was alive."

R C. A very good lawyer and among his friends and business acquaintances in Salthill-on-Hudson, New York, a model of integrity.

But God damn: here he was three hours late leaving for his daughter's school near Baltimore. When he'd promised Robin he'd be arriving early in the afternoon so that they could "relax" before the game.

Sure, Dad, I know what your promises are worth.

But his promises did mean something! At least, his professional promises. His word and his handshake were as binding to him as fully executed contracts to others. Roger Cavanagh was a very good lawyer and a model of integrity and since the breakup of his marriage he lived for his work, and for his reputation as Roger Cavanagh a very good lawyer and a model of integrity.

Middle Age: A Romance *

"What else is there, really?"

Not women. He'd had enough of women, he was sick of women. His soul, if he had a soul, if that hungry angry emptiness at the core of him was his soul, recoiled in loathing.

I * mid-October. The carefully forged signatures on Adam Berendt's will had not been detected. Roger Cavanagh's integrity remained inviolate.

In his law office that Sunday morning the red-haired woman stunned in grief had asked him naively, not in reproach but with her blunt childlike innocence (that so aroused Roger, even as it annoyed and maddened him, as a man) Isn't this illegal? Criminal? and fixing her bruised-looking eyes upon him asked What would happen if you, a lawyer, were- He'd cut her off. Roger Cavanagh would not engage in any conversation with Marina Troy on the ambiguous matter of Adam Berendt's last will and testament, as with other ambiguous matters regarding their deceased friend's estate, that might be considered conspiratorial.

As grounds for disbarment.

"I won't be disbarred. I won't be caught. Who could prove the signatures aren't Adam's? Who would wish to?"

"Marina would never tell. Marina is in love with him."

"Marina would never tell. Marina is implicated, too."

"I had no choice! I had to protect Adam's interests after his death.

Since the man didn't do a very good job of protecting them before his death."

Not that these remarks were made to Marina Troy, or to anyone. They were not. They were tersely uttered, as so many of Roger Cavanagh's most heartfelt remarks were uttered, in the privacy of his BMW.

R C of integrity was thinking these things on the harried drive south from Salthill, New York, to the Ryecroft School in Nicodemus, Maryland. He was deeply unhappy. He was anxious about this visit with his daughter, in dread of things going wrong. No, he wasn't unhappy, or anxious: he was angry. His guts like writhing snakes. Strapped into the powerful car like a pilot strapped into a bomber. Shifting from one lane of I-8 to another, impatient to get to his destination yet resentful of having to get there, being obliged to be Dad, yes, but he was Dad, he loved his daughter. Muttering aloud, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

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Late leaving the office, and now he was beginning to be caught up in Friday afternoon traffic. The field hockey game in which Robin was playing began at four .. He'd promised Robin he wouldn't be late for the game.

Sure, Dad, I know what your promises are worth.

Adam Berendt had died more than three months before. Yet the wound was still raw. Roger scratched compulsively at it with his nails.

Must've liked the raw oozing blood, the dull throb in his veins.

"Your death is an infection in us, survivors. Fuck you!"

No. Bitterly Roger mourned Adam Berendt, he missed his friend enormously. He had a quarrel with Adam that smoldered like an underground fire.

Roger Cavanagh was Adam's attorney, the executor of his estate, he would keep those secrets of Adam's he could. Surprise, shock, incredulity, a kind of baffled hurt-so Adam's Salthill friends had reacted when they learned of the estate Adam was leaving behind. How was it possible!

Adam Berendt who'd lived so frugally in the midst of affluent Salthill.

