The New Yorker Stories Part 39

He stopped drawing and looked over at her in a different way. "I know," he said. "I shouldn't have taken it back. I really do believe that's what exists. One person jockeying for position, another person dodging."

"I can't tell when you're kidding. Now you're kidding, right?"

"No. I'm serious. I just took it back this morning because I could tell I was scaring you."

"Oh. Now are you going to tell me that you're in compet.i.tion with me?"

"Why do you think I'm kidding?" he said. "It would kill kill me if you got a better grade in any course than I got. And you're so good. When you draw, you make strokes that look as if they were put on the paper with a feather. I'd take your technique away from you if I could. It's just that I know I can't, so I bite my tongue. Really. I envy you so much my heart races. I could never share a studio with you. I wouldn't be able to be in the same room with somebody who can be so patient and so exact at the same time. Compared to you, I might as well be wearing a catcher's mitt when I draw." me if you got a better grade in any course than I got. And you're so good. When you draw, you make strokes that look as if they were put on the paper with a feather. I'd take your technique away from you if I could. It's just that I know I can't, so I bite my tongue. Really. I envy you so much my heart races. I could never share a studio with you. I wouldn't be able to be in the same room with somebody who can be so patient and so exact at the same time. Compared to you, I might as well be wearing a catcher's mitt when I draw."

Nancy pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her cheek against one of them. She started to laugh.

"Really," he said.

"O.K.-really," she said, going poker-faced. "I know, darling Garrett. You really do mean it."

"I do," he said.

She stood up. "Then we don't have to share a studio," she said. "But you can't take it back that you said you wanted to marry me." She rubbed her hands through her hair and let one hand linger to ma.s.sage her neck. Her body was cold from sitting on the window seat. Clasping her legs, she had realized that the thigh muscles ached.

"Maybe all that envy and anxiety has to be burnt away with constant pa.s.sion," she said. "I mean-I really, really really mean that." She smiled. "Really," she said. "Maybe you just want to give in to it-like scratching a mosquito bite until it's so sore you cry." mean that." She smiled. "Really," she said. "Maybe you just want to give in to it-like scratching a mosquito bite until it's so sore you cry."

They were within seconds of touching each other, but just at the moment when she was about to step toward him they heard the old oak stairs creaking beneath Kyle's feet.

"This will come as no surprise to you," Kyle said, standing in the doorway, "but I'm checking to make sure that you know you're invited to dinner. I provide the chicken, sliced tomatoes, and bread-right? You bring dessert and something to drink."

Even in her disappointment, Nancy could smile at him. Of course he knew that he had stumbled into something. Probably he wanted to turn and run back down the stairs. It wasn't easy to be the younger extra person in a threesome. When she raised her head, Garrett caught her eye, and in that moment they both knew how embarra.s.sed Kyle must be. His need for them was never masked as well as he thought. The two of them, clearly lovers, were forgoing candlelight and deliberately b.u.mped knees and the intimacy of holding gla.s.ses to each other's lips in order to have dinner with him. Kyle had once told Nancy, on one of their late-fall walks, that one of his worst fears had always been that someone might be able to read his mind. It was clear to her that he had fantasies about them. At the time, Nancy had tried to pa.s.s it off lightly; she told him that when she was drawing she always sensed the model's bones and muscles, and what she did was stroke a soft surface over them until a body took form.

Kyle wanted to stay close to them-meant to stay close-but time pa.s.sed, and after they all had moved several times he lost track of them. He knew nothing of Nancy Niles's life, had no idea that in October, 1985, she was out trick-or-treating with Garrett and their two-year-old child, Fraser, who was dressed up as a goblin for his first real Halloween. A plastic orange pumpkin, lit by batteries, bobbed in front of her as she walked a few steps ahead of them. She was dressed in a skeleton costume, but she might have been an angel, beaming salvation into the depths of the mines. Where she lived-their part of Providence, Rhode Island-was as grim and dark as an underground labyrinth.

