Secrets and Surprises Part 13

"What the h.e.l.l's the matter with you?" Tom said. "What did you say that for?"

"Was it a secret?"

"It wasn't a secret. It's just that I hadn't discussed it with her yet."

"Sorry," Max said. "I'll wash out my mouth with soap. Believe me, I intended nothing by it. If you knew how lousy my own love life was, you'd know I wasn't pa.s.sing judgment."

The snow started as they ate. Elena looked toward the window because there was such a draft she thought it might be open a crack, saw that it was closed, saw the snow.

"I guess we'd better hit the road while the road's still visible," Max said, waving to the waitress. Tom took Elena's hand and kissed her knuckles. She had left almost all of her sandwich.

Outside, they all stopped. They stood staring at a van, with a deer strapped to the top. Elena looked down and fingered the b.u.t.tons on her coat. When she looked up, the deer was still there, on its side on the rack on top of a blue van. Tom went over to the van. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and wrote "Murdering Motherf.u.c.ker" and swung open the door and dropped the paper on the driver's seat.

"Let's get out of here before he comes out and starts a fight," Max said.

Tom took a turn at the wheel. Max stretched out in the back seat. The driving was getting more difficult, so Tom let go of Elena's hand to drive with both hands on the wheel. She turned off the radio, and n.o.body said anything. "That b.a.s.t.a.r.d was the one who should have been shot," Max said. She turned around and saw him: eyes closed, knees raised so his feet would fit on the seat. She no longer hated him. She hoped that Margaret had taken in wood before the snow started. The place where it was stacked was hardly sheltered at all.

When the car started to swerve, she grabbed Tom's arm-the worst thing she could have done-and sucked in her breath. Max sat up and started cursing. She watched as the car drifted farther and farther to the right, onto the shoulder of the road. It b.u.mped to a stop. "G.o.dd.a.m.n tire," Max said, and opened the back door and got out. Tom got out on his side, leaving the door open. Snow blew into the car. No cars had been behind them when it happened. They had been lucky. Elena heard Tom complaining that there was a jack, but no spare tire. "I'll walk back," Max said and kicked his foot in the gravel. "There's got to be somebody who'll come out, snow or not. I'll call somebody." He did not sound as if he believed what he was saying.

Tom got back in the car and slammed the door. "How stupid can we be, to take this trip without a spare?" he said. "Now we sit here and freeze, like a couple of idiots." He looked up into the rear-view mirror, at Max walking back to where they had come from. No cars came along the road. Elena took his hand, but he withdrew it.

"We'll get going again," she said.

"But I can't believe how stupid we were."

"It's Max's car," she said. "He should have had the spare with him."

"It's Max's car, but we're all in the same boat. You took that I-am-not-my-brother's-keeper lecture too much to heart."

"You believed what you told me, didn't you?"

"Oh, leave me alone. I've had to argue and discuss all weekend."

She turned the rear-view mirror toward her to see what progress Max was making, but the back window was entirely covered with snow. The light was dimming. She took Tom's hand again and this time he let her, but didn't look at her.

"You'll hate me again," he said, "because I never change."

"I won't," she said.

"What about what Max said in the restaurant? You don't want to hear about all that c.r.a.p, do you?"

"I guess not."

"If I bullied you into leaving Margaret, you can go back. I wouldn't hate you for it. Maybe I said too much. It just struck me that I'm not the best one to be giving advice."

"What are you trying to do?" Elena said. "Are you trying to get me to back out?"

