Bad Connections by Joyce Johnson Page B

parents’ table, she felt really sure of him—if even there she felt a persistent uncertainty, the sense of inexplicable omissions just below the surface, days and nights unaccounted for, secret transgressions, inconsistencies. Had he promised her he was turning over a new leaf? She would have believed it, of course, just as I would have believed that kind of promise myself—because I wanted to. Conrad himself might even believe it, temporarily. He would come to see me with a reserved and solemn face—“Molly, I have something to tell you … ”
    I turned and twisted in my unmade bed. I staggered to the kitchen and heated a can of soup, ladled it into a bowl and ended by pouring it into the sink, clogging the drain with noodles. If I had lost him anyway, there was nothing left to lose. I could make the call or not, it wouldn’t matter. I would know only the satisfaction of acting rather than being acted upon. Did the means then justify themselves?
    I reached for the kitchen phone and dialed his number—not hers—giving him his last chance to explain, to tell me what was going to happen in my life. I wanted to hear it all now, not Tuesday. How could I wait another three days or even another hour? I almost hoped he would lie to me. That would be a sign he still cared enough to try to keep me. But I would have to be hard on him, tell him what I knew, not allow him to deny it. Holding the receiver slightly away from my ear, I listened to the phone ring eight times. He always picked it up by the third ring if he was home. But it was not yet the end of the weekend, it was only Saturday night. They were still together, unreachable in some private space sacred to couples, “out of town for the holidays” like any more conventional pair, taking a respite from the pressures of the city. No need to hasten their return.
    They came back on Sunday. Around eight there was a busy signal on Conrad’s line. Perhaps at that moment he was trying to reach me. I never asked him. After I hung up, I picked up the phone and dialed again. By this time I knew the other number by heart.
    â€œHello,” she said in the flat, little girl’s voice that I remembered.
    â€œHello. Is this Roberta?” I recognized the crisp, civil tone as the one I used in the office when talking to strangers.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œMy name is Molly Held. I know who you are but you don’t know me.” I realized after I had spoken that I had reversed the order of my original statement, given it a baldness, a bluntness, it had not had before.
    â€œAm I supposed to?” she asked rather coldly.
    â€œNo. We are not—either of us—supposed to know each other. I’m calling because I felt there was something you ought to be aware of.”
    â€œAnd what is that?” she asked after a moment.
    â€œI am a person whom Conrad has been seeing. He has been seeing me rather seriously for several months now.”
    There was a silence.
    â€œI suppose he never mentioned it. I thought he would have told you himself. Anyway, I’m tired of being the person who knows everything. We both should know all sides.”
    â€œLook,” she said, “I don’t understand how Conrad could be seeing you. He’s with me every night of the week.”
    I had to ponder the logic of what she had just told me. I wondered—if it was true that I could not be seen—whether I existed, whether Conrad existed. “Well,” I said clumsily, all my adroitness, my desire to maintain a certain delicacy, having deserted me, “someone must be lying. Why don’t you think about it? Goodbye,” I said and hung up.
    Felicia, whose wisdom about the nuances of human relationships I trust absolutely, has often warned me about the unreliability of dialogues imagined in advance of their occurrence—a lesson learned through her own tendency to endlessly project and rehearse, taking both