American rust (9 page)

“You don't have to say it. I don't care.”

“I love you, too,” she said.

Soon she was touching the bare skin on his stomach. He put his hand up her skirt and she pushed against it and he undid his pants and slid them down and reached for her. She let him. She rolled on top of him and he pulled her underwear over and got partway inside, it was as quick as that. She raised herself up to get it in smoothly. They were still for a minute. She grabbed his shirt and squeezed it hard and then quickly rolled to one side and took her underwear off.

They started again and after a minute or two there was a look on her face like she was concerned with something and he pulled her mouth to his neck so she wouldn't make noise. Eventually the tension went out of her and they were going slower.

“Do you want to be on top,” she said.

“I think I'm done.”

“Me too,” she said.

After lying like that for a while they took all their clothes off, just to be touching, and she lay with her back to him, his arms around her. She had a raised mole on her back, on the one shoulderblade, and he leaned and kissed it. He knew the other one wouldn't, is why. He knew she meant something different to the other one, she did not mean as much to the other one. It didn't matter. She was not the same for him but that didn't matter, he was going to write it down, a life lesson. Shut the fuck up, he told himself.

Then he thought she was just doing this as a favor. It was just her doing a favor for you, old times’ sake, next time she will be gone to you. He felt cold. He was considering all the possibilities but then he decided no, it wasn't from pity, it was from several different things, he was fine with it. But it was time to get going, in an hour he might be nervous or angry, he didn't want her to see that. He slipped out from behind her and began to look for where his clothes had fallen, then stood up and began dressing.

The coldness woke her and she opened her eyes.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“I dunno,” he said. “I guess home.”

“I'll drive you.” She stood up, naked. She was so small. “Jesus, I'm shitfaced,” she said. “No wonder I wanted to seduce you.” She smiled at him.

He was slightly hurt by the implication but he smiled anyway and his head began to feel straight again, this was as good as it would get, two old friends, occasional benefits, any more and she'd take him under and then leave him there. He was glad it had happened, a good reminder of how it was supposed to be. It was supposed to mean something, it was more than just body parts. Life was long and he would feel this way again only not with her. He couldn't figure out why he was feeling so natural about it, he hoped the feeling would last, he knew this was how he should close it. The end of one book of his life. He did not want to think about it.

“I'm glad I got to see you again,” he said. He cleared his throat and made himself lean forward to kiss her forehead. She tried to pull him back to the couch.

“You might as well stay a while longer,” she said. “We might as well do it all night.”

“I should get home.”

“I meant what I said.”

“I know,” he said. “I know you did.”

As he was leaving, he turned to wave and saw something move in Isaac's window. He kept walking. Soon he was in the dark under the trees.

8. Lee

S
he was lying on the couch, looking around at the home she'd grown up in but had put from her mind five years now, water- stained ceilings, patches of wallpaper curled from dry plaster, Isaac's books flung everywhere. Since she'd left, the books had filled the house. Old science textbooks he'd picked up at thrift stores, copies of
National Geographic, Nature, Popular Science,
piles of them on every shelf, on her mother's upright piano, the stacks of books and magazines spread across the living room in unruly masses. It was a large room but still there seemed barely enough space for her father's wheelchair to pass. Obviously, Henry had decided to tolerate it. But maybe he no longer cared. A person looking in the window would have thought the house belonged to some crazy old lady and about twenty cats.

On one hand she loved her brother for it, his curiosity, he was always teaching himself things, but she was beginning to worry about him. He was getting more isolated and eccentric. Right, she thought. You're the one who stuck him here. It didn't seem like she'd had a choice about it. She'd always thought she had escaped just in time, outrun the sense she'd had her entire childhood that with the exception of her even-stranger younger brother, she was fundamentally alone. It was not a good way to think. It had changed completely when she got to Yale, not right away, but quickly enough, her sense of aloneness, of what she would now describe as an existential isolation, had disappeared. Her entire childhood in the Valley now seemed like a past so distant it might have been another person's life. She'd found a place she belonged. It seemed impossible she'd have to give that up and come back here.

There was a creaking from upstairs—her brother was still awake. She felt guilty. I'm working on it, she told herself. Simon's family had agreed to pay for a nurse, she'd made some phone calls, tomorrow she would start the interviews. It could not have gone any faster. Same as what they taught you as a lifeguard—you have to save yourself before you can save anyone else. That's what she was doing. She had gotten herself to solid ground and now she was coming back for her family. You sure took your time about it, she thought, but that probably wasn't true, she was just being hard on herself. She hadn't been a particularly good lifeguard, either—her body wasn't big or buoyant enough and technique only went so far. A heavy enough person would drag her under every time.