Tom sighed. Elena moved over next to him for warmth. As they sat huddled together, a car pulled up behind them. Tom opened the door to get out. Elena looked around him, hoping to see a policeman. She saw a short man with a camouflage hat that buckled under the chin. Tom pushed the door shut behind him, but it didn't click and slowly swung open as the man talked. Elena reached across the seat to close the door, and as she did that she looked farther than she had the first time and saw that it was the blue van with the deer on top. She was terrified. Certainly the man had seen, from the restaurant, who put the note in the van. She took her hand off the handle and leaned across the seat to watch the conversation. In a while the man in the camouflage hat laughed. Tom laughed too. Then he walked to the man's van with him. Elena moved into the driver's seat and stuck her head out the door. She felt the snow soaking her hair. Max was nowhere to be seen. Tom and the man were nodding at the deer. Then Tom turned and came back to the car, and Elena moved into her seat again.

"Did he know it was us?" she said.

"How would he know?" Tom said.

"He could have looked out the restaurant window."

"No," Tom said. "He didn't know it was us."

"I thought something awful was going to happen."

"Don't be silly," Tom said, but she could tell from his voice that he had been frightened too.

"Did he make you look at it?"

"No. He was nice about stopping. I thought I'd take a look at his deer and say something about it."

"What did you say?"

"Nothing," Tom said.

Elena stared ahead, into the falling snow.

a a a When they were on the road again, Max made small talk about how smart it had been to stop to eat, because otherwise they would have starved as well as frozen. On the highway, guide lights had been turned on. Elena rubbed her window clear of fog so that she could see a little, and made a game of silently counting the lights. She got no farther than the third one before the one-two-three she had counted reminded her of her father throwing her in the air, hollering "onetwothree, onetwothree." She could remember how light, how buoyant, she had felt being tossed high in the air, and thought that perhaps being powerless was nice, in a way. She stared at the guide lights without counting, as the car moved slowly along the highway.

The Lawn Party.

I.

said to Lorna last night, "Do you want me to tell you a story?" "No," she said. Lorna is my daughter. She is ten and a great disbeliever. But she was willing to hang around my room and talk. "Regular dry cleaning won't take that out," Lorna said when she saw the smudges on my suede jacket. "Really," she said. "You have to take it somewhere special." In her skepticism, Lorna a.s.sumes that everyone else is also skeptical.

According to the Currier & Ives calendar hanging on the back of the bedroom door, and according to my watch, and according to my memory, which would be keen without either of them, Lorna and I have been at my parents' house for three days. Today is the annual croquet game that all our relatives here in Connecticut gather for (even some from my wife's side). It's the Fourth of July, and d.a.m.n hot. I have the fan going. I'm sitting in a comfortable chair (moved upstairs, on my demand, by my father and the maid), next to the window in my old bedroom. There is already a cl.u.s.ter of my relatives on the lawn. Most of them are wearing little American flags pinned somewhere on their s.h.i.+rts or blouses or hanging from their ears. A patriotic group. Beer (forgive them: Heineken's) and wine (Almaden Chablis) drinkers. My father loves this day better than his own birthday. He leans on his mallet and gives instructions to my sister Eva on the placement of the posts. Down there, he can see the American flags clearly. But if he is already too loaded to stick the posts in the ground, he probably isn't noticing the jewelry.

Lorna has come into my room twice in the last hour-once to ask me when I am coming down to join what she calls "the party," another time to say that I am making everybody feel rotten by not joining them. A statement to be dismissed with a wave of the hand, but I have none. No right arm, either. I have a left hand and a left arm, but I have stopped valuing them. It's the right one I want. In the hospital, I rejected suggestions of a plastic arm or a claw. "Well, then, what do you envision?" the doctor said. "Air," I told him. This needed amplification. "Air where my arm used to be," I said. He gave a little "Ah, so" bow of the head and left the room.

I intend to sit here at the window all day, watching the croquet game. I will drink the Heineken's Lorna has brought me, taking small sips because I am unable to wipe my mouth after good foamy sips. My left hand is there to wipe with, but who wants to set down his beer bottle to wipe his mouth?