Adam Berendt who'd seemed always to subtly disapprove of their lives, in his dry, witty way. Adam Berendt who'd been a local "character" of whom they'd liked to speak warmly, admiringly, and always with that air of con-descension. Adam who'd bought secondhand overcoats, suits, even a tuxedo to wear to Salthill parties. He would play their clothing-game, and even seem to enjoy it, basking in their attention; at the same time he was slyly mocking them. He drove an elegantly rust-stippled secondhand Mercedes, even rode a secondhand English racing bike. His dogs were handsome, noble dogs, dogs to break your heart, yet they were strays, cast off by their original masters. Was it some sort of game? A masquerade? Adam had postponed, for years, having the rotting, leaking roof of his "historic"

house repaired; some of his friends conferred, should they offer to pay for the repairs? Or would Adam be offended? (They'd never summoned up quite the courage to make the offer.) Adam was passionate and idealistic about art, he seemed truly to believe in the high worth of art, but scav-enged his own art materials from town dumps; to the frustration of friends like Roger, he gave away his curious, odd-sized sculptures to nearly anyone who expressed an interest, rather than trying to sell them. ("Adam, what kind of compulsion is this?" Roger once asked, "-are you afraid to be a 'professional,' afraid of defining yourself as an artist, and of competing with other artists? But why?" and Adam said, with an embarrassed shrug, Middle Age: A Romance *

and a wincing smile, "Roger! I guess you got my number.") And all along, Adam had been investing in Internet and biotech stocks, and real estate, in utter secrecy from his friends. His brokers were scattered over four states, his savings accounts were under a half-dozen names. Apart from giving away isolated sums of money, often anonymously, to organizations like the National Project to Free the Innocent, the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter, the Salthill Arts Council, and the Salthill Environmental Watch, he seemed to have no use for his money. As if ashamed. Was he ashamed? Something is not right here. Something is very wrong here. Adam Berendt leaving- how much behind? Ridiculous rumors made their way back to Roger. That Adam was leaving fifteen million dollars, twenty million dollars, to charities; that he owned numerous properties on the river, worth additional millions; that he was a professional who gambled in Vegas under aliases; that he had grown children from whom he'd long been estranged, to whom he was leaving millions of dollars . . .

Roger refuted these rumors as he heard them. He was reticent about the actual worth of Adam's estate, but allowed himself to be quoted that it would probably add up to no more than six or seven million dollars once fees and taxes were settled, and this included the "historic" Deppe House.

Ashamed. Sure. Having so much money. More than some of his friends in fact. Saying he didn't deserve happiness. Who the fuck deserves happiness? Not wanting us to know him. That's the reason. That he had money, and didn't spend it on himself. Gave it away. He'd have been ashamed to reveal himself as better, more generous, than the rest of us.

"Except he didn't factor in dying so soon. And 'Adam Berendt'

exposed."

Uncle Adam. When Robin was a little girl, and very sweet with soft honey-brown curls, and big honey-brown eyes, and very smart with a love of reading and writing though she was such a little girl, and her daddy was still married to her mommy, and Uncle Adam was a family friend, in that long-ago lost time, for Robin's fourth birthday Uncle Adam brought her a big funny book he'd constructed out of papier-mache covers painted robin's-egg blue, and cream-colored pages of stiff construction paper decorated with friendly cartoon farm animals. The title of the book, in gold *

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leaf script, was : * * . Each of the pages had a headline- *

* REALLY

What a nice birthday surprise! Childhood is made of such nice birthday surprises, though of course we forget.

Robin loved the robin's-egg-blue book, she'd loved her funny Uncle Adam with the queer staring eye that never exactly looked at you, Uncle Adam who was always making her and her mommy and daddy laugh.

While the adults sat at dinner, talking and laughing for hours, how strange we have the passion, the energy, the mutual fluent love that allows us to spend so much time with one another, Robin lay stretched out on her stomach on the fuzzy wool rug in front of the fireplace, and excitedly filled in the entire book. When it was brought to show him, Adam was astonished. "Robin! What a special little girl you are."

Did Robin remember, now? Maybe. Sort of vaguely. - : * * has long been lost.

That night, eleven years ago, saying good-bye to his hosts, Adam Berendt was deeply moved. He was sober, but shamelessly sentimental.

Made you embarrassed, though you loved the guy. Never knew what he'd come out with! Taking Lee Ann's and Roger's hands in his, squeezing, didn't know his own strength, saying, earnestly, "I guess you know how God-damned lucky you are, don't you? Yes?"

