The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg by Deborah Eisenberg Page B

at a very pretty Italian restaurant in my neighborhood, neither of us mentioned how long it had been since we’d seen each other.
    Rafe ordered a bottle of Cliquot. “To the free peoples of the world,” he said, lifting his glass.
    “What’s the matter?” I said. “Is Heather giving you a hard time?”
    “Oh, we just haven’t seen too much of each other for a while.”
    “You finally got tired of each other, huh?” I said.
    “No. We just don’t like each other. Jesus, that’s not true.” He raked his hands through his hair, which, in view of the horror he had of disarranging it, indicated profound anguish.
    “Poor Rafe,” I said, but with measured commiseration. I was waiting to hear more before deciding whether it was sympathy that was required or (had I been that sort of person) an “I told you so.”
    “She wanted to get married, you see. Have children.” My God, what a thought. Rafe surrounded by weensy Rafe replicas. “In fact, she gave me something like an ultimatum. Oh, God. I’m too old to settle down. I’ve really got to start running around again.”
    “It does seem to suit you, Rafe.”
    “I just couldn’t. She’s a wonderful girl, but I couldn’t. Particularly the children part, you know? I do want children of course, eventually, but just not right now. And just the fact that she says to me, ‘Look, I really want children, I want them now, I think that if we’re to continue we should get married,’ and I don’t have any response at all, except sheer terror—well, that indicates to me that it’s wrong, you know? No matter how I think I feel about her, that proves that it’s just wrong.” How glossy his hair looked in the candlelight while he shoved it around like that! “Don’t you think that’s true?” he said.
    “Well,” I said slowly—I felt I was looking at us both from a great height—“I suppose it must be.”
    “See, that’s what I mean,” he said. “Here, have some of my zucchini. How do you feel about children, anyway? I’ve always wondered whether you were disappointed about not having any.”
    “I might still have some one of these days. I’m only your age, remember?”
    “Sure,” he said. “Of course. But how do you feel about them now?”
    “Oh, I don’t know, really,” I said. “They are dear, but to tell you the truth, Rafe, I sometimes find them—I don’t know—off-putting. I mean, those tiny faces all lit up with some entirely groundless joy, and then something happens and they just crumple all up like old Christmas wrappings. All that anguish, all that drama! I mean, it’s quite cute and whatnot, but who can understand it? Of course, they’re so sweet—absolutely adorable—and yet I can’t help feeling that they’re, well… oddities. Almost a bit creepy, somehow.”
    “I know,” Rafe said, sounding faintly surprised. “That’s sort of how I feel, really.”
    I looked across at him, sitting there lost in his fleecy sadness, and I wondered if Heather knew what she’d given away. Perhaps she really was looking for something more ordinary than life with Rafe, or perhaps, having been dazzled by him, as doubtless she had been, she feared that there was nothing to rely on beneath his sophistication and glamour. But that was the thing about Rafe, I knew. Underneath the alpaca and wool, underneath the—well, no matter— fundamentally , I mean, he was as good a man as you could ever hope to find.
    “She really is a marvelous girl,” Rafe said, as if in verification of his own opinion (although by then, of course, it didn’t really matter if his opinion was correct or not). “She has a quality I’ve never really encountered in anyone else. A sort of directness, or clarity, that gives her courage. Like some magic sword.”
    It occurred to me that this quality Rafe so touchingly considered her to have was perhaps her quality (and it truly was a very attractive one) of youthful, vigorous ignorance concerning life’s more serious