Lorna's mother has left me. I think of her now as Lorna's mother because she has made it clear that she no longer wants to be my wife. She has moved to another apartment with Lorna. She, herself, seems to be no happier for having left me and visits me frequently. Mention is no longer made of the fact that I am her husband and she is my wife. Recently Mary (her name) took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. She broke in on me on my second day here in the room, explaining that she would not be here for the croquet game, but with the news that she had visited New York yesterday and had taken the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. "And how was the city?" I asked. "Wonderful," she a.s.sured me. She went to the Carnegie Delicatessen and had cheese cake. When she does not visit, she writes. She has a second sense about when I have left my apartment for my parents' house. In her letters she usually tells me something about Lorna, although no mention is made of the fact that Lorna is my child. In fact, she once slyly suggested in a bitter moment that Lorna was not-but she backed down about that one.

Lorna is a great favorite with my parents, and my parents are rich. This, Mary always said jokingly, was why she married me. Actually, it was my charm. She thought I was terrific. If I had not fallen in love with her sister, everything would still be fine between us. I did it fairly; I fell in love with her sister before the wedding. I asked to have the wedding delayed. Mary got drunk and cried. Why was I doing this? How could I do it? She would leave me, but she wouldn't delay the wedding. I asked her to leave. She got drunk and cried and would not. We were married on schedule. She had nothing more to do with her sister. I, on the other hand-strange how many things one cannot say anymore-saw her whenever possible. Patricia-that was her name-went with me on business trips, met me for lunches and dinners, and was driving my car when it went off the highway.

When I came to, Mary was standing beside my hospital bed, her face distorted, looking down at me. "My sister killed herself and tried to take you with her," she said.

I waited for her to throw herself on me in pity.

"You deserved this," she said, and walked out of the room.

I was being fed intravenously in my left arm. I looked to see if my right arm was hooked up to anything. It hurt to move my head. My right arm was free-how free I didn't know at the time. I swear I saw it, but it had been amputated when I was unconscious. The doctor spoke to me at length about this later, insisting that there was no possibility that my arm was there when my wife was in the room and gone subsequently-gone when she left. No, indeed. It was amputated at once, in surgery, and when I saw my wife I was recovering from surgery. I tried to get at it another way, leaving Mary out of it. Wasn't I conscious before Mary was there? Didn't I see the arm? No, I was unconscious and didn't see anything. No, indeed. The physical therapist, the psychiatrist and the chaplain the doctor had brought with him nodded their heads in fast agreement. But soon I would have an artificial arm. I said that I did not want one. It was then that we had the discussion about air.

Last Wednesday was my birthday. I was unpleasant to all. Mrs. Bates, the cook, baked me chocolate-chip cookies with walnuts (my favorite), but I didn't eat any until she went home. My mother gave me a red velour s.h.i.+rt, which I hinted was unsatisfactory. "What's wrong with it?" she said. I said, "It's got one too many arms." My former student Banks visited me in the evening, not knowing that it was my birthday. He is a shy, thin, hirsute individual of twenty-a painter, a true artiste. I liked him so well that I had given him the phone number at my parents' house. He brought with him his most recent work, a canvas of a nude woman, for my inspection. While we were all gathered around the birthday cake, Banks answered my question about who she was by saying that she was a professional model. Later, strolling in the backyard, he told me that he had picked her up at a bus stop, after convincing her that she did not want to spend her life waiting for buses, and brought her to his apartment, where he fixed a steak dinner. The woman spent two days there, and when she left, Banks gave her forty dollars, although she did not want any money. She thought the painting he did of her was ugly, and wanted to be rea.s.sured that she wasn't really that heavy around the hips. Banks told her that it was not a representational painting; he said it was an Impressionist painting. She gave him her phone number. He called; there was no such number. He could not understand it. He went back to the bus stop, and eventually he found her again. She told him to get away or she'd call the police.