"Oh, Adam. Yes." Lee Ann smiled beautifully.

"Yes. We certainly do." Roger smiled, standing tall.

He was a man of hardly five feet ten inches. Always, he made a conscious effort to stand tall.

Sure, they'd laughed at Adam afterward, undressing for bed. Adam Berendt was easy to laugh at. Their heated skins pressed together, wine-sweetened mouths kissing, nuzzling. How God-damned lucky you are. They knew!

After the divorce, furious with Adam for having been sympathetic Middle Age: A Romance **

with Roger as well as with her, Lee Ann refused to speak with Adam, ever again. She left Salthill to remarry, took Robin with her, and lived now with her investment banker husband in Rye, New York. Much of the summer they spent in Aspen, Colorado, and it was the Aspen number Roger called to inform Lee Ann and Robin of Adam's death. It was Robin who picked up the phone. "Oh, hi-Dad? You? " Robin pretended at first not to recognize her father's voice. Her manner with her father (whom she saw not very frequently) had become archly flirtatious in the past two years.

Roger never knew how to respond to her, and usually played it straight.

He was somber now, trying not to sound agitated. He asked Robin if her mother could come to the phone and Robin said quickly, with an air of satisfaction, that her mother and George (Robin's stepfather) were out, and she didn't know when they'd be back. Roger said, "I'm afraid I have upsetting news, Robin." Always quick at repartee with her father, Robin said, "Upsetting for who, Dad? You, or us?" Roger said severely, "All of us."

With a sharp, girlish laugh Robin said, "Then don't tell me, Dad. Tell Mom. She can deal with it. You know old armor-plated Lee Ann." Roger winced at the girl's juvenile sarcasm. He tried to envision her plain-pretty face, her hazel eyes so like his own, but could not. Look, honey. I didn't want the divorce, I didn't want to leave you. Your mother wanted me gone. He told Robin to tell her mother that he'd call back that evening; he knew that Lee Ann would never call him; if Roger Cavanagh lay on his deathbed, Lee Ann would never call him. But when he called back that evening, Lee Ann picked up the receiver, and said in her cool, languid former-wife's voice, "Yes? What do you want, Roger?"-as she might speak to a telemarketer. Roger told her about Adam's sudden death, and Lee Ann murmured, "Oh! Oh, God." For a long moment she was silent though in the background (was Lee Ann out-of-doors? speaking on a cel-lular phone?) there were raised excited voices, it sounded like a tennis game, Roger had a blurred image of the flashing of a white ball, tanned legs and swinging arms, his daughter's face screwed up in concentration, but who was Robin playing?-the stepfather?-and Lee Ann said, sadly, sighing, "Adam! But he was always overweight, and didn't take care of himself. It doesn't surprise me. Heart failure! What can you expect, at his age, if you don't take care of yourself? Remember," Lee Ann said, in that impassioned breathy way of hers, building a case against the victim, "how Adam postponed seeing a dentist?-for so long? He was superstitious about his health, so many men are, even intelligent men, and he absolutely *

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hated to spend money, and when finally he went he had to have all that root canal work, poor Adam, remember . . ." Roger listened to this, and to the tennis players in the background, and at first Roger was shocked, and then Roger was disgusted. "That's all you have to say, Lee Ann? I call to tell you that Adam Berendt is dead, in his early fifties, and you're blaming him for his teeth? " Lee Ann said sharply, "Adam was your friend, Roger, not mine. He chose you." "Fuck that shit, Lee Ann. Just fuck it!" "And don't use your obscene language with me, I'm not one of your hookers."

Before Roger could protest, Lee Ann hung up.

Hookers! It was a tale Lee Ann had wanted to believe, she'd told it so many times she had come at last to believe it.

No one else has the power. No one! The lethal power of the ex-spouse.

