Featured Fiction: Jennifer Haigh
Jennifer Haigh is the author of the short story collection News From Heaven and six critically-acclaimed novels — most recently, Mercy Street. Published in eighteen languages, her books have won the Bridge Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Massachusetts Book Award, the PEN New England Award in Fiction, and a literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her short stories have been published widely, in Granta, The Atlantic, The Best American Short Stories, and many other places. A Guggenheim fellow, she teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Boston University.
An Introduction by John Fulton:
It’s my great pleasure to introduce the short fiction of Jennifer Haigh, a writer often thought to be one of our best novelists at work today. But what many fans of her masterful novels may not know is that she writes beautiful, fierce, and surprising stories, of which “Citizen” is a beguiling example. This isn’t just a short story, but what I’d call a short short story. In just over five pages, this lithe and concise narrative gives us the history of an entire marriage. Maggie and Gordon are both well into their sixties, though don’t let their age lull you into thinking that this is a quiet or uneventful coupling. Among its many surprises, “Citizen” is the sort of story that rewards rereading because — and I’ll be careful not to give anything away — nothing is quite what it appears to be at first glance. Who is in control of this story and of this marriage won’t be clear until you reach the end, at which point you’ll want to start again at the beginning to examine your own preconceptions (and perhaps misconceptions). I could say much more about “Citizen” — how it traces two full lives, examines aging, love, commitment, and gives expression to what it means both to regret and to be content with one’s choices late in life — but I’ll stop here and let the reader enjoy this gem of a story.
Citizen
When I woke this morning, the Audi was gone from the driveway. This in itself wasn’t unusual. Gordon, my husband, is an early riser. Most mornings he slips out of bed just after dawn, eager to start the day’s work.
When he returned, I saw that he’d gotten a haircut. “Nice,” I said, running my hand over his head. Gordon has a fabulous head of hair — mostly gray now, but still thick and luxuriant. He is — we both are — sixty-five this summer; but suntanned and freshly barbered, he looks ten years younger. He is still a handsome man.
“And an oil change,” he said, kissing me. “I have to go into the city this weekend.”
“You’re driving?” The city, New York, is an easy train ride from Boston. Gordon is a painter and knows many people there — artists, curators, collectors, gallery owners. Though none of these people is likely to be in town on a glorious weekend in June.
“It’s kind of last minute,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
It was the apology that got my attention. I know, people apologize all the time — I am Canadian — but Gordon isn’t that type of person.
After breakfast he went out back to his studio. I went online to check the balance of our checking account. Then I took Lola for a walk. She is a Chesapeake Bay retriever, our sixth Chessie. We’ve had them, usually two at a time, for most of our thirty-year marriage. I grew up with spaniels, and there’s a corgi in the neighborhood I’m fond of, but a Chessie is the only type of dog Gordon will consider. He is loyal to the breed.
At dinner I give him the bad news.
“Lola was sick this afternoon,” I tell him, which is true. “She must have eaten something.”
Gordon looks stricken. “Did you give her water?”
“I tried, but she won’t drink.”
He gets up from the table and roots around in the pantry cabinet. “We can’t let her get dehydrated. Remember last time.” He finds a can of chicken broth and pours it into an ice cube tray to make her special popsicles — a surefire way to get some fluids into her.
“If she isn’t better, I’ll take her to the vet in the morning,” I tell him. “After you leave for the city.”
For a moment he looks confused, as if he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
“I’m not going,” he says. “Not if she’s sick. I’ll go another time.”
#
It’s been a while, but I remember the signs.
He will drive rather than take the train. There will be a large withdrawal of cash from our joint checking account, enough to cover a hotel room and an extravagant dinner for two. He thinks he’s being clever, but really it couldn’t be more obvious. Who pays cash these days? Nobody. Certainly not Gordon.
The first time, it happened naturally. Lola had been puking for two days straight — some kind of stomach parasite. The vet told us to watch her closely, and Gordon refused to leave her side. We’re down to one dog now — Buster died last year of a rare canine cancer — and Gordon worries about her excessively. In her older age, Lola has become a spoiled only child. She loves me too, but when you get down to it she is Gordon’s dog. They are proprietary about each other.
We never had children. Gordon felt it was incompatible with the artist’s life and I agreed, though I’m not an artist. I’m retired now, but at the time I was the Dean of Students at a large public university.
“Maggie is a citizen,” Gordon used to say at parties. By this he meant I was a regular person, a contributing member of society. He meant it in a complimentary way.
It was the secret to our harmonious marriage: I agreed with him about most things. At the time it didn’t feel like capitulation. My own feelings about parenthood were ambivalent, and Gordon’s weren’t. He had a stronger opinion than I did, so it seemed natural to defer to him. He had stronger opinions about most things.
