May We Be Forgiven Part 42

"Meet men in the grocery store and follow them home?"

"No," she says. "I'm just killing time."

"Until what-the five o'clock movie at the Yonkers cinema?"

"Where are the kittens?" she asks.

"Upstairs," I say, taking her to the master bedroom, which has been not so much converted as taken over as the cat nursery.

"Oh my G.o.d," she says, getting down on her hands and knees and crawling towards the kitten pen. "They're adorable." The kittens are in fact adorable; they're now walking around a bit and playing, and the queen seems willing to allow me to play with them.... I change the towels in their box.

"Lots of laundry," I say.

She picks one up and rubs it against her face-the queen mother seems unhappy.

"Best not to pick them up," I say.

"Sorry."

I am watching her down on her hands and knees in the rather smelly "cat room."

"Do you have a husband?"

She shakes her head no.

"A boyfriend?"

"Former, not current," she says.

We play with the kittens for a few minutes and then go back downstairs. Reflexively, I turn the television on. It's as though I need backup, more voices, the simulation of a c.o.c.ktail party. A soon as I push the b.u.t.ton, I think of George, who always had the television on.

I look at the woman. "There's a reason your mother said not to talk to strangers," I say.

"Can we change the channel?" she asks.

I'm thinking she means change the subject. "Sure," I say, pretending to push a b.u.t.ton on my stomach-bing, channel changed. "Are you hungry?"

"No, I mean really, can we change the channel? I need to, like, clear my head. Can we put on something different, like not Headline News but a real show, you know, like Two and a Half Men? You know-cheerful?"

The show that starred a c.o.kehead hooker-abuser-cheerful? I think, but say nothing. "Yeah, sure." And I change the channel. "You know it's not real people laughing," I say.

"It was once," she says, and there's nothing more to say. "It's kind of cold in here."

"Would you like a sweater?" In the front hall closet there are still some of Jane's things-I give the girl a soft magenta sweater.

"So you're married," she says.

"My brother's wife's. She pa.s.sed away-keep it."

"It's cashmere," she says, as though obligated to disclose the value of what I'm giving away.

When she puts it on, I remember Jane wearing it, and I remember noticing the curve of her breast and feeling compelled to touch it, wondering if it felt as good as it looked, delicate, s.e.xy. Now, on this other girl, the look is different, but it still has a special effect.

"Hors d'oeuvres?" she asks.

"You want me to make your cheese puffs?"

"What else have you got?" she asks in a way that makes me wonder what she bought the cheese puffs for-like she's saving them for something better.

I dig around in the freezer and find some old pigs-in-blankets and pop them into the toaster oven.

"Piping hot," I announce when I bring them out eleven minutes later-at the third commercial break.

"I didn't know they made these for home use," she says.

"Sorry," I say, not understanding her point.

"I thought pigs-in-blankets was, like, something only a caterer could get."

She dips the hot dog into the Dijon mustard and pops it in her mouth. "Wow, I like it. Quite a kick. What is that?"

"Dijon mustard?" And all I'm thinking is, how can you never have tasted Dijon mustard?

When the snacks are gone, we watch a little more TV, and then she declares she's still hungry. "Who delivers around here?"

"No idea," I say.

"I know there's pizza," she says.

"Had it for lunch," I say. "Chinese?"

"Do they deliver?"

I call my usual place. "It's me," I say, "Mr. Half Hot and Sour/Half Egg Drop. Do you by any chance deliver?"

"You sick, you can't come in?"

"Something like that."

"Okay, so what you want?"

I look at the woman. "A double order of my usual soup, a couple of egg rolls, an order of moo-shu pork, and sweet-and-sour shrimp. Anything else?" I ask the woman.

"Extra fortune cookies," she says, loud enough for the man taking the order to hear.

"How many you want?"

"Six," she says.

I give them the address and phone number and turn on the outside light. And then, a few minutes later, out of small talk and worried they won't find the house, I suggest we wait outside. We sit on the front stoop. There's something wonderfully melancholic about being outside on a spring evening watching the vanis.h.i.+ng sunset against the deepening blue; the outlines of the old thick trees, full with bright fresh leaves, the surprising, gentle tickle of a breeze, and it somehow feels so good to be alive.

I breathe deeply.

"It's like when we were kids," she says. "We'd eat dinner early, before Dad came home, and then sit outside and wait for the Good Humor truck-my favorites were Strawberry Shortcake or Chocolate eclair."

"We weren't allowed ice cream from the truck," I say, suddenly remembering. "My mother thought that was how children got polio."

Tessie is working the yard, sniffing everything, bushes, the daffodils, lilies that are pus.h.i.+ng up through the dirt; she pees a little here and a little there.

"She's really well trained," the woman says. "She doesn't seem the least bit interested in going in the street."

"She hates the street."