Roger stopped at a Big Boy on I-8 for black coffee. To bring the fist-banging sensation in his chest under control. The mere thought of Lee Ann and that disgraceful three-minute call left him shaken. Flooded with adrenaline! He sipped steaming-hot bitter-black coffee from a plastic cup. Fuck it, if he burnt his mouth. A red-haired woman seated in a nearby booth distracted him, that freckled pallor, skimpy eyebrows and lashes, but a bloodred juicy mouth, this one was nothing like the Troy woman, the woman he guessed he was in love with, if in love with wasn't a lurid joke at this point in his life; this one had two small fretting children and a good-looking linebacker husband, woman of about twenty-eight, normal-seeming, at ease in her female body, not-crazy, with that translucent redhead skin that drew Roger's rapt attention, a virtual kick in the groin . . . "Not her. Don't think of her." He was pondering the time: he had about ninety miles to the Ryecroft School, most of it on I-8, which was fairly clear, but then he had to exit on 6 West and from 6 he'd have to drive north to Nicodemus on a busy state highway, and on Friday afternoon . . . Before leaving his law office he'd called Robin, left a message on her answering machine, wincing at the girl's flat dismissive voice. Hi. I'm not here, I guess! Leave a message at the sound of the beep if you think it's worth it. A mirthless giggle. Your message, I mean. He left a message explaining he was a little late starting out, Dad was going to be a little late but Dad was definitely coming to see her play field hockey, wouldn't miss it for the world, don't wait for him in her residence but go Middle Age: A Romance *

get ready for the game, he'd be there for the game, absolutely. Now, since it was past two .., and the game began at four .., it looked as if he wouldn't make the start of the game, but-"God damn, I will be there."

Lee Ann had told Roger, via e-mail, their preferred means of correspondence now, that she was "concerned" about Robin. She was concerned that Robin "obsessed" about field hockey, and was neglecting her studies, and seemed to have few friends, and never, "repeat: never" spoke of him to her and George, which, Lee Ann said, "I'm sure you'll agree is not a healthy thing. For after all, you are the girl's father."

Doubtful about the wisdom of calling the baby girl Robin. So close to Roger. "Robin"-"Roger." He hadn't made the decision, Lee Ann had.

He hadn't remarried within eighteen months, Lee Ann had.

He was the wounded one, not Lee Ann.

"Never." Meaning, he'd never remarry. Never again.

He wasn't in love with Marina Troy, the thought was absurd. Their single bungled attempt at lovemaking . . . on the gritty floor of Adam's studio. (In Roger's furious imagination, someone or something was watching them. The damned dog?) Half-consciously Roger was watching the red-haired woman in the booth. If her beefy husband was aware of him, Roger didn't notice. Lost in a dream. But it was a caffeine-dream, the beat of a heavy pulse. The woman half-carried a fussing round-faced toddler into the women's lavatory, kissing and scolding, and Roger, turning to stare after them, felt a faint, sick sensation. The truth was: he'd loved Robin so much, as a baby; he'd loved Lee Ann so much, as his young, high-spirited wife; he'd even loved, to a degree, the young man he'd been. Yes, we were happy. And not deluded. Was disillusion inevitable with middle age? Or was it just a fact that, with the passage of time, things fracture, break, split into pieces?

From the age of thirty-one to the age of forty-three he'd been married, and his daughter Robin, his only child, had been born in the second year of that marriage. That long-ago time. Twelve years married! Now, it felt like an amputated limb.

He would marry again, sometime. He was a man of fierce passions and appetites and he would love a woman again, he had to believe this would happen.

Pathetic asshole. Even as a lawyer you're mediocre.

Roger bought a second steaming cup of coffee to take with him in the car. Since his friend's death he'd become acutely conscious of his *

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heart: if it was going to beat oddly, he wanted to know the cause was caffeine. Yet still he lingered in the restaurant. Gazing toward the door of the women's rest room, which was continually being pushed open, swinging shut, pushed open and swinging shut and at last the red-haired young woman emerged with the toddler, and Roger saw to his disappointment that she wasn't so attractive as he'd believed, she really looked nothing like Marina Troy. The young woman glanced up quizzically at him as if wondering should she know this man, this sharky-looking guy in his mid- or late forties with a narrow dark calculating face and graying dark hair receding from his forehead, and in the same instant Roger sighted a tall figure approaching in the corner of his eye, the woman's linebacker husband, no thanks! Clamping the lid tight on the cup, Roger fled the Big Boy.

