Chapter 31

For several days after visiting his mother, Focus Man found himself thinking about the quiet in her house.

It wasn't that she seemed lonely. He wasn't even sure she was. She had friends, neighbors, former coworkers, children and stepchildren scattered across various parts of the country, and a telephone that seemed to ring often enough. She had spent enough of her life surrounded by other people's needs that there might even have been something pleasant about deciding for herself when the television came on and what time dinner happened.

Still, he remembered the clock.

Nine children had once passed through that house, along with their friends, dates, arguments, music, schoolbooks, wet towels, baseball gloves and an astonishing amount of food. Focus Man could remember standing in front of the open refrigerator as a teenager, looking for something to eat, while his mother reminded him that staring at food did not cause new food to appear.

Now she could hear the clock from the living room.

He didn't know why that stayed with him.

Perhaps because he and Claire had returned to a quiet house of their own.

Their house overlooking the Bay had never been noisy in the way his mother's house had been. There had been dinners with friends, parties occasionally, visitors who stayed for a weekend, and the normal sounds of two people building a life together. But mostly it had belonged to the two of them.

They had become good at that.

Years of living together had created an arrangement neither had consciously designed. Claire knew which mornings Focus Man wanted to be left alone with his coffee and whatever problem had occupied his mind before breakfast. He knew when she came home from work carrying a story that needed to be heard rather than repaired. She had finally stopped expecting him to remember where he had left his glasses. He had finally stopped insisting that he always knew.

Usually they were on his head.

Once they had been in the refrigerator.

Claire had discovered them beside the milk.

She stood in the kitchen holding them by one earpiece.

"Would you like to explain this?"

Focus Man looked at the glasses.

Then at the refrigerator.

"I was probably carrying something."

"Your glasses?"

"No. Something else."

"What?"

He thought about it.

"I don't remember."

Claire handed them to him. "That strengthens your argument considerably."

He had tried to reconstruct the sequence afterward. There had undoubtedly been a perfectly reasonable explanation involving groceries, reading, and an interruption of some kind.

He never found it.

The incident became part of their private inventory, one of those small stories couples accumulate and bring out again whenever evidence is required.

So when Claire reminded him one Thursday morning that she wouldn't be home for dinner, he paid attention.

At least he believed he did.

She had plans with two women from work. One of them had recently been promoted, and they were meeting at a restaurant in the city to celebrate. Claire told him the name of the restaurant and the names of the women, and Focus Man listened while pouring coffee.

"Don't wait for me," she said.

"I won't."

"I'll probably be late."

"Have fun."

She kissed him before leaving.

There was nothing unusual about any of it.

That afternoon Focus Man stopped at the grocery store on the way home.

He bought salmon.

Two pieces.

At home he put both on the counter and began preparing dinner.

It wasn't until he took two plates from the cupboard that something in the arrangement troubled him.

He looked at the plates.

Then at the salmon.

Then toward the driveway.

Claire's car wasn't there.

He stood in the kitchen trying to remember whether she had said she was working late.

Then it came back.

Dinner.

Friends.

San Francisco.

"Right," he said.

He returned one plate to the cupboard.

The second piece of salmon went into the refrigerator, where, as far as he could tell, it encountered no personal belongings.

He ate at the dining table rather than in front of the television. That was habit more than principle. The table stood near the windows, and even after years in the house the view remained difficult to ignore.

The Bay was turning silver in the late afternoon light. Farther north, the first lights were beginning to appear. An airplane descended toward the airport, moving so slowly from that distance that it seemed almost suspended over the water.

Across from him was Claire's chair.

Focus Man ate his salmon.

It was slightly overcooked.

He had been distracted by the second piece.

There was nothing particularly strange about eating alone. He had done it countless times before Claire entered his life and many times since. Business trips, meetings, different schedules, visits to friends—two people could hardly spend years together without occasionally having dinner in different places.

He wasn't unhappy.

In fact, the evening was pleasant.

Nobody objected when he turned on music Claire didn't particularly like. He read part of the newspaper while eating, something she considered evidence that civilization remained an unfinished project. Afterward he carried his plate into the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher.

He looked at the plate.

For a moment he considered putting it in at an angle.

There was no one there to appreciate the gesture.

He put it in correctly.

Some principles apparently survived solitude.

He made coffee, then decided against drinking it so late and put the cup beside the sink.