It was ironic that men thought she could lead the way for them, because Nancy had realized all along that she had little sense of direction. She felt isolated, angry at herself for not pursuing her career as an artist, for no longer being in love. It would have surprised her to know that in a moment of crisis, late that night, in Warrenton, Virginia, when leaves, like shadows on an X ray, suddenly flew up and obscured his vision and his car went into a skid, Kyle Brown would see her again, in a vision. Nancy Niles! Nancy Niles! he thought, in that instant of fear and shock. There she was, for a split second-her face, ghostly pale under the gas-station lights, metamorphosed into brightness. In a flash, she was again the embodiment of beauty to him. As his car spun in a widening circle and then came to rest with its back wheels on an embankment, Nancy Niles the skeleton was walking slowly down the sidewalk. Leaves flew past her like footsteps, quickly descending the stairs. he thought, in that instant of fear and shock. There she was, for a split second-her face, ghostly pale under the gas-station lights, metamorphosed into brightness. In a flash, she was again the embodiment of beauty to him. As his car spun in a widening circle and then came to rest with its back wheels on an embankment, Nancy Niles the skeleton was walking slowly down the sidewalk. Leaves flew past her like footsteps, quickly descending the stairs.

Where You'll Find Me

Friends keep calling my broken arm a broken wing. It's the left arm, now folded against my chest and kept in place with a blue scarf sling that is knotted behind my neck, and it weighs too much ever to have been winglike. The accident happened when I ran for a bus. I tried to stop it from pulling away by shaking my shopping bags like maracas in the air, and that's when I slipped on the ice and went down.

So I took the train from New York City to Saratoga yesterday, instead of driving. I had the perfect excuse not to go to Saratoga to visit my brother at all, but once I had geared up for it I decided to go through with the trip and avoid guilt. It isn't Howard I mind but his wife's two children-a girl of eleven and a boy of three. Becky either pays no attention to her brother Todd or else she tortures him. Last winter she used to taunt him by stalking around the house on his heels, clomping close behind him wherever he went, which made him run and scream at the same time. Kate did not intervene until both children became hysterical and we could no longer shout over their voices. "I think I like it that they're physical," she said. "Maybe if they enact some of their hostility like this, they won't grow up with the habit of getting what they want by playing mind games with other people." It seems to me that they will not ever grow up but will burn out like meteors.

Howard has finally found what he wants: the opposite of domestic tranquility. For six years, he lived in Oregon with a pale, pa.s.sive woman. On the rebound, he married an even paler pre-med student named Francine. That marriage lasted less than a year, and then, on a blind date in Los Angeles, he met Kate, whose husband was away on a business trip to Denmark just then. In no time, Kate and her daughter and infant son moved in with him, to the studio apartment in Laguna Beach he was sharing with a screenwriter. The two men had been working on a script about Medgar Evers, but when Kate and the children moved in they switched to writing a screenplay about what happens when a man meets a married woman with two children on a blind date and the three of them move in with him and his friend. Then Howard's collaborator got engaged and moved out, and the screenplay was abandoned. Howard accepted a last-minute invitation to teach writing at an upstate college in New York, and within a week they were all ensconced in a drafty Victorian house in Saratoga. Kate's husband had begun divorce proceedings before she moved in with Howard, but eventually he agreed not to sue for custody of Becky and Todd in exchange for child-support payments that were less than half of what his lawyer thought he would have to pay. Now he sends the children enormous stuffed animals that they have little or no interest in, with notes that say, "Put this in Mom's zoo." A stuffed toy every month or so-giraffes, a life-size German shepherd, an overstuffed standing bear-and, every time, the same note.

The bear stands in one corner of the kitchen, and people have gotten in the habit of pinning notes to it-reminders to buy milk or get the oil changed in the car. Wraparound sungla.s.ses have been added. Scarves and jackets are sometimes draped on its arms. Sometimes the stuffed German shepherd is brought over and propped up with its paws placed on the bear's haunch, imploring it.

Right now, I'm in the kitchen with the bear. I've just turned up the thermostat-the first one up in the morning is supposed to do that-and am dunking a tea bag in a mug of hot water. For some reason, it's impossible for me to make tea with loose tea and the tea ball unless I have help. The only tea bag I could find was Emperor's Choice.