She got up and walked around the stairs, through the small dining room, and into the kitchen. Off the kitchen, in the den which had been converted to a bedroom, she heard her father snoring, the long pauses when his breathing seemed to stop. It is him, she thought. He is the problem. Her ears and neck got very hot and she had to wash her face in the sink, it was the old feeling that there were terrible things in motion and she would only understand when it was too late, it was the feeling she associated with this house, with the entire town. She felt it every time she came home. Soon they would all be gone from it. It was a conversation she'd been planning for years, telling her father it was time for both of his kids to leave. That he could stay in the house with a nurse or move to a home, but that the time for Isaac to stay had passed.

She had always been the favorite. Their father treated Isaac like a foster child, because he, Henry English, was a big man from a line of big men, because Isaac had a curious mind and Henry English did not, and while those same faults, smallness and fine- mindedness, were acceptable in his wife and daughter, when they appeared in his son it was as if everything he had to offer, everything he had valued in himself, it had all been submerged under the character of his wife. Including her Mexican coloring, which both children had inherited. Their skin wasn't that dark, really, they just looked slightly tan, Isaac could have passed for someone from the hills. Not so much her, though. A little more foreign. Dark eyebrows, she thought. Meanwhile Henry English was pale and red- haired. Or had been, anyway.

Their mother had come to the U.S. to study at Carnegie Mellon, and as far as Lee knew, she had never gone back. By the time her kids were born she had no trace of an accent and neither Lee nor Isaac had ever heard her speak Spanish. Right, she thought. As if Henry would have allowed that anyway. He wouldn't have been happy either if he knew you checked the box, called yourself Latina, on your college and law school applications. She'd thought it over many times, but when the time came she hadn't hesitated to do it. It was true and not true. She could look the part if she wanted, but she didn't know the language, not even a nursery rhyme—she was the daughter of a steelworker, it was a union family. At Yale she'd learned French. As far as college and graduate school went, she probably would have gotten in anyway, she had perfect SATs and nearly perfect LSATs but there were times she wished she could know for sure. Obviously it was a luxury to even wonder about it.

She took a handful of vitamins for all the wine she'd had, drank a glass of water, and went back to the living room. She couldn't get over the house—it was bigger and grander than some of the houses of her professors. Built for some businessman in 1901, the date in stone over the front door. A little ostentatious, but that was the style then. Her father loved the house more than he would ever admit. They had bought it in 1980, when things were beginning to slow, when people in the Valley were much less sure about buying big houses. Later, it had been the reason he had to take the job in Indiana, after the mill downtown had closed, living in a shack while he sent back money. In hindsight it seemed stupid. But of course that was the American Dream. You weren't supposed to get laid off if you were good at your job.

She wasn't ready to go upstairs and face her brother and decided she would sleep on the couch. Cheating had always seemed a male thing to do. She wondered why she'd slept with Poe. Maybe because she owed him, she'd made him some silent promise, the sort of promise you made with your body and she had broken it. Not so much by getting married as by not telling him. Or maybe she wanted this marriage to be over sooner rather than later, and was trying to speed up the process. No, that was not what she wanted but still, married at twenty- three, it was a little ridiculous. She had done it to show Simon she forgave him, it seemed as good a reason as any. Still there were days when he wouldn't get out of bed, barely acknowledged her existence. He was going through a hard time but maybe he had always been like that. He was going through a hard time but he'd grown up on an estate in Darien, Connecticut. He was a little bit spoiled.

Also, she still loved Poe, in a hopeless sort of way, in a way she would never love anyone else because she knew it could never go anywhere— Poe was a boy from the Valley, Poe loved the Valley, Poe had not read a book since graduating from high school.

She didn't feel sorry yet but that was probably still the endorphins. Or maybe not—Simon he'd cheated how many times, three girls she knew about and then how many others she didn't? She wondered if the statute of limitations had expired on those things. She wondered what she would do about Simon. He was already getting testy, she'd only been away two days but he wasn't doing well on his own, he'd gone to stay with his parents in Darien. From Darien it was only an hour train ride into New York, he had maybe fifty friends in the city but he didn't feel like leaving the house. It was depression but it was also a habit. It was his habit of acting helpless. To say he was a little spoiled—it was a gross understatement. If his supply of money were to somehow run out… he wouldn't make it. Maybe half of her Yale friends would make it. Most of them worked very hard, but none had any idea what it was to want something they wouldn't get. A specific lover, maybe. You're being defensive, she thought. This is better than you ever thought it could be. You are happier than anyone you know.