Ten minutes later he wondered where his coffee was.

That concerned him slightly more than the glasses.

He eventually found the empty cup and decided the evening might be improved by sitting down.

He took a book into the living room.

For a while he read.

Then he stopped.

The house was quiet.

There was the refrigerator cycling on in the kitchen, an occasional car passing outside, the faint sound of an airplane. Nothing else.

He thought again about his mother's clock.

Her house had become quiet because people had left it. Children grew up. Her husband died. A household that once seemed incapable of silence had gradually surrendered to it.

His own house was different.

Claire hadn't gone anywhere.

She was having dinner with friends.

She would be home later.

Focus Man returned to his book.

A few pages later he realized he had been reading the same paragraph repeatedly without knowing what it said.

He closed it.

There had been a time when nearly everything he and Claire did seemed to belong to both of them. Not because they were inseparable, but because their lives were still being assembled. A restaurant discovered by one became a restaurant known by both. A friend became our friend. A piece of furniture was discussed, purchased, carried into the house and assigned a place. Even disagreements had belonged to them together.

Over time, naturally, their lives had grown larger.

Claire had work he knew only through the stories she chose to tell him. She had friendships that were hers. Focus Man had cycling friends, projects and interests that required no participation from Claire. They could spend an evening apart without either feeling abandoned or needing an explanation.

That seemed to him one of the achievements of a long relationship.

Two people could belong together without requiring possession of every hour.

He liked that idea.

He believed it.

Still, he noticed the empty chair.

Claire came home a little after ten.

Focus Man heard the car and then the front door. She called his name from the entryway.

"In here."

She appeared carrying a small white box.

"I brought you something."

"What?"

"Dessert."

She handed him the box.

Inside was a piece of chocolate cake.

He looked at her.

"You thought about me."

"Briefly."

"That's reassuring."

She laughed and sat beside him.

She had enjoyed the evening. The woman who had been promoted was delighted about the new position and terrified she wouldn't be good at it. Dinner had lasted longer than expected because they had ordered another bottle of wine and then dessert.

Focus Man listened.

There were names he recognized and one he didn't. Claire explained who she was. Something funny had happened involving a waiter and a dropped napkin, although Focus Man suspected the story had been considerably funnier at the restaurant.

He laughed anyway.

"How was your evening?" Claire asked.

"Fine."

"What did you do?"

"I made salmon."

"Good?"

"One piece was."

She looked at him.

He explained.

"You forgot I was going out."

"I did not forget."

"You cooked me dinner."

"I temporarily failed to incorporate available information."

Claire stared at him for a moment.

"Is that what we're calling forgetting now?"

"It is more precise."

"Of course it is."

She leaned against him.

He opened the cake.

They shared it from the box, passing the fork between them because neither wanted to get another plate.

Claire told him one more story from dinner.

Focus Man told her about looking for the coffee he had decided not to make.

"You know," she said, "eventually we're going to have to put a little tag on you."

"Like Mom's emergency button?"

"Exactly."

"I'm not wearing it."

"We'll tell you it's a watch."

He laughed.

For a while they sat together without talking.

There was nothing uncomfortable in the silence.

Claire's head rested against his shoulder. The empty chair was across the room now, tucked beneath the dining table where it belonged.

Nothing was wrong.

Focus Man knew that.

He was not sitting beside his wife wondering whether they loved one another. He wasn't measuring the evening against some earlier version of their life or trying to identify a problem that needed correcting.

Claire had gone to dinner.

He had cooked too much salmon.

She had brought him cake.

That was the entire evening.

And yet, later, after Claire had gone upstairs, Focus Man remained in the living room for a few minutes.

The lights around the Bay had become brighter against the dark water. He could see the reflection of the room in the windows now: the sofa, the lamp, part of the dining table.

Two chairs.

For years he had thought of a shared life as something people built together. The house, the routines, the private jokes, the accommodations, the memories—each year adding something to what had come before.

He had not thought as much about what happened after the building was mostly done.

Perhaps nothing happened.

Perhaps this was simply what a good life looked like after enough years had passed: two people secure enough to leave each other for an evening and certain enough to come home.

He liked that explanation too.

Upstairs, he heard Claire moving around.

Focus Man switched off the lamp.

As he started toward the stairs, he glanced once more at the dining room.

Their life had become very good at making room for two people.

He wasn't sure why, but that thought followed him upstairs.