Do I regret it? Only rarely, and only slightly. I do sometimes wonder what that other life would have been like. I also wonder, what if I had become a nun or a scientist, applied for a Fulbright, lived in England or Greece or Japan or India, kept skiing and trained for the Olympics? It’s mind-blowing to think of all the lives I haven’t lived.
#
I cheated on him once, in retaliation. It wasn’t a great experience. The man I chose to cheat with was good-looking but not kind, and the sex wasn’t memorable. His most attractive quality, in the end, was that he wasn’t Gordon.
If Gordon found out, it would be the end of our marriage; I knew this. For me, it was the entire point.
He’s a proud man, and stubborn. He used to say that we were made for each other, and I’ve never known him to change his mind about anything. Our marriage was a concrete bunker, and I didn’t have the strength to tunnel my way out of it. The only way out was to blow it to bits.
I never intended to come back, and I wouldn’t have. I was living in a sunny top-floor apartment six blocks from Harvard Square — you could still find them, back then — and I’d met someone. No more artists for me; Frank was a molecular biologist. It felt like the beginnings of a life.
When Gordon got sick, he didn’t tell me. I might never have found out at all if I hadn’t run into Alan Dershowitz at Whole Foods. We’d met a couple of times — he owns several of Gordon’s paintings — and he wasn’t aware that Gordon and I had separated. “How’s the dialysis going?” he asked.
That night I went to see Gordon in the hospital. After his discharge, I took care of him for eleven months. With his new kidney, he could live another twenty years. Even thirty isn’t impossible, if the rest of his body holds up. When he dies, it won’t be the kidney’s fault. It could easily outlive the rest of him and be re-gifted to someone else, like clothing a child has outgrown.
We are both grateful, and we are happy.
For a long time, years, there were no impromptu weekends in New York.
#
I don’t know who this woman is, not that it matters. I assume she’s younger. They weren’t always, but when you’re pushing seventy, most people are.
At our age, sleeping together isn’t what it used to be. I don’t mean the sex. In the beginning, our bodies were elastic, they molded to each other like some advanced polymer cooked up in a lab. We fell asleep in astounding positions, curled around each other like puppies in a pile. We were puppies, always sniffing and licking at each other, unable to contain our exuberance, our hunger.
We’re both stiffer now, intractable. Some body part or another always hurts — Gordon’s bursitis and sciatica, my tricky lower back. When he holds me at night, his arm compresses my rib cage, so heavy I can barely breathe. If I spoon him, he reaches behind his back — I’m amazed he can still do it — to bend my arm at some awkward angle that makes my fingers go numb. I’m skinnier than I used to be, all knees and elbows, my pelvis so angular it bruises him.
What has happened to us?
The spirit, or whatever you call it, is still in there. I still want to want Gordon inside me and around me and all through me. The body is the problem, heavy and rigid as a wineskin, a leathery old bag of bile and blood.
#
I don’t hurt Lola. I simply don’t watch her as closely as I might, knowing her tendency to eat repulsive things: garbage, roadkill, her own or something else’s crap. Anything that fits in her mouth qualifies as food.
She isn’t a stupid dog, but she is a dog. This morning I took her to the reservoir at Fresh Pond and let her off leash — you’re not supposed to, but everyone does it. She disappeared for some moments, and when I went to find her she’d plucked an aluminum pie pan out of a trash can and was lapping enthusiastically at a pile of gook that could have been throwup or leftover macaroni and cheese.
“Bad dog,” I said half-heartedly.
Lola gave me a sheepish look — she knows better — but, like all dogs, she can go voluntarily deaf when it suits her.
She slurped up the mess until it was gone.
I don’t feel good about it. I realize that I’m exploiting what is sweetest and best in my husband to keep him from acting on what is worst.
Aging is a trip. It’s not what you think it’s going to be. Even against your will, you come to understand certain things. Gordon’s adultery, for instance. He is old, too; the possibilities of his life are largely exhausted. But because he is a man, and still handsome, and because he has a prescription for Viagra, this one avenue remains open to him, these fleeting glimpses of lives he hasn’t lived.
Lola is getting older too. Her left eye is a little milky, the beginnings of a cataract. After our daily walk she sleeps for an hour straight. When she dies, Gordon will be devastated, and so will I.
It’s better not to think about it. You can ruin your whole life that way. Every new love and every old one, every dear moment, casts a dark shadow if you look for it.
The next morning Gordon brings me espresso in bed. I can hear the clack of an ice cube on the kitchen floor, Lola eating her special popsicle with great relish.
“I don’t feel like working,” he says. “Let’s drive to the shore.”
We consider the options, consult the tide chart. At Pigeon Cove, low tide is at 11 am. Gordon coaxes Lola into her harness while I pack a picnic. There’s a cold bottle of white and leftover fried chicken in the fridge.
Sometimes, life is sweet.