She still had principles—there was no longer any real reason to go to law school but she was still going. Simon was trying to talk her out of it, he wanted to do some extended traveling—there was a family house in Provence that was barely used. Only it was too cliché, blue- collar girl marries into rich family, benefits accrue. When she thought about that it made her sick. She would not take their money. Except they're happy to have you, you'll be the most well- adjusted person in their family—a scary thought. Obviously they had more money than she could reasonably expect to make in her entire life, even if she got a job at a Big Firm, which she would not do, she'd end up doing something for humanity, work for the Department of Justice or something, civil rights law. That is what everyone tells herself, she thought: I'm going to Harvard Law so I can be a public defender. Was it Harvard? She had gotten into Stanford and Columbia as well, all she had to do was pick. Actually she knew. Harvard, obviously. She couldn't help smiling. Christ you're a snobby bitch. That was alright. As long as you don't let anyone know. You just tell them you're going to school in Boston, and then if they ask further … but under no circumstances offer the information otherwise. It just sounded too snotty—Harvard. It was the same as Yale but worse. What about your brother, she thought. What is your brother going to do?

She wondered if she and Poe had been loud, she wondered if Isaac was a virgin and he'd heard her having sex with Poe. It would be horrible. She was not sure how much she knew him anymore. Part of her worried he was headed for serious trouble. She couldn't sleep. She opened her eyes and sat up.

She made a mental inventory of all that was wrong with the house— roof, paint and plaster on the inside, the trim around the windows was rotted, the bricks needed repointing—those were just the things her father had told her. It was a gorgeous house but it would likely cost more to fix those things than they'd get out of selling the place as is.

Because that was what was going to happen. Isaac was not going to stay here any longer, and she was not coming back, and Henry would have to accept that. He was willing to sacrifice Isaac, but she was not. Except you did, she thought. You let this go on way too long.

She wondered what they'd get for the house. In Boston or Greenwich it would sell for two million, but in the southern Mon Valley it might go for forty thousand. The neighbor's house had been empty twelve years, even the For Sale sign had faded and rotted away. The state had built a brand- new highway running north to Pittsburgh but there were never any cars on it, it was hard to imagine that in any other place, an enormous highway that no one used, the central artery, empty. Driving around New York or Philadelphia, the entire I-95 corridor, you wouldn't believe a place like this existed, and only a few hours away.

To help her get to sleep she decided to read in front of a fire. She opened the flue and piled some logs on the grate and put newspaper under them and lit the paper but after the paper burned out the logs were just smoldering, no real heat or flame. The smell of smoke filled the house and she opened the windows so the smoke detectors wouldn't go off. She was an idiot, really, how she'd managed to grow up in a town like this and still be such a girl. She did not know how to start a fire, shoot a gun, anything like that, she'd never had any interest though she'd grown up in Pennsyltucky for Christ's sake, it was embarrassing. Maybe before she left she would ask her father to do that, teach her how to shoot one of his handguns, tin cans in the backyard or something. That was something he'd be happy to do.

Looking through the books she'd brought, she picked up
Ulysses,
but couldn't figure out where she'd stopped. She wondered if it was really such a great book if you could never remember what you'd just read. She liked Bloom but Stephen Dedalus bored the crap out of her. And Molly, she'd skipped ahead to read that part. Racy for then, pages and pages of masturbating. At least she would not have to do that tonight. That was a relief. It had gotten to be a chore, really. Here she was, a young hot piece of ass and no one to give her what for, only her own hand to depend on. She shouldn't be so hard on Simon, really. It was only because she worried about him. He had hurt that girl, it had not even been his car, it was John Bolton's car, it was John Bolton that should have been driving. John Bolton had been nearly sober but he liked to encourage Simon, the bad part of Simon. John Bolton was one friend she wished Simon didn't have. Actually, there were several others. Anyway there was the black ice on the road. That was what the investigators had determined. There was no point in even thinking about it. She had forgiven him. You did not forgive people and then change your mind later. Simon hadn't forgiven himself and that seemed like enough punishment. She wanted them to have a normal life again, it didn't have to be crazy googly eyes or anything, just back to the way it was. Except there was Poe who is so warm you want to wrap yourself around him, you see him and you cannot stop touching him. You would not be happy with Poe, she reminded herself. Poe who gets in bar fights. Poe will never leave the Valley no matter how all the blood rushes down there and everything so sensitive and wanting pressure even thinking about it now she closed her legs together very hard Poe Poe Poe she squeezed her legs harder she thought about his flat stomach and the muscles on his chest she listened her father was still asleep she slipped her hand under her skirt, no she thought, there's no need for that. She took her hand back.

She picked up
Ulysses.
Hands are for turning pages, she decided. Leopold Bloom was having lunch. She wanted to fall asleep. She wondered if she had any Henry James. Except right there on the side table was her old copy of
Being and Nothingness.
Sartre—that was an equally good choice, good as Ambien. What should she pick? It was a very tough decision her life was full of them. She decided to stick with Joyce, she would get as far as she could. After a few more pages she was dozing happily.