I sit in one of the kitchen chairs to drink the tea. The chair seems to stick to me, even though I have on thermal long johns and a long flannel nightgown. The chairs are plastic, very nineteen-fifties, patterned with shapes that look sometimes geometric, sometimes almost human. Little things like malformed hands reach out toward triangles and squares. I asked. Howard and Kate got the kitchen set at an auction, for thirty dollars. They thought it was funny. The house itself is not funny. It has four fireplaces, wide-board floors, and high, dusty ceilings. They bought it with his share of an inheritance that came to us when our grandfather died. Kate's contribution to restoring the house has been transforming the baseboards into faux marbre. How effective this is has to do with how stoned she is when she starts. Sometimes the baseboards look like clotted versions of the kitchen-chair pattern, instead of marble. Kate considers what she calls "parenting" to be a full-time job. When they first moved to Saratoga, she used to give piano lessons. Now she ignores the children and paints the baseboards.

And who am I to stand in judgment? I am a thirty-eight-year-old woman, out of a job, on tenuous enough footing with her sometime lover that she can imagine cras.h.i.+ng emotionally as easily as she did on the ice. It may be true, as my lover, Frank, says, that having money is not good for the soul. Money that is given to you, that is. He is a lawyer who also has money, but it is money he earned and parlayed into more money by investing in real estate. An herb farm is part of this real estate. Boxes of herbs keep turning up at Frank's office-herbs in foil, herbs in plastic bags, dried herbs wrapped in cones of newspaper. He crumbles them over omelets, roasts, vegetables. He is opposed to salt. He insists herbs are more healthful.

And who am I to claim to love a man when I am skeptical even about his use of herbs? I am embarra.s.sed to be unemployed. I am insecure enough to stay with someone because of the look that sometimes comes into his eyes when he makes love to me. I am a person who secretly shakes on salt in the kitchen, then comes out with her plate, smiling, as basil is crumbled over the tomatoes.

Sometimes, in our bed, his fingers smell of rosemary or tarragon. Strong smells. Sour smells. Whatever Shakespeare says, or whatever is written in Culpeper's Complete Herbal Culpeper's Complete Herbal, I cannot imagine that herbs have anything to do with love. But many brides-to-be come to the herb farm and buy branches of herbs to stick in their bouquets. They anoint their wrists with herbal extracts, to smell mysterious. They believe that herbs bring them luck. These days, they want tubs of rosemary in their houses, not ficus trees. "I got in right on the cusp of the new world," Frank says. He isn't kidding.

For the Christmas party tonight, there are cherry tomatoes halved and stuffed with peaks of cheese, mushrooms stuffed with pureed tomatoes, tomatoes stuffed with chopped mushrooms, and mushrooms stuffed with cheese. Kate is laughing in the kitchen. "No one's going to notice," she mutters. "No one's going to say anything."

"Why don't we put out some nuts?" Howard says.

"Nuts are so conventional. This is funny," Kate says, squirting more soft cheese out of a pastry tube.

"Last year we had mistletoe and mulled cider."

"Last year we lost our sense of humor. What happened that we got all hyped up? We even ran out on Christmas Eve to cut a tree-"

"The kids," Howard says.

"That's right," she says. "The kids were crying. They were feeling compet.i.tive with the other kids, or something."

"Becky was crying. Todd was too young to cry about that," Howard says.

"Why are we talking about tears?" Kate says. "We can talk about tears when it's not the season to be jolly. Everybody's going to come in tonight and love the wreaths on the picture hooks and think this food is so festive festive."

"We invited a new Indian guy from the Philosophy Department," Howard says. "American Indian-not an Indian from India."

"If we want, we can watch the tapes of Jewel in the Crown, Jewel in the Crown," Kate says.

"I'm feeling really depressed," Howard says, backing up to the counter and sliding down until he rests on his elbows. His tennis shoes are wet. He never takes off his wet shoes, and he never gets colds.

"Try one of those mushrooms," Kate says. "They'll be better when they're cooked, though."

"What's wrong with me?" Howard says. It's almost the first time he's looked at me since I arrived. I've been trying not to register my boredom and my frustration with Kate's prattle.

"Maybe we should get a tree," I say.