Mr. Gao, the owner of the Chinese restaurant, pulls up to the curb in a Honda SUV with the name of the restaurant on the side.

I go down to the car. Mr. Gao is at the wheel, and his wife sits beside him, holding the heavy brown paper bag filled with dinner-the inside of the car smells delicious.

Even though she could easily hand me the bag through the window, the wife gets out of the car. She is wearing her Chinese hostess dress. "Ding-dong, delivery," she says, pretending to ring an invisible doorbell.

"How have you been?" I ask.

"Good," she says. "We no see you in long time."

"I've been busy. Who is minding the store?"

"Mr. Foo, the headwaiter. He has been with us a long time." She glances up at the house. "Nice place."

"Thank you," I say, as I take money out of my wallet.

I pay her, and she hands me the bag and then dips both hands in her side pockets and pulls them out, fists clenched.

"Pick a hand," she says.

I tap her right hand; she turns it over and opens. Her palm is filled with the white mints with the jelly center that they have at the cash register. "Trick-or-treat for you," she says.

"Thanks," I say, popping one in my mouth. She pours the rest into my hand-they are kind of sweaty-sticky.

The woman is hanging back, high up on the lawn, near the door, as though she doesn't want to be seen.

"Come visit soon," the woman from the restaurant says.

"I will, and thank you."

I watch as they drive off, and then turn back towards the house. The woman has already gone inside and is in the kitchen, looking for plates and silverware.

While we're eating, she asks if I've ever stolen anything.

"Like what?"

"Like anything?"

"No, but it sounds as though perhaps you have."

She nods.

"Okay, so what's the biggest thing you've ever stolen?"

She stops to think for a moment and takes a bite of her moo-shu roll-up; cabbage and soy sauce squirt out. "A thirty-seven-inch plasma TV," she says, still chewing.

"Under your coat?"

"No, in a rented car; I had to have it; I'd lived with a thirteen-inch for so long-no remote. It was time to get with the program."

"Do I need to worry that the real reason you came here is because you're casing the joint and you and your boyfriend are going to come back later with a U-Haul and clean me out?"

She looks up. "Oh no, I don't steal from people, only stores. I would never take something from someone I know."

"Do you know me?"

"You know what I mean, an individual as opposed to a corporation."

We finish eating, and then she neatly packs up the leftovers, puts them back in the brown bag, and tucks it into the fridge.

"Time for cookies," she says.

"Would you like some tea?" I ask.

"More wine," she says, cracking a fortune cookie. She opens one and then another and another, each time apparently not pleased with the result, until, finally, the fourth fortune reads, "Your Good Fortune Starts Now."

She feeds cookie bits to Tessie until I say no more: otherwise she'll get a tummy ache.

We retreat back to the sofa and watch more television, and I find myself thinking that I now understand what the perfect use for TV is-it gives people who have nothing in common something they can do together and talk about: it gives us familiar territory. I have a new respect for what George used to do, how television binds us as Americans-we are what we watch.

"Soon I have to go," she says.

I nod. I'm not thinking about s.e.x, but apparently that's part of the deal-on the menu, right after orange sections and fortune cookies. Without warning, she dive-bombs me on the sofa with heavy wet kisses, her mouth open and oddly gifted: I can't help but respond. She's thrusting her tongue into me and then pulls back for a moment, lifts her s.h.i.+rt over her head-and essentially gifts me with herself. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are bigger, fuller than I would have expected-she wears a bra that is dark blue and lacy, which sets off her pale skin. Rather deftly she's down on me, wrestling my stiffening situation from its hiding place, but when I reach for the b.u.t.ton of her jeans-she shakes her head no. I obey. The rest is frenetic, urgent, with a lot of grappling and sliding off the leather cus.h.i.+ons and onto the floor. And then I come and it's over. I am left, spilled, my d.i.c.k shrinking back in my lap like messy melted ice cream, and she is up, putting her s.h.i.+rt back on like this is just the way it goes. She walks into the kitchen, collects her frozen stuff from the freezer, and pops back into the living room, where I'm still on the floor. "See ya," she says, like it's all so easy.

"Do you want to give me your phone number?"

"I know where you live," she says.

When she's gone, I clean myself up, straighten the sofa cus.h.i.+ons, and try not to think about how really strange it all was. I don't even know her name.

The next morning, via certified mail, I am informed that I am officially divorced. The mailman rings the bell, Tessie barks, I sign for the letter, and, voila, I have the divorce in hand. It wasn't as hard as I thought it might be.

I remember as a kid overhearing conversations about marriages that had failed and how the wife had to prove the husband had been cheating, had to "catch him in the act," and other cases where one or the other of the couple would have to go live in another state for at least a year or two until things could be resolved.

Now it literally comes in the mail, along with discount coupons for pizza and a thank-you note from Ashley, written on her "official" stationery, embossed "A.S.S."