Ah, Banks. Ah, youth-to be twenty again, instead of thirty-two. In cla.s.s, Banks used to listen to music on his ca.s.sette player through earphones. He would eat candy bars while he nailed frames together. Banks was always chewing food or mouthing songs. Sometimes he would forget and actually sing in cla.s.s-an eerie wail, harmonizing with something none of the rest of us heard. The students who did not resent Banks's talent resented his chewing or singing or his success with women. Banks had great success with Lorna. He told her she looked like Bianca Jagger and she was thrilled. "Why don't you get some platform shoes like hers?" he said, and her eyes shriveled with pleasure. He told her a couple of interesting facts about Copernicus; she told him about the habits of gypsy moths. When he left, he kissed her hand. It did my heart good to see her so happy. I never delight her at all, as Mary keeps telling me.

They have written me from the college where I work, saying that they hope all is well and that I will be back teaching in the fall. It is not going to be easy to teach painting, with my right arm gone. Still, one remembers Matisse in his last years. Where there's a will, et cetera. My department head has sent flowers twice (mixed and tulips), and the dean himself has written a message on a get-well card. There is a bunny on the card, looking at a rainbow. Banks is the only one who really tempts me to go back to work. The others, Banks tells me, are "full of it."

Now I have a visitor. Danielle, John's wife, has come up to see me. John is my brother. She brings an opened beer and sets it on the windowsill without comment. Danielle is wearing a white dress with small porpoises on it, smiling as they leap. Across that chest, no wonder.

"Are you feeling blue today or just being rotten?" she asks.

The beginnings of many of Danielle's sentences often put me in mind of trashy, romantic songs. Surely someone has written a song called "Are You Feeling Blue?"

"Both," I say. I usually give Danielle straight answers. She tries to be nice. She has been nice to my brother for five years. He keeps promising to take her back to France, but he never does.

She sits on the rug, next to my chair. "Their rotten lawn parties," she says. Danielle is French, but her English is very good.

"Pull up a chair and watch the festivities," I say.

"I have to go back," she says, pouting. "They want you to come back with me."

Champagne gla.s.ses clinking, white tablecloth, single carnation, key of A: "They Want You Back with Me."

"Who sent you?" I ask.

"John. But I think Lorna would like it if you were there."

"Lorna doesn't like me anymore. Mary's turned her against me."

"Ten is a difficult age," Danielle says.

"I thought the teens were difficult."

"How would I know? I don't have children."

She has a drink of beer, and then puts the bottle in my hand instead of back on the window sill.

"You have beautiful round feet," I say.

She tucks them under her. "I'm embarra.s.sed," she says.

"Our talk is full of the commonplace today," I say, sighing.

"You're insulting me," she says. "That's why John wouldn't come up. He says he gets tired of your insults."

"I wasn't trying to be insulting. You've got beautiful feet. Raise one up here and I'll kiss it."

"Don't make fun of me," Danielle says.

"Really," I say.

Danielle moves her leg, unstraps a sandal and raises her right foot. I take it in my hand and bend over to kiss it across the toes.

"Stop it," she says, laughing. "Someone will come in."

"They won't," I say. "John isn't the only one tired of my insults."

I have been taking a little nap. Waking up, I look out the window and see Danielle below. She is sitting in one of the redwood chairs, accepting a drink from my father. One leg is crossed over the other, her beautiful foot dangling. They all know I am watching, but they refuse to look up. Eventually my mother does. She makes a violent sweep with her arm-like a coach motioning the defensive team onto the field. I wave. She turns her back and rejoins the group-Lorna, John, Danielle, my Aunt Rosie, Rosie's daughter Elizabeth, my father, and some others. Wednesday was also Elizabeth's birthday-her eighteenth. My parents called and sang to her. When Janis Joplin died Elizabeth cried for six days. "She's an emotional child," Rosie said at the time. Then, forgetting that, she asked everyone in the family why Elizabeth had gone to pieces. "Why did you feel so bad about Janis, Elizabeth?" I said. "I don't know," she said. "Did her death make you feel like killing yourself?" I said. "Are you unhappy the way she was?" Rosie now speaks to me only perfunctorily. On her get-well card to me (no visit) she wrote: "So sorry." They are all sorry. They have been told by the doctor to ignore my gloominess, so they ignore me. I ignore them because even before the accident I was not very fond of them. My brother, in particular, bores me. When we were kids, sharing a bedroom, John would talk to me at night. When I fell asleep he'd come over and shake my mattress. One night my father caught him doing it and hit him. "It's not my fault," John hollered. "He's a G.o.dd.a.m.n sn.o.b." We got separate bedrooms. I was eight and John was ten.