"I don't think it's Christmas that's making me feel this way," Howard says.

"Well, snap out of it," Kate says. "You can open one of your presents early, if you want to."

"No, no," Howard says, "it isn't Christmas." He hands a plate to Kate, who has begun to stack the dishwasher. "I've been worrying that you're in a lot of pain and you just aren't saying so," he says to me.

"It's just uncomfortable," I say.

"I know, but do you keep going over what happened, in your mind? When you fell, or in the emergency room, or anything?"

"I had a dream last night about the ballerinas at Victoria Pool," I say. "It was like Victoria Pool was a stage set instead of a real place, and tall, thin ballerinas kept parading in and twirling and pirouetting. I was envying their being able to touch their fingertips together over their heads."

Howard opens the top level of the dishwasher and Kate begins to hand him the rinsed gla.s.ses.

"You just told a little story," Howard says. "You didn't really answer the question."

"I don't keep going over it in my mind," I say.

"So you're repressing it," he says.

"Mom," Becky says, walking into the kitchen, "is it O.K. if Deirdre comes to the party tonight if her dad doesn't drive here to pick her up this weekend?"

"I thought her father was in the hospital," Kate says.

"Yeah, he was. But he got out. He called and said that it was going to snow up north, though, so he wasn't sure if he could come."

"Of course she can come," Kate says.

"And you know what?" Becky says.

"Say h.e.l.lo to people when you come into a room," Kate says. "At least make eye contact or smile or something."

"I'm not Miss America on the runway, Mom. I'm just walking into the kitchen."

"You have to acknowledge people's existence," Kate says. "Haven't we talked about this?"

"Oh, hel-lo," Becky says, curtsying by pulling out the sides of an imaginary skirt. She has on purple sweatpants. She turns toward me and pulls the fabric away from her hipbones. "Oh, h.e.l.lo, as if we've never met," she says.

"Your aunt here doesn't want to be in the middle of this," Howard says. "She's got enough trouble."

"Get back on track," Kate says to Becky. "What did you want to say to me?"

"You know what you do, Mom?" Becky says. "You make an issue of something and then it's like when I speak it's a big thing. Everybody's listening to me."

Kate closes the door to the dishwasher.

"Did you want to speak to me privately?" she says.

"Nooo," Becky says, sitting in the chair across from me and sighing. "I was just going to say-and now it's a big deal-I was going to say that Deirdre just found out that that guy she was writing all year is in prison prison. He was in prison all the time, but she didn't know what the P.O. box meant."

"What's she going to do?" Howard says.

"She's going to write and ask him all about prison," Becky says.

"That's good," Howard says. "That cheers me up to hear that. The guy probably agonized about whether to tell her or not. He probably thought she'd hot-potato him."

"Lots of decent people go to prison," Becky says.

"That's ridiculous," Kate says. "You can't generalize about convicts any more than you can generalize about the rest of humanity."

"So?" Becky says. "If somebody in the rest of humanity had something to hide, he'd hide it, too, wouldn't he?"

"Let's go get a tree," Howard says. "We'll get a tree."

"Somebody got hit on the highway carrying a tree home," Becky says. "Really."

"You really do have your ear to the ground in this town," Kate says. "You kids could be the town crier. I know everything before the paper comes."

"It happened yesterday," Becky says.

"Christ," Howard says. "We're talking about crying, we're talking about death." He is leaning against the counter again.

"We are not," Kate says, walking in front of him to open the refrigerator door. She puts a plate of stuffed tomatoes inside. "In your typical fas.h.i.+on, you've singled out two observations out of a lot that have been made, and-"

"I woke up thinking about Dennis Bidou last night," Howard says to me. "Remember Dennis Bidou, who used to taunt you? Dad put me up to having it out with him, and he backed down after that. But I was always afraid he'd come after me. I went around for years pretending not to cringe when he came near me. And then, you know, one time I was out on a date and we ran out of gas, and as I was walking to get a can of gas a car pulled up alongside me and Dennis Bidou leaned out the window. He was surprised that it was me and I was surprised that it was him. He asked me what happened and I said I ran out of gas. He said, 'Tough s.h.i.+t, I guess,' but a girl was driving and she gave him a hard time. She stopped the car and insisted that I get in the back and they'd take me to the gas station. He didn't say one word to me the whole way there. I remembered the way he looked in the car when I found out he was killed in Nam-the back of his head on that ramrod-straight body, and a black collar or some dark-colored collar pulled up to his hairline." Howard makes a horizontal motion with four fingers, thumb folded under, in the air beside his ear.