Not wanting to hear the exchange.

That guy, he's somebody you know?

Him? No.

The way he was looking at you.

So? Let him look.

Ashes. Quietly she'd murmured, in that low throaty voice that seemed deliberately to provoke him, and the corners of her mouth twitching, "It isn't a dead man's ashes you spread, is it? It's the dead man himself." This bizarre statement was made as Roger, with a strained smile, conscious of eyes upon him, carried the urn into the garden. Thinking Jesus Christ! Let us not fuck this up, too. At least it was a still, windless day. An opaque pale sky through which sunlight penetrated like the beginning of a migraine.

Adam's ashes dumped from the urn, mostly bone chunks and powdery grit would at least not be blown back into their faces.

They'd invited only Adam Berendt's closest friends to the ceremony.

Ten days after his death. Marina, who'd been keeping the urn in her house, said she couldn't bear it any longer, they had to put Adam's ashes to rest.

Roger agreed. No point in keeping Adam's ashes in an urn on a mantel, if you knew Adam wanted to be raked into the soil of his garden.

(Except in fact would Adam now give a damn? That is, would Adam, if he could know, have seriously cared where he, or his ashes, ended up?

Not likely.) Middle Age: A Romance *

"Ceremonies! They mean nothing really, yet without them we sink into grief."

Since the morning of their bungled lovemaking in Adam's studio, of which neither Roger Cavanagh nor, he assumed, Marina Troy wished to think, the two were stricken with shyness, and a deep disgust and rage beneath, in each other's presence. Roger was a man for whom impotence of any kind, especially sexual, was humiliating; if he'd been impotent once, very likely he'd be impotent again; it was the start of a curse, and Marina Troy was to blame. No, Adam Berendt was to blame. Marina Troy was the witness, the innocent victim. Incredibly, Marina Troy had struck Roger with her fists. But it was Roger's fault, he knew. He loathed himself, knowing. The woman scarcely looked at him now. There was still the powerful sexual attraction between them but it had turned spiteful, mocking. Roger was conscious of the woman's heavy-lidded eyes, her gaze that brushed past him as if he were no more than a cloud of gnats, even as she spoke with him, and was obliged to speak with him, for they were connected through the dead man, and could not so easily avoid each other. Roger called Marina, and Marina never picked up the phone, even when Roger knew she was home; if he called the bookstore, Marina's assistant claimed that Marina wasn't in; even when Roger called from his car parked on Pedlar's Lane, and knew absolutely that Marina was in the store; he thought, This is how a man becomes a stalker, a criminal: he is driven to it by a woman. But no. This was absurd. Roger was not a man to force himself upon any woman, even in the interests of a third party. He would win over Marina Troy as he won the majority of his law cases, by the force of his seriousness, his integrity, his lawyerly cunning. He understood that Marina was afraid of him and that she resented him for being alive, while their friend was dead, and with this sentiment Roger sympathized. But I am alive, and Adam is dead. He could not believe that Adam and Marina had been lovers, no matter what others believed. He seemed to know that Adam had resisted the Salthill women who adored him, perhaps he'd always resisted women who adored him, not for a moment had Roger supposed that the cache of letters and gifts Marina had discovered in Adam's studio meant that Adam had been the lover of any of these women. He wanted to assure Marina of this, to console her, but of course, he could not speak to her of such things, she'd been too deeply wounded, made ashamed. And I am her witness. No wonder she hates me! Roger called Marina, and left messages on her answering service; she never failed to call *

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back, for she was a courteous, scrupulous person, but invariably she called when she knew that Roger wouldn't be home, and her messages on his answering machine, which made him shiver, were almost inaudible, but precise; she sounded like someone speaking from a coffin buried in the earth.

Always when she returned Roger's calls she identified herself as Marina Troy. As if Roger might confuse her with another Marina of his acquaintance.