The Conference on Beautiful Moments

ROBERT AND HIS WIFE

R o b e r t a n d H i s W i f e I’d been coming to the meetings for some time.I would sit and listen and occasionally talk from the couch or straight-back chair in a poorly lit living room. We had rotating hosts but all the living rooms looked more or less alike, with paintings and posters and plants and cats and Satie or Miles Davis in the background when we first walked in. There would also be chocolate-chip cookies, cheese and crackers, and cheap wine on a table.When there was something in my life I wouldn’t go but when there was nothing I went. It was true that there were no particularly attractive women at the meetings and it was also pretty sad to hear the mostly middle-aged members reading their stories and poems that no one would ever publish, but there were times when I simply needed to listen and talk to people so I went, though I never wrote anything for the group myself. With no potential love interest at the meetings, I began to focus my attention on Robert, who by acclamation was the group’s most interesting person. One night Robert read one of his stories. I remember the first two lines were “There are lonely people and people who don’t know they’re lonely. Derek was a little of both.” Not bad lines, I thought. They stuck in my mind though I couldn’t tell you much about the rest of the story. Those lines, however, made me decide to talk to him that night, and as soon as the meeting was over I invited him over for a drink at the Majestic, our neighborhood restaurant /bar. 63 64 t h e c o n f e r e n c e o n b e a u t i f u l m o m e n t s Robert is a large man with a big flowing beard. Since I’m thin and clean-shaven with much shorter hair, we’re pretty much physical opposites . The only physical thing we have in common is the tinge of gray at our temples. AfterourdrinkscameIfeltIshouldsaysomethingmoreabouthisstory but was afraid he’d realize I hadn’t paid much attention past the opening lines. Instead I took a swallow of my whisky sour and said, “Sometimes, even when the meetings go on too long, I don’t like them to end ’cause I just don’t want to be in my apartment. Of course I don’t say much in the group . . . you may have noticed I have trouble writing stories.” “Your writing will come when it comes,” Robert said softly. Then he looked at me a moment. “I know what you mean about not wanting to face your apartment. I’ve certainly been there.” “Really? When was that? I picture you always with friends. Everyone in the group seems to gravitate toward you.” “After my divorce, I felt that way. And not just about my apartment. If somebody held up a line in the grocery store ’cause their credit card wouldn’t work, I’d be seething, like I was ready to strangle them. I had a very short fuse with people then but I didn’t want to be alone either.” I was surprised to hear this. I was almost disoriented in a way, since Robert seemed so calm and self-possessed—a man always on top of things. I asked him what got him over it. “Becoming friends with Beth again, my ex-wife, helped a lot. That didn’t make the divorce such a loss. It was also much better for our children too, even though at the time they were almost grown.” Robert, I found out, had two daughters. One had just started law school, the other was two years into medical school. He described his relationship with them as“very close.”When I asked if he was still friends with his ex-wife he quickly said,“Oh yes.Great,very close friends.She still lives near St. Louis, in Clayton. She’s in a writer’s group there as a matter of fact. You’d like Beth. Everyone does.” I nodded. I’d wanted to say something but didn’t. He went on to tell me more about Beth. She was an intense this, she was a sensitive that. She was a thinker, too, who’d majored in philosophy...