"Now you're trying to depress everybody," Kate says.

"I'm willing to cheer up. I'm going to cheer up before tonight. I'm going up to that Lions Club lot on Main Street and get a tree. Anybody coming with me?"

"I'm going over to Deirdre's," Becky says.

"I'll come with you, if you think my advice is needed," I say.

"For fun," Howard says, bouncing on his toes. "For fun-not advice."

He gets my red winter coat out of the closet, and I back into it, putting in my good arm. Then he takes a diaper pin off the lapel and pins the other side of the coat to the top of my shoulder, easing the pin through my sweater. Then he puts Kate's poncho over my head. This is the system, because I am always cold. Actually, Kate devised the system. I stand there while Howard puts on his leather jacket. I feel like a bird with a cloth draped over its cage for the night. This makes me feel sorry for myself, and then I do do think of my arm as a broken wing, and suddenly everything seems so sad that I feel my eyes well up with tears. I sniff a couple of times. And Howard faced down Dennis Bidou, for my sake! My brother! But he really did it because my father told him to. Whatever my father told him to do he did. He drew the line only at smothering my father in the hospital when he asked him to. That is the only time I know of that he ignored my father's wishes. think of my arm as a broken wing, and suddenly everything seems so sad that I feel my eyes well up with tears. I sniff a couple of times. And Howard faced down Dennis Bidou, for my sake! My brother! But he really did it because my father told him to. Whatever my father told him to do he did. He drew the line only at smothering my father in the hospital when he asked him to. That is the only time I know of that he ignored my father's wishes.

"Get one that's tall enough," Kate says. "And don't get one of those trees that look like a cactus. Get one with long needles that swoops."

"Swoops?" Howard says, turning in the hallway.

"Something with some fluidity," she says, bending her knees and making a sweeping motion with her arm. "You know-something beautiful."

Before the guests arrive, a neighbor woman has brought Todd back from his play group and he is ready for bed, and the tree has been decorated with a few dozen Christmas b.a.l.l.s and some stars cut out of typing paper, with paper-clip hangers stuck through one point. The smaller animals in the stuffed-toy menagerie-certainly not the bear-are under the tree, approximating the animals at the manger. The manger is a roasting pan, with a green dinosaur inside.

"How many of these people who're coming do I know?" I say.

"You know... you know..." Howard is gnawing his lip. He takes another sip of wine, looks puzzled. "Well, you know Koenig," he says. "Koenig got married. You'll like his wife. They're coming separately, because he's coming straight from work. You know the Miners. You know-you'll really like Lightfoot, the new guy in the Philosophy Department. Don't rush to tell him that you're tied up with somebody. He's a nice guy, and he deserves a chance."

"I don't think I'm tied up with anybody," I say.

"Have a drink-you'll feel better," Howard says. "Honest to G.o.d. I was getting depressed this afternoon. When the light starts to sink so early, I never can figure out what I'm responding to. I gray over, like the afternoon, you know?"

"O.K., I'll have a drink," I say.

"The very fat man who's coming is in A.A.," Howard says, taking a gla.s.s off the bookshelf and pouring some wine into it. "These were just washed yesterday," he says. He hands me the gla.s.s of wine. "The fat guy's name is Dwight Kule. The Jansons, who are also coming, introduced us to him. He's a bachelor. Used to live in the Apple. Mystery man. n.o.body knows. He's got a computer terminal in his house that's hooked up to some mysterious office in New York. Tells funny jokes. They come at him all day over the computer."

"Who are the Jansons?"

"You met her. The woman whose lover broke into the house and did caricatures of her and her husband all over the walls after she broke off with him. One amazing artist, from what I heard. You know about that, right?"

"No," I say, smiling. "What does she look like?"