Danielle comes back, looking sweatier than before. Below, they are playing the first game. My father's brother Ed pretends to be a majorette and struts with his mallet, twirling it and pointing his knees.

"n.o.body sent me this time," Danielle says. "Are you coming down to dinner? They're grilling steaks."

"He's so cheap he'll serve Almaden with them," I say. "You grew up in France. How can you drink that stuff?"

"I just drink one gla.s.s," she says.

"Refuse to do it," I say.

She shrugs. "You're in an awful mood," she says.

"Give back that piggy," I say.

She frowns. "I came to have a serious discussion. Why aren't you coming to dinner?"

"Not hungry."

"Come down for Lorna."

"Lorna doesn't care."

"Maybe you're mean to her."

"I'm the same way I always was with her."

"Be a little extra nice, then."

"Give back that piggy," I say, and she puts her foot up. I unbuckle her sandal with my left hand. There are strap marks on the skin. I lick down her baby toe and kiss it, at the very tip. In turn, I kiss all the others.

a a a It's evening, and the phone is ringing. I think about answering it. Finally someone else in the house picks it up. I get up and then sit on the bed and look around. My old bedroom looks pretty much the way it looked when I left for college, except that my mother has added a few things that I never owned, which seem out of place. Two silver New Year's Eve hats rest on the bedposts, and a snapshot of my mother in front of a Mexican fruit stand (I have never been to Mexico) that my father took on their "second honeymoon" is on my bureau. I pull open a drawer and take out a pack of letters. I pull out one of the letters at random and read it. It is from an old girl friend of mine. Her name was Alison, and she once loved me madly. In the letter she says she is giving up smoking so that when we are old she won't be repulsive to me. The year I graduated from college, she married an Indian and moved to India. Maybe now she has a little red dot in the middle of her forehead.

I try to remember loving Alison. I remember loving Mary's sister, Patricia. She is dead. That doesn't sink in. And she can't have meant to die, in spite of what Mary said. A woman who meant to die wouldn't buy a big wooden bowl and a bag of fruit, and then get in the car and drive it off the highway. It is a fact, however, that as the car started to go sideways I looked at Patricia, and she was whipping the wheel to the right. Maybe I imagined that. I remember putting my arm out to brace myself as the car started to turn over. If Patricia were alive, I'd have to be at the croquet game. But if she were alive, she and I could disappear for a few minutes, have a kiss by the barn.

I said to Lorna last night that I would tell her a story. It was going to be a fairy tale, all about Patricia and me but disguised as the prince and the princess, but she said no, she didn't want to hear it, and walked out. Just as well. If it had ended sadly it would have been an awful trick to pull on Lorna, and if it had ended happily, it would have depressed me even more. "There's nothing wrong with coming to terms with your depression," the doctor said to me. He kept urging me to see a shrink. The shrink came, and urged me to talk to him. When he left, the chaplain came in and urged me to see him. I checked out.

Lorna visits a third time. She asks whether I heard the phone ringing. I did. She says that-well, she finally answered it. "When you were first walking, one of your favorite things was to run for the phone," I said. I was trying to be nice to her. "Stop talking about when I was a baby," she says, and leaves. On the way out, she says, "It was your friend who came over the other night. He wants you to call him. His number is here." She comes back with a piece of paper